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Gone, But Not Forgotten? What The Internet Will Look Like Under SOPA Fearsgiving Week Jesus Approves of Waterboarding Beware of Asteroids 
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It's Unacceptable to ThinkMonday, Sept. 18, 2006 1:11 PMNational Security Advisor Stephen Hadley is working on creating a compromise with Senator John McCain over his stance against the Administration's mysteriously undefined interrogation techniques. In case you're tuning in late, one of the concerns voiced by Senators McCain, Warner, and Graham is that redefining Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to retroactively allow techniques such as waterboarding will, ultimately, put our own soldiers at risk. Hadley is right there with the Administration's excuse that they need 'clarity' or 'clarification' over what constitutes outrages upon personal dignity and humiliating and degrading treatment. Why, when we deplore the acts of terrorists who behead hostages, are we trying to justify interrogation techniques that effectively qualify as war crimes? But don't forget the other slider the Bush Administration is trying to sell the American public. Secret information can be used to convict someone. In a press conference last Friday, Mr. Bush phrased it much more delicately. "The bill I have proposed will ensure that suspected terrorists will receive full and fair trials, without revealing to them our nation's sensitive intelligence secrets." Yet, when we have an Administration that has conclusively been shown to have misconstrued intelligence about Iraq, why would anyone believe in evidence that is not part of the public record? Torture, secret camps, why not show trials? But Bush is playing the 9/11 card. "As soon as Congress acts on this bill, the man our intelligence agencies believe helped orchestrate the 9/11 attacks can face justice." Wasn't that Saddam? Or whatisface, Osomebody? Iran! Yes, it was Iran! Here's a news flash: waterboarding qualifies as compassionate, decent behavior. In the same press conference where Bush announced his desire to make us over into a fascist state by allowing torture and trials with secret evidence, he asserted that, "� any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic." Bush's problem? He isn't thinking. He won't think. He refuses to think. "It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective." "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'? That's a statement that is wide open to interpretation," Bush also said. Moral clarity at its finest.
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