Thursday, September 28, 2006

Here or there?

I confess to being more than just a little perplexed by continuing claims that "we are fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here." No one seems to question this bit of what I believe is an extremely illogical claim. Are we supposed to believe that the "insurgents" who want us out of their country pronto are going to then follow us home if we leave? Do they have an armada of ships and planes ready to chase after us and invade the U.S.? Well, if not the insurgents, the terrorists. But apparently the terrorists are relatively few, have no nation to support them, relatively little in the way of resources, and would face great difficulties in trying to enter our country. I guess the belief is that if we allow them to kill us there they won't be able to spare any to come and kill us here. Yeah, I guess that makes perfect sense to Bush/Cheney.

I guess you know that as of today we are no longer a democracy but, rather, a totalitarian nation. Both the House and Senate approved the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This gives Bush the right to interpret the Geneva Convention in any way he sees fit, to approve of any kind of interrogation he believes suitable, and to arrest and detain indefinitely anyone he wants, even American citizens. The Act allows people to be tried without knowledge of what they are charged with or even how the accusations came about. In other words it suspends habeas corpus, the most basic feature of our used-to-be democracy. So congratulations Republicans, you have managed to get what you obviously wanted, a dictatorship run by Dick the Slimy with his dummy president. This is probably unconstitutional but with the Supreme Court in their pocket as well as the House and Senate that shouldn't matter much. I guess I'm not surprised that power-mad Republicans would go for this. But I am outraged that some Democrats supported this absolutely terrible legislation. I think 34 House Democrats voted for it and 12 Senators. It is said they supported it because they do not want to be seen as soft on terror. In other, plainer words, they sold out our Democratic society in order to try to insure their re-election. Real patriots. This is one of the most shameless events I can remember. I hope you will all keep their names in mind for future elections (I don't have the lists at the moment). As far as I can see this Act is exactly the opposite of everything our country is supposed to stand for. History will not look kindly on this travesty but, as Bush has said, who cares about history, we'll all be dead.

Apparently the House voted against using any money for permanent bases in Iraq. I would assume that by now these bases must already exist or be very close to being finished. So what will happen to them? I guess the Iraqis can turn them into Youth Centers. As their puppet government has already said we should maintain some forces there do you think Bush/Cheney will pay any attention to what the House thinks about it?

Things just continue to go swimmingly. If only our 16 different intelligence agencies could get over their naivete.

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