ITMFA
So.
The American Imperium picks up someone on suspicion of being Islamic so that Maximum Leader Genius can say that his secret police have picked up yet another kingpin in the International Terrorist Conspiracy. And it turns out pretty quickly that this is not a kingpin, but instead just a mentally ill nobody who was nothing more than a secretary.
So what should the secret police do? Let him go? Bung him into jail for arranging travel for the wrong women and children?
Oh hahahahaha. Don't be silly. The fucking sociopathic scum who run this country called him "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States", so if the US let him go that would be admitting that B*sh isn't infallable. And that's not acceptable, because it would embarrass the Coward in Chief.
No, apparently B*sh felt it would be less embarrassing to torture, by presidential order, this lunatic until he said something that could produce a great flurry of secret policemen running around trying to look important, repeated until some other headline happened to distract attention from this mishap.
"I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?"
The pretense that the B*sh junta's vast abrogation of civil liberties was to "protect" the United States is all swept away now. The real reason is right there; we are losing our rights just to keep the goddamned emperor from losing face.
(links via Michael Froomkin)