Some Kind of Manly

Molly Ivins over at Working For Change makes it clear that Bush and Cheney are not tough guys with their pro-torture stance. Instead they are pathetic with their "fake machismo."

'We do not torture,' said our pitifully inarticulate president, straining through emphasis and repetition to erase the obvious.

A string of prisons in Eastern Europe in which suspects are held and tortured indefinitely, without trial, without lawyers, without the right to confront their accusers, without knowing the evidence or the charges against them, if any. Forever. It's 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.' Another secret prison in the midst of a military camp on an island run by an infamous dictator. Prisoner without a name, cell without a number.

Who are we? What have we become? The shining city on a hill, the beacon and bastion of refuge and freedom, a country born amidst the most magnificent ideals of freedom and justice, the greatest political heritage ever given to any people anywhere.

snip

'Sometimes you gotta play rough,' said Dick Cheney. No shit, Dick? Now why don't you tell that to John McCain?