CelticBear’s Musings

SFGate: World Views : Bush signs torture bill; Americans lose essential freedom

[A]s in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China or Pol Pot’s Cambodia, anyone labeled an “enemy combatant” – again, by whom; by Bush? – can be whisked away and never heard from again. That kind of authority, in the hands of corrupt or untruthful politicians, may or may not be an effective tool in some kind of “war on terror,” but it certainly can be a useful tool when it comes to silencing their opponents.

Is this really what we want to be known for in the world? After 40 years of no one having any problem with the Geneva Conventions, nobody claiming “they’re too vague” until this administration, now we’re the western nation that allows politically defined criminals with no rights? And torture is fine? Is that the kind of American value we really want to be known for?

Meanwhile, come to find out, Bush didn’t even know there were such a thing as Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam two months before the invasion. That’s like trying to invade Northern Ireland without knowing there’s such a thing as Catholic and Protestant, except worse. There’s no wonder the administration had no concept of a civil war occurring after we threw the established government into upheaval and destroyed their infrastructure and starting raping the country for billions of dollars of war profiteering for Haliburton and their ilk. How can you invade a country without knowing the very volatile and even recent political/religious history of the country?

Even this year, leadership of the intelligence community have been asked by journalists if they know the difference between Sunni and Shiite, and many important figures have admitted to not knowing, including the CIA admin in charge of recruiting Muslem operatives.

bush is a bloody idiot, his administration is a cabal of criminals and crooks and filled with an unbelievable amount of hubris, and they will destroy this nation if we let them.