Roll out the kegger, kids: (TPM via Digby)

Reader David F. reminds me of this anecdote from The Nelson Report, back in May 2004, via Josh Marshall:

We can contribute a second hand anecdote to newspaper stories on rising concern, last year, from Secretary of State Powell and Deputy Secretary Armitage about Administration attitudes and the risks they might entail: according to eye witnesses to debate at the highest levels of the Administration...the highest levels...whenever Powell or Armitage sought to question prisoner treatment issues, they were forced to endure what our source characterizes as "around the table, coarse, vulgar, frat-boy bully remarks about what these tough guys would do if THEY ever got their hands on prisoners...."

-- let's be clear: our source is not alleging "orders" from the White House. Our source is pointing out that, as we said in the Summary, a fish rots from its head. The atmosphere created by Rumsfeld's controversial decisions was apparently aided and abetted by his colleagues in their callous disregard for the implications of the then-developing situation, and by their ridicule of the only combat veterans at the top of this Administration.

I keep thinking back to that trip to Europe not too long ago, with the German chancellor backrub/grope, the keg 'o fish antics, and the disgusting talk with your mouth full to the poodle roll incident. Eight freaking years of a doofus at the helm with power lust and a vice president who isn't shy about pushing him -- and the whole of the US government -- ever further to the heights of gory.

Jeebus, if you wrote this as fiction, no one would ever find the sheer level of idiocy and deliberate mendacity rolled into one package believable.

(YouTube -- the bike race scene from Revenge of the Nerds.)