It’s been a tough week for all of us. But it’s been a tough week for the Republicans too. From John Hulse in the comments:
We have Mark Foley a republican congressman from Florida’s 16th Congressional District, a 52 year old man, sexually harassing a 16 year old (boy) congressional page, resigning from congress immediately. The congressman was even asking the young boy for photos of himself. Sexually explicit computer messages. Something like “Would you please slip your tighty-whities off for me.” and “Are you turned on?” Creepy times 10.
We have snippets of Bob Woodward’s new book, where Laura Bush is walking around the White House hallways calling for Don Rumsfeld’s resignation.
Then a CIA report that says that the invasion and occupation has made the United States LESS SAFE and recruited 1 million new crazed terrorists who are willing to kill themselves and all of us.
Reports are now saying that American troops are coming under attack 100 times EVERY SINGLE DAY. That�s an attack about every 13 minutes. Give or take a roadside bomb.
Crooked republican lobbyist, Jack Abramoff now is being reported to have had hundreds of meetings inside the White House. Offering gifts to the richest men in the White House. Free concert tickets, free dinners to nice restaurants, free trips, free travel. FREE FREE FREE.
Quite ironic how the poor of Katrina were left to starve and die, but Bush’s friends get concert tickets and a free meal. The average American can’t afford to take a vacation and these corrupt pieces of human garbage get free trips to Scotland to play golf. All they had to do was agree to screw over the Indians. It seems from the evidence that it was an easy call for them to make.
The question one wonders is how much more harm to America could George Bush and the republicans do to America if they were with the other side?
And finally Bill Clinton’s slam dunking of poor Chris Wallace. Mr. Wallace ended up peeing all over himself and lying about all the tough questions he asked the Bushies.
All this and we left out, TORTURE. George W. Bush will be known forever to history as the torture president. Both al Qaeda and the United States, I’m afraid.
Oh yeah�.I almost forgot. MA-KA-KA!
Let’s just say this is going to be a helluva campaign. Fasten your seatbelts.
Update: This Republican Boytoy scandal must really have the leadership freaked out:
House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and that Hastert assured him “we’re taking care of it.”
ooops
Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush’s anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president’s judgments in wartime.
He said the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president’s pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. “The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime,” the attorney general told a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.
Right. The Empty Codpiece and his federalist society drones are the ones the constitution anticipated should be interpreting the constitution when the US engaged in an unending, undeclared “war” on a tactic.
If these Republicans manage to hold on to the presidency, which they very well may since we’ve anointed St McCain of Guantanamo, I guess we’d better get used to the idea that we are living in an All American form of military dictatorship. There really is no other way to interpret Gonzales’ statement.
Funny how we managed to get through the cold war and WWII without stripping the courts of authority, but then the Commies and the Nazis were nothing (nothing, I tell you!) to the existential threat posed by Osama bin Laden and his henchmen. It’ll be a miracle if the country survives.
I read today that one of the biggest corporations in the world has taken sides in the election and has chosen to explicitly identify themselves with a right wing shill. General Motors has actually hired Sean Hannity for a “patriotic” campaign to sell their cars. (This is a man who asks his guests “Is it that you hate this president or that you hate America?” )
Hannity is an unusual choice, to say the least. Apparently GM no longer cares if Democrats buy their cars. Good to know.
As I was casting about today for various Hannity quotes, I came across this beauty from his book “Deliver Us From Evil.” The events of this week made it particularly striking, I thought:
Uncomfortable with the idea of God-given natural rights, [liberals] seek to substitute their own concepts of liberty and justice — whatever they may be at the moment. The prefer the idea of a “living and breathing” constitution, one that can change with the times. Yet what they fail to see is exactly what Madison warned against: that a government with unchecked power — whose authority is not grounded in a more fundamental source of morality — leaves its people unprotected from evil.
This blind spot has left liberals far less suspicious of totalitarian regimes than they should be. Monarchism, national socialism, fascism, communism — all these forms of authoritarianism are illegitimate and inherently unjust. They enable a relative handful of people to hold the state’s levers of power, and use them to impose their will on an entire population. And inevitably they lead to abuse, oppression, even mass murder.
…We believe that American is a superior society not because Americans are superior human beings, but because our culture was founded on a recognition of our God-given natural rights — the “unalienable rights'” referred to in the Declaration of Independence. From that awareness flows a basic, shared respect for humanity, individual liberty, limited government and the rule of law.
Well, there’s unalienable and then there’s unalienable.
