Tomorrow perhaps I will write about how that cute little Mexican guy Mr Solis called me and through a translator told me that I’m beautiful. Or maybe I’ll talk about some aging “good old boys” I know. Maybe I’ll read tarot cards for fun and profit. Maybe after I give my Mom a pedicure I’ll feel better. I know she will. The thing is I’m stuck on good versus evil. And it’s not monsters in the dark but a man that wears a cowboy hat, as an affectation, that scares me most today.
The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". The phrase was concocted in 1937 by the Nazis, and may have been used again in Russian Siberia, and in the dungeons of the Middle East before America brought our unique brand of “cure or kill” Democracy to Iraq.
The methods, if not the political environment, are a mirror to the "enhanced interrogation techniques" championed by a cowboy president. The art on the wall of the White House shows a “good-old-boy” on a horse. But this horse that Bush has ridden in on…. is a nightmare. America’s policies are no longer the rule of law and are indeed well outside the law prior to the last 7 years. I wish this was an extreme comparison.
The Gestapo memo,that was written in 1937 and explores the legality of torture and tries to define it for practice for the Nazi in there interrogation locations or “Black sites’ is nothing compared to the repeated memos and white papers written by Bush’s underlings to try and justify this administration’s deviant policy. Moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their "enhanced interrogation techniques" would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by a professional staff, and strictly reserved for a certain type of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.
“Not a week goes by without President Bush citing Saddam Hussein's cruelty and butchery as a justification. The tragic irony of pursuing his torture policy while denouncing Saddam's appears to be lost on him…” Sydney Blumenthal.
The use of hypothermia and waterboarding, authorized by Bush and Rumsfeld, was initially forbidden by the Nazis. The Nazi’s started with tame techniques compared to those sanctioned by Bush and the boys. Just as Hitler took his power one step at a time crossing one line after another while he changed the law of the land to fit his needs, Bush has a bevy of “loyal” attorneys and extremist judges at his beck and call to support a war on terrorism and his torture mentality. It is my belief that this domino falling has toppled our Constitutional rights and destroyed the intent. A painful 7 year process has taken us to a surreal America that debates torture. And an administration that claims it does not torture as the evidence mounts that it refuses to stop even when Congress demands it.
I prefer a president that refused to admit a private blowjob was sex over a president that insists that torture is not illegal and attempts to rewrite the law and constitution to make it true.
“ As time went on, historians have found that all the bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own." Guantanamo”, according to professor Darius Rejali of Reed College,
Bush is not Hitler. But the policies of the United States of America, which Bush has illegally brought to bear all over the world are evil. The roots of the torture movement and similar restrictive and secret Bush policies including manipulating the media ( bought and paid for with your tax dollars), the suppression of science , and even the phrase “Homeland” closely mirror techniques and policies used in Nazi Germany.
Our elite soldiers are private mercenaries (the SS is alive and well with guns blaring) and the Blackwater “storm troopers” go unchecked in Iraq. Despite the denials, the excuses, the unsupportable legalese and the large scale cover-up there are 100 documented deaths from torture at America’s “Black Sites”. There are hundreds of deaths of innocent Iraqis that continue with American authorization or at the very least from our willingness to look the other way.
America has seen the “tip of the iceberg” photos of Abu Ghraib. Everyone knows we run torture camps all over the world. No one can deny that our “might make right” private army is shooting first and asking questions later. The principles our nation has upheld for over 200 years are crumbling. One drugstore cowboy with a few extreme advisers has reduced us to what we fear the most. In the “war against terror’ we have become the terrorist. Feel free to excuse it or try hard to deny it. Perhaps we should define terrorist in the same way Bush attempts to define torture. I am fairly certain that in a Bush administration definition terrorists would only be people whose names he cannot pronounce.
I was born and raised in Texas, where “good old boy” politicians scratched backs, twisted arms, lined pockets and carried their rifles openly in the back window of their pick up trucks. But the “cowboy way” mentality has been dying out here. Over time it has faded from our common vision only to appear in the White House in a cheap parody of what was once real in my home state.
But the “good-old-boys” I grew up with do not torture. They do not excuse murder. The Cowboys that I still love are not imported from the Bush compound. They are not empowered by fledgling attorneys. God does not speak directly to them urging them to war.
LBJ agonized over “his war” in Viet Nam. Bush believes that God has “anointed” him as the “decider”.Bush has become a tyrant with no restrictions from the rule of law. Sadly the lines between cowboy democracy and a not-so-distant Nazi dictatorship are crossed daily in America.
This is not the “cowboy way”……To echo the Dixie Chicks, “I am ashamed that the President’s from Texas.”
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?
