Blurring the Box

Though the United States has been engaging in indecent and degrading practices, outside the Bush administration’s outlandish legal interpretation of “torture” for the past 5 years in the “War of Terror”, George W. Bush announced today that these methods of interrogation would go on no more… or at least that is how he would want it to read to the average American.

Through Bush’s unconstitutional line item vetoes, or Presidential signing statements, the military and other intelligence agencies have been allowed to conduct interrogation techniques disregarding the mandates set forth by the over 50 year old Geneva Conventions. Bush has contended that the law, including Common Article 3, is too vague hence the need for his legal team to attach even more ambiguous signing statements to bills passed through to him regarding U.S. policies on torture. He seems to be the only president, or international governing authority for that matter, to have trouble understanding the meaning of the universally accepted methods of treatment contained in the conventions. Some of the previously practiced, now somewhat banned, techniques used by the military and C.I.A. include forced nudity/sexual acts, beatings, electric shocking, waterboarding (a.k.a. simulation drowning), mock execution, and dog attacks, just to name a few. Bush announced September 6, 2006 that these practices will no longer be used by those under the rule of the Department of Defense at the bases at Guantanamo Bay. This announcement, however, will not affect the C.I.A.’s practices in the “secret detention facilities” that he has, for the first time, publically admitted to since they were (so maliciously) exposed by (those unpatriotic) reporters (trying to undermine the security of the US of A) late in 2005.  Bush also attacked the June 2006 ruling of the Supreme Court regarding the legality of military tribunals used at Guantanamo Bay in the landmark civil rights case of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld.     He also had the audacity to put pressure on Congress to quickly pass similar legislation regarding the trials and treatments of detainees, as required by the court’s earlier ruling, by making remarks that the families of the victims of September 11^th had waited long enough for justice. Much in the same way he has made gay marriage an issue only in election years Bush thought it timely to bring up the name of the man who started it all- Mr. Osama Bin Laden. How disgusting it was to hear him compare a man he has feverishly avoided finding, much less mentioning, to Hitler and Lenin (maybe he meant Stalin). 

If there is only one thing we can learn from the latest Bush PR campaign it is that it has never been more obvious that he has nothing to offer to the American people beyond contradictory rhetoric and fear mongering.