They (the detainees) do not deserve the full panoply of rights reserved for Americans. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) 9/28/06
“It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people,” he said. “Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli’s and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.”
Do they all look like macacas Trent? because animals don’t qualify for those unalienable rights that are reserved for Americans. Well, some the Americans. The good ones. You know which ones.
Oh, yes, it’s disturbing. But let’s not not over-react. In reality, it’s just election-season politicking, the torture bill, I’m talking about, the limitations on habeas corpus. They really don’t mean it to stick ’cause they know full well it’s unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will overrule it. And that will be that.
Supreme Court decisions that are “so clearly at variance with the national will” should be overridden by the other branches of government, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says.
“What I reject, out of hand, is the idea that by five to four, judges can rewrite the Constitution, but it takes two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the states to equal five judges,” Gingrich said during a Georgetown University Law Center conference on the judiciary.
It takes approval by two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the 50 states to adopt an amendment to the Constitution, the government’s bedrock document.
Gingrich, a Republican who represented a district in Georgia, noted that overwhelming majorities in Congress had reaffirmed the Pledge of Allegiance, and most of the public believes in its right to recite it.
As such, he said, “It would be a violation of the social compact of this country for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise and would lead, I hope, the two other branches to correct the court.”
In 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled that the pledge was unconstitutional when recited in public schools because of the reference to God. The Supreme Court in 2004 reversed that decision on a technicality, but the case has been revived.
Gingrich said “the other two branches have an absolute obligation to render independent judgment” in cases that are “at variance with the national will.”
He spoke at Thursday’s panel discussion on relations between the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government.
And I can just hear the rationalizations. Look, it’s well known Newt isn’t in the Bush inner circle, even other Republicans think Newt is crazy.
Keep going…
Besides the country wouldn’t stand for it. If George W. Bush chooses to ignore Supreme Court decisions he doesn’t like, why, there would be…well, no there wouldn’t be riots in the streets, but a lot of very irate people would write letters to the editor!
Riiiiiight.
And don’t you just love Daschle’s charmingly naive riposte? What if Gore ignored the Supremes? The Republicans wouldn’t have liked that one bit! ROTFLMAO!
My dear Daschle, you really don’t get it. This isn’t a game where the rules are “I play fair so you play fair.” This is about the reality of asymmetrical power and that’s no game. For a Republican in 2006 to worry that a Democrat would ever be in a position, let alone dare, to override a Supreme Court decision is like worrying that Noam Chomsky might have his own talk show on Fox News.
Now, for those of you clinging on to the delusion that what is happening isn’t what actually is happening, let me spell it out. Gingrich is floating out there the very real possibility that Bush will not abide by any Supreme Court judgment he doesn’t like. Suddenly the idea that the Supremes aren’t the final arbiter on constitutionality is something that “merits discussion” and if you don’t think this notion is going to dominate the discourse if the Supremes strike down the torture bill, well, I hate to be so blunt about it, but you are completely, totally wrong.
Rogue presidency. Fascism.
I’m not joking, I’m not being shrill, and I’m not being alarmist.
Susie informs me that today was Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, the protector of light against the forces of darkness. Apparently St. Mike is honored by all the people of the book, which is news to her — and me too.
Susie nominates him for our patron saint and I’ll second that nomination. We need all the help we can get.
Many thanks to tristero for voicing the frustration and outrage so many of us are feeling about events of this week. I remember writing a piece sometime back about the danger presented by the constant drumbeat of cruel and violent rhetoric that bubbles up from the right wing into the national conversation and becomes more and more acceptable. (David Neiwert, as you know, has written about this extensively.) Civilized taboos are being broken everywhere, especially the most important taboos, the big ones, the ones that put untrammelled power in the hands of unaccountable authority. I wrote in that post called “Flame On High”
Seeing Ann Coulter feted on the cover of Time magazine as a mainstream political figure instead of the deranged, murderous extremist she actually is was quite a shock. And then a friend sent me the links to the Free Republic thread discussing the death of Marla Ruzicka, which made me so nauseous that I had to shut down for a while.
It has become clear to me that we are frogs being slowly boiled to death. And the media are enjoying the hot tub party so much that they are helping to turn up the heat.
