Bezt cumbak evah!

Seriously.
Well fuckin’ done, Major.

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a g-d- piece of paper!”

Does it even matter if he said it? He claims that he can designate people “enemy combatants”.

As far as I can tell, this means he can unilaterally declare that American citizens have no constitutional protection.

Even if he didn’t say it, it’s sure how he feels.

And, incidentally, I don’t think he’d be dumb enough to say that, but on the other hand, I didn’t think he’d be dumb enough to do… well, pretty much every single thing he’s done as President.

i wrote about it, too:

http://cedwyn.blogspot.com/2005/12/freedom-torture.html

what a bunch of whackjobs!

For example: It is my understanding that some of the Abu Ghraib incidents are recorded on video, video that only some members of the Senate have seen. Without public showing of that kind of video, it’s been easy for the right to spin the whole thing as a minor aberration, frat-hazing level high jinks, etc. If that stuff ever got out to the public, I bet some new heads would roll in the Pentagon. Maybe higher.

… discussing whether or not George Bush actually said “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a g-d- piece of paper!” …

The Founding Fathers’ documents were a slap in the face and they were directed at YOU! Well, no … not you, that other fellow … behind YOU, the one with the hair …

While I find Capitol Hill Blue a rather dubious source, I think that in these days when we’re dealing with terrorists who could have planted an atomic bomb in New York City (a bomb which we can only find through torture), Bush probably did say it. I’m just waiting for the Secret Service to torture McCain for slapping the President in the face.

Oh well…fool me once…

I’m with Karl. Name one, kids. Preferably one that can be verified by someone other than the voices in your heads.

If you can’t name one, shut the hell up.

Before I sign off on this Torture Is Okay With Us plan, I want at a minimum for you guys to:

1. Show us the terrorist plot that was foiled. Actual plans, kids, with actual concrete elements. Pulling some guy’s fingernails out till he admits that he was planning to build a suitcase bomb with items he has no access to and allies he doesn’t know *does not count*. We call that “admitting any shit you like just so long as you’ll leave me the fuck alone”. I want evidence.

2. Demonstrate that said plot would not have been foiled *without* torture. Could’ve worked it out with a warrant, or by listening to our allies, or by questioning people who you’ve been told are taking flight classes but show no interest in taking off or landing? Hell, if you could’ve worked it out by phonetapping people without a warrant, that’s still an abuse of civil liberties, but is better than, you know, beating people until they *die*.

3. Show us exactly how many people were tortured, abused, or whatever other weasel-words you’re using at the moment, to get the information. Don’t just show us the guy who had the ticking-bomb info. We want to know how many other eggs you broke to make this particular omelette. Have enough respect for your citizens to tell them what you’re actually doing to keep them safe. If it’s saving their lives, why would they object? Unless, of course, it isn’t, or it’s horribly inhuman.
Which brings us to

4. Show us the torture. You’re doing it for us, we should have to see what you’re doing. We should have to actually watch this foul shit and think about the consequences and if this is worth it, balanced with everything else you’ve told us. I don’t want to see what our government is doing in our name. I can barely stand to think about it, to be honest. If the guy next door was doing any of this to his fourteen year old son, we’d call him an abuser, and the prosecutor would damned sure use words like “torture” at the trial before we locked the fucker up and threw away the key. This is immoral and inhuman. And we need to see it so that people stop pretending it’s somehow the sterile light-deprivation and truth-serum crap we see on TV shows. It is unacceptable to pretend that this is anything other than absolutely dirty, and it is unacceptable to let people regard it from a safe distance and quibble about the definition of “torture” vs “abuse” vs “humiliation”.

If it’s necessary, then you should be able to look at it clearly and say so.
If you can’t look directly at it and declare it a reasonable response, then shut the hell up about how we need this as a “tool” in our “struggle”.

Full disclosure. Show everyone everything. Then let’s have an actual fucking debate.