The Last Redoubt

President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.

...Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz, ..."yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

My understanding and commentary have followed a depressing arc over the almost four years I have been at this. First, I blamed the Bush Administration for its endless and unprecedented wrongdoing. Then I blamed the media for its bias and failure to report that wrongdoing. More recently I have been forced to confront the fact that the truth has gradually come out, and is now available to all who would but seek it, but that our citizenry no longer cares.

With this ABC story, it seems to me that this journey is complete. The President of the United States has freely acknowledged complicity in war crimes. The press has reported that searing, unfathomable truth. It is now up to the opiated masses.

Again: the President of the United States has not merely admitted that his underlings have broken the law, and crossed moral lines universally thought inviolate only a decade ago; the President of the United States has just admitted his own participation in and approval of those transgressions. I submit that further reporting about his malfeasance is now superfluous -- what could possibly top that?

If George Bush is not impeached now, then he is right about what America truly is. If Rice and Rumsfeld and Tenet and the rest are not indicted, then the American people thereby are -- indicted for their complicity and acquiescence in the brutality done in their -- in my -- name.