Another response to Bush Administration Sanctions Torture—specifically, to Sanctuary (Part 1), which a correspondent sent me:

>> So why were the Taliban and Al Qaeda and Fedayeen insurgents treated so differently? Why the hoods and shackles? Why the humiliation at Abu Graib? <<

Have any of you flippin' fanatics read the reports that a huge percentage of the Iraqi captives are probably innocent? This person obviously hasn't read them, so his entire premise is fatally flawed. I hope you're not as ignorant as he is.

>> What is the obvious difference between an enemy Prisoner of War, and an Unlawful Combatant? Suppose two of them were standing in a line-up. What one glaringly obvious thing sets them apart? <<

What's the difference between either of these and a civilian imprisoned by mistake? Or a suspect whom we don't have enough evidence to try and convict? Not to mention a US citizen whose constitutional rights have vanished. This last one was too much even for the right-wing Supreme Court, which slapped down the Bush administration for violating the Constitution.

>> By wearing uniforms, soldiers differentiate themselves to the enemy. They assume additional risk in order to protect the civilian population. In other words, by identifying themselves as targets with their uniforms, the fighters provide a Sanctuary to the unarmed civilian population. <<

This might apply if the Iraqis were actually "the enemy." But we invaded the country for no justified reason. The only enemy present is US. Every country has the right to defend itself, and they don't have to wear military uniforms to do it.

Besides, most of the insurgents have come from outside Iraq. They weren't the enemy until we made them the enemy. The actual "enemy" we attacked, the Iraqi populace, was never a threat to us. Neither was Saddam, since he had no WMDs whatsoever.

>> Our soldiers are civilized, compassionate and decent citizens doing a tough, horrible job. <<

A tough, horrible, and unnecessary job—one started under patently false pretenses. Who's to blame for perpetuating a false and unnecessary war? The perpetuators, that's who.

>> These are the kind of men in Guantanamo. <<

Oh, yeah? Then prove it.

This doofus doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. He's either speculating wildly or listening to the proven liars in the Bush administration. Only the people in charge have any idea why we're holding the prisoners captive, and I wouldn't trust those constitutional cheaters with a plugged nickel.

>> I am trying my level best to understand how and why someone who professes to be for freedom for artists, homosexuals and women -- not to mention unlimited personal expression of every stripe — can take the side of 8th Century religious fanatics who brag about murdering writers, stoning women, beheading homosexuals and instituting moral policemen at every street corner with unquestioned authority to beat, jail or execute anyone suspected of being insufficiently pious. <<

I guess we're talking about Islamic fundamentalists here. Too bad they're mainly located in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan—not in Iraq, which was a secular state without religious fanaticism until we invaded it. Oops. Right people, wrong country.

In other words, try harder, simpleton. We liberals are not taking their side. We're taking the side of the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed during our invasion. We wanted Saddam out, but as long as he wasn't committing mass murder—as he did during the Reagan and Bush administrations—we were willing to use economic and political means to wait him out and remove him eventually.

We're also taking the side of our soldiers, who are dying unnecessarily in one of the stupidest wars ever. As for the fanatics, we're pointing out that your stupid war has created more of them than it's eliminated. This is another inconvenient fact you're too dumb or cowardly to address.

Ironically, women had more freedom under the secular Saddam than they'll have under an Islamic Iraqi regime that practices sharia. Oops. Another unintended consequence of Bush's badly bungled war.

You and your fellow conservatives can't win this debate on the facts, which is why you don't even try. Instead, Bush continues to mislead people by claiming a connection between Iraq and 9/11. He continues to talk in generalities while studiously avoiding the hard questions. If you don't know propaganda when you hear it, you're deaf as well as blind.

>> I used to wonder why civilizations fell. No longer. I see it now before my eyes, every day. <<

Me too. We're following the path of imperial Rome to eventual destruction. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

>> Civilizations fall because the people inside the Sanctuary throw open the gates. <<

More asinine rhetoric. Where are the historical examples to justify this absurd claim?

