Repugs: killing Americans is A-OK

Republican treason is a fact of life. From the Reagan campaign's negotiations with Iran to keep the hostages until after the 1980 election to George Bush senior's sales of chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein to the chimp's illegal and deceptive war of choice, the Plame affair, Iran-Contra, even support for the Axis in World War II, the list just goes on and on. Treason is in their blood, it seems.

The newest iteration is nothing short of scandalous; I am referring, of course, to the repug demand that amnesty be extended to Iraqi insurgents that are in Iraqi jails for killing Americans.

Under the headline "Amnesty for Insurgents? Yes.", Charles Krauthammer writes:

The Bush administration is firmly behind this policy. And who is sniping at it from the sidelines? Democratic senators, fresh from having voted for troop withdrawal rather than victory as our objective in Iraq, led the charge to denounce any sort of amnesty for insurgents who had killed Americans.

Apart from the hypocrisy, there is the bizarre logic: Is the best way to honor the sacrifice of those who have died in Iraq to decree an impotent, completely hypothetical policy of retribution? (Who, after all, is going to bell the cat?) Or is it to create conditions for precisely the kind of Iraq -- self-governing and internally reconciled -- that these courageous soldiers were fighting for?

Yes, the best way to honor those killed in Bush's war is to set free the very people who killed them, hoping they won't do it again. Which, likely, they will, because this desperate gambit doesn't contain any safeguards to assure good behavior; in terms of competent negotiation, this is the approach we know so well from hurricane Katrina, the Dubai ports deal and other examples of repug government.

Repugs want to go into November with some sign of success in Iraq. To achieve that, they are putting American lives at risk. Par for the course.