Reply #8: Read my original post. This isn't about torture. [View All]

[mhatrw]

First, this is more important than any crass political considerations. This is about legislated tyranny.

Second, just because the Repukes got their way doesn't mean that they won't turn around and use this exact same issue as a bludgeon against all Democrats -- the vast majority of whom voted against it. If you think otherwise, I have to ask you -- which Republican Party have you been fighting for the past 30 years?

Third, this issue only "doesn't play well" because so many Americans are completely ignorant of the most basic principles that our country was founded on. We need to fight such ignorance with all our might. Otherwise, the ignorance of the electorate will ever remain a cudgel in the fascists' hands.

Fourth, pretending this bill is only about torturing terrorists is THEIR FRAME. We need to reframe the issue away from torture and onto the fundamental rights of ANY accused individual that (used to) differentiate the USA from Pinochet's Chile or Stalin's USSR.

This isn't about whether we are or are not too squeamish to waterboard terrorists, folks. That's just what the Republicans and our complicit corporate media are pretending this is about. Everybody hates terrorists. Nobody wants to coddle them. Sure, many of us don't think torture should ever be legal, for many reasons including the potential for even worse abuses than those that we've already seen at Abu Ghraib and the fact that the information gleaned from this sort of questioning is almost never reliable. But the torture aspects of this bill are no more than the sensationalistic cover story for a wide ranging assault on the fundamental rights of US citizens (as well as all other human beings in the world).

This is about the same people who told us the best way to fight terrorism was to start a war that had nothing to do with it now telling us that we all have to give up our basic right to a fair and speedy trial at the whim of our monarchical executive. This bill reverses over 790 years of Anglo Saxon legal tradition starting with the Magna Carta and extending through our revered Constitution and Bill of Rights. That's the frame we have to push. That's the frame that no educated American who is proud of America's heritage can dispute.