...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, June 08, 2004
      ( 3:17 PM )
 
Speaking of Torture...

An unfortunate byproduct of the media's frenzied focus on Reagan (as Atrios points out, the oft repeated, totally wrong statement that Reagan left office with the highest approval ratings of modern presidents is becoming the mantra of the week) is that the story about the US government's approval of torture, which is getting headlines around the world, is being virtually ignored here.

A leaked Pentagon memo cast serious doubt yesterday on the Bush administration's insistence that its treatment of prisoners was bound by laws and treaties banning torture.

A secret document discloses that, on the eve of the Iraq war, political appointees overruled military lawyers to assert that President George W Bush was not bound by US and international law on torture.

The memo, prepared for Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, went on to claim that, if national security was at stake, government agents who tortured or even killed prisoners on the president's authority were immune from prosecution.

The worst of this is yet to come. The problem is that it has been handily ignored by American media that inhumane treatment of prisoners has been authorized at the highest levels. The worst part of this isn't that Bush and his cronies have condoned the bypassing of all treaties and conventions on torture and have allowed this horrific treatment of prisoners in US custody - no, the worst part is that they have now made it absolutely certain that any US soldier or civilian who is taken hostage will be tortured and treated horrifically. They have endangered our own protectors, our own soldiers, our own citizens.

You may have thought I was being hyperbolic months ago when I said that this administration isn't so much trying to win votes as trying to kill off as many voters as possible. But more and more, the only conclusion we can come to is that the ultimate goal of this administration is to kill us all one way or another.

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