Do not click on this link unless you’re sure you’re ready.  This was done at Abu Ghraib in your name.  Let us not pretend that this was either an isolated incident or the act of a few bad apples.

Hey, Brittan.  It’s us, the United States.  You look good today.

So, yeah.  Remember that whole big flap thing about the “extraordinary rendition,” and how you said that none of our planes used to render prisoners had refueled on your bases anywhere?  Yeah, what a pisser that whole thing was, eh?  With the media and the parliament and all.  So last week. . .   Well, the darnedest thing happened.

Seems some guys down at the State Department accidentally left a box of floppies next to the toaster in the break room, and well, we just found them.  We’re always telling those guys not to bring their office stuff into the break room, but you know how it is, sometimes.  Anyway, it turns out that there may have been one, possibly two, of our planes that refueled in Diego Garcia.

I mean, with a name like Diego Garcia, who would have thought that was one of your guy’s bases anyway, right?  Don’t you guys normally name things like, “Her Majesty’s blah-blah-blah,” and stuff like that? You guys always name stuff after your queen chicks and such, and the English ones, not like the French ones and definitely no Spanish ones, if you have any of those lying around.

Well, the thing is, we know this might be a bit of a bummer for you.  But you guys got a new Prime Minister, so maybe if you just play cool, it’ll all blow over.  If you guys have anyone you need to render, we can totally hook you up, seriously.  Just ask.

We cool?  Awesome.

These things are acceptable - at minimum - to be used on human beings deemed to be enemies of the state according to John McCain, presumptive Republican Nominee to the Presidency of the United States (of America, I think).  Threats to your family, if there is some reason to suspect you might be the enemy, are OK.  Threats, presumably to kill your children, presumably to rape your wife, presumably to destroy all those things you’ve devoted your life to.  These things are entirely appropriate, if you’ve been found by an arbitrary body to pose some hypothetical risk to the United States.

Waterboarding, on the other hand, is right out.  That is, of course, if the Administration keeps its solemn and here-to-fore unsullied word that they won’t use it.  If they don’t, thanks to his vote, there will be no legal protection for you under the law.  Whoopsies.

The Congress is coming at Attorney General Mukasey pretty hard, as well they should.  In an exchange with Senator Biden, Mukasey basically told the Senate that the Detention Act’s “shock the conscience” language is basically all relative to the reason for torturing; that there is no hard-and-fast definition of that mandate and therefore no solid way to say that waterboarding is illegal.  And anyway, he insists the CIA isn’t doing it anyway.

Dick Durbin tried again to pin him down, and this time, Mukasey basically told him that the Congress would need to pass an entirely new law that specifically forbade waterboarding.  Can you imagine that this is the state our nation has come to?  We need a law to prevent torture.  Then, by all means, let’s have the law.

Just watch it.  Clear as crystal: