Bill Richardson, Cluster Bombs, and Use of Torture

This morning President Elect Barack Obama announces that New Mexico's newly clean shaven governor, Bill Richardson, is his pick for Commerce Secretary. At the abbreviated press conference afterwards, Obama was asked if he was giving Richardson the consolation prize for not getting Secretary of State, and thus taking away my lead sentence... Obama responded that he is picking the best people for his cabinet and that when the process is over, folks will be impressed by the diversity and solid backgrounds of the appointees.

After thinking about it, I agree that Bill is a good pick. It signals that we will be refocusing our business and trade agreements with Latin America, an area that has languished while the focus has been on the Middle East. China, Brazil, and Russia have formed an economic alliance, and we will need to address those spheres of influence. Our economy is so bad, 250,000 jobs lost in November alone, that many illegal immigrants are packing it up and going back to Mexico. If you are going to starve, might as well be with the ones you love...

Representative from over 100 countries today were in Oslo, Norway, to sign an agreement banning the use of cluster bombs. The bombs are designed to rip apart tank armor, but have killed and maimed more children than tanks. Not surprisingly, the two largest users and manufacturers of the cluster bombs refused to sign the accord. Way to go, Russia and the United States, today's winning hypocrites...

I'm surprised that we are still having a debate over the use of torture. The proponents are mostly heartless bastards without any moral compass, who use the military and intelligence services to hide and justify their sick underpinnings. You can get better information from a prisoner using other methods and that information usually will be more reliable. Torture is used to fuel the sick, sadistic fantasies of sociopathic people like Dick Cheney and the ones who were in charge of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.