Ann Coulter is not, as Howie Kurtz asserts today, the equivalent of Michael Moore. Michael Moore is is not advocating the murder of conservatives. He just isn’t. For instance, he doesn’t say that Eric Rudolph should be killed so that other conservatives will learn that they can be killed too. He doesn’t say that he wishes that Tim McVeigh had blown up the Washington Times Bldg. He doesn’t say that conservatives routinely commit the capital offense of treason. He certainly doesn’t put up pictures of the fucking snoopy dance because one of his political opponents was killed. He doesn’t, in other words, issue calls for violence and repression against his political enemies. That is what Ann Coulter does, in the most coarse, vulgar, reprehensible way possible.
Moore says conservatives are liars and they are corrupt and they are wrong. But he is not saying that they should die. There is a distinction. And it’s a distinction that Time magazine and Howard Kurtz apparently cannot see.
I have long felt that it was important not to minimize the impact of this sick shit. For years my friends and others in the online communities would say that it was a waste of time to worry about Rush because there are real issues to worry about. Likewise Coulter. Everytime I write something about her there is always someone chastizing me for wasting their time. Yet, here she is, being given the impramatur of a mainstream publication of record in a whitwash of epic proportions. Slowly, slowly the water is heating up.
The idea was that the rise in heated, violent rhetoric in our culture was leading to serious concerns about the eliminationist impulse on the right. Just this week we see a disgusting anthrax “joke” played on Keith Olbermann because he has had the temerity to speak out against the president — and a right wing newspaper laughs about it.
But why should that surprise us? We also saw more than half of our elected representatives explictly endorse torture and the repeal of habeas corpus (although they lied right to our faces and said they didn’t.)
That shouldn’t have surprised us either. CJR has an interesting article this month on how the press covered torture called A Failure of Imagination. It’s not pretty:
There is a final factor that has shaped torture coverage, one that is hard to capture. In most big scandals, such as Watergate, the core question is whether the allegations of illegal behavior are true. Here, the ultimate issue isn’t whether the allegations are true, but whether they’re significant, whether they should really be considered a scandal.
Though the administration has decided not to defend publicly the need for “coercive” interrogations, others have. Their argument is that the policy of abusive interrogations is not only acceptable but necessary to protect the United States. At the same time, polls on torture are notoriously sensitive to phrasing. It’s the mixed results themselves, though, that may be telling. Americans appear to be ambivalent about the occasional need for torture. And with ambivalence, perhaps, comes a preference for not wanting to know.
Within this context, any article, no matter how straightforward or truthful, that treats abuse as a potential scandal — even by simply putting allegations on the front page — is itself making a political statement that “we think this is important,” and, implicitly, wrong. To make such a statement takes chutzpah. Between the invasion of Afghanistan in fall 2001 and the revelations about Abu Ghraib in spring 2004, chutzpah was in particularly short supply.
And it still does, apparently. While there has been ample coverage of Bush’s torture and indefinite detention regime it has never assumed the level of “scandal.” Even Abu Ghraib, where there were pictures of abuses, never really touched the administration. And what happened to the culture?
You’ll recall what the most popular radio host in the world had to say about it:
LIMBAUGH: …this is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?
And you’ll recall what leading Republicans said about the criticism he received for that:
Rush’s angry, frustrated critics discount how hard it is to make an outrageous charge against him stick. But, we listeners have spent years with him, we know him, and trust him. Rush is one of those rare acquaintances who can be defended against an assault challenging his character without ever knowing the “facts.” We trust his good judgment, his unerring decency, and his fierce loyalty to the country he loves and to the courageous young Americans who defend her.
In the days after 9/11 the panic and hysteria were so thick in the air that people were saying a lot of crazy things. I remember writing a blistering post some time back about Jonathan Alter, who is a good guy, but who lost his mind for a bit after 9/11 and entertained this torture concept in his column. We all remember Alan Dershowitz going on the record early with an argument to make torture legal. I was quite stunned at the time, but I assumed that once the smoke cleared the nation would realize, with some chagrin, that many of the things they felt and believed while the rubble was still fresh was no longer acceptable.
The opposite happened. Our culture, debased by years of ugly rightwing eliminationist rhetoric has gotten worse. It is so much worse that it has abandoned the taboo against torture. There is no other way to read the results of this week.
Some of our leadership did speak out against the abuse of prisoners. Hillary Clinton, in particular, addressed the humane treatment of the captured enemy in explicit terms of fundamental American values. Others did as well. But overall, I think it’s pretty clear that speaking out against torture is still something that requires chutzpah — which means that approving of torture is now the norm. We need to recognize that and form our strategy based on that recognition. We are no longer the country I grew up in.
