Torture is something that one had not associated with the United States for the past forty or so years. Torture occurred in Vietnam if one is to accept the testimony given by Vietnam veterans. But since the seventies, America has been supposedly the beacon of human rights.

Since Abu Ghraib, that image no longer stands. American troops tortured prisoners repeatedly and regularly and in a number of documented cases, this led to the death of the prisoner. In many cases, the prisoner was not even guilty of a crime in any sense of the word. It has been a dark time for this country.

Just so that we don’t get yanked off track by strawmen arguments about defaming the troops, this is not about the troops. This is about the degradation of a nation that was once regarded as a voice of reason and a leader in the fight against the abuse of humans and their rights across the globe, to a country that incarcerated children and tortured juveniles. It is about the attempt to pervert what this country was purportedly about.

This story is the story of Donald Rumsfeld and many others in the Bush administration, who’s actions, deeds and words, led directly to the torture of young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees," claims a Senate Armed Services Committee report issued Thursday.

According to the committee, prisoners were tortured in the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib, the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other US military installations. Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ) were responsible for the content of the Senate's findings.

This article will illicit, I am sure, a response from the right. The very right that is alarmed by Barack Oabama’s past associations with people like Bill Ayers. People scared because they don’t know, or pretend not to know, who the real Obama is.

Where are their voices calling for Rumsfeld’s head? For Cheney to be indicted? For the responsible members of the Bush administration, who have brought shame onto this country to be held accountable? These are not tin-foil-hat ideas about affectations which may or may not have occurred decades ago. These are hard facts. These men and women in the Bush enclave, these supposed real American patriots, in fact not only dragged this country through the mud, but endangered it:

The report determined that placing the blame on "a few bad apples," as Bush administration officials attempted to do in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, is inappropriate.….

The report finally claims that Rumsfeld's torture policies "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies and compromised our moral authority."

Where are you, you who are concerned that barrack Obama may be tainted by his former acquaintances, when you are faced with terrorism in your own party? Terrorism in the form of memos, meetings, nods and ultimately torture. Where are your cries of indignation?

But it’s remarkably still around them as far as these topics go.

Religion In Action

CNN reports that a sign criticizing religion that was installed next to a Nativity scene was stolen from the Legislative Building in Olympia, Washington, on Friday. It was later found in a ditch.

Amongst other things, the sign read:

"Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds,"

The sign, which was at the Legislative Building at 6:30 a.m. PT, was gone by 7:30 a.m., Gaylor said.

It took some religious wingnut 60 minutes to break the Eighth Commandment.

There's irony for you.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/12/05/atheists.christmas/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

The Real America Arrives....

At the doors of the Supreme Court in order to pray that the Supreme Court would invalidate Obama's victory.

It's a tiny crowd. They're all wingbats. But they're the real thing.

I promise.

Reported By The Raw Story

Here Comes Newt

Or, where did the GOP go?


The future of the Republican Party is shaping up in the shadows of the calamitous MCain and Palin campaign. Even before barrack Obama has been inaugurated, the remaining forces in the GOP are vying for power and attempting to define direction. Unfortunately for us, and unfortunately for them, they’ve taken McCain’s defeat as not having been too much of a thing but too little.

Even as we speak, George Bush is crafting “a right of conscience rule” which would give anyone the right to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable. The Hippocratic Oath would become a wishy-washy, worthless expression whilst doctors and nurses refuse to care for patients based on their own beliefs. Pharmacists, caretakers and even janitors could object to working or participating in any way in anything they personally might find objectionable even if they do not understand the facts or are not in a position to grasp the full meaning of a particular issue.

Sarah Palin is shifting to the right with her ramped up rhetoric that panders to the right wing, religious nutcases but that was almost to be expected.

But now here comes Gingrich. Newt Gingrich, that purported icon of forward thinking politicians. Newt has aligned himself with a new movement called The National Committee for Faith and Family. You all know where this is going right?

Gingrich, who almost certainly will run for the Presidency in 2012, appears in a trailer for a so-called documentary in which he says:

"There is no attack on American culture more destructive and more historically dishonest than the relentless effort to drive God out of America's public square,"

Oh really?

One of the movements main characters is David Barton who in the nineties, when Gingrich was trying to bankrupt the government in order to cripple the Clinton Presidency – remember – GOP before God and country, was allied with Christian Identity, a white supremacist group.

As Michelle Goldberg notes in The New Republic, visitors to Gingrich’s website are asked to sign a petition maligning the fact that there are too few references to God in the Capitol’s visitor centre.

This is where the GOP is headed and that is probably good, because with any luck, it’ll dig its own grave there.