The Meat of the Matter

Bush Answers Plea to Stop Torture. "No," he says.

Bush can't understand why people think there might be Human Rights violations in Guantanamo. That's absurd!  Today's headlines state that our President's response to allegations of torture was "It's absurd." The allegations are apparently absurd because they were made by prisoners "who hate America." This response, to me, paints a clear picture. If we really are the good guys here, then President Bush would have responded more compassionately and logically. It is illogical to assume that just because a prisoner makes an allegation, that it is patently false. Instead, he responded with a glittering generality: "The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world." This response scares the ever-living shit out of me. First, our President is changing the phrase "promote freedom" to mean, "enforce freedom with the use of massive military firepower." Second, he is responding to a serious allegation with platitudinous "truths" that he assumes are unquestioned. Well sir, we want to believe that our country is the good guys in the War on Terror. I really really want to believe that we are. However I have no factual basis to back up this belief, so I don't believe it at all. We are the bad guys, and you, Mr. President, are the leader of the bad guys. I used to think that the torture buck stopped with Donald Rumsfeld, who is the one who repealed interrogatory limitations in a memo in 2002. It was the repeal of those limits (which approved the use of some previously unapproved methods of interrogation) that has led to outright torture and debasement of human beings. Some of these atrocities were recorded on film in a little place called Abu Ghraib, where our troops were "promoting freedom" by marching prisoners around naked in front of women, making them wear dunce caps, harassing them with dogs, forcing them to sit in their own filth, piling them atop each other naked, etc. Here's your freedom, baby! Here we have hard proof that the use of torture is not absurd. But our President still thinks it’s absurd to claim that it is happening in Guantanamo, where the "detainees" are arguably even greater enemies of America. If President Bush truly and sincerely did not think that similar atrocities were being committed at Guantanamo, I believe he would a softer response to Amnesty International. Rather than poo-pooing the allegations, even though they were based in facts corroborated by our very own FBI. But that is not how he responded. Instead, he discounted the allegation as absurd, and discounted the source because it was made by people “who hate America.” The allegations were made by people released from prison after being unjustly held by America. Of course they fucking hate us! His response does not even have a hint of compassion, which tells me something very telling. Namely that he has no compassion. Ironically, in the same speech later he was talking about Russia's treatment of a celebrity criminal. President Bush had the huevos to say, "Here, you're innocent until proven guilty and it appeared to us, at least people in my administration, that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial." He's criticizing Russia for the same exactly thing that we are guilty of in Guantanamo. Many "detainees" (a word I hate) have been held there since 2001 without even being charged with a crime. "Innocent until proven guilty." Kiss my ass. Clearly President Bush is aware of the atrocities being committed in Guantanamo, and does not give a shit about it. Or he does give a shit about it because he likes it and wants it to continue. Or, there is a might smaller chance that he actually doesn’t know about it, but doesn’t give a shit about it anyway. In any case, President Bush’s response now puts the responsibility and the weight of those human atrocities square on his shoulders. Yet another reason to despise him. Like I needed one.