Chris's Rants

Sunday, May 16, 2004

Whatever it takes?

The Observer reports on reported abuses at Gitmo that were also video-taped. I wonder if they'll find an 18 minute gap?

I think we all probably suspected that the prisoners at Guantanamo were being interrogated using questionable means. After all, that's why the administration established the policy, making a clear, if not tenuous, legal distinction that the prison camp was not on U.S. soil and that the detainees are not prisoners of war in accordance to the 3rd Geneva Conventions of War, etc. so that the interrogation methods would not be in violation of U.S. law.

I think that we all bear some responsibility. We have allowed the administration to bully us, and to a large extent the fifth estate, into thinking it unpatriotic to question its motives and actions in pursuing the "war on terror" and the war in Iraq. Congress has basically been out of the loop, and only recently have there been calls from both sides of the aisle for the administration to be more forthcoming.

There's a reason that the U.S. government has checks and balances, and why the 1st amendment is so critical to our democracy. As Lord Acton said: "Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely".

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