Al Adaschik
Torture Is Nice
Fri Jun 11, 2004 10:51
65.140.0.102

Politically speaking, I am amazed how naïve Americans are in regard to what is what happening to them. Of late, we have learned that the acts of torture at Abu Ghraib prison were condoned by President Bush and his administration. I am sure that most Americans will be shocked by this revelation, which serves to illustrate how naïve we have become in regard to the political realities we presently live under.

President William Jefferson Clinton, while in office, made the following statements:

· The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people.

· If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.

· We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.

The truly amazing aspect of this situation is that these utterances on the part of our President were not met by a flood of protest and a march on Washington to ensure that such despicable notions did not become the status quo in regard to the prerogatives of our government and the office of the President. This did not occur. Therefore, why are we now so surprised when President Bush saw no problem with reining in the rights of captured Iraqis and was not fixated on a desire to preserve their rights. Surely, if such treatment is acceptable for ordinary Americans, it is also acceptable for Iraqi prisoners of war especially when there is a chance they may be terrorists.

The point is that the despicable events that occurred at Abu Gharaib prison are not just an isolated aberration in the policies of an overzealous President intent upon pursuing a war on terrorism, but instead, a logical result of the fact that the most fundamental principals upon which this Nation was founded have been rendered dysfunctional by our two most recent Presidents without a whimper of protest from Congress. Terrorism and the present war against it had nothing to do with these developments.