"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism"

Be afraid, and very afraid. Especially those "lippigs" and "terrorist sympathizers", if someone in uniform or with authority doesn't like what you said on this BBS, they have all the means to force Clutch to expose your identity, wire tape you, put you into jail, and torture you ... The most fun part is, you won't be told why. I guess Marx was right after all, capitalism will be replaced.

 

Bush, instead of supporting the military decides to screw them over. The is only partially how they define torture. The real danger is that any one nation tries to decide how the Geneva conventions should be decided for them.

 

Here's Josh to explain it...

...from what I could tell the torture compromise is that we agreed not to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, only to continue violating them.

 

Any trial where a defendent can't see the evidence against them is a travesty of justice. How can they defend against evidence they never see.

What a horrible sham and mockery Bush is making of our nation of laws and due legal process.

 

So, as I read more this morning, the deal allows Bush to interpret the Geneva Conventions. It also exempts prior violaters of the Geneva Conventions from criminal or civil prosecution. Interestingly, those under trial can see redacted or summarized classified evidence that is to be used against them.

Taking these one at a time...

Who in their right mind is going to give any President, much less this President with this track record, the authority to unilaterally interpret the Geneva Conventions? It absolutely freaks me out that Bush (Cheney) will decide what is torture.

Why would you exempt previous violaters? We just took a big dump on all that Democracy and Freedom rhetoric that goes along with the WOT. Of course, the only reason is because it's not a couple of rogue agents, but people in the WH that are exposed on this. Cowards... if it is truly that important, stand behind your convictions.

So, a detainee is allowed to see summarized or redacted classified info. This raises a number of questions. First, who is doing the classifying? Second, who's doing the redacting/summarizing? Third, if you are not allowed to challenge the authenticity of the information, can't the prosecutors easily manipulate the info any way they want? As an example, during the lead up to Iraq, how many times did the administration talkers say "Intelligence sources confirm that Iraq has X, Y, and Z?" A hell of a lot of times, and most Americans accepted this. It was only later that we learned that these sources were people like Chalabi who were talking only to the people that wanted to hear what he had to say and that the folks who were able to contradict him with facts were shut out of the process. If you take a summary of what was said before the invasion, it's a compelling case. If you look at the base data and what was really going on, it's a house of cards. I can easily see the process being similar and resulting in some poor innocent schmuck being beaten to death or imprisoned forever under this "compromise"

This compromise does nothing but throw American values further under the bus.

 

I would have to read the details to be sure, but from what I can gather, Bush got what he really wanted... exemption from prosecution for those who violated the Geneva Conventions. Like your typical bully who is a coward at heart, Bush, Cheney and company can relax a little. The prospect of going to trial for crimes of torture just got remote. Everything this country stands for just got covered with another layer of mud, and McCain can continue his quest for votes among Bush's "base," while declaring victory. To say I'm disappointed would be, needless to say, a huge understatement.

Something else Bush can apologize to America for, and won't.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

It gets better... evidence collected by "coercion" is allowed if deemed relevent by a judge, but the judge has no say on such evidence if you're at Guantanamo.

So, anything you say that will get them to stop beating you can be used against you. God Bless America.

 

I don't think there is enough secret service protection to protect Bush for the rest of his life. I almost, no after seeing 43,000 dead Iraq;s I take that back, no I don't feel sorry for him but I do feel sorry for the hatred his family will have to endure. It would be a tragedy if someone gets him but it won't be unexpected.

I AM IN NO WAY WISHING TO SEE THIS HAPPEN....HE HAS JUST MADE TOO MANY ENEMIES.

I KNOW THIS THOUGH WHO EVER DOES IT, JOHN KARR WILL TAKE THE CREDIT!

 

Good Read...

 

This guy is mad, and so am I. Sadly, I agree with his premise...
____

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1477.html#010031

THE SILENT PARTY. You worthless passel of cowards. They're laughing at you. You know that, right?

The national Democratic Party is no longer worth the cement needed to sink it to the bottom of the sea. For an entire week, it allowed a debate on changing the soul of the country to be conducted intramurally between the Torture p*rn and Useful Idiot wings of the Republican Party, the latter best exemplified by John McCain, who keeps fashioning his apparently fathomless ambition into a pair of clown shoes with which he can do the monkey dance across the national stage. They're laughing at him, too.

