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Posted on 03/01/2006 1:46:42 AM PST by bayourant
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/03/01/keillor/ March 1, 2006 | These are troubling times for all of us who love this country, as surely we all do, even the satirists. You may poke fun at your mother, but if she is belittled by others it burns your bacon. A blowhard French journalist writes a book about America that is full of arrogant stupidity, and you want to let the air out of him and mail him home flat. You hear young people talk about America as if it's all over, and you trust that this is only them talking tough. And then you read the paper and realize the country is led by a man who isn't paying attention, and you hope that somebody will poke him. Or put a sign on his desk that says, "Try Much Harder."
Do we need to impeach him to bring some focus to this man's life? The man was lost and then he was found and now he's more lost than ever, plus being blind.
The Feb. 27 issue of the New Yorker carries an article by Jane Mayer about a loyal conservative Republican and U.S. Navy lawyer, Albert Mora, and his resistance to the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. From within the Pentagon bureaucracy, he did battle against Donald Rumsfeld and John Yoo at the Justice Department and shadowy figures taking orders from Dick (Gunner) Cheney, arguing America had ratified the Geneva Convention that forbids cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, and so it has the force of law. They seemed to be arguing that the president has the right to order prisoners to be tortured.
One such prisoner, Mohammed al-Qahtani, was held naked in isolation under bright lights for months, threatened by dogs, subjected to unbearable noise volumes, and otherwise abused, so that he begged to be allowed to kill himself. When the Senate approved the Torture Convention in 1994, it defined torture as an act "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering." Is the law a law or is it a piece of toast?
Wiretap surveillance of Americans without a warrant? Great. Go for it. How about turning over American ports to a country more closely tied to 9/11 than Saddam Hussein was? Fine by me. No problem. And what about the war in Iraq? Hey, you're doing a heck of a job, Brownie. No need to tweak a thing. And your blue button-down shirt -- it's you.
But torture is something else. When Americans start pulling people's fingernails out with pliers and poking lighted cigarettes into their palms, then we need to come back to basic values. Most people agree with this, and in a democracy that puts the torturers in a delicate position. They must make sure to destroy their e-mails and have subordinates who will take the fall. Because it is impossible to keep torture secret. It goes against the American grain and it eats at the conscience of even the most disciplined, and in the end the truth will come out. It is coming out now.
According to the leaders of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, our country is practically as vulnerable today as it was on 9/10. Our seaports are wide open, our airspace is not secure except for the nation's capital, and little has been done about securing the nuclear bomb materials lying around in the world. They give the administration D's and F's in most categories of defending against terrorist attack.
Our adventure in Iraq, at a cost of trillions, has brought that country to the verge of civil war while earning us more enemies than ever before. And tax money earmarked for security is being dumped into pork barrel projects anywhere somebody wants their own SWAT team. Detonation of a nuclear bomb within our borders -- pick any big city -- is a real possibility, as much so now as five years ago. Meanwhile, many Democrats have conceded the very subject of security and positioned themselves as Guardians of Our Forests and Benefactors of Waifs and Owls, neglecting the most basic job of government, which is to defend this country. We might rather be comedians or daddies or tattoo artists or flamenco dancers, but we must attend to first things.
The peaceful lagoon that is the White House is designed for the comfort of a vulnerable man. Perfectly understandable, but not what is needed now. The U.S. Constitution provides a simple ultimate way to hold him to account for war crimes and the failure to attend to the country's defense. Impeach him and let the Senate hear the evidence.
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Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)
Hey Garrison, take your sorry ass back to the cushy world of NPR and your insufferable radio show.
This guy has been a Bush-bashing leftie since day one.
Garrison, call when you have a new idea. The old blatherings are getting stale.
NPR, where liberals who can't support themselves without a massive government handout from CPR can get a free meal and radio program.
He combs his hair like that to cover the 666 which is on his forehead.
Keillor's crazy. He's a tree-hugging idiot who can't wait to let Islamofascism take over. Why not? He'll be exempt since he's one of the elite. (Little does he know, he'll be among the first they behead.)
He looks like Michael Moore with a Queer Eye makeover.
deserves repeating
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Like this article full of torturous lack of knowledge, written as if Garrison knows all.
The Geneva Convention goes a bit further than the above false implication.
"Art. 4. A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy: (1) Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces. (2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:[
(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war."
From ... http://www.genevaconventions.org/
So choke these terrorists until they talk or die.
On with the show!
Quite Frankly, I dont care if we torture these scumbags. Hell I wouldn't care if Bush personally kicked them in the crotch every morning just as a wake up call. Maybe Garrison, what a manly man....NOT, should do the prarie mosque companion or something.
Garrison Keillor?????
Is he still alive???
Is he still on the air?????
He is sooooo 1970's!
JANET RENO??
I grew up a mile from the Minnesota border and I felt like he was talking about my town. I, like you, have not listened to him for years for the same reason. I wonder if this is part of his promotion for his movie which comes out this year (I think)?
This rant gives me a headache, so does it count?
What color is the sky in these people's world? What color is the grass?
The last president allowed the nation's economy to slide into recession while his people misrepresented the economic conditions during the 2000 campaign to not hinder his VP's election chances. President Bush's sound economic policies not only brought about recover but has also brought a real economic boom, not an economy on paper, or future predictions as the 90's budget "surplus" was. Almost 5 million additional jobs created in America in the last 3 years. Can liberals find anything good in any of this?
I think the detainees at Guantánamo Bay should made to listen to Garrison Keillor's writings, that would be worse than torture.
I guess I missed that, sorry. I'm stuck in liberal land where democrats just outright fabricate votes every time they get behind. (read that as WA state, where they found "misplaced" ballots 7 separate times after the ballots were initially counted and the democrat lost the election...each time after the republican ended up ahead)
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