Torture? Fine and Dandy. Sex? String Him Up!

Let me see if I understand this.

We’re hopelessly entangled in a quagmire in Iraq (current U.S. military deaths: 1,842; overall deaths: at least 23,456). Our executive branch is torturing prisoners right and left (and blaming lowly foot soldiers in the process). The regime signs a whopping payoff to the energy industry, an explicit piece of graft (along the lines of the recent payoffs to the pharmaceutical and credit card industries) proving once and for all that they’re as crooked as three-dollar bills.

But this is what we get our panties in a bunch about? A general — just months before retirement — is drummed out because (gasp!) he had an extramarital affair! Not with someone under his command, mind you, or anyone involved in the military-industrial complex, or a foreign power, but a garden-variety citizen (at least as far as has been revealed).

Talk about rank hypocrisy (if not more — I smell cover-up). I’ll wait to see what the public reaction to this is, but if folks start thinking this is a good thing, it’ll sure make it all the more difficult for me to give a rat’s ass about a country with its priorities so ridiculously far out of whack.