"Power: A Boot Heel in the Face" - G. Orwell

Is Little Bush "Stalinesque?" Go read Martin Amis' "Koba the Dread" about power and torture, and then see if you hear echoes in the lies streaming from the mouths of Bush, Rice, Rumsfield, and Cheney.

As Mark Kleiman so eloquently puts it: If we stopped torturing people, directly or by proxy, then we couldn't force them to reveal what they didn't know and what in fact wasn't true. And without untruths, the War on Terror would grind to a halt.

Also if you get a chance hunt down Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, it's breathtaking, heartbreaking and oh so true. Here's a speech Pinter has volunteered to write for our indecent, fearless, leader: ‘God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden’s God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad, except he didn’t have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don’t chop people’s heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget it.’