blargblog

A Slight Extension

Good grief. I hate to say it, but in terms of posting another cartoon, I need a couple more weeks. All my spare time right now is dedicated to getting out my applications by the June 1st deadline. There's a lot to assemble, including letters of recommendation from various sources, some of whom I owe materials (sorry—soon!), and forms to fill out and so on and so on. I won't further bore you with details.

And I mean it—not drawing a cartoon on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses is killin' me. I mean, ya heard what Rush said, right? We all heard it. Kip unearthed another doozy, this time from that paragon of journalistic virtue, The American Spectator. Every so often I hear variations on the theme: it's not "torture;" it's "not comparable to what Saddam did in the same prison;" or that "liberals didn't make this much fuss about 9/11." And so on.

Oh, and: "Let's not politicize this; it affects all of us." That last bit has some truth: regardless of party affiliation, we Americans are stained in world opinion by this whole affair. But let's be clear. It is not "politicizing" to point out that inattentiveness by the commander-in-chief regarding such issues as the Geneva Conventions, the details of American occupation of Iraq (force deployment, say, or the nuances of Arab culture), or the veracity of reports of WMD under the Hussein regime, or the reports of the prisoner abuses themselves created a perfect storm of incompetence and corruption that has infected the entire system running this operation. But the buck never stops with Bush, does it? And if Rummy resigns, so what? They'll replace him with another Cheney stooge.

Yeah, yeah. This would all make such a wonderful cartoon. Two more weeks. Honest.