Laura has a very interesting article over at War and Piece and there are several different concept threads going on all at once. They’re all interleaved, however with one exception.

How is the Lincoln Group spinning the US authorizing torture? As Bush's poll numbers since November indicate, it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the administration's efforts to attempt to covertly buy good press in Iraq through such an outfit as Lincoln. After all, so much for the spin machine employed by this administration at home or abroad when the single most used word American citizens tell pollsters they associate with the president is "incompetent" -- (closely followed by "idiot" and "liar," according to Pew).

We’ve had these discussions about the malAdministration’s serious (and expensive) efforts to “buy” good press in the Iraq and the US. Why is anyone surprised? They’re Republicans. Republicans coerce assent through fear or bribery. It’s what the party does. Why is anyone surprised?

In some ways, perhaps the best Lincoln's funders could hope for is that its influence campaign convinces Iraqis that the US's foibles in Iraq are the result of incompetence rather than some malign intent. The White House's position on torture would seem however to erode the "bad apples" defense the Bush White House characteristically employs when acts of gross abuse by US personnel are uncovered in Iraq and Afghanistan, and eat away at the US's image in the world, far more than any Pentagon-funded Lincoln Group influence campaign could ever manage to counteract.

Now, isn’t that an interesting idea? A conscious attempt to “minimize” the political fallout and moral outrage from revelations of torture by invoking the “incompetence” theme, rather than the “evil bastards” theme.

It’s certainly no secret that George Bush loves torture. Those who have taken the time to investigate his youth have found numerous sources revealing his pleasure in sticking firecrackers into some orifice of frogs and blowing them up. And there’s a memorable photograph of our Cheerleader-in-Chief playing rugby or soccer in college, with his arm around another player’s neck, and his fist saying hello to the hapless (and helpless) opponent’s face. That was published in a Yale yearbook, in fact, I believe.

A college professor taught me in a class on Logic and Philosophy that “generalizations are ALWAYS suspect.” Yet I think most astute and experienced Americans understand that bullies are invariably moral and physical cowards, and most likely to take vicious pleasure in hurting another life form – animal or human. It’s hardly surprising that people like Mr Bush, Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld have advocated torture – rather stridently I understand, right from September 12th.

There’s another concept in all of this, of course. Lincoln is one of the patrons and clients of the Republican Party. Another is Bechtel. A third is CheneyBurton. It’s a good way to get cash into the hands of the patrons of the party, who then return a portion of their windfalls by way of donations, both legal and illegal. By legal I mean those campaign donations, bundled and otherwise, so carefully protected by all the “reform” laws that have been enacted to “control” paying to play. Illegal is a touchy subject of course, because even those things generally perceived as “legal” like say a bundle of $2,000 checks given by Jack Abramoff to Katherine Harris, to cite one example is only kinda sorta “legal.” That sort of thing is technically legal, but stop and consider what would happen if Ms Harris was a Democrat.

What I really had in mind was the thought that Mom and Pop candy stores, dry cleaners, and bars aren’t the only businesses that have a lot of loose cash floating around, if you get my drift and I’m sure you do.

William Learned Marcy, an American Senator once said “They see nothing wrong with the rule that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.” And that’s a contributory reason for the looting of the Treasury and why we no longer have the surplus that President Clinton worked so hard to amass.