- After Bush ignored the Clinton administration's trashing
of the American people's White House early in his first term, and after
offering no input on "Pardongate," the next crumbling pillar
of Bush's compassionate conservatism was marked by his aloofness relative
to the unconstitutionality of phony "Campaign Finance Reform"
legislation. All that ill-conceived law managed to actually accomplish
was to protect incumbent politicians and to send the NRA offshore.
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- Now that very same CFR-initiating GOP compadre, John
McCain, the Senator from Arizona and a Vietnam war veteran who spent many
months in captivity suffering brutal torture, has now introduced somewhat
sensible legislation in the form of a very moderate renunciation of President
Bush's international policy of "terrorism by torture." Bush's
rationale is, in all probability, shouldn,t one fight fire with fire?
Or perhaps, aren,t we all resolved to take an eye for an eye? Isn,t it
therefore appropriate to fight terrorism with yet more terrorism?
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- I offer this only as an attempt at explaining the growing
opinion in both the Democratic and Republican camps of the War Party upon
their reflections on the competence and political sense our commander-in-chief
has been displaying of late. It is becoming increasingly clear that Bush
is pulling US backwards and further into the trappings of our own stateside
tyranny, and that our "CINC" is mentally out of "sync."
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- President Bush could have demonstrated his constitutional
understanding while demonstrating loyalty to oath of office by correctly
opposing McCain on CFR, but for him to trash instead the entire $440 billion
defense spending bill, especially in time of war, a war he plotted by fixing
intelligence around policy as verified by the Downing Street Memo and confirmed
by the total disappearance from the Beltway scene of Colin Powell, does
a lot more than show his bull-headed stubbornness and demand for sycophancy.
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- Coming on the heels of the conviction of the first soldier
whose leashed and naked Iraqi photo was first and most conspicuously publicized
in the breaking of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, testimony from
fellow rank and file soldiers pointing to a definite and specific policy
of torture advocated at the highest levels of the Bush administration was
never aggressively pursued by either the media or the opposition party.
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- Bush's actions in now threatening to veto the entire
Department of Defense spending bill because of the attachment of a very
watered down amendment on torture displays Bush's inability to put what
is really important first; namely, the support of that very same military
he sent to war for no really sound tactical or strategic reason. As the
Downing Street Memo confirmed, Saddam and Iraq were no threat to the United
States, Israel, the United Kingdom or any of Iraq's neighboring nations.
This assessment has been repeatedly confirmed by weapons inspectors and
the UN.
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- So what is Bush's problem in accepting the minor restrictions
proposed in this insignificant amendment supported by 90 United States
Senators? All it requires is that "cruel, inhuman or degrading"
treatment of those in the custody of the US military be abolished, and
that the military simply revert back to procedures in place before the
Bush administration took power. It doesn,t even address Bush's kidnap
and torture policies currently employed by the CIA and FBI.
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- But the real insanity is that it proves beyond any shadow
of doubt who initiated and authorized the torture of untried, uncharged,
innocent Iraqi men, women and children, Iraqis who were simply rounded
up at random and in the wrong place at the wrong time. This proves that
President George Bush himself directly ordered torture as standard US policy,
and that policy is now being directed at unarmed, non-combatant Iraqi civilians
who have wrongfully been labeled as "enemies" in order to justify
Bush's wrongful torture policy.
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- Isn,t it astonishing that President George Bush has signed
every horrendous spending/squandering bill that has come across his desk,
yet now the members of our military that he killed and maimed by his lies
are to be denied funding as well? How will they be paid? Many have already
donated arms and legs to Bush's lies, and some have given their lives.
But Bush values his ability to torture over the funding of our own military!
This kind of puts into clearer perspective an individual who gleefully
mimics the pleas of a condemned prisoner about to die in the Texas death
house, and even more so the glee of a deranged child that enjoyed the thrill
of blowing up frogs with firecrackers.
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- Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.
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