No Time for Despair. It's Time to Fight!

We don't have the luxury to bemoan the situation.

We - and the world - can't afford to give up.

The president has finally admitted approving torture. He and his gang stand naked before the world.

But the media and Congress as a whole are still acting as if the emperor is wearing a teflon suit from head to toe.

And if you don't like Bush's threads, well, don't worry, in nine months you can have a different emperor with even better clothes. Not so threadworn. In fact, they're brand new.

Admittedly, one of them is pretty old, but we can put new clothes on him.

And one of them's a woman!

And one of them's black!

Isn't that exciting?

So what if the present emperor is naked. We don't think so. And who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes?

Meanwhile, polls report that Bush's disapproval ratings - 69% - are the highest ever recorded in the seventy years of U.S. polling. The prior high was 67% disapproval for Harry Truman while we were enmeshed in the Korean War.

Gallup doesn't always ask the question, but Bush's "strongly disapprove" rating of 50% is also a record, exceeding Nixon's 48% in February 1974, six months before he resigned - to avoid the certain fate of impeachment - in August 1974.

So, the truth that Bush is widely hated is there to be seen for those who care to look.

The truth that he is a bloody torturer, tyrant, war criminal and liar are there to be seen by all those who don't suffer from terminal political cataracts.

Yet, the mass sentiment against this criminal gang - these hooligans in three-piece suits - who stole office in the first place, remains latent, disorganized and disoriented by the deeply troubling, yet nonetheless starkly evident, fact that the rest of this country's political and opinion-leadership are shielding these world class war criminals and liars.

We don't have the time to indulge ourselves in wishful thinking:

"Maybe the next president will not continue what the current regime has been doing."

"Maybe the next president will even undo some of it."

"Maybe he or she will carry out investigations and hearings and maybe there will be some justice."

Maybe we should get real.

Everyday that this regime remains in office, more people are tortured and killed. The more than a million Iraqis who have died for Bush and Cheney's lies won't be brought back to life when Bush and Cheney leave office. The more than 4,000 Americans killed in the Iraq War won't come back and rejoin their families. The global warming and insults to the earth that this rotten cabal are refusing to do anything about and exacerbating as we speak become more dire every day.

The lasting damage to our collective conscience as a people will not be undone if we let these criminals go unpunished.

The pretenders to the throne have all had the opportunity all these years to do something if they thought something should be done.

They have absolutely refused to do so.

If someone you knew had steadfastly refused to make good on a promise for seven years, would you still believe their promises to do the right thing next year?

Let's see, how did the president put it? "Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - [pause, search brain for words, damn, can't ... find ... words!] - you can't get fooled again!"

Ah, and there's the rub. Can we get fooled once again?

And who - to finish the line that W. couldn't remember - would this be shame on?