“The U.S. does not torture prisoners!” Yeah right. Our illustrious, benevolent leader, in mustering all of his stupefying logic just vetoed a bill that would ban waterboarding.
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. So in his wisdom, the ends justify the means, whether it is illegal or immoral.
“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 and has the interrogation requirement as one provision. It cleared the House in December and the Senate last month.
How about we just allow the outright killing of any suspected terrorist? Will that make certain that we got them all? Why not just allow this stellar form of terrorist eradication, Mr. President? I’m waiting for your answer.
This guy’s lunacy continues to amaze me. He admonishes Congress for outlawing “practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe”. How dare he use “keeping America safe” as reasoning for resorting to illegal and immoral interrogation techniques? Oh, yeah, he lied to get us into this illegal war which increased terrorist activities against us which in turn prompted him to ask for more funding to fight his “war on terror” which further increases terrorist activity against us. So, yes, I see where the precedent has indeed been set.
How recent was it that he flatly denied even using waterboarding as a technique for interrogation? And now he proclaims our use of it as the most important technique to keep U.S. citizens safe. His audacity knows no bounds. He can’t even keep his lies straight so he can at least try to prevent them from coming back on him.
Please tell me how sinking to the level of these terrorists is going to make us any better.
He tries to make the distinction between “lawful combatants captured on the battlefield” and “hardened terrorists” as basis for using life-threatening procedures against a terrorists suspect and expects to get truthful responses. This means that if you wear a uniform in fighting against the U.S. then we will only declare you a prisoner of war and treat you better for it. If you don’t wear a uniform and fight against us then you will be tortured unmercifully until you tell us something that we still need to verify. If in doing so we cause more people to hate us and take up arms against us then so be it.
We have been through all of this before. Torture does not guarantee a truthful answer to the torturers questions. The person being tortures will say whatever is necessary to stop the torture.
The use of torture relegates us as hypocrites in that it undermines the U.S. when arguing overseas for human rights and other moral issues. It also places Americans at greater risk of being tortured when captured.
By vetoing Congress’s obvious condemnation of inhuman tactics, George W. Bush has single-handedly snubbed international and U.S. law, again. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 includes a provision barring cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment for all detainees in U.S. custody, including CIA prisoners, which covers waterboarding.
Bush and his advisors have proven once again that they have no interest in seeking an end to hostilities with the world. In their use of animalistic and barbaric methods, by using military might and torture tactics instead of diplomacy, in order to force their policies onto the rest of the world, we are no better than the terrorists that Bush repeatedly insists is necessary for us to fight against.
The U.S. military specifically prohibited waterboarding in 2006. The CIA also prohibited the practice in 2006, and says it has not been used since three prisoners encountered it in 2003.
So, why did Bush veto practices that have already been abandoned? I think it is very possible that he is telling some other organization, that has not yet been exposed by the media, that it is okay to continue their use of it.
I hate the fact that this administrations past deviousness feeds my skepticism of anything this man does. I want to believe that we American’s are better than this. But I am constantly shown by this group of individuals that I am probably wrong.
I greatly detest George W. Bush’s vision of America. He must relish our rapid decline towards the bottom of the list of civilized nations. He has done so much to cement our position once we get there. We now grovel at ground level of what is considered acceptable human rights while demanding others ‘do as we say, not as we do’. Our only good quality is that we do not hesitate to send money to aid natural disaster victims. And even then we degrade ourselves through the mismanagement, greed and graft of the ‘helpers’ siphoning off as much money for themselves as they can.
The only way for me to understand this dichotomy of good American and low-life politician is to keep in mind that this immoral, poor excuse for a humanitarian does not represent me as an American.
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