They will be held accountable. We will never forget nor forgive.

Do you think they have feelings of shame and guilt?

Or is it more just the reaction like cockroaches have of scuttling back into the dark when the light goes on?

I've been having more than a few Washington D.C. ips click on my post of Harper's magazine discussion with Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side. But what I think worries/ scares/ confuses/ angers/ concerns them about the post is when I wrote this:

We want names. We want the names of those in the legal [and medical] profession who assisted in this horror. We want to know who they are and why they thought this was a patriotic thing to do. Or worse yet, why this would be an intriguing thing to do.

We won't let them sink quietly back into American society, becoming the lawyers who do our trusts or the doctors who prescribe pills to our children. They have participated in the torture of prisoners and it has brought shame to our nation and fury and revulsion to its citizens.

We want to know who they are.

Interesting, don't you think? That they might just begin to realize that there is a demand for accountability from those who helped the Bush adminstration break the Constitution, destroy the law, bomb the high road, go for the throat, empty the treasury, gut the Geneva Conventions, lay low our nation's integrity and honor.

If this is what is making loyal Bushies break out in a sweat, I'll say it again:

We want their names.

Paul Krugman

Notes the sacrifices of the Bushies:

On this Fourth of July, President Bush compared the Iraq war to the Revolutionary War, and called for “more patience, more courage and more sacrifice.” Unfortunately, it seems that nobody asked the obvious question: “What sacrifices have you and your friends made, Mr. President?”

On second thought, there would be no point in asking that question. In Mr. Bush’s world, only the little people make sacrifices.

[snip]

This time around, Mr. Bush celebrated Mission Accomplished by cutting tax rates on dividends and capital gains, while handing out huge no-bid contracts to politically connected corporations. And in the four years since, as the insurgency Mr. Bush initially taunted with the cry of “Bring them on” has claimed the lives of thousands of Americans and left thousands more grievously wounded, the children of the elite — especially the Republican elite — have been conspicuously absent from the battlefield.

The Bushies, it seems, like starting fights, but they don’t believe in paying any of the cost of those fights or bearing any of the risks. Above all, they don’t believe that they or their friends should face any personal or professional penalties for trivial sins like distorting intelligence to get America into an unnecessary war, or totally botching that war’s execution.

Krugman goes on to discuss the panicked behavior of the Bushies over the possibility of Scooter Libby actually having to go to jail. He finishes:

Mr. Bush says that Mr. Libby’s punishment remains “harsh” because his reputation is “forever damaged.” Meanwhile, Mr. Bush employs, as a deputy national security adviser, none other than Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty to unlawfully withholding information from Congress in the Iran-contra affair. Mr. Abrams was one of six Iran-contra defendants pardoned by Mr. Bush’s father, who was himself a subject of the special prosecutor’s investigation of the scandal.

In other words, obstruction of justice when it gets too close to home is a family tradition. And being a loyal Bushie means never having to say you’re sorry.

Georgie has been physically unable to acknowledge mistakes. I don't think his mouth will ever be able to form the short sentence: I made a mistake. Or: I was wrong. Or even: I'm sorry.



This is a man who assumed he'd never have to accept responsibility for any of his actions.





And his enablers believed it too.



Guess what. This is Bush's and Cheney's war. They started it. They can't finish it. They can't fix it. The mess is all theirs.

They are responsible.