My counterclaim is that civilizations fall because their leaders become too arrogant and inbred. Examples: Rome, Egypt, China. This is exactly what's happening with America's greedy, selfish leadership today.

>> Look around. Tell me what you see. Look at how the entire idea of civilization is under attack. <<

I don't see it. Give me examples or quit wasting my time.

>> When Newsweek runs an unsubstantiated rumor about flushing a Quran down the toilet, entire nations erupt into riots that leave many dead and more, likely, to follow. <<

It was an insufficiently substantiated rumor, and it followed similar rumors from Guantanamo, which increased its plausibility.

>> That is savagery. <<

Is it? We've had race riots and anti-labor riots throughout our history. Black people get beaten by mobs or riddled with bullets by the police, while homosexuals get flushed down toilets or strung up on fences. We're one of only a handful of countries who executes people, including children and the mentally retarded. So how do you define savagery, exactly?

And how exactly did those unfortunate riots threaten civilization? As far as I can tell, they didn't even threaten people 100 feet from them. They're about as threatening as gay marriages, another made-up "threat" to civilization that conservatives have used to scare people and get reelected.

>> Trained teams of Islamic murderers hijack four airliners, slit the throats of their crews, immolate their passengers as flying bombs and destroy the heart of a city and worse <<

Trained teams of American pilots dropped numerous bombs on Iraq, leading to the deaths of some 500,000 Iraqi children. As Ward Churchill so aptly pointed out.

This followed the greatest single example of mass murder in history. I'm talking about the American nuking of 140,000 innocent people in Hiroshima, of course.

Wow, what deep thinking we see displayed here. "These people" threaten civilization. Why? Because of 9/11. Why is 9/11 a threat to civilization? Because these people are savages. Why are they savages? Because they threatened civilization. How? By committing 9/11. Etc.

Can you say "circular reasoning"? Can you say "illogical"? I can.

The hijackers didn't even know the WTC buildings would collapse. According to most analyses, the buildings shouldn't have collapsed. The result was unexpected by hijacker and onlooker alike.

The terrorists wanted to send us a message, not to kill the maximum number of people. That's also why they're bombing public transportation in Europe. If they wanted to kill large numbers, they'd try a sports stadium or some place where people actually congregate.

So much for the threat. In reality, a few hundred people at most should've died on 9/11. That's tragic, but it happens every day in places around the world. That doesn't even threaten to spill a cup of coffee, much less to harm civilization. Civilization has managed quite well despite disasters of much greater magnitude—e.g., the recent tsunami.

>> the most powerful people the world has ever known sit patiently trying to identify the perpetrators and then sacrifices its own children to reform a diseased and despotic region with overwhelming restraint and discretion -- that is civilization. <<

Patiently trying to identify the perpetrators? Is that what we're doing while we kill thousands of innocent Iraqis? Does that explain the extensive abuses in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, which even the US has admitted? Or the infamous torture memo, which basically claimed the imperial Bush administration was above and beyond the law?

Why do America's fundamentalists need to suspend our civil rights when we didn't in WW II? 9/11 was barely worse than Pearl Harbor, yet we're treating 19 nutcases and their leader as a worse threat than Adolf Hitler and his Nazi war machine. Talk about being oblivious to history!

I thought the actual perpetrators of 9/11 died during their attack. And Osama bin Laden, the planner of 9/11, is still roaming free as a bird. Which must be why "Mission Accomplished" Bush is too embarrassed to mention him anymore.

So civilization means losing a war you never should've started? Hmm. I haven't heard that definition before. At least not since Vietnam, the last major war we entered under false pretenses to "save civilization."

Because he's made the US a worldwide pariah, Bush won't get a chance to invade Iran, Syria, or any of his oil-rich targets. His so-called plans may well die with him. If he somehow manages to achieve them before he's impeached for war crimes, it'll be by political and economic means—not by invading the wrong country at the wrong time.

Do you really like it when I portray you as a naive child who has no knowledge of what's going on? If so, keep trying to make your case and I'll keep destroying it. It's literally child's play, since any well-educated child could win this debate handily.

Rob

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