Dear Dick, What a Sadistic Bastard You Put Forward. Thanks!

A letter from General JC Christian:

Dear Vice President Cheney,

I don't think you're exploiting Melvin Sembler's skills very efficiently. The man should be heading up your Iraq team rather than serving as our ambassador to Italy. After all, as the founder of the STRAIT, Inc. youth treatment program, he has a demonstrated record of implementing the very policies you embrace.

You don't have to take my word for it; read what his former clients have to say:

Just one of many survivors is Samantha Monroe, now a travel agent in Pennsylvania, who told The Montel Williams show this year about overcoming beatings, rape by a counselor, forced hunger, and the confinement to a janitor's closet in "humble pants" -- which contained weeks of her own urine, feces and menstrual blood. During this "timeout," she gnawed her cheek and spat blood at her overseers. "I refused to let them take my mind," she says of the program. The abuse took years to overcome.[...]

"You don't understand what they did to these kids," Bradbury told AlterNet. "They put stuff up my butt."

According to Dr. Arnold Trebach, a professor emeritus at American University, nearly half of the children committed to Ambassador Sembler's care received similar treatment. If he can do that to American kids, just imagine how biblical he could go on foreign adults. He's your kind of guy.

He's also, apparently, Our Leader's kind of guy. After all, he awarded Mr. Sembler his ambassadorship and even named a building after him. You can't get a better endorsement than that.