I understand that 9.11 changed everthing. I get that. Really. What I don’t get, though, is why and how the American Sheeple have stood idly by while Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © and his neoConservative thugs have turned the rule of law on it’s head. This is no small thing. When an Attorney General nominee can sit in a Congressional hearing and state in all seriousness that the President has the right to ignore certain laws if he determines it necessary to protect the Homeland, we have begun travelling down a very slippery slope…and there likely will be no going back.
It used to be that the Attorney General was considered the top law enforcement officer in the land. The primary responsibility of the Attorney General was to ensure that law enforcement officials nationwide could protect and serve the American public. Now it seems as if the primary responsibility of an Attorney General is to parse and twist the Constitution in a manner that turns the President into the equivalent of a (not so) benevolent monarch. How else can one explain the introduction of “extraordinary rendition” into the public lexicon?
As a nation, we have stood by while a cabal of power-mad criminals have subverted our Constitution for the own political gain. If this is allowed to stand unchallenged, then we will ultimately have only ourselves to blame.
Do you ever wonder how this will look in history books when the history of this time is written? I don’t think we’re going to come out looking very good….
A Pew survey from 2005 asked this question:
"Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified. "
The poll showed a consistent correlation between approving of torture and Christian religious beliefs.
Results
That's because Christians are always on the side of good, doing God's will, spreading democracy and bringing freedom.
None of those things are true of course, but since when did their acceptance of reality have any bearing on the situation?
Waterboarding has been banned by the Geneva Conventions, we've prosecuted as war criminals those who engaged in it. How hard can it be for Judge Mukasey, or Rudy Giuliani for that matter, to figure out how to say the words "it's wrong"?