Ah, the CIA, that wonderful beacon of democracy. They protect us from evil people like Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically elected President of Guatemala until 1954, Salvador Allende, the martyred defender of democracy in Chile, and Hugo Chavez, another one of those damn democratically elected Presidents. So it's only natural to allow them to use torture. I mean, they know what's good for us. At least, they knew that a 36 year civil war was good for Guatemala and a military dictator was good for Chile. So, although we have to make it look like we don't like torture, because we don't want another Abu Ghraib getting out and discrediting our puppet regime in Iraq, we still need to use it to protect us...somehow. So let's make a special exemption for the CIA, cause they're good at covering things up.
If you haven't figured it out yet, that last paragraph was sarcasm. South of the 49th, John McCain is trying to put in a ban on torture, with the support of practically the whole senate. Btu what does he know, he's only a victim of torture. All right, so they're gonna ban torture. But not so fast! Bush and Dick think it's a bad idea (wait, did I just use the words "Bush" and "think" in the same sentence?). Well, they want to make it look like they don't support torture, and make it look like the US government doesn't torture anyone, so they want a special exemption for the CIA. In other words, they still want to torture people. They just don't want the average Joe Soldier with a camera phone to do it. They want it swept under the rug, so their house is clean. Well, we can still see a suspicious lump under the rug.
This is how you build democracy? This is the shining beacon of democracy in the world? I don't think so. Of course, it was never about democracy or WMDs. It was all about getting a favorable investment climate for the world's second most evil company (I know they try, but United Fruit set the bar pretty high in the 50s), Halliburton. A few no bid contracts here, some shutting out companies not from the Coalition of the Killing, and we got some nice neocolonialism in action.
Chretien may have gutted the healthcare system and set up the sponsorship program, but at least he wasn't stupid enough to get us on board this train.
