The President is trying to legalize torture 'lite'. He is afraid that the people working for him in the CIA, and to a lesser degree in the Military Police Components, will get into the same kind of trouble that the scape goats for this shameful behavior got into at Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo. For that reason he is trying to get Congress to legalize his behavior. If it had been legal he wouldn't be worried about it. No ex post facto law can be applied retroactively. It is precisely because he and his henchmen knew they were breaking the law that he is crying "national security" and trying so hard to get his behavior legalized.
(please read this: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_091906C.shtml)
Besides he knows that normally appeals to fighting terrorism make him popular with the minority of Americans who feel that any means to keep us secure is fine with them, and the majority who fear Bin Laden. Its good to see Powell adding his voice:
"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," wrote Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Bush's first secretary of state, to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)."
But where was Powell when this material was being crafted and he was Secretary of State?
He claims he was a critic of the Iraq war and of this from the beginning. He is right, if we use these means then we are demonstrating that we have no moral fiber. That the terrorists are at least partly right about us. But he's a Johnny come lately to this debate. I'm sorry, but had he the moral fiber and convictions to back them on this issue he would have publicly opposed these things he opposed privately, publicly, and during he first administration. McCain at least tried to, but seems to have thought that if he acquiesced on other things the President would support him on this.
It doesn't work, the President is an ideologue and an abusive person, he doesn't want to deal on this. He, and those backing him, want the power to create a terrorist police state. Maybe not for himself, but for some successor.
I understand McCain, McCain seems to have thought he could make a deal with the administration. But you can't deal with terrorists unless you hold a better hand then they have. You can't deal with dishonest people unless you have a means for checking their maneuvering and verifying their signitures. And McCain and Powell have less credibility now than they had prior to the election because they gave into these abusive dishonest people.
The press is casting this as politics, but this is a struggle for the moral fiber of our nations soul. We will literally and figuratively go to hell (on earth) if we don't stop this effort.
The President should not only be stopped from getting this lawless travesty of a law passed, but should be prevented from telling his subordinates that what they did was ever legal or correct. Moreover, this should be investigated and those who engaged in water-boarding, humiliation, and "torture lite" should be punished. At the very least they should be drummed out of the companies and Government and stripped of their security clearances. And then finally those behind these orders should be impeached from office. And they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Then maybe the rest of us can look in the mirror again. This is shameful.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/452522p-380822c.html
Chris
Posted by cholte at September 15, 2006 11:51 PM