I feel I should point out that the old frog in boiling water thing is incorrect. When a frog feels the water heating up he jumps out. His survival instinct is strong. Humans, on the other hand, are much more complex creatures. It’s not that we don’t have a surivial instinct — it’s that we have the ability to rationalize and make ourselves believe that boiling water can’t kill us — it only kills frogs. But primitive lizard brain instincts are important in warning us when something is terribly wrong — and we fail to heed them at our peril.
This country is very swiftly retreating to an uncivilized state. It’s not because of gay people getting married or women aborting blastocysts. It’s because a vicious, violent ugly faction took over the political discourse and normalized the idea of a powerful enemy within and without America that must be stopped by any means possible.
And the government is giving these people tours of the prison at Guantanamo and they come back and report that it is beautiful resort and the residents are fat and lazy. (Literally. It couldn’t be more soviet.)
Of course, the very same person who said that wrote this in 2003:
“In a year’s time, Iraq will be, at a bare minimum, the least badly governed state in the Arab world and, at best, pleasant, civilised and thriving. In short: not a bad three weeks’ work.”
That would be amusing except for the fact that he is no more deluded than the people who run the most powerful country in the world. This water is starting to bubble.
What Exactly Did Bush Do About The Cole In His First 8 Months?
by tristero
Olbermann examines the recent claims that Bush in his first 8 months was as aggressive in going after bin Laden as Clinton. Guess what? It’s all lies and Olbermann has compiled the facts and footage to prove it, including stuff I suspect is quite new to most of us (such as that the Taliban offered Bush, yes Bush, to hand over bin Laden to the Saudis and he ignored the offer). And guess what? It’s on MSNBC and nobody will see it.
Wotta racket. It’s even better than suppressing the truth. Make it available so no one can claim censorship. But keep it away from the mainstream mass media so it has absolutely no impact at all. And if by any chance anyone gets suspicious, ignore the substance but dismiss the reporter as “too far left” to be taken seriously.
The first thing to do is apparently quite controversial, why, I have no idea. But it is imperative that we fully recognize how seriously godawful the situation is.
I’ll say it again: Americans are living in a fascist state. Don’t like the word “fascism?” Neither do I. So what? It’s ludicrous to call the gutting of habeas corpus, etc, etc, by near unanimous consent merely “authoritarian.”* We are living in a fascist state. [See update.]
Some commenters in the post below said I am being too discouraging. Hardly. This country’s government has been transformed and is no longer recognizable as a working democracy. That’s simply a fact and we better accept it.
Because when you’re dealing with fascism, “We can beat this, people if we just fight harder!” is naive win-one-for-the-Gipper fantasy-land. It’s gonna get a lot worse than it is now before it gets better. We’re gonna be lucky if more of us don’t end up “persons of interest” to the Bush administration. Remember, if you’re not with Bush, you’re objectively pro-terrorist and I can’t tell you how many times when commenting on rightwing blogs I’ve been accused of “aiding and abetting” the terrorists.
Does that mean not to resist Bush as some people suggested yesterday? I have no idea where that comes from. It never occurred to me.
I fail to see the connection between being realistic – that the situation is absolutely godawful – and giving up. Perhaps it’s my experience as a composer, where confronting literally intractable obstacles – aesthetic, personal, and professional – are often an hourly occurrence. Of course, it’s difficult to stick with it. Of course, it’s discouraging, probably impossible with the odds of failure 10 to 1 or worse. Understanding that – truly understanding that – is the first step towards fighting with competence. You still very well could fail, but at least you’re reality based.
And that makes you a lot more agile and street-smart than most of the folks you have to fight. And that increases the odds in your favor. And your chances of capitalizing on luck. Maybe not enough, but there’s something downright satisfying about giving the bastards the worst possible time you can give them.
But in order to resist Bush, it’s not enough to understand that we are in the early stages of a major catastrophe. We must also recognize exactly how it is bad, awful, dangerous, and the full extent of it before we can craft an appropriate resistance. What is clear is that the strategies used by the Democratic party to resist Bushism are useless.** We need much better ones.
Finally, we must realize that we will be fighting what this unspeakable bastard has done to the country and the world for a very long time.
*Only Republican votes count. And even then, a signing statement can easily finesse where they deign to restrict the god-inspired power of Oedipus Tex to do whatever he wants.
