http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20051121/cm_huffpost/010978;_ylt=A86.I2i0YIJDfvkAQRT9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--
Nov 21
With Beezlebub on our Side
By Tom Gilroy
It’s the torture, Stupid.
If we can look up from the maze every once in a while before we hit
the little lever that makes the cheese pop out, we may discover that
all this talk of did Cheney know this,
will Scooter be pardoned that,
will Alito overturn Roe v. Wade,
will Pat Robertson melt if doused with water on live TV
---all of this matters little to the uncharged, unconvicted,
undefended cab driver hanging from his ankles in Guatanamo Bay.
I left out ‘starving’ and ‘sleep-deprived,’ but let’s not muddy this
very polite and abstract political debate by mentioning ruptured
organs,
crushed vertebrae,
being chained in a fetal position in a pool of your own ***** and *****,
or having electrodes clipped to your balls.
Let’s just keep it all polite so people like Joe Lieberman can seem
patriotic, unbiased, and centrist.
After all, we’re on the side of freedom and morality, so pulling out
somebody’s fingernails is really an insignificant detail when you look
at The Big Picture, which is of course hard to see when you’re hanging
upside down in a hood and everything.
So let’s just say we’re having one of those moments of clarity that
reformed alcoholics always speak about, where none of the details
matter and suddenly The Big Picture all comes clear.
Before we switch focus back again to the important things like Terrell
Owens or Jennifer Aniston or the sale at Home Depot, let’s just sit in
this moment of clarity here in the Land of the Free and think about
this little issue in this little war we’re fighting with--as the
President reminds us--God on our side.
Already humiliated on a international stage by candid photos of
church-going GI’s leading naked detainees around on a leash--the
logical outcome of following our Attorney General’s infamous torture
memo dismissing the Geneva Conventions as ‘quaint’-- Our President
announced to the world a week ago ‘we do not torture,’ at the very
moment his vice president was making sure that, well, some of us can,
and do, and will continue to.
Senator John McCain, a curious man who plays nice-nice with the very
cut-throats who floated unfounded rumors about his supposed sexual
infidelities so he’d lose the Republican primary, can speak from
experience when he decries torture.
He knows what it’s like to be inside that hood.
I don’t, you don’t, Rumsfeld doesn’t, Cheney doesn’t, Bill O’Reilly
doesn’t, Sean Hannitty doesn’t, and W doesn’t.
But Senator McCain does.
So what does he do?
He proposes a bill any sane American would call a no-brainer; since
we’re the Paragon of Freedom, it just makes sense we’d join the rest
of the planet and not only denounce torture, but refuse to engage in
it.
This was the idea behind those ‘quaint’ Nuremberg additions to the
Geneva Conventions, and it might be instructive here to remember who
the violators were in that debacle, you know--the last Western
government that was openly pro-torture.
But the Nazis were Godless commies, and we’re so much better, what
with God on our side and all, and Him having those little private
chats with W, so really there’s no comparison.
So McCain states it in plain English for those of us God doesn’t have
the time to chat with; moral people can’t do this, no matter what you
call the victims--‘enemy combatants,’ ‘prisoners of war,’ or
‘terrorists.’
He utters perhaps the most morally astute quote of the W era-- ‘it’s
not about what they are, it’s about who we are.’
Well, let’s use this moment of clarity to look at who we are.
We’re the kind of people who torture.
Given the opportunity to assert what God-fearing people already know,
that torture is the Devil’s work, did Congress unanimously pass
McCain’s ‘no brainer’?
No, they gutted it via ‘the Graham measure’ and gave the Vice
President the torture loophole he was looking for.
Five of our ‘peacenik liberals’ sided with the lunatics in the
majority who spout things like evolution is bunk, homosexuality is
bestiality, and affirmative action is reverse racism, and gave 'the
Graham measure' its margin of victory.
Given the chance to look up from their George Lakoff books and say to
themselves, ‘hmm, I don’t know, in my heart, something smells funny
about this whole wallowing in your own ***** and ***** thingy,’ five of
our leftist bleeding hearts okayed practices that would give Hitler a
hard-on.
At a time when the Democrats are supposedly ‘on the march,’ we find
five of them voting against a Republican who’s anti-torture.
What does it tell you?
It tells you the labels of GOP and Democrat are *****, as are
liberal and conservative, and this whole little exercise is a board
game of PR and semantics.
What matters in life--and more so in politics--is not what you say,
not what you spin, not how you describe yourself, it’s what you do.
And we torture.
Who needs ‘liberals’ like Lieberman, et al, when they plug in the
electrode that ***** Cheney waves with glee?
So when we speak of change in 2008, let’s not let that mean the
Democrats replace the Republicans; these labels are worthless.
Let’s make it mean people who do what we believe in, and let’s start
with torture.
If they’re not against it, all the time, 24-7, in any case, against
any person, well, they’re just not living up to the PR of what
America--let alone Humanity and God--is supposed to be all about.
If the person who wins the election supports torture, than nobody
wins.
Period.
This doesn’t mean voting for the opposition and it doesn’t mean not
voting.
It means starting right now to change your government into something
that represents you.
Voting is the last step of that process.
Look around you, at your town First Selectman/woman, the head of your
school board, your lawyer, your butcher, your mail carrier.
Would they value their political legacy over their innate moral
conviction that torture is wrong?
Would they play little rhetorical games about whether the fingernails
are being ripped from the hand of a ‘prisoner of war’ or an ‘enemy
combatant’?
If not, maybe they should run for office, and maybe you should help
them, because clearly the career politicians are failing us.
Because the only way we are not people who torture is if we don’t vote
for people who say it’s okay to torture.
So Joe Lieberman of Connecticut? Out.
Kent Conrad of North Dakota? Out.
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana? Out.
Ben Nelson of Nebraska? Out.
Ron Wyden of Oregon? Out.
Let’s replace them with people who think about humanity instead of
approval ratings and the sterile little board game of politics.
Let’s replace them with people who believe in humane standards for all
people whether God’s on their side or not.
Because if they have the strength of will to say no to torture, who
knows?
Maybe they’ll say no to gutting school spending or taking away your
grandmother’s house via eminent domain so a private contractor can
build a McMansion village.
Maybe they’ll say no to Medicaid caps to underwrite tax cuts for the
rich.
Maybe they’ll say no to the weakening of EPA laws that prevents the
factory upriver from dumping radioactive sludge into your drinking
water.
Because right now, with God on our side and torture and black sites
and extraordinary rendition going on in our and his name, I’m a little
worried.
What’s going to happen to me when ***** Cheney and Joe Lieberman decide
God isn’t on my side anymore?
And the little guy hanging upside down in the hood, is he wondering
about the subtle difference between ‘enemy combatant’ and ‘prisoner of
war’?
Once his mind is obliterated of thoughts of his wife and kids, his
childhood, his parents, his garden, his pets, his nationality, his
humanity--is he thinking about whose side God is on?
Or is he thinking, ‘this is it, The End of Humanity. The gates of Hell
have opened and the Devil’s spawn is on the march’?
You tell me.
---
http://www.ElmerFudd.US/ http://www.rightard.org/ http://www.thedarkwind.org/
"We're going to sue your *****, AND your balls!" -- Scientology's leader
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