Vive la Résistance!
Lisa at All Hat and No Cattle has a great graphic in this weekend’s edition from the Democratic Underground site. It features the James Madison quote: “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
Earlier Jams at Poor Mouth wrote about the death of Iva Toguri, a Japanese American woman who was trapped in Japan at the start of World War II and worked on Japanese radio. Even though she was cleared of wrongdoing by the American occupation forces, when she returned to the US she was tried and convicted of helping the enemy by a corrupt legal process at the urging of Walter Winchell, the “Greatest Generation’s” version of Rush Limbaugh.
Everyone should be aware of the Japanese internment camps in World War II, so none of what is going on is new; every generation seems hell-bent on making the same stupid mistakes of earlier generations. We never seem to learn.
Listening to Republicans talking about the need for the torture bill, they all seemed to stress that those opposed to the bill want to treat terrorists like petty criminals.
Well, what’s wrong with that system?
The first World Trade Center bombing occurred on February 26, 1993. By October of 1995, those responsible had been caught, tried, and convicted.
Timothy McVeigh bombed the Federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19 of 1995. He was indicted on August 10 of 1995, convicted on June 2, 1997, and has been executed for his crime.
These acts of terrorism were investigated and closed using the same procedures as are used against petty criminals and they work.
The Shrubbery wants a new law to use as a stall because he and his crew are incompetent. They can’t do their jobs, so they keep trying to re-define their jobs until they find something they can do. They have been using illegal methods and produced nothing in more than 5 years.
They are clueless. As Dr. Cole writes in his post, Partially Declassified NIE, the National Intelligence Estimate contradicts the spin the White House has been trying to push: US presence in Iraq is important to fight terrorism. They are so stupid that they released a report that supports the critics they were attempting to portray as uninformed, and tells people that the US presence in Iraq is fueling terrorism.
In fairness I should note the one thing that you can reliably use torture for, and this was/is the main use by oppressive regimes. Torture is very effective at getting people to confess to crimes. The benefit of torture is that people don’t have to actually be guilty of any crimes, but a few weeks in “the pool” or on the rack and they will swear they helped to assassinate Caesar, Lincoln, Kennedy, and any other offense the torturer would care to name. This is very handy if you need a show trial because your security apparatus is too damned incompetent to actually solve a crime or gather evidence. Of course, this means that the people who actually commit the crimes are free to commit other crimes, but it makes your government look effective.
[Title stolen from Divageek at WTF is it now?.]
2 comments
You know, I’m reading a book and, interestingly, it describes what’s going on right now with enemy combatants, xenophobia, religious problems (yes, Bush has a problem with Islam as does much of the West), toture, and conning leaders. I’m reading a book about the Spanish Inquisition and the events (so far) from about 1390 to 1600 (only that time it was against Jews, conversos (Jews forced to convert but accused of still practicing Judaism), and later on Erasmusians and illuminists (accused of being Lutherans/Calvinists and other forms of Protestants). The practices, you asked, well, anyone could accuse anybody of these offenses, the accused did not have access to the evidence, testimony, and could not face their accusers. The accused would be tortured and, alas!, would plea guilty to anything. Sounds familiar?
Welcome back, CD.
Yes, it’s amazing how devoid of ideas and concepts humans are. Even though we have all the proof that any intelligence primate would need that a specific course of action will end badly, we always seem to do it again and again.