While Will Rogers always said that no citizen was safe while the Congress was in session, any claim to humor in that remark was duly eviscerated when the august body, the United States Senate, duly caved to the President’s demand to “try” poor schmucks that he calls “terrorists” arbitrarily (if at all), detain them forever, and insulate anyone who would abuse them (i.e. himself) from later prosecution, and passed this abomination of a bill, making us, officially, the only nation in the world to legally and officially sanction torture. BTW, there is nothing stopping the application of this “law” (the detention and torture part, of course) to citizens (military tribunals are limited to furriners… for now…)
We all understand that the rights of any accused never get much shrift from Americans; we understand that much, and certainly, furriners believed to be terrorists (even if they were guilty of getting picked up for bounties in Afghanistan or Pakistan as was the overwhelming majority of cases) get even less shrift.
But this will not play well anywhere else. Our troops, if and when captured, will be in far greater danger than they already are. Certainly, our moral authority to demand decent and proper treatment has now been flushed down the toilet, and ex-tortured prisoner of war John McCain even had his hands on the flusher. One of these days, we all might want to consider caring about things like this. Maybe. But hey, we gotta mid-term coming up in, like 40 days…?
Not much to say. Bruce the Veep e-mails a David Greenberg quote:
“Arlen Specter said the other day that the bill ‘would take our civilized
society back some 900 years.’ He voted for it anyway.”
That sounds about right. One hopes we are not watching anything irreversible to the fabric of our republic, or civilization (whatever that means anymore). One is certain we will look back at this someday with the greatest of shame. One hopes… that we live long enough to be around to do that.
Who knew that Americans really were this yellow in our hearts, as to be so afraid of a swarthy bogeyman that basic values of civilization are deemed unmaintanable? Who knew? Somewhere in his cave, or more likely, his villa with swimming pool, in North Waziristan, OBL is laughing his ass off. This has got to be more than he could ever have hoped for.
Perhaps he’ll even tell us that in his video next month.
tdog
Specter continues to be the most two headed politician in Washington.
The terrorists have won. Bush and cohorts have played right into their hands. America has reacted just how they wanted it to. I bet OBL is laughing his ass off right now.
Mixter
Two soldiers bodies were mutilated prior to passing this bill. How much worse could it get after passing the bill? American civilians had their heads chopped off on camera, again how much worse could it get? Yep, no needs to care about the swathy bogeyman.
Now that the President has the authority he sought, see a tongue-in-cheek visual of the Grand Opening of “Tortureland”…here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
You’all DO realize that no troops were killed in Iraq before the Abu Ghraib photos came out, do you not? The atrocities committed against our troops in Iraq all came out AFTER it became clear we were abusing those in our custody there. Universal law called “what goes around comes around” came into effect. Americans are outstanding at selective memory and failing to make big picture comprehensions. Just outstanding at those.
No, we can’t ever guarantee that those we fight will behave well toward our captured personnel; but we can– and just did– guarantee that they will behave badly toward them.
Morning in America. A dark and grey one.
Name one time our enemies did not treat us badly under the Geneva Conventions or one time our enemies in any war obeyed the Geneva Conventions.
World War II Germany comes to mind… bizarrely, Hitler’s legalistic streak led, at least aspirationally, to trying to comply… let’s just say, a lot better compliance than his Japanese allies, where we outright executed a number of Japanese officials for taking a very similar tack to the one taken by the Bush Administration, to wit “we’re not obliged to follow the Geneva Conventions” (Japan actually hadn’t signed on then… unlike us), but then the Japanese did egregiously abuse POWs anyway.
Pete Peterson of the Vietnam era has said that while he was mistreated by the North Vietnamese as POW, he believes he and many others would be dead but for our compliance.
It’s not perfect by any means; in fact, mostly, Geneva conventio compliance is aspirational. To be sure, chucking our compliance out of convenience and inviting a race to the bottom is the easiest thing to do, to be sure; but as we’re the country most likely to be engaged somewhere militarily these days… is that a good idea?
And you kind of missed the whole “Abu Ghraib” point about Iraq… funny that.
We’re supposed to be taking the moral high ground, Bobby. Instead, we’ve become what we were fighting against!
Mixter
Intense interrogations are not torture when you are dealing with worthless scumbags that are not wearing the uniform of a country and propose to kill our soldiers and civilians. Unlike you, I trust our military and I don’t put us on equal ground with terrorists. The bottom lines is that the left is trying to impose the generic underpinnings of a treaty that does not apply to these turds of humanity. If there comes a time that we go to war with Belgium or Australia, I’m confident that we will follow the outdated Geneva conventions for uniformed military personnel.
Nothing I read from your hand-wringing comments makes me believe that your ideology will protect me and my family from this Theocratic-Death-Cult that has declared war on us.
900 years would be 1106. I have no problem if Spector wants to live there and would loan him my ride to get there.
I just object to being forced to accompany him. He’s boring, he farts a lot and he talks out of all eight sides of his mouth.