Do You Love America?
I'm not sure I do any more. At least I don't love what it's becoming. Civil liberties don't seem to have any value any more. Maintaining power of the political leaders seems to take clear precedence over maintaining freedom of the citizens these days. I don't like the direction we're heading.
We're fixing to have a new AG who thinks it's just fine to lock up American citizens on a whim. Declaration of a citizen as an "illegal combatant" is nothing more than a whim. There's no meaning to the phrase it's simply a phrase that's been made up to use as part of a claim that some people aren't subject to criminal law or to law of war, they have no protections from the Bill of Rights or treaties like the Geneva Convention. It's gobbledygook, it's a meaningless phrase. It just means "we can lock up up forever if we want to".
And when they lock you up they can torture you. We do that by simply declaring that we don't torture therefore whatever we do to you isn't torture by definition.
I love the popular argument that water boarding isn't really torture. The argument goes that since we actually waterboard people as part of specialized survival training it certainly can't be torture.
It's like the world has become a stage for a comedy routine. That doesn't mean it's not torture, that's evidence it is torture. We put people through it in an attempt to help them learn to withstand torture should they be captured. The reason we put people through it as part of their survival training is that it is torture.
This clown is going to be our next AG even though he has no respect for the rights of American citizens. Our Congress is just a bunch of cowards. Every damn one of them is worthless.
Update:
Ezra Klein thinks we should like the new AG because the alternatives are worse.
The problem I see with that kind of thinking is that it's how we got ourselves in this mess in the first place. There is a certain level of incompetence that we need to just say No to. A failure to respect Habeas Corpus intentional misrepresentation about torture falls in that category. It's just not acceptable and America just needs to make that clear.
We're fixing to have a new AG who thinks it's just fine to lock up American citizens on a whim. Declaration of a citizen as an "illegal combatant" is nothing more than a whim. There's no meaning to the phrase it's simply a phrase that's been made up to use as part of a claim that some people aren't subject to criminal law or to law of war, they have no protections from the Bill of Rights or treaties like the Geneva Convention. It's gobbledygook, it's a meaningless phrase. It just means "we can lock up up forever if we want to".
And when they lock you up they can torture you. We do that by simply declaring that we don't torture therefore whatever we do to you isn't torture by definition.
I love the popular argument that water boarding isn't really torture. The argument goes that since we actually waterboard people as part of specialized survival training it certainly can't be torture.
It's like the world has become a stage for a comedy routine. That doesn't mean it's not torture, that's evidence it is torture. We put people through it in an attempt to help them learn to withstand torture should they be captured. The reason we put people through it as part of their survival training is that it is torture.
This clown is going to be our next AG even though he has no respect for the rights of American citizens. Our Congress is just a bunch of cowards. Every damn one of them is worthless.
Update:
Ezra Klein thinks we should like the new AG because the alternatives are worse.
The problem I see with that kind of thinking is that it's how we got ourselves in this mess in the first place. There is a certain level of incompetence that we need to just say No to. A failure to respect Habeas Corpus intentional misrepresentation about torture falls in that category. It's just not acceptable and America just needs to make that clear.
Labels: nutcase politicians
posted by Gary Carson at 6:17 AM
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