Ornoth

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that I’m not succinct by nature. But I’m afraid life is now moving faster than I can type, and I’ve been falling behind. I’ve gotta start posting stuff without taking so much time to think about it.

Case in point: two political developments from two weeks ago:

First, the Supreme Court surprisingly upheld the right of habeas corpus in the Boumediene case, invalidating Yorgi Bush’s holding prisoners at Guantanamo for the past six years without charging them with any crime. With so little of it evident these days, it’s worth celebrating every iota of sanity that comes out of our government.

And in other news, Congress finally found one guy with the balls to file impeachment articles against Uncle Yorgi. For what?

• For failure to act on advance intelligence on plans for the 9/11 attack
• For falsely attributing the 9/11 attacks on Iraq
• For lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction
• For violating the United Nations charter by going to war with Iraq
• For annexation of Iraqi oilfields
• For allowing US oil interests to control US military policies
• For providing criminal immunity to US oil contractors in Iraq
• For lying about revealing CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity
• For spying on Americans without a warrant
• For illegally imprisoning US and foreign nationals, including children
• For authorizing and encouraging torture as an official US policy
• For exporting prisoners abroad to facilitate the US torture policy
• For refusing to enforce US law and gross abuse of Presidential signing statements
• For failing to comply with subpoenas and obstruction of justice
• For gross mismanagement of the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort

The bill enumerates no less than 35 impeachable offenses. Some of them are kind of petty, but if even two thirds are dismissable, that means the President—who swore to uphold the Constitution—has violated that oath a dozen times… that we know of.

So why would DK stick his neck out and commit political suicide? Well, if nothing else, the guy’s got two things: principles, and the fortitude to stand up for them.

Not one other Congressman or -woman was willing to stand up to Bush’s unprecedented crimes against the Constitution and the spirit of America that the founding fathers instilled in this nation.

The other 434 Senators and Representatives have sacrificed their oathes of office in the interest of political expediency, letting George Bush get away with whatever he wants. By stepping up and calling out Bush’s many heinous crimes, and being willing to take the heat for it, the Honorable Mr. Kucinich deserves a lot of respect.

Today is election day in many jurisdictions across the US. Please go vote.

I find it serendipitous that this comes just a couple hours after the release of this Associated Press article, which I’ll cite momentarily. I’ve had a political rant coming, and that article was definitely the last straw.

Now, I’m not particularly radical politically. Sure, I have liberal views, but I’ve had occasion to praise certain administrations, even when their policies have been right of center. Nixon, although Vietnam was his downfall, was an absolute foreign relations master. I think Reagan, for all his problems, did a good job bringing the country together after the wandering Ford and Carter years. The wiser Bush, despite the Iraqi war, also was competent in the area of international relations. I can live with Republicans, when they’re intelligent, competent, and rational.

So the current administration of Baby Bush comes as a very rude shock to me. It seems that every time I listen to the news, there’s more and more evidence that George Bush is not merely thoroughly inept and stupid; not merely hateful and criminal; but singlemindedly intent on doing the most evil things conceivable.

Consider the following facts.

1. The United States, under GWB, invaded another sovereign nation and deposed its legal government, in direct violation of international law.
    
2. He did so with full knowledge that Iraq did not, in fact, possess any weapons of mass destruction.
    
3. He did so against the counsel of the United Nations, the entire free world, and significant domestic protest
    
4. The administration allowed, encouraged, defended, and continues to defend the unabashed torture of prisoners at Abu Graib, in violation of international law.
    
5. The administration has imprisoned hundreds of noncombatants at Guantanamo Bay, without charges, withheld due process of law, and tortured them, in violation of both international law and the U.S. Constitution. Independent international inspection of the facility has been prohibited by the US government. Bush has allowed, encouraged, defended, and continues to defend these actions.
    
6. There have been several stories recently that detailed how the government set up dummy front companies which leased private jet aircraft to the government for the exclusive purpose of extraordinary rendition, i.e. moving prisoners, held illegally, to jails outside the US so that they could be held and tortured without being subject to US laws forbidding such actions.
    
7. The US has admitted the existence of several covert CIA-run prisons across Europe after the International Red Cross discovered their existence.
    
8. Even after all this attention, the administration is still publicly trying to retain the ability to torture anyone they want, without due process. While Congress is trying to pass a bill to further specify what kind of treatment constitutes torture, the Vice President of the United States (and this is a quote from the AP article) “is seeking to persuade Congress to exempt the Central Intelligence Agency from the proposed torture ban”. According to GWB, torture should definitely be illegal… for everyone but our secret police.
    
9. None of those items above are disputable; they are publicly-known facts. But here’s the kicker. This quote from the AP story shows the true measure of this administration’s evil intent. When asked about the secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe and Asia, this is what the President of the United States said: “Anything we do … in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law.”

Come on, people! “Anything I do is, by definition, within the law”. That is not representative democracy. That isn’t even limited monarchy. That is outright, unabashed dictatorship. He couldn’t have said it plainer if he’d claimed to be Holy Emperor Bush!

That isn’t America. It’s not Abraham Lincoln or John Kennedy. It’s not FDR, and it sure as hell isn’t Thomas Jefferson. That’s Louis XIV and “l’etat c’est moi”. That’s Napoleon Bonaparte and Julius Caesar’s “vini, vidi, vici”. That’s Genghis Khan and, yes, that’s Adolph Hitler.

The Pledge of Allegiance says “with liberty and justice for all”, not just for legal American citizens. The Declaration of Independence says that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. George Bush would change all that, and have us treat any man who differs from us with hatred and fear. That’s the world he lives in, and he would have us all live in. But it’s not America the brave or America the beautiful.

Torture, illegal imprisonment, invading other nations under false pretenses, and brushing it all under the carpet with the excuse that anything the government does is, by definition, legal. These things are all being done in your name, people.

Where is the fucking outrage?

This administration has openly resorted to illegal invasions, illegal imprisonment, and illegal torture camps. Think what a comparatively small infraction it would be to rig an election.

Go vote, while you still can.