NY Times, Too bad they are a little late

"There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.

Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.

Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American jailers.

n other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where “high-value detainees” were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that “experts” could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.

The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.

These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush’s two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America."

Europe Knows

This came from there!

Copied from Left Coaster

At Guantanamo Bay There is No Law

by paradox

Long ago my brilliant ivy lawyer sister taught me a great mental exercise: whatever policy issue or problem dealt with one must be able to state the core issue/problem in a simple declarative sentence, no commas allowed. If it’s impossible being effective in the issue environment is never going to happen, for plain reality isn’t perceived and humans won’t trust whatever incorrect tactic is chosen. People love and trust simplicity, rightly so.

Swinging our objective, internally examined gaze--implacably locked in the holy prism of the scientific method--toward the phenomena and place of Guantanamo Bay the simple declarative sentence exercise yields some fascinating answers, for Guantanamo Bay is many possible things to many different people. Citizens could easily state with valid truth that Guantanamo Bay is a prison, a detention camp, or a crazy nation-state Cuban political quirk, even a necessary tactic in the war on terror. [cough]

At Guantanamo Bay there is no law.

Oh please, white boy, how many hits of acid are in your past again? The place crawls with judge advocates and has spawned numerous boils of lawsuits and lawyerly activity, yes, but the declaration is still stoutly defended, for in all the swirl of Guantanamo Bay a central fact remains: those imprisoned there are denied the most basic of laws and rights that define American existence and human decency. It is a place where so much of what is precious to be an American is chucked out the window, even though we assume the supreme arrogance to imprison humans with alleged American law. Only the law that the President says is law works at Guantanamo Bay, not really at all the law every American lives by and with every day.

Say again? There is law that is implacable and very powerful, also entrusted with rights of the utmost importance, that dictates and affects our lives in countless ways every hour. Our powerful entrusted armed officials build prisons with it and always adhere to the law, what else could be adhered to? How else could it be so?

Yet somehow, in just one super-special amazing place, laws like the Bill of Rights vanish through the very American hands who insist everyone must live by one set of rules—the law—in the reality they live with every day as Americans. That, right there in that instant of monumental rationalization, is where the law is killed, the pistol pops and the law of America, blood to the country, fountains to the concrete when it is insisted that in just this one place the rules don’t apply.

There can never be a special place in the land of law, a land of some magical mystical other, a rule is valid to all in reality or it isn’t. If not, how, then, is the rule valid anywhere? How is it possible to decide for future application to apply the law correctly and fairly if there is no way to know when it truly is enforced/applied? It isn’t possible, the human reality of the rule spins off into an infinity of anything, nothing works.

That’s why there is no “special” or “emergency” powers in the Constitution, how is it possible to know what variables employed in the future to declare the “emergency” or “special” time truly work? There isn’t, the whole concept of law and constitution instantly falls onto its face and dies. “Emergency” constitution laws—“laws” like those in Guantanamo Bay—also leave the door wide open for a possible tyrant to abuse the definitions and deliberately use them to smash the Constitution, either for themselves or their faith of political movement.

If so-called Americans are being supreme rationalizers and actively advocating elements that in fact smash what they purport to uphold, then the law is gone in America too, the country is gone. That’s correct. The definitive historical marker for when America officially lost the law and its democracy occurred with Bush vs. Gore.

That indelibly true statement labels me a partisan can’t-get-over-it-lives-with-his-mama crank, so the truth can also be seen in two later occurrences. The first is when Bremer, Lord of Iraq, declared that tens of thousands of Americans were not bound by Iraqi law while working there.

The absurdity and total disregard for any law can be seen when possibly applying the statement to another country. “Americans living in London are not bound by UK law.” Does that sound like a healthy democratic statement coming from an official in a functioning lawful country? Not.

The second is when it was revealed that Addington, top aide to Vader Cheney, declared “We’re one bomb away from getting rid of a law.” What this means is that Addington doesn’t believe in the law—any law, it’s not a selective principle—he’s waiting for a rationalization to smash it, to utterly disrespect and befoul it. Addington is one of the highest officials in the land, and he isn’t an official of existing democracy either.

At Guantanamo Bay there is no law. That means there is no law at all, the country doesn’t have it, the country is gone. That’s correct. We currently grope forward in a tragic, pathetic dance of denial into what’s really happened to us as citizens and to our country, purposefully blind to reality with the clumsiest of lies and increasingly totally captive to whatever events and fates assail us.

Mike Huckabee, Compasionate Conservative!

Those were the days

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him."...

"For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril."

"Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

"But let me stress again that these are my views--for contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters--and the church does not speak for me."

"Whatever issue may come before me as President--on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject--I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise."

"But if the time should ever come--and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible--when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same."

"But I do not intend to apologize for these views to my critics of either Catholic or Protestant faith--nor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election."

John F. Kennedy