For them, the answer was "Yes"

Yesterday, I alluded to a couple of questions most ably posed by the Rude Pundit: "Do you trust George Bush to decide what torture is?" and "Do you want George Bush to be able to imprison anyone he wants for as long as he wants?"

We already knew that the Republicans would goose-step past The Decider's reviewing stand, arms swinging in triumphal salute to His Glory. (Lincoln Chaffee was the only one who didn't.)

What shocked me was that twelve--twelve!--Democrats also bowed before Him. Here they are, above, Senators Carper, Johnson, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Bill Nelson, Ben Nelson, Menendez, Pryor, Salazar and Stabenow. Most of them don't even mention their votes on their official Senate websites, almost as if they were trying to distance themselves from the shame they should be feeling. (Some do mention it, like Nebraska's Ben Nelson, with pride.)

Senators, shame on you. All of you. Not just these twelve, but every single one of you who voted to eliminate the most important legal protection this country has. Shame on all of the Representatives who let this pass the House. There are not words to describe the evil that you have done in all of our names.

Let me single out two Senators here, one on each side of the aisle.

Senator Lieberman: how could you? Yes, you're a hypocritical, lying toady for the Imperial Administration, but your own FAMILY suffered under the rule of a man who thought the way The Decider does. It boggles the mind that you could even consider allowing George W. Bush to arbitrarily put people into prison camps. What would your wife's parents think about that? Would they just look down at the tattoos on their arms and then look back up at you in silence?

Senator McCain: Don't you think what was done to you in Vietnam was bad? Yeah, I guess we can be all macho and say "It's what happens in war," but aren't we as a nation supposed to rise above barbarism? Aren't we supposed to be better? You never broke under the assault back then, but you've proven yourself to be nothing but gutless ever since. Yeah, I said it.

I say that every single legislator who approved of the Monkey King's legislation should be subjected to some of the "tough interrogation techniques" that He wants to be able to use. Start with The Decider himself. Do it until they beg for it to stop, then do it some more, saying "This is what you want us to do."

I'm disgusted with the whole damn lot of 'em, from Bush on down. Democrats and Republicans. Republicans for doing it, Democrats for letting 'em. The government has let us all down. Everything from here on out is our fault. All of us have allowed this to happen. I only hope that one day we'll come to our senses as a nation and begin to atone for the evil that we've done.

Yeah, I know. Keep dreamin'.

Update: Sorry, I forgot my attributions. All of the images in the collage were taken from the Senators' websites and cropped. Most of them are official images, but at least three of them are snapshots from the Senators' photo galleries.

Update 2: How appropriate is it that this is my 666th post?