Bush defenders use tortured logic BY ANDREW GREELEY

[jbfam4]

Bush defenders use tortured logic

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel13.html

January 13, 2006

BY ANDREW GREELEY


Those who believe, as do the pope and the Catholic hierarchy, that torture is a grave moral evil must be excused for taking a public stand against a president and a vice president who claim the right of the commander in chief to authorize torture that does not lead to death (in Mr. Cheney's euphemistic phrase) and want to extend that privilege from the CIA to the American military.


Torture has always been part of the human condition. The strong abuse the weak to seek information or to punish or for sheer pleasure. The Nazis, the communists, and the Japanese did it during the war. Presumably some Americans did it too, though not as an instrument of national policy. Quantitatively our current assaults on human bodies as a matter of American right are much fewer than that of our former enemies. Qualitatively if even one man or woman is tortured by implicit or explicit consent of the president of the United Stares, it is a grave sin and must be condemned.

Don't try to tell me that a president who approves of such behavior is a God-fearing man. "Rendition" disgraces the president, his administration, the American people and our heritage as a free country. And don't tell me that I'm just arguing the politics of the Democratic Party . I'm arguing for basic American and Christian principles. As T.S. Eliot once wrote, when good does evil to fight evil it becomes indistinguishable from its enemy.

T. George Harris, the distinguished editor and publisher, fibbed to get into the Army at the age of 17 during World War II. From Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge he flew as an observer in an artillery spotting plane for which he was awarded a medal and a battlefield commission at Bastogne. He wrote me recently that Mr. Bush's approval of torture spreads slime over the traditions of the American military. I agree with Mr. Harris. Today we stand covered with the slime of George Bush and Dick Cheney for all the world to see.

[rodeodance]

1. "the slime of George Bush and Dick Cheney"-for sure!

[Dan]

2. Why not ask this question...

Of American parents....would you want your children to go into the military.... knowing that what we believe we can do to the 'enemy', they can now do to our children?

[teryang]

3. Bush wants to implicate the military in his war crimes

It's a form of control. Torture dehumanizes the wrongdoer and reduces them to slavish control. Once complicit, totalitarian control over the institutions is complete.

[Vitruvius]

4. If Bush orders the military to commit war crimes, and they do, then

they HAVE to keep Bush & co in power -- forever. To keep themselves from being put on trial and imprisoned for the rest of their lives.

This is a stock tactic of every would-be dictator; implicate the military in your crimes so they can NEVER let you be overthrown. What sometimes happens tho' is that the military themselves take over... Bush is playing with fire.