"I know George Bush is legendary for how he fended off the Cong in Texas

understandinglife

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Fri Jul-29-05 11:41 AM
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"I know George Bush is legendary for how he fended off the Cong in Texas

... and Alabama, but he might have been wise to heed the words of real combat tested military officers. These men know that if we are outside of international law and our boys (and girls) get caught, there is now a 100% chance that they will be abused, degraded and tortured. They weren�t willing to take that chance with lives of the men under their command. But Bush took that chance for them from the comfort of his Oval Office bunker.

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Eh, military officers, what do they know about being tough? George Bush was -- Out for Justice!

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I know, how dare he? Besides what would Senator McCain know about prisoners of war anyway? Dick Cheney, who got five deferments from Vietnam (coincidentally the same number of years Senator McCain spent as a POW in a North Vietnamese prison), has the nerve to lecture John McCain on rules of war.

When Cheney couldn�t convince the Senators to back off, President Bush threatened to use his first ever veto. Vetoing a bill that demands we follow U.S. military law � how does anyone support these guys anymore?

I remember a day when America used to be better than this. I don�t say this because I hate America, as the rabid right claims. The generals didn�t warn the President against torture because they hate America. We fight for what�s right because we love America.

From George W Bush: Above the Law by Cenk Uygur on July 29, 2005

Please read the entire excellent essay:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/cenk-uygur/george-w-bush-above-the_4857.html

Robert Cohen has written a compelling, honest and very important review of play "Primo" in which Antony Sher portrays Primo Levi and the experiences Mr Levi endured at Auschwitz. It is important to read the following with same care that Mr Cohen has written it:

I need to be very careful here, to say precisely what I mean and leave nothing to chance. <clip> It is an account of his time in Auschwitz. I could not help but think of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.

I know, I know. One must never compare anything to the Holocaust. One must never invoke Nazism except in reference to the Nazis. One must isolate that era to honor the victims. I know all this - and I believe it, too.

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Yet much of this remarkable play is not about genocide, but about shame and the annihilation of self. Levi was made a slave laborer, slated for death eventually but kept alive to do mostly meaningless work and so severely abused that it amounted to torture. The purpose of the torture, aside from it mostly having none at all, was to annihilate the prisoner's sense of self. For Levi and the others, it meant the replacement of his name with a number, 174517.

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The sense that torture or abuse is a momentary thing is a fiction. Torture is not merely something we can do - forgive us, but we must - because it is quick and we are right and then it is over ... and no big deal because, really, we have moved on. Too often, the victim has not.

So understand, please. I am not likening us to the Nazis (or the Communists), and I am not comparing victimhoods. I will not permit the trifling of the Holocaust. But if Primo Levi is to have the value I think he does, then he must make the horror of his time tell us something about our time. In "Primo" - in the body and voice of Antony Sher - he does.

From The searing truth of a tortured soul by Richard Cohen on July 29, 2005

Link:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/332081p-283768c.html

One might hope the editors and owners of the corporate media might spend a summer evening viewing "Primo."

In any event, the editor's of the Washington Post, while still hesitant to describe the scale of all the lies and all the crimes Bush and the neoconsters have already committed, seem to be inching closer to the reality that Bush excels at only two things - incessant lying and crime.

FOR 15 MONTHS now the Bush administration has insisted that the horrific photographs of abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were the result of freelance behavior by low-level personnel and had nothing to do with its policies. In this the White House has been enthusiastically supported by the Army brass, which has conducted investigations documenting hundreds of cases of prisoner mistreatment in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but denies that any of its senior officers are culpable. For some time these implacable positions have been glaringly at odds with the known facts. In the past few days, those facts have grown harder to ignore.

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The White House and Pentagon have gotten away with their stonewalling largely because of Republican control of Congress. When the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted, GOP leaders such as Sen. John W. Warner (Va.) loudly vowed to get to the bottom of the matter -- but once the bottom started to come into view late last year, Mr. Warner's demands for accountability ceased. Mr. Rumsfeld and other senior officials have never been the subject of an independent investigation. A recommendation by the latest Army probe that Gen. Miller be reprimanded for his role in the Qahtani interrogation was rejected by Gen. Bantz Craddock of Southern Command.

The only good news in this shameful story is that a group of Republican senators, though resisting justified Democratic demands for an independent investigation, are attempting to reform the policy of abuse to which the administration still adheres. Six GOP senators led by John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) have backed an amendment to the defense operations bill that would exclude exceptional interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay and ban the use of "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment for all prisoners held by the United States. The administration contends that detainees held abroad may be subject to such abuse. Attempts by the White House and Mr. Warner to block or gut the legislation failed, and on Tuesday the GOP leadership pulled the defense bill from the floor rather than allow a vote. The administration probably will spend the next month trying to quell this rebellion of conscience and good sense. The nation would be better served if President Bush instead accepted, at last, the truth about Abu Ghraib.

From The Truth About Abu Ghraib a WaPo Editorial on July 29, 2005

Link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/28/AR2005072801745.html

When they lie to the citizens, to the Congress, to the UN and to our allies, why would we expect them ever to stop.

In fact, they cannot stop because they must do whatever it takes to maintain power because the one reality they never ever forget is:

The day our neoconster junta doesn't control the system is the day we are all going to jail.

WATCH IT; SPREAD IT http://www.bushflash.com/right.html

Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us - How ever long it takes, the day must come when tens of millions of caring individuals peacefully but persistently defy the dictator, deny the corporatists their cash flow, and halt the evil being done in Iraq and in all the other places the Bu$h neoconster regime is destroying civilization and the environment in the name of "America."