The New York Times has the right of it here, limning the pathetic gullibility at the heart of the "compromise." There is nothing in this bill that President Thumbscrews can't ignore. There is nothing in this bill that reins in his feckless and dangerous reinterpretation of the powers of his office. There is nothing in this bill that requires him to take it -- or its congressional authors -- seriously. Two weeks ago, John Yoo set down in The New York Times the precise philosophical basis on which the administration will sign this bill and then ignore it. The president will decide what a "lesser breach" of the Geneva Conventions is? How can anyone over the age of five give this president that power? And wait until you see the atrocity that I guarantee you is coming down the tracks concerning the fact that the president committed at least 40 impeachable offenses with regard to illegal wiretapping.

And the Democratic Party was nowhere in this debate. It contributed nothing. On the question of whether or not the United States will reconfigure itself as a nation which tortures its purported enemies and then grants itself absolution through adjectives -- "Aggressive interrogation techniques" -- the Democratic Party had…no opinion. On the issue of allowing a demonstrably incompetent president as many of the de facto powers of a despot that you could wedge into a bill without having the Constitution spontaneously combust in the Archives, well, the Democratic Party was more pissed off at Hugo Chavez.

This was as tactically idiotic as it was morally blind. On the subject of what kind of a nation we are, and to what extent we will live up to the best of our ideals, the Democratic Party was as mute and neutral as a stone. Human rights no longer have a viable political constituency in the United States of America. Be enough of a coward, though, and cable news will fit you for a toga.

However, because I know it is vital for the Democrats to "recapture" the good Christian folks, there's a passage from Scripture that seems apropos: "When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it."

-- Charles P. Pierce

 

What ashame for all of us who love our nation and what it stands for. It is really strange when if the President gets his way, it goes against what our nation has stood for.

rimrocker is right. The Dems were weak once again on this. They have been weak, and acting like spineless blobs for some time now. If it weren't so important I would vote for all third party candidates every chance I could.

I hope the Dems snap out of it one day. I hope the GOP is snapped out of control ASAP. Honestly, though I don't have much hope of that happening.

 

Then vote Republicans only. Dems might eventually wake up after repeated devastating defeats. GOP will destroy themselves by going down this road. But the only problem is, what will happen to the country and people?

 

My desire to punish the Dems isn't stronger than my desire to vote what is best for the nation.

 

It's not really punishment. The real question is, are the Dems really the best for the nation? Maybe it's time for an independent to win.

 

Glenn Greenwald writes well...
____________

Battling Democrats' indifference
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/22/democrats/index.html

Even the most determined optimist would have a difficult time surveying our political landscape today and feeling anything other than a rising sense of hopelessness. Throughout 2004, the country began turning against the president as Americans realized that the principal justification for the war in Iraq -- WMD -- was completely false, and that the war that the Bush administration repeatedly led us to believe would be easily and quickly resolved was, in fact, a brewing disaster. In 2004, the president's approval ratings steadily declined (PDF) as compared with the two prior years, but he was nonetheless reelected after an intense and frighteningly efficient Republican campaign.

Ever since President Bush's reelection, his approval ratings have descended even further, almost to historic lows. Most of the country has spent the last two years thoroughly dissatisfied, even disgusted, with the president and his party because of a mixture of ineptitude, corruption and deceit in virtually every realm. Yet now, Bush's political prospects have been gradually improving again as Americans are subjected to a relentless propaganda campaign of fear-mongering, underscored with the standard assault on Democrats as weak losers who are in cahoots with America's enemies. Iraq has all but disappeared from public view. In its place is one scary discussion of terrorism after the next.

There is a strong temptation to feel that if Americans allow themselves to be manipulated again in this manner -- if, after they spent the last two years thoroughly disgusted with the president, they maintain the stranglehold that Republicans so disastrously hold over all facets of our government -- then perhaps the country will deserve what it gets. The damage to our country from a Bush administration that is completely unchecked and unlimited for the next two years is hard to fathom, but if Americans choose that, they will reap the consequences of their choice.