**Of course, you have to vote and of course you must vote for Democrats. Why? Because.
You think that’s no answer? In the amount of time it would take for you to type out all the reasons you and I shouldn’t bother, including gleefully pointing out that in the footnote above, I “admitted” it doesn’t make a difference (which I didn’t, btw), you could have saved yourself all that tedious effort and just voted. So grow up and just do it.
That’s the least you can do. But if you’re serious, you have to find ways to resist Bush in addition to voting that are less futile.
BTW, don’t waste valuable electrons telling us how voting legitimizes a corrupt system, blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard it all before and it doesn’t sound any more plausible the more it gets repeated. And yes, I know full well that the machines are rigged and it is not a paranoid fantasy to think that. It doesn’t matter. Get off your lazy ass in November and vote for Democrats.
Don’t wanna vote for Democrats who voted for torture? Agreed. Don’t vote for them. Vote for other Democrats.
[Updated slightly after original post.]
[UPDATE: Some in comments and elsewhere have disputed my use of the F word here. Among the arguments: fascist states don’t have elections. Well, in fact they do. But they’re rigged. Computerized voting machines anyone. Another is that free speech is curtailed in a fascist state. Well, in fact it is. What matters freedom of speech in an era of megachurches if you don’t have access to a significant microphone?
I deliberately chose one the most “extreme” words available because it sets off alarm bells. I am aware that this eruption of American fascism is quite different than classic examples. I am also aware that the extent of fascistic repression is small compared to other countries. American fascism doesn’t resemble European models, or Asian, or Middle Eastern totalitarian states. But that doesn’t make it any less fascistic.
If the cult of a leader inspired by God and Manifest Destiny, deeply beholden to corporate interests, which condones torture, heaps contempt on habeas corpus, plays the race card whenever it can, passes laws based upon the whim of the leader, and severely restricts the free discourse of ideas on the truly mass media isn’t fascism, then please tell me what is.
More active use of the repressive powers Bush has seized? More censorship? That’s simply a quantitative argument. The “quality” of fascism is undeniably here.]
Yes, the NY Times gets it. But it’s not telling the whole truth.
The truth is that the United States government is presently holding, torturing, and even murdering countless numbers of people who have no chance in hell of obtaining a lawyer, let alone anything resembling a trial. The government is doing this under the direct orders of George W. Bush. There is no law, no bill, and no legislature who can stop him. If Congress were to pass a law unequivocably banning torture and send it to him, he’d use it for toilet paper. If the Supreme Court were to rule against Bush in the harshest and bluntest language, he’d yawn.
The truth is that there is a rogue presidency and there has been, since January, 2001 (earlier, if you count the stolen election). Certainly, everyone in Washington knows it, but no one dares to admit it. The bill legalizing torture merely enables Congress to pretend they still have some influence over an executive that from day one was governing, not as if they had a mandate, but as if Bush were a dictator. If, for some miracle, the bill didn’t pass, every congress-critter knows Bush would keep on torturing.
Better to vote to pass and preserve the appearance of a working American government, the thinking goes. For the very thought that the US government is seriously broken – that the Executive is beyond the control of anyone and everyone in the world – is such a truly awesome and terrifying thought that it can never be publicly acknowledged. If ever it is, if the American crisis gets outed and Congress and the Supremes openly assert that the Executive has run completely amok and is beyond control, the world consequences are staggering. It is the stuff of doomsday novels.
And this brings up the dilemma of a post Nov. 7 world. Apparently, one if not both houses of Congress may be controlled by Democrats. Now what? You think Bush is gonna get impeached? Put on trial for war crimes? Forget it. You think they’re gonna repeal the pro-torture law they’re about to pass? You can almost certainly forget that, too. Remember: it is crucial to maintain the illusion that Congress still has some say, as it was in November of 2002 about the Bush/Iraq war.
If, for some reason, Congress does decide to move against Bush in some substantive way, there will be hell to pay. Those of us who well remember Watergate remember that while it was genuinely thrilling to have Nixon caught, disgraced, and removed, it was also a time of extreme tension. Would Nixon tough the impeachment trial out, causing the country incalculable harm? It looked for quite a long time that he would. About Bush, there is no doubt.
Since the day after the 2000 election, Bush and his goons have been playing chicken with the very structure of the United States Government, double-daring anyone to try and stop them. If Congress does try – and I’m not talking little things like wrecking Social Security, that’ll happen and a dictator can afford to let things like that wait a while, I’m talking atomic bang bang and thumbscrews – he will force the private Constitutional crisis into the open. And there is no guarantee that Bush will lose.
