Paid for by our tax dollars

With Tax Day coming up, it is worth remembering what our tax dollars pay for; rather, what our President gets them spent on.

Bewert at dailykos.com gives us a good start:

The remains are received clad in a white shirt, white pajama type pants, and white
undershorts. Feces covers the clothing from the waist down....There is gauze dressing on the left wrist. No other evidence of medical intervention is noted.... The right chest wall has fractures of ribs three through seven anteriorly and ribs six through twelve posteriorly. The left chest wall has fractures of ribs two through nine anteriorly and ribs seven through twelve posteriorly. There are fractures of the lateral aspect of ribs nine and ten on the left side. There is a horizontal fracture through the mid-portion of the body of the sternum."

(from the final autopsy report of an Iraqi man who died hanging by his cuffed wrists from a door frame, gagged, and beaten to death by his US interrogators.)

There is a direct line from the John Yoo memos arguing that the President has the power to ignore the US War Crimes Act and international treaty obligations like the Geneva Conventions, to the National Security Council's Principals Committee including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet that met with the President's knowledge to "choreograph" interrogations, to the result above.

There is a second line of culpability from the Congress that overwhelmingly supported the 2006 Military Commissions Act that in many cases grants retroactive immunity to US government officials for violations of the US War Crimes Act.

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Fafblog's Giblets put it this way (on Inauguration Day for the Bush 2nd term)

My fellow Gibletsians! On this day in history! Now is not a time!

Today Giblets is re-coronated Lord High Emperor Giblets of Everything. Long live me! But also: long live Freedom. It is delicious and to my liking and soon Giblets will spread it throughout the world!

Can you doubt the freedom-spreadery of Giblets? Giblets has decreed Iraq to be free and now it is! Oh sure, not in the petty "liberal democracy with equal protection under the law" sense. But in the "infested with terrorists" sense it's as free as they come! Once Iraqis were tortured and killed by an evil dictator. Now they are tortured and killed by freedom! Their genitals are shocked with the electrodes of liberty. They are mowed down by the machine guns of independence!

We are not our fathers, or our fathers' fathers! These truths are self-evident! We the people!

There are good countries and there are bad countries. Good countries are free, like Pakistan and Russia and Afghanistan! Bad countries hate freedom and want to destroy it. Giblets is for turning anti-freedom countries into powerful new Freeocracies bursting with color and vitamins! Stand with Giblets and freedom shall annihilate its enemies!

Freedom is like a woman, or a well-aged cheese, or a monkey. It is available for tasting and purchasing in the lobby refreshment center. There will always be an England!

Freedom is on the march, and it is heavily armed. You cannot stop freedom! It has conquered many lands and grown drunk on the blood of those who oppose it! It will crush its enemies, see it driven before them, and hear the lamentations of the women! With Giblets to lead it, freedom will sweep over the world - no, the UNIVERSE!

Ass, gas, or grass! Three for $3.99! God bless America!

PS- from a comment on dkos:

In regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty while all are responsible.
- Abraham Joshua Heschel