DETROIT -- What kind of people are we? Ten months before the presidential election, the choices are clear, unambiguous. We can choose fear or hope, freedom or fascism.
With the speed of summer lightening, Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, embraced the most radical elements of his party as he endorsed fear and torture and rejected reason and restraint. In a flip-flop that would make even Willard "Mitt" Romney dizzy, McCain voted against a measure passed in the Senate last week banning waterboarding and other "harsh interrogation methods."
McCain, a former prisoner of war, had previously spoken out against the drowning-torture technique last year, telling ABC's "This Week," "Anybody who says they don't know if waterboarding is torture or not has no experience in the conduct of warfare and national security."
McCain, once the feisty maverick, is now a gelding galloping to the beat of Bushevik fear-mongering. McCain's fast-track political evolution -- or perhaps in deference to the religious fundamentalists he now grovels before I should say intelligent design -- brands him no longer as the outsider but the defender of the status quo.
For the first time, CIA Director Michael Hayden has admitted the United States did use waterboarding with detainees following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden finally confessed before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The torture was refined during the Inquisition and the practice is banned by the Geneva Conventions. After World War II, Japanese soldiers were executed for using waterboarding on U.S. POWs.
McCain once said, "If you inflict physical pain on anybody, they will tell you anything you want to know." And that's exactly what the CIA did with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks now being held at the U.S. gulag in Guantanamo, Cuba.
Mohammed and five other defendants will be tried before a constitutionally dubious military tribunal where the government will use torture-tainted and hearsay evidence in a kangaroo court timed for maximum impact on the general election campaign.
"What we are looking at is a series of show trials by the Bush administration that are really devoid of any due process considerations," Vincent Warren, head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told British newspaper The Independent.
Warren's group represents many of the Guantanamo detainees, and he's concluded, "Rather than playing politics, the Bush administration should be seeking speedy and fair trials. These are trials that are going to be based on torture as confessions as well as secret evidence. There is no way that this can be said to be fair, especially as the death penalty could be the outcome."
That's fine and dandy with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who defended using torture and more capital punishment in an interview with the BBC. Vice President Dick Cheney's yet-unwounded hunting pal scattered a shotgun blast at international law and the high moral ground America once could claim.
Scalia justified physical interrogation on witnesses refusing to answer questions. Showing his boob-tube addiction to Fox's "24" and belief in the show's absurd scripts, Scalia said, "I suppose it's the same thing about so-called torture. Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the Constitution?"
Then making law on the fly and irresponsibly speaking on issues that may come before him, Scalia declared that it was "extraordinary" to assume the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" applies to "so-called" torture.
Tom Toles, the political cartoonist for the Washington Post, saw right through Scalia's transparent hypocrisy. His cartoon shows "Antonin Benito Scalia's" head dipped in water with an onlooking Inquisition monk saying, "Just a little test whether you'll stick with your position that torture is sometimes OK."
In 10 seconds of waterboaring Scalia would cry for mercy and promise to vote for Hillary Clinton. What a pompous fraud! Scalia went on to gratuitously insult the Europeans for their opposition to the death penalty.
"If you took a public opinion poll, if all Europe had representative democracies that really worked, most of Europe would probably have the death penalty today," Scalia claimed.
The man who orchestrated the Supreme Court's halt of the vote count in Florida in 2000, stealing the election for George W. Bush, hardly has the authority to speak about "representative democracies."
No doubt Scalia wants Khalid Sheikh Mohammded and his confederates executed. Never mind the testimony gained through torture. Forget that the CIA destroyed hundreds of hours of videotaped interrogations. Hang 'em high and justice will be served, goes the thinking of Scalia and other Neanderthal thugs.
While there is little doubt those facing trial in Guantanamo were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, executing them only serves their murderous purposes, making them martyrs for other Muslim jihadists to emulate. Jailing them for the rest of their lives, letting them rot in obscurity, is much harsher punishment for them and avoids alienating most of the world that considers the death penalty barbaric.
But Scalia and his ilk can only think of retribution. Elect McCain president and we can count on him nominating some Scalia clones to the Supreme Court.
Midnight last Saturday came and I slept right through the terrifying moment. That's when Bush said the failure of Congress to give him exactly what he demanded in extending a temporary surveillance authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would unleash a flurry of unmonitored terrorists generating a frenzy of communications and plots.
Bush's arguments are filled with lies and his real purpose is aimed at protecting the giant telecom companies that broke the law "following orders" from the administration to spy on Americans without warrants.
The Senate went along with Bush's demands for immunity for the telecom companies that aided and abetted the government in the most widespread and pervasive illegal spying on U.S. citizens ever uncovered. So far the House has refused to capitulate.
Bush claimed, at the stroke of midnight Saturday, there is "more danger of attack." That is a demonstrable lie, since existing surveillance programs are authorized for a year. It's all about the politics of fear and greed.
In a scathing commentary, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann laid into Bush for peddling fear and essentially arguing "You've got to have this law or you're all going to die." Olbermann directed his remarks right at Bush: "If you believe in the seamless mutuality of government and big business, come out and say it. There is a dictionary definition, one word that describes that toxic blend -- you're a fascist. Get them to print a T-shirt with 'Fascist' on it."
Thursday, Republican Members of the House walked out of their chamber in protest, demanding action on the immunity deal. Olbermann called them "crash dummies" for Bush and, along with him, "symbolic descendants of the despotic middle managers of some banana republic to whom freedom is an ironic brand name, a word you reach for when you want to get away with its opposite. Thus, Mr. Bush, your panoramic invasion of privacy is dressed up as protecting America."
Olbermann reminded us of Sen. Ted Kennedy's apt analysis when Bush demanded the same protections for the telecoms late last year: "The president has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto a FISA bill that does not grant immunity. No immunity. No FISA bill. So if we take the president at his word, he is willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies."
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, told MSNBC, "The fix has been in for some time on the unlawful surveillance program and the torture program. Many Democrats and Republicans were aware of the program and they are actively helping the White House shut down any confrontation on the issue. This is helped by the fact the telecoms are one of the five most powerful lobbying forces in Washington and many of their members have close ties to those lobbyists."
McCain is supporting immunity for the telecoms. Bush declaring martial law and pronouncing that he and Cheney would continue in office beyond the expiration of their terms would best assure the continuation of our national flight from freedom and plunge into fascism.
But that could be messy. So electing John McCain is a neater way to continue the Bush-Cheney administration, and thus prolong our national nightmare.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Feb. 19 2008 |