Waterboarding, U.S.A.

CIA destroyed tapes despite court orders

Several issues involved here even though the opposite extremist ends of the political spectrum would desire that folks only paid attention to one issue or another or one very narrow view of an issue.

The Bush administration was under court order not to destroy videotapes of prisoner interrogations. Knowing they were forbidden to destroy those tapes, the Bush administration went ahead and destroyed them, anyway.

One has to ask, is this a "high crime" or "misdemeanor?" Is it an impeachable offense or, when taken together with other offenses committed by the Bush administration, is all of it "impeachable offenses?"

Is it scary that a President thinks he is above the law and entitled to make up his own laws as he goes along? Should America be concerned about this?

Is a President answerable to the law of the land?

There are also the debates over what constitutes torture and how to safeguard the secrecy of C.I.A. operations, something the Bush administration has clearly demonstrated little regard for when it suited their vengeful political purposes. Can they now hide behind the same protection they denied to a loyal C.I.A. operative and all she came into contact with as a part of her job?

Even if making public knowledge of the torture tactics used by the Bush regime was something that still required debating behind closed-to-the-public top secret doors, should not the evidence/issues to be debated have been preserved?

The Bush Derangement Syndrome suffered by the right-wing extremist zealots will have them scurrying like obedient little lemmings to defend any crime comitted by their leader. At this point, I truly do have to question their love for this country. How can they advocate for criminal behavior and dictatorship and say they love America? The truth is, they only love agenda and be damned to America and her laws... and her democracy.

FROM THE ARTICLE:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics.

Normally, that would force the government to defend itself against obstruction allegations. But the CIA may have an out: its clandestine network of overseas prisons.

While judges focused on the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and tried to guarantee that any evidence of detainee abuse would be preserved, the CIA was performing its toughest questioning half a world away. And by the time President Bush publicly acknowledged the secret prison system, interrogation videotapes of two terrorism suspects had been destroyed.

READ THE ARTICLE

The Hypocrisy of Extremists

I got to thinking about this after making the post just two posts below this one, the post about waterboarding and is it torture or not. It seems the American people do view it as torture but what's pretty incredible is that a goodly portion of those have no problem with that.

Guess which political party most of them belong to and know that they would be screaming and whining and frothing at the mouth if a President of the other major political party had been the Waterboarder-in-Chief.

You see, it's not about the waterboarding. It's not about the torture. It's not about any single moral belief or article of faith other than the one that states the hypocrite's view of the world must reign supreme and all others must be utterly destroyed. It's all about pissing and who can make the fanciest pictures in the snow.

If you dare to challenge the machismo posturing (yes, even of the female fanatics), then you are the anti-American traitor, you are the one aiding and abetting America's enemies and you can be dehumanized and marginalized and ultimately discounted. It's the only way to maintain the Bubble World where the fanatics live.

I call it "Bush Derangement Syndrome," though the scope of this mental disorder goes far beyond one individual man.

The extremist hypocrites practice the most unAmerican of behaviors in the name of fighting whatever they deem as being unAmerican.

In fact, their extremist agenda is so all-important they eat their own as a matter of course if that lawmaker or business icon or even President should stray off the agenda's officially proscribed path.

And so, it is not America that matters to them at all. Not when they are fond of threatening our American society with open declarations of weapons stockpiling for the Armageddon against our own government that's sure to come if anyone not blessed by them should be elected to high office by the American public they swear they live to defend (except, not very many of these bigmouths seem to be active duty military or would even be eligible for service to this country, preferring instead to act as bullies behind the anonymous internet).

No, agenda comes first, even before America and American values. And for that alone, these gasbag fact-spinners of the new and old media are indeed hypocrites.

Getting back to waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, and various other truths... it would almost have been amusing to watch the extremists sizzle on the end of their hypocrisy stick - defending America by denying what America is - except there is nothing amusing about watching cancer grow.

So, according to the latest extremist talking point, if you're against torture you are positively unAmerican.

Hypocrites.

Poll results: Waterboarding is torture

A majority of Americans consider waterboarding a form of torture, but some of those say it's OK for the U.S. government to use the technique, according to a poll released Tuesday.