And that is the truth. The Congress has been given an awful choice: Vote to approve torture and the suspension of habeas or show the world that yes, you really do have no genuine power to check Bush.
Of course, all of Congress should vote against the bill anyway. But they won’t. And to themselves, they will justify the vote as saying they made a hard choice but made the best one they could for their country.
Me, well…I’ve gone on record numerous times about how much I dread radicalism and serious national crises (which are two reasons Bush scares the hell out of me). The prospect of an open Constitutional confrontation, Bush vs. the Congress plus the Supremes…Jesus Christ. Perhaps I should understand the Congress had no real choice?
Absolutely not. The time truly is long overdue where there simply is no choice but to say “enough.” It should have been enough over the stolen election, or the neglect that led to 9/11, or Schiavo, or the filibuster.* But voting to permit the US government to sidestep Geneva? To suspend habeas? What the fuck is Congress thinking, for crissakes??? Has fascism moved so slowly that only a few bloggers can perceive the inevitable progression? I don’t think so.
There’s no question about it. Any person in Congress who votes for this – listening, Hillary? [UPDATE: Apparently, she was.] – will never get my vote again. Ever, not even for dogcatcher, let alone president. If there is going to be a public Constitutional crisis over Bush’s rogue presidency – and there will be sooner or later, guaranteed – bring it on now.
[Update: * To those hardy souls amongst you who feel that I, an appeasing liberal, advocated “going along” with Bush during those earlier moves towards fascism, please read what I wrote. I have been consistent in actively opposing all his stunts of Constitutional chicken and of calling his bluff. Before I started blogging, I was quite active as well. Regarding the Iraq war resolution, I wrote a post long after the resolution passed examining Clinton’s motivations for agreeing to it (I am a New Yorker, by the way). Whatever remaining willingness I have to give her a pass will evaporate for good if she votes for torture. She would be sending a strong signal that she simply isn’t serious about responsible governance in a time of internal crisis. ]
[Kerry] Let me be clear about something—something that it seems few people are willing to say. This bill permits torture. It gives the President the discretion to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions. No matter how much well-intended United States Senators would like to believe otherwise, it gives an Administration that lobbied for torture just what it wanted.
The only guarantee we have that these provisions really will prohibit torture is the word of the President. But we have seen in Iraq the consequences of simply accepting the word of this Administration. No, we cannot just accept the word of this Administration that they will not engage in torture given that everything they’ve already done and said on this most basic question has already put our troops at greater risk and undermined the very moral authority needed to win the war on terror.]
[UPDATE 3: From a letter that was sent to me and others by ARIS:
My wife and I have been lifelong Democrats and have contributed and worked on national and Ohio campaigns for the Democratic Party since 1988. This year we were actually looking forward to winning Ohio for the Democratic Party.
No longer. We’re livid. We will not work, support or even vote for either Brown or Strickland. Judging from the reaction of many fellow Democrats, we’re not alone.]
Looks like I’m not the only person for whom this bill represents a line that cannot be crossed.
I wrote a post a couple of days ago quoting Admiral Henry Harris, the commander of Guantanamo asying there are no innocent men imprisoned there and that those who committed suicide were committing an “act of asymmetric warfare waged against us.” It struck me as absurd that hanging yourself in your cage could be considered an act of war and I thought this guy was likely taking the notion of “suiciders” to some ridiculous conclusion.
But I came upon another quote from him saying something even more absurd:
Rear Admiral Harris is adamant that the people in his care are well looked after and are enemies of the United States.
He told me they use any weapon they can – including their own urine and faeces – to continue to wage war on the United States.
Where do they find these nutballs to send down there to Guantanamo? First Geoffrey Miller and now this kook. Apparently he believes that any act of resistence by these people who are imprisoned in cages is an act of war.
It seems to me that far too many Americans have worked themselves into some sort of hysteria, including this loon running Gitmo. When heavily guarded people in cages throwing feces is considered assymetrical warfare, we have gone down the rabbit hole. (Either that or a couple of toddlers I know are in training to be the next Osama bin Laden.) Does this man think he’s actually fighting terrorists down there?
The men being held in Guantanamo might have been terrorists, but when they are under the total control of the most powerful military in the world they are most definitely not combatants, they are prisoners. It’s not an act of war to dislike your jailers or resist your imprisonment. That’s absurd.
These people need to get a grip before they give themselves heart attacks from irrational fear. Those prisoners are just human beings not aliens from outer space.