That sentiment, unfortunately, is bolstered by the completely despicable -- and quite deliberate -- disappearing act of the Democratic Party at exactly the time our country debates some of the most profoundly important political issues of our time. News accounts of the "compromise agreement" reached by political leaders on the torture issue barely even mention Democrats at all. It is as though we do still have a two-party system, but the two political parties are the White House and congressional Republicans. Democrats are like some quirky little third party relegated to an afterthought and quoted almost as an act of charity.

But nobody did that to the Democrats. They consciously absented themselves from our political dialogue because they were afraid to take any position, and opted instead to anoint John McCain as their proxy. We literally don't even know the views of the Democrats on these interrogation issues because they haven't told us what those views are. Isn't that just unfathomable?

The Democrats have been and will continue to be equally mute and invisible on the warrantless-eavesdropping legislation. Recall that after the New York Times revealed that President Bush has been violating criminal law for the last five years by eavesdropping on our conversations without warrants, Sen. Russ Feingold wanted to have the Senate do nothing more than simply express the sentiment that the president ought not to violate the law. As Feingold explained when he introduced his censure resolution, if the Senate does nothing once it learns that the president is acting illegally, then it is, in effect, expressing its approval for presidential lawbreaking.

That's all Feingold wanted to do -- just have the Senate express its opposition to Bush's deliberate violations of the law. And yet only a small handful of Democratic senators supported him, while the rest either mumbled something about its being premature or outright attacked Feingold for introducing his resolution. Democrats were unwilling even to criticize the president for breaking the law when spying on Americans because they were afraid of being depicted as allies of the terrorists. That, of course, is same reason they chose to hide behind John McCain and Colin Powell rather than participate in any meaningful way in the debate over whether America should torture people.

With all those facts assembled, it is truly difficult to avoid indifference over the outcome of this upcoming election. But then one ponders what the next two years is likely to bring our country if the Bush administration continues to exercise full-scale, unchecked power over all facets of our government -- a Congress that rubber-stamps a war with Iran (if it is allowed to vote at all); a likely Supreme Court nomination to replace the 86-year-old John Paul Stevens, which would create an executive-power-worshiping majority on the Supreme Court for the next couple of decades; more presidential lawbreaking, and the further entrenchment of one-party rule. And then one realizes that indulging the desire to see the timid, meek, frightened, principle-less Beltway Democrats get what they deserve (still more defeat) is something that our country simply cannot afford if it is to have any hope of avoiding passing the point of no return, where both our national security and our national character are fundamentally degraded in a way that is irreversible.

The "opposition party" is literally missing, silent, mute and invisible. And yet the only hope for reversing or at least halting any of this is to have that same Democratic Party actually somehow win an election and provide some desperately needed gridlock and balance and investigative processes to find out what our government has been doing. That is about as bleak of a picture as one can imagine.

-- Glenn Greenwald

 

I agree as well. I kept waiting for Democratic "leaders" to speak out strongly on the floor of the Senate, in press conferences... everywhere, instead of seemingly standing around, letting the two crippled "wings" of the GOP command the debate. Using the term "wings," is ludicrous, anyway, because you have a handful of Senators that attempted to make a stand, and then caved to the Administration. The result is so confusing, however, that a Democratic filibuster would have to be explained, all over again, to the general public, so they would understand that this was not a victory for abiding by the Geneva Convention against torture, and is worthy of a full-blown fight.

I don't know what they were thinking. It was, and is, ludicrous that they allowed this to happen. Were they planning on a filibuster against what came out of committee?

Man, this is the worst possible idea. If that would "cure" the poor Democratic leadership in Congress, they would be geniuses by now. Democratic control of Congress is essential to stopping the mad policies of the GOP and the Bush Administration. And I really believe that Dem control of Congress will provide a shakeup, eventually, in leadership that will benefit the party, and the nation.

Call me an optimist.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

...and the Democrats further render themselves utterly useless when it comes to important 'moments' for our nation.

I now fully understand the Democratic party's strategy for the upcoming election: Stand on the sidelines and pray the GOP screw up enough that Americans will want to 'throw out the rascals'.

Won't work...