Well, I have not completely turned to the arts....... and I will endeavor to keep the mixture of pop and politics at a high-octane level.

I will agree with you for once that Obama does indeed intend to prosecute high-ranking members of the Bush administration, perhaps even George Bush himself, for the ludicrous crime of authorizing so-called torture of the worst enemies of the American people and republic. This idea is so bad that it is difficult for me to oppose it with rational detachment. There are so many things dangerous about this absurd intention that I am at a loss of where to begin. It will establish the awful precident of a new administration placing members of the previous administration on trial for its policy decisions, making a 200-year tradition of the smooth transition of power a thing of the past. And it will make it much more difficult, if not impossible, for the United States to ever effectively fight and win another war. Not to mention little things like the end of all effective human intelligence gathering or the possibility of preventing another catastrophic terrorist attack. This silly idea will be celebrated by all the enemies of the United States from Pyongyang, Caracas and Tehran to the the streets of Londonistan and mountain caves of northern Pakistan to the Crazy Mosques and al Qaeda cells right here at home.

Let me say that we can all thank the Almighty that Obama, or even Al Gore, was not the President after 9/11 and that George W. Bush was the President. President Bush did what he had to do to make this nation secure and some of those measures were outside the Marquis de Queensbury rulebook and part of the Jack Bauer rulebook. The actions taken by the President on the advice of members of his cabinet, legal and military advisors and the CIA were mild in comparison to what other Presidents have done in waging wars and suppressing rebellion. In this Never Never Land of Obama and company, Presidents such as Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan and others are guilty of war crimes and should be labeled as such in our history text books...... and I am sure they will be in time with the approval of the Department of Education.

First of all it is big fat lie. Torture as a policy is defined as the infliction of severe, unendurable pain, permanent crippling injuries and sadistic cruelties on victims held as prisoners of war, captured insurgents, political prisoners or terrorists. Waterboarding causes neither death, severe pain nor permanent injury and is regarded by most intelligence experts as a stressful interrogation technique, not as torture. Every U.S. special operations soldier, Marine and Navy SEAL is waterboarded as part of their training and no one has ever died from it. Colorado's own Gunny Bob has been waterboarded and seems to be uneffected by the experience. It was used by the CIA on just three people and elicited vital information in time to save thousands of lives and billions in property loss. Other stressful measures, including raised voices, slaps, sleep deprivation and bright lights, were used and none of them would have been regarded by the Gestapo, the KGB or Castro's DGI as torture techniques. Those masters of the arts of torture would have looked at the stressful American techniques as amateur night.

After 9/11, I would have been willing to see much harsher methods authorized by the White House than those adopted and I have little doubt a majority of the American people would have concurred with me on this score. The President acted with restraint and practical measures to keep America safe during a period of unprecidented danger. It would be an obscenity to put the President or Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, or Alberto Gonzales on trial. Never again could the President rely on getting sound advice in a crisis from the people around him. All would have to bear in mind that they could face prosecution in the event someone decided to criminalize that advice. These Stalinist show trial would be the single most effective means to guarantee that we will not only lose the war against Islamic terrorism, but all future wars to protect out interests and secure the survival of the nation.

Nevertheless, I have no doubt that Obama will at least attempt to do this and it will backfire right in his face. For in a trial, the Defense will demand to see the CIA records that will indicate stressful interrogations did elicit vital information from the most evil of men that saved American civilian lives. And the American people in their wisdom will see the defendents as victims of persecution by a naive and vengeful administration. It is the one action by Obama that has the potential of making George Bush, Richard Cheney and Don Rumsfeld popular again.

Lyman's Law Number Seven is what applies here and it is a simple one. It states that the scandals, crimes and misdemeanors of a Republican President and the people around him will almost invariably be an excess of zeal in defending the United States from those who wish her destruction.... ie: the bombing of Communist supply routes and troop concentrations in Cambodia, providing illegal aid to the Contras in Nicaragua, wiretapping Americans making phone calls to al Qaeda operatives abroad and getting a little rough in a nice quiet place with some of Allah's warriors of God. The inverse is that scandals, crimes and misdemeanors of Democratic Presidents and the people around them will almost invariably be some kind of a moral lapse, either for financial gain or for sexual gratification. I have no doubt that will hold true during the next four years.