One of the goofier features of Bush’s Friday trainwreck presser was how he punched the phrase “young professionals.” (Take the time to listen, at the link. It’s a remarkable, er, performance.) In demanding that the Geneva Convention’s language prohibiting torture be obfuscated (that is, recalling “healthy forests,” “clarified”) Bushh said this:

[BUSH:] You can’t ask a young professional on the front line of protecting this country to violate law.

Now, why this sudden concern for “professionals,” young or otherwise? Bush certainly didn’t show much concern for professional scientists when he gagged them on global warming, or for processionals in medicine when he rammed through his goofy and lethal abstinence-only programs.

And why this sudden concern for violating the law? Bush believes its His to violate the law—that’s a conseqence of His theory of the unilateral executive. And Bush committed a felony each and every time he reauthorized His program of warrantless surveillance, for a grand total of thirty felonies, so his actions show he has no respect for the law at all.

So, what’s up with this “young professionals” bullshit byte?

(It’s as if somebody managed to penetrate the Xanax haze in Bush’s head, and scrawled “young professionals” across the inside of his forehead in luminous letters…)

My guess, which can only be a guess, is this:

The “young professionals” looked at what happened when the Republicans were perfecting their techniques of administering torture at Abu Ghraib, and did a “lessons learned” exercise.

The Republican techniques for administering a system of torture included: (1) a deliberately blurred chain of command, (2) a Stanford Experiment-like grant of permission from authority figures in and out of government to allow torture, no matter what the rules or training said, and (3) —real extrapolation here—an electronic backchannel to feed data, and especially images, to the West Wing. (Samuel Provance would be the network administrator to ask about that.)

And, oh yeah, (4) “the bad Apples” theory, which was essential for providing the brass with “plausible deniability.” Did anyone ever notice that it was only the grunts—the “Bad Apples”—who paid any price for torture, and never, ever, anyone higher up in the chain of command? I’m betting the “young professionals” noticed.

Presumably, these “young professionals” aren’t stupid, and don’t want to be the “bad appples” convicted of war crimes. So, they’re demanding protection, and have let somebody with Bush’s ear (Negroponte?) know this in no uncertain terms.

NOTE It would certainly be interesting to find out if any of these “young professionals” had some insurance salted away. More Abu Ghraib-like CDs, more tapes of screaming boys, the passwords to the West Wing backchannel… After all, if I were negotiating with the Bush regime over criminal liability for anything, I’d certainly want some leverage.

UPDATE Oops, I forgot “young.” Sorry. That’s in there to reinforce Bush’s strong father frame. Gag.