Torture and abuse are nothing new for Bush

[Andy_Stephenson]

ACLU of Missouri Condemns Prisoner Treatment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, August 19, 1997

ST. LOUIS -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri today condemned the Missouri Department of Corrections for failing to act sooner in response to reports that Missouri prisoners being housed in a Texas jail facility were subjected to repeated abuse by prison guards.

After obtaining a 1996 video tape of the abuse, which included guards forcing dozens of prisoners to crawl naked along prison floors while guards kicked and beat them, zapped their backsides and genitals with stun guns, and had guard dogs bite prisoners, the corrections department announced Friday that Missouri was canceling its $6 million contract with the Brazoria Detention Center in Brazoria Texas, which was housing 415 Missouri inmates as part of Missouri’s cell-leasing program in Texas.

.........More

When do we say enough??????

[RoadRunner]

1. More evidence.

<snip>

Shooting frogs with BB guns was apparently pretty standard entertainment for young boys in Texas in the 1950s. But for added amusement, George W. Bush and his friends used to tuck firecrackers into the mouths of frogs, throw them in the air, and watch them explode.

<snip>

Despite psychiatric evidence that children who are cruel to animals often go on to be abusive adults, the U.S. media apparently decided that the torture of frogs was nothing more than a charming little anecdote from Dubya's early years. (Imagine what the media would make of a charming little childhood anecdote like that, if it were in Saddam Hussein's background.)

It should have at least been a clue that Bush — now the most powerful man in the world — has a taste for blowing things up, not to mention an insensitivity to suffering.

<snip>


http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1215-03.htm

[maggrwaggr]

9. wow. That's a perfect backstory for Shrub

defines him better than anything I've ever seen

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

13. Bush accept award of "Governor Of The Year" from The Safari Club

The Safari Club International is a Washington-based organization that promotes the hunting of endangered species throughout the world, including lions, tigers, elephants, etc. The membership is comprised of rich, globe-trotting elitists who are into the thrill of big game hunting. While Bush was Texas Governor, the State of Texas became the "canned hunt" paradise of the world, attracting big game hunters who wanted to know what it was like to kill exotic animals. Old zebras, lions, and elephants were purchased from circuses or zoos that could no longer house them, were isolated in pens, and were then dispatched by hunters who later posed for trophy photos.

Bush accepted the award of Governor Of The Year from this sick, sick organization. His father, George H.W. Bush actually attended the banquet and accepted the award on behalf of his son. The annual banquet of the Safari Club always features a menu comprised of exotic animals like monkey, bear, aarvark, tiger meat, etc.

[nostamj]

2. this too.....

The tone for this new gloves-off era was set by the White House itself, which has openly scorned the notion that prisoners in its "war on terror" have any rights. The whole purpose of building a special prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was clearly to put detainees beyond the reach of U.S. law.

Of course, the Geneva Conventions should have applied there; but the Bush administration simply announced that the detainees were "unlawful combatants" — a newly defined category of human being arbitrarily stripped of all legal rights by a country that, paradoxically, continued to bill itself as the world's leading democracy.

What possible reason would there be to hold prisoners in a law-free, offshore enclave except to do things to them that the law doesn't permit — including perhaps to "soften them up" before interrogations, to apply the very gloves-off treatment that Black set out to members of Congress as the new normal.

There was plenty of international outrage over this stance but, to a large extent, the U.S. media and intellectual community accepted it.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=16098

:hi: andy! (check out "Thanks For The Sodomy" link if you haven't seen it. It was selected for "Worst of DU" on CU!)

[Andy_Stephenson]

3. nost...

you got a link?
to thanks for the sodomy

[nostamj]

4. it's in my sig line...... n/t

[koopie57]

5. I thought this had

something to do with listening to one of the idiot's speeches. I'm going back to bed now. It is just too ugly to stay up for the rest of today.

[Andy_Stephenson]

6. Kick

:kick:

[MrBenchley]

7. Check this out...

"If the president wasn't so forthright about his disinterest in the world, it would have been hard to believe him Wednesday when he said the abuse in Abu Ghraib prison "doesn't represent the America I know." But who can doubt him? To represent the America George W. Bush knows, there would have to be explosive snapshots of Iraqi detainees lounging by the Abu Ghraib pool, barbequing ribs and snorting primo Bolivian coke off empty cases of Coors Light. There would have to be shocking reports of prisoners with family members on the Iraqi Governing Council being handed sweetheart deals on professional sports franchises and energy firms.
But being stripped, hooded and urinated on while your friend is forced to masturbate next to you? The only member of the Bush clan who knows about that kind of thing is Jenna.
Of course, if the President were more of a newspaper-reading sort of feller, he wouldn't have been so shocked by the pictures. As a tough-on-crime Texan, he would have recognized such treatment immediately, perhaps even feeling a little swell of pride. If he'd ever put down the Bible for a broadsheet after his conversion, he'd know that "Texas prison" is one of the most feared phrases in the language, and he'd know why. When he sat down in front of Arab tv audiences on Wednesday to explain the true American way, he could have pointed to an October, 1999 story in the Austin American Statesman that detailed how female prisoners there were regularly kept in portable detention cells for hours at a time in summer heat with no water. "In fear of more time in the cages," the article explains, "many women submit sexually to their oppressors and are raped, molested and forced to perform sodomy on their captors."
And in 1996, if Bush hadn't so busy handling the transfer of $9 billion in public funds over to the University of Texas Investment Management Company, the governor might have had time to read about the videotape that surfaced that year depicting prison guards brutalizing inmates in the Brazoria County Detention Center in Angleton, TX. The tape, which was originally shot for use as a training video, showed riot-clad guards beating prisoners (arrested on drug violations) and forcing them to crawl while kicking them and poking them with electric prods. Had Bush cleared a little time to watch this video, he would had an easier time digesting the images out of Abu Ghraib, and thus saved himself those few moments of humiliating supplication in front of all those Arabs, based as they were on the faulty assumption that those pictures "weren't America." "

http://www.counterpunch.org/zaitchik05072004.html

[Andy_Stephenson]

8. I loathe the Animals in charge of

our Government at the present time.

[MrBenchley]

10. You and me both

And their natural constituency are the ignorant turds who pine for lynching bees and hold beer blasts when prisoners are executed...

[Andy_Stephenson]

11. This shit must stop

and stop now! Today!

[Andy_Stephenson]

12. Kick

:kick: