(thanks to David Flanders for this one)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks…. “The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror,” Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. “So today I vetoed it,” Bush said. The bill he rejected provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and has the interrogation requirement as one provision. It cleared the House in December and the Senate last month…. “This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe,” the president said.
OK, so let me see if I have this straight…. America doesn’t torture, but Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © doesn’t want to rule out the possibility of doing so….just in case. Yeah, you never know when waterboarding a terrorist is going to be your last and only available option to secure the information that may well save thousands of American lives. Then again, if America doesn’t torture, waterboarding isn’t necessary…right??
Uh…if America doesn’t torture, why should we not encode the prohibition of torture as the law of the land? Why not make a statement that says loud and clear the America respects human rights and doesn’t torture? Why? Well, perhaps because the reality is that America DOES torture. However, since former Attorney General Alberto “Torture Boy” Gonzales issued an opinion essentially stating that anything short of making a human being explode is not torture, we’re good. America can engage in just about any coercive activity imaginable, secure in the knowledge that America Doesn’t Torture…because Torture Boy said so. Man, if this doesn’t offend your sensibilities and your sense of common human decency, I don’t know what will.
It seems that since 9.11, The Worst President EVER © has essentially been allowed a blank check…and has proceeded to drain his account of whatever credibility he may once have had. Now it would seem that virtually ANY violation of human rights is permissible as long as it can even loosely be defined as necessary for the protection of the Fatherland Homeland.
If you’re one of the brain-dead hero worshippers who still think that Commander Codpiece © means it when he says America Doesn’t Torture, you really should just go ahead and turn in your voter’s registration card now. Then you really need to start asking yourself why we shouldn’t outlaw practices such as waterboarding.
“The main reason this program has been effective is that it allows the CIA to use specialized interrogation procedures to question a small number of the most dangerous terrorists under careful supervision,” Bush said.
“The bill Congress sent me would deprive the CIA of the authority to use these safe and lawful techniques. Instead, it would restrict the CIA’s range of acceptable interrogation methods to those provided in the Army Field Manual. The procedures in this manual were designed for use by soldiers questioning lawful combatants captured on the battlefield. They were not intended for intelligence professionals trained to question hardened terrorists.”
The above quote is from The Decider’s © weekly propaganda dog-and-pony show radio address. I don’t know what the man’s been smoking (and can I get my hands on some of that??), but how anyone can reasonably call waterboarding and other torture techniques “safe and lawful”…as if they have the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval…defies rational explanation.
If America Doesn’t Torture, then why did CIA Director Michael Hayden admit that waterboarding has been used on three suspected terrorists since 9.11? Why does Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © continue to lie to the American sheeple about the use of torture, insisting that America Doesn’t torture…despite significant evidence to the contrary?
If we believe that America doesn’t torture, and that waterboarding ISN’T torture…well, I’d submit that the terrorists really have won. No, they haven’t destroyed us or Our Way of Life, but they have made it possible to defeat ourselves. By acquiescing in our government engaging in torture, by allowing our government to chip away at our civil liberties, and by standing idly by while our government continues an illegal and immoral war in Iraq, we’ve handed the terrorists much of what they were probably hoping to achieve. We live in fear, and we’ve proven that we’re willing to endure just about anything if it’s done in the name of protecting us. We’re a nation of sheep, willing to be led around by the nose, because we’ve allowed ourselves to react to threats rather than think critically.
Congratulations, y’all…we have exactly the quality of leadership we deserve. What saddens me more than just about anything else is realizing how abysmally low our standards truly are.
