Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 10:01 am by Darryl
WTF? Making Torture an American Value?
The terrorists are about to achieve a victory much larger than the attacks of September 11th, 2001.
Thanks to a largely-partisan vote in the House of Representatives yesterday, George W. Bush has come one step closer to making torture an American value. Oh…suspending due process, too.
It’s funny. We used to have these concepts of due process, habeas corpus, innocent until proven guilty. We used to convicted people first, before imposing “torture” in the form of imprisonment and sometimes execution. That’s so-pre-9-11.
That was before the terrorist won.
The terrorists have achieved a victory over us because chicken-shit Republicans are so frightened that they are willing to trash the constitution and surrender our fundamental American values. They are codifying into our laws the practices of Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin.
These chicken members of Congress are traitors.
The bill is up for a vote in the Senate today. Contact your Senators now, and let them know how you feel.
Contact your Representative today and either offer congratulations for standing up for fundamental American values or call them a surrender-monkey, chicken-shit traitor for their cowardly vote to allow us to torture people not convicted of crimes.
Update: Read the bill (HR6166) and check its status here. Want to know how your Representative voted? Check here.
Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Awesome work, my man!
Call your Senators! 1-866-808-0065
Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Do you know where Sen. Cantrell and Sen. Murray stand on this? Are they trying to duck it? Are they planning to Oppose the legalization of torture or go along with it?
Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Sorry, I haven’t gotten a response from them yet, but my email has not been working for several hours.
Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
The Senate passed it. Every member of the Senate and House that voted to condone torture as a method for gathering intelligence should be tried for crimes against humanity. Today, I am ashamed to call myself an American.
Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
I agree, Michael. I am seriously considering moving to Mexico to join the Zapatistas. At least there I know I’m living under a fascist oligarchy. Here everyone keeps claiming we live in a democracy.
Yeah right. When Debbie Stabenow and Mary Landrieu vote FOR torture, I think democracy is about the last thing we’ve got going right now.
More like blackmail and extortion. That’s the only thing that can explain this national nightmare.
Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Once more Cantwell and Murry show their lack of leadership.
It is hard to vote for them.
Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Huh, Stephen??
Cantwell and Murray voted against the torture bill.
Monday, November 20th, 2006 at 12:14 am
The time is rapidly approaching when no nation will justify the use of torture or of nuclear strikes in name of securing its homeland security. How so? Because even the restricted use of torture against an enemy automatically justifies the enemy to employ the same means to serve its own cause. Michael Caine is thus correct when he emphatically argues that anyone legitimating the torture of military combatants thereby endangers every one of its own combatants. The same thing holds true for nuclear armaments. Any person advocating a nuclear strike (especially when civilians are involved, as they always are) does thereby perpetually endanger his own children who, for the present moment, may be secure in their mothers’ arms. Even in instances wherein the enemy does not yet have the capability to deliver a nuclear retaliation, they will assuredly be impelled to do so in the future so as to vindicate the excessive horrors unjustly visited upon their loved ones. The same train of logic, of course, applies also to suicide bombers or CIA operatives who justify the targeting of civilians. Hence, the time is rapidly approaching when any nation contemplating a nuclear strike or the relaxing of the rules against torture will be regarded as “a rogue nation” for any such act is calculated to unleash a horror that will come back to haunt them and their children for all the rest of their lives. In brief, those who would rightly teach us about homeland security can only be those who teach us to act justly (even when, for the moment, our enemies may not be inclined to do so). One cannot successfully combat terrorists by committing even more horrendous acts of terrorism ourselves. Only acting justly can bring lasting security and peace.