Newsweek: Bush Is to Blame

[UpInArms]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4982092/

May 14 - Washington insiders are playing a typical blame game over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Maybe some military leader is responsible for the outrages, they say. Maybe a civilian leader in the Pentagon. Maybe even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself. Here at Berkeley, however, liberal students know exactly who to hold responsible for the dehumanization of the detainees. Ultimately, the person to blame for Abu Ghraib is George W. Bush

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The real explanation for Abu Ghraib,
according to many Berkeley students, has something to do with the ease with which this president turns the world into his enemy. Berkeley liberals have always chafed at the heavy-handed moralism implicit in the Bush worldview. Since Bush launched the war on terror three years ago, his war-rally rhetoric has implied that anyone outside of his narrow ideological domain is America’s sworn enemy. But Abu Ghraib makes the stakes seem higher. As we head toward the November election, voters here are taking a hard look at the president’s good versus evil outlook and the effect it’s having on our military overseas.

At first, the actions of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib seemed incomprehensible to Berkeley students. Most of these soldiers were our age--how could do they do something that is so clearly immoral to us? But when we consider that these soldiers are coming from a country that barely distinguishes Iraq from Afghanistan, an Arab from a Sikh or an enemy from a terrorist, the soldiers’ ugly behavior doesn’t seem that hard to explain. Soldiers are internalizing the president’s rhetoric and rationalizing it as true. Our political leaders are preying on the innocence of our young people who take oppressive rhetoric at face value. They encourage us not to think of Iraqis as human beings. It’s no wonder, then, that average Americans could treat Iraqis so inhumanely.

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[LittleApple81]

1. The tide is turning. Reality is heating the fan. Hurra! Hurra! n/t

[crossroads]

2. Americans and Iraqis alike are victims of GWBs hate rhetoric!

It has been force fed by the media into the minds and hearts of all gullible followers. This war on t'errrrr has terrorized the world!:wow:

[teryang]

3. This is a deliberate policy, not just rhetoric

This neo-con policy is aimed at subverting the rule of law and human rights, world wide and here at home. It is fundamentally a fascist policy.

This administration is systemically creating the unlawful framework for an international gulag where people are tortured and disappear. It isn't just a subversion of international law, it is linked to attacks on the Bill of Rights and Constitutional safeguards at home. Many democratic elected officials have dimwittedly just gone along for the ride.

The rhetoric is there, but the abdication of rights, political machinations, legal maneuvering, propaganda and psychological warfare are having their impact at home as well.

It is embodied in Congressional legislation and executive orders doing away with the due process of law. One hardly holds out much hope for the Supreme Court to do anything about it in the important cases now pending before it.

<Try to keep in mind the big picture of the Bush II administration’s plans for new “justice” system for accused terrorists. If the Bush administration wins all of its court cases and implements all of its expressed policy preferences, anyone accused of terrorism who is not a “state actor,” that is a soldier of another state, would get neither the protections of the criminal justice system, nor the protections afforded POWs under the Geneva Convention. This is the system in place, for example, in Guantanamo and Iraqi prisons. >

<The Bush administration sees it differently. In killing him, the administration defined Derwish as an enemy combatant, the equivalent of a U.S. citizen who fights with the enemy on a battlefield, officials said. Under this legal definition, experts say, his constitutional rights are nullified and he can be killed outright.>

From:

CIA Target: Americans
Officials: U.S. Citizens Working for Al Qaeda Can Be Killed in CIA Actions

By John J. Lumpkin

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/cia_americans021203.html

[struggle4progress]

4. What Is the Message? Don't be associated with anyone abroad ...

who criticizes the Administration, or we'll classify you as a terrorist and kill you?