Human Rights
Il Duce pontificated while signing his bill into law — the one that blocks accused terrorists from having legal counsel or gaining access to the evidence against them.
“With the bill I’m about to sign, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people will face justice,” Bush said.
How? How can we call it justice, George, when we won’t let them speak to an attorney, when we won’t let them see the evidence we’re supposed to have against them? This isn’t justice — it is a star chamber, and it is an insult to the traditions this nation upholds, and an insult to every man and woman you have sent to Iraq to die in the name of your sick, solipsistic quest for approval from your daddy.
He made sure — of course — to invoke 11 September; it’s all he’s got left; it’s all he’s ever had.
Bush signed the bill in the White House East Room, at a table with a sign positioned on the front that said “Protecting America.” He said he signed it in memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
There’s been a lot of breast-beating done since that day, the most odious of which tends to invoke the memories of the victims of the attacks in the name of this or that. “I’m sure that so-and-so, were he alive today, would support this decision to do such-and-such.”
I wonder how many of those dead people would have approved of this suspension of civil liberties. Even the accused terrorists are merely accused; to damn them without defense or possibilty thereof assumes that the US government is somehow inerrant and omniscient.
I have one word to say to anyone who believes this to be plausible: Katrina.
“We will answer brutal murder with patient justice,” Bush said. “Those who kill the innocent will be held to account.”
Yes, George, they will, in 2007, when the opposition congress begins impeachment proceedings.
650,000 + 44 More Per Day
October is turning into a real meat grinder in Iraq, as casualties mount on both the civilian and military fronts. More then 700 civilians are dead already, with nearly 60 troops added to the body count.
Let me remind, once again, that this level of violence did not happen under Hussein, and that Iraq was not a nation overrun by terrorism until we invaded. I’ll concede Hussein was a bad man, that he very likely was a typical insane dictator who killed off many of his own citizens — but I guarantee that we have lost the high ground there, and that we are now perceived as being infinitely worse.
Meanwhile Afghanistan is still disintegrating and Osama Bin Laden is still at large. Apparently he can, indeed, both run and hide.
Security
We are not safer now than we were on 10 September 2001. Our ports remain unguarded and aircraft are still crashing into buildings in New York.
How hard would it be for an extremist fanatic to obtain a dirty bomb — or even a small nuke — get aboard a light aircraft, fly it over a large city, and blow it up?
It will happen. These people are insane, but they are not stupid.
What is being done about it?
Absolutely nothing.
North Korea
Kim appears to be preparing for a second nuke test. The first one was a little over a half kiloton — a baby nuke, possibly even a misfire.
SEOUL, Sept. 17 — North Korea may be preparing for a second nuclear test, South Korean and Japanese officials said today, as the Communist state threatened “merciless blows” against any country imposing the sanctions just adopted by the United Nations Security Council.
There’s squeaking on all sides about the probability of a second try, but the best bombast is still available only from your all-American sources, such as Fox News White House mouthpiece shill spokesman Tony Snow.
“The North Koreans have made no secret of their desire to be provocative,” he told reporters, according to news service accounts. “The first test, while nuclear, did have a low yield, and perhaps it would not be unreasonable to expect that the North Koreans would like to try something again.”
In other words, they’re all a bunch of pussies! Nyaah! Bring it on!
Hey, Tony: Your job description happens to include diplomacy, whether you’re aware of it or not, so maybe you could try ramping it back a little, huh?
Meanwhile Kim is saying that the sanctions approved by the UN will be treated as acts of war.
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea on Tuesday blasted U.N. sanctions aimed at punishing the country for its nuclear test, saying the measures amount to a declaration of war and that the nation wouldn’t cave in to such pressure now that it’s a nuclear weapons power.
Even though NKor is really only barely a nuclear power, this kind of rhetoric is what’s driving Japan to rethink its own policy on nuke armaments.
I wonder how it is that North Korea wasn’t targeted for invasion in, say, 2003 or so on the grounds that they might have WMD manufacturing apparatus. I suppose the intelligence on Iraq was ever so much more conclusive.
And by the way: It was George’s inattention that got us here — recall Kim didn’t have a nuke in, say, 1999 — and it’s idiotic to blame Clinton when it was Bush who failed to act for six years to prevent any of this from happening.
But you know what? We’re going to be okay. Bush said so as he signed his little bill.
Sleep well, America.
