Rants:

Absurd

All I ask is for you to think, and not simply jerk your knee and go with your initial reaction.

Follow me through to the end, think about it, and if you disagree with me, I can respect your position.

From MSNBC.com:

Bush blasts Amnesty report on Guantanamo
President says document is an 'absurd report'
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:56 a.m. ET May 31, 2005

WASHINGTON - A human rights group's report about conditions at the U.S. military's prison at Guantanamo Bay is "absurd," President Bush told reporters Tuesday.

The Amnesty International report, released last week, said prisoners at the U.S. Navy base had been mistreated and called for the prison to be shut down.

The president, addressing a news conference at the White House, said the Amnesty document was an "absurd report."

"It's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world," Bush said of the report, which compared Guantanamo to a Soviet-era gulag.

He said the Amnesty allegations were based on interviews with detainees, who hated America and were trained to lie.

Bush's remarks echoed similar criticism by Vice President Dick Cheney.

"Frankly, I was offended by it," Cheney said in the videotaped interview with CNN's Larry King. "For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don't take them seriously."

Without the transparency, then the accusations stick because no one REALLY knows what is going on in there.

Which part of this incredibly simple math is too difficult to understand where the comparison with gulags arises?

Is the comparison with gulags an exaggeration?

Yes, it is an exaggeration, but it is a sad irony that the same nation that condemned the Soviet Union for setting up prisons that were extra-legal, with no recourse to appeal in any independent judicial system has now set up more than one prison that has the same extra-legal characteristics.

If you cannot see the irony, then there is nothing more to say, because you have decided to wear the blinders of "my country, right or wrong," which in the end results in the destruction of that which you hold so dear.

The absurdity here lies not in the report from Amnesty International, it is in the fact that President Bush apparently thinks these actions of setting up these extra-legal prisons and asserting the right to declare any citizen an enemy combatant who can be imprisoned with no right of appeal or even seeing legal counsel are completely fine and within the principles outlined by the Constitution.

How far removed from the reality of this incredible expansion of governmental power over citizens, not to speak of the documented cases of prisoner abuse, do these people we have chosen to govern us have to be for their complete and utter disregard for the fundamental principles that our founders wrote out in the Constitution is actually recognized?

If you cannot see the absurdity in the statement from President Bush, then you have stopped thinking, or you never understood the fundamental principles of the Bill of Rights in the first place.

Call me liberal if you must attach a label to satisfy yourself, but remember your name-calling when the federal agents are kicking down YOUR door because you have been declared an enemy combatant with no appeal, no recourse to any courts, and no way to resist.

Hyperbole?

Perhaps...

But what if it is not?

Recall the grievances listed in our Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

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He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

In other words, "My way or the highway"...
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He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

In other words, "Pass all of my judges or I'll go nukular on your ass"...
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For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.

In other words, "We're settin' up a prison in Guantanamo so those damned judges that I didn't nominate don't interfere with us puttin' the hurt on the evildoers"...

Yes.

So was our Declaration of Independence.

However, the commentary I added to the text IS the face we are presenting to the world, as perceived by that world.

"The rest of the world doesn't matter," you say.

You are wrong, and that statement is even more absurd than the statement of President Bush, as you sit there in your Chinese-made clothes, using your Taiwanese assembled computer with parts made in Singapore, Hong Kong, and who knows where else.

Do the math, or the math will do you.