Goodbye Walmart,

Hello inflation.

As the U.S. dollar declines

You can count on inflation

To rock our nation.

Throwing all that cash into Iraq

Nearly 5,000 U.S. Soldiers

Will never come back.

Bush and Cheney got us

Into this tragic mess,

Every honest American

Must confess!

Obama won't look back on Iraq

To properly punish those who

Instigated this ill fated attack.

From the point shortly prior to the time that Dick Cheney theoretically gave up the reins of Halliburton to run on a ticket headed by George W. Bush in 2000 to the present, his conduct has involved multiple layers of deceit.  

The Machiavellian antics of Cheney commenced with his resolution of his position heading the selection committee for a running mate to serve with Bush when he ordained himself as the best qualified individual, reportedly outraging ordained minister and former United States Senator John Danforth of Missouri.  

Under the circumstances, if Danforth, at one time considered to be Cheney's choice, was as innocent as conventional wisdom believed, he had every right to conclude he had been no more than a duped fall guy for a power hungry political opportunist charging forward at full gallop.

Many experts believed that the U.S. Constitution had been violated by allowing Cheney on the ticket.  The point raised was that, as Halliburton's president operating out of its Texas headquarters, Cheney was a resident of the lone star state rather than that in which he grew up and resided in while in Congress -- Wyoming.  

At long last I can agree with a comment from Fox News, creators of fiction posing as informational television.

Sean Hannity in an interview of former MSNBC program host and longtime actor Charles Grodin April 22 has said in response to the latter's question that he would agree to be waterboarded with proceeds going to families of those who served in the Iraq War.

Keith Olbermann has agreed to pay $1,000 for every second that Hannity endures of a procedure that has been defined as torture under international law and the United States military for years.

In the case of the U.S. military court martial activity occurred as far back as 1898 and the Spanish-American War according to comments made by Olbermann in his April 23 broadcast.

President Obama, there are certain issues where splitting differences is not only an option but the wisest policy.  In the case of prosecuting CIA torture suspects this is not the case.

Historical analysis reveals that it was the United States under President Harry Truman that made a concerted effort to arm the world statutorily with the legal wherewithal to avoid the tragic Holocaust of World War Two and other horrible ramifications flowing therefrom.

Justice Robert Jackson, a former attorney general under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was selected to lead the U.S. legal team at the Nuremberg Trials, conducted in the same city where Nazi Fuhrer Adolf Hitler held his largest rallies, which were preserved on film by his cinema diarist Leni Riefenstahl.

Assisting Jackson was Telford Taylor, soon to become one of the eminent legal minds of the past century and a longtime professor of law at Columbia University.  

President Obama's statement reported this afternoon by the New York Times that his administration would not be prosecuting CIA operatives responsible for "waterboarding" prisoners is a decision that is both legally and morally reprehensible.

Obama's statement used the term "good faith" respecting the individuals involved in the context of his decision not to prosecute.  To anyone who studied law the term good faith in this context is a contortion of legal terminology.  Its use in this fact situation would be rejected scornfully by any reasonable judge hearing this fractured lexicon.

The term good faith is generally applied in a civil context pertaining to performance of duty in a contractual setting.  In making a determination on services rendered in a contract the issue of good faith is applied in the context of the individual performing under the contract.

How does good faith apply in this context?  It never passed muster and almost assuredly was never used in the cases of Japanese officers who went to the gallows following World War Two for waterboarding.

It was understandable that of all the Republicans, save drug-addicted talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the one to fire the first and loudest opening growl at President Barack Obama was you.

Considering your track record, could we have expected anything else?

The subject matter was thoroughly predictable, seeking to generate terror in the hearts of Americans with your latest wolf cry of the imminent attack we are facing from international terrorists.

You take bows for keeping Americans safe from terrorism on your watch and that of George W. Bush.  Talk to Richard Clarke and any other bona fide terrorist expert and a different story emerges of those repeated warnings before 9/11 to which the administration in which you served and feel so prideful about did nothing.

The next time Michael Mukasey is called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee I suggest that he be strapped to a stretcher, a rag placed in his mouth and water poured in the rag until he begins to answer completely and truthfully the questions put to him by the committee.

Now that waterboarding has become an accepted form of interrogation in these United States, I recommend that it be utilized not only with Mukasey, but with all future witnesses before committees of the congress. I think that there are subpoenas kicking around out there for Condi Rice and other executive department figures who have been less than forthcoming in past appearances, so perhaps as our favorite republican tough guy Rudy Giuliani says, we should question them aggressively.

It might be a good idea if the voting public were able to use the same technique in questioning the presidential candidates on their positions. For the rest of the debates all candidates should be wheeled in strapped to stretchers and aggressively questioned using this simulated drowning method.

Using these methods we may begin to get the truth from our "public servants" and declared wannabes.

This will not work in Atlanta however, they don't have enough water at the moment to achieve any kind of satisfactory results.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust