Should Torture Be An Issue?

I took a visit to Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish [time.blogs.com] today because he was on the PBS show NOW [www.pbs.org] yesterday and I found what he had to say very insightful. He is a life long Republican who is disgusted with the way the neocons have done away with the true ideals and core beliefs of the Republican party. He said that not only is this election a referendum on the Republican party but it is an intervention. Sullivan believes the Republican party needs to lose this election to save it.

While on his blog I came across a post called, Exibiting Torture [time.blogs.com] in which he has a video of a Fox News* reporter who underwent waterboarding to see if it could truly be considered torture. I highly recommend you go to his blog and watch the video. Please keep in mind this reporter knew he would not die and he was in noway under the same conditions as a suspected terrorist. Below is what Sullivan had to say about the exibition of waterboarding...

It's important to remember that psychologically, he's in a very different space than prisoners who have no autonomy, and who are not aware that they can stop this at any time. Even so, his conclusion is inescapable:"As far as torture goes, at least in this controlled experiment, to me this seemed like a pretty efficient mechanism."It is indeed a pretty efficient torture technique that triggers involuntary extreme panic and fear in order to get information - any information - in order to have it stopped. The legal definition of torture is the infliction of "severe mental or physical pain or suffering" to extract information. The reporter essentially cops to "severe mental suffering" at the very least. I am grateful to Fox for not mincing words. This is torture. That a prisoner can survive it with minimal outward signs of physical harm is one of its benefits for torturers, because they can repeat it endlessly until a human being is still alive but reduced to an empty shell. And that is why the Khmer Rouge used it. And the Soviets. And the Nazis. And George W. Bush.

This is also on the ballot next Tuesday. Do you believe America should torture its military detainees and terror suspects? Do you believe the president - and the president alone - should be able to arrest anyone at will, name him or her an "enemy combatant," deny him or her habeas corpus rights, and torture him or her? If you believe he should have that right, vote Republican.

Your vote tomorrow is about more than politics. It is indeed about values, American values. A vote for the Republicans is a vote for torture.

*I may have to change my views of Fox News because in this instance they truly are being fair and balanced in their reporting.

The GOP Dirty Tricks Begin

From the last 3 elections we've seen that the GOP will stoop to any level to win an election. Apparently they are smart enough to realise they cannot win in a fair contest and this election is no different.

For weeks now GOP voter fraud has been detected, 11 in O.C. charged with voter registration fraud [www.latimes.com] Dozens of people who thought they were signing up to be Democrats ended up Republican. Those accused in the case are low-level, per-signature workers. These "low level" pre-signature workers are now facing jail time not the GOP big wigs who hired them.

Today we hear of deceptive GOP Robo calls bringing back memories of the GOP phone jamming scheme in the 2002 elections which resulted in jail time for those involved. As long as the corrupt GOP only gets a slap on the wrist for this type of voter corruption they will be allowed to get away with it.

POLITICS -- RIGHT WING RESORTS TO HARASSING ROBO-CALLS: In multiple states around the country, conservative groups have devised a way to suppress turnout and smear political opponents through push polling. (Push polling is "a campaign tactic that is often criticized as deceptive because it involves calling potential voters under the guise of measuring public opinion, while the real intent is to change opinions with questions that push people in one direction or the other.") The scheme involves making "repeated robo-calls to households late in the evening or early in the morning," when voters will be "sleeping and most annoyed by the calls." "When someone answers, they're led to believe the call is coming from" the conservative group's opponent. Those who end the call early believe the opponent's campaign is pestering them, and those who stay on the call receive misleading information. One Vermont resident said she received 21 of these calls since October 24. "They are very annoying," she said. A conservative group called Common Sense Ohio is funding the calls in that state. Pew Research Center pollster said the calling "smells like a push poll, it feels like a push poll, so I guess we have to call it a push poll." "The way they're sent is deceptive," one Pennsylvania voter told the Associated Press. "The number of calls is harassing. The way her stances are presented in these stories is deliberately misleading and deceptive."

When You Go To Vote Remember This...

Sadly, many American's and our troops in Iraq have been brainwashed by the Bush administration into believing that Saddam was the main terrorist and only one responsible for 9/11. We were told that even though Iraq had been under severe sanctions for over 12 years they were developing WMDs. Common sense would have told most of us that the Iraqi's did not have the means to maintain a modern military machine much less WMDs because of those sanctions.

On September 13, 2001, just 2 days after 9/11 Bush still had the ability to be a great leader. He said the words every American and person of the free world wanted to hear...

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden." It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."-- George W. Bush 9-13-2001

Then, almost 1 year later Bush said these unbelievable words letting down his country and the world but then again he was making a case for war with Saddam and Iraq not Osama bin Laden...

"I don't know where he (bin Laden) is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."-- George W. Bush 3-13-2002

The Bush/Rove political machine and their neocon followers are trying to make these midterm elections about Saddam's guilty verdict as though it were some kind of coup for this do nothing Congress.

However, for many it just reminds us that after 5 years the real culprit, Osama bin Laden, of 9/11 is still free, taunting Americans with his very existence and that the Bush administration along with his neocon Congress have failed in their so called "war on terror" causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, 3,000 of America's finest to die for nothing.

If you are as outraged as I am about the no plan "stay the course" failed tactics Bush has used in his "war on terror" then when you go to vote remember Bush's word's that I cite and the words of Cheney from September 10th 2006...

Asked by "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert whether the United States would have gone ahead with the invasion anyway if the CIA had reported that Saddam did not, in fact, have such weapons, Cheney said yes.

"He'd done it before," Cheney said. "He had produced chemical weapons before and used them. He had produced biological weapons. He had a robust nuclear program in '91."

The U.S. invasion "was the right thing to do, and if we had to do it again, we would do exactly the same thing," he said.

Remember friends, after knowing what they know now and after killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people the Bush Administration would commit this same sad illegal war all over again.

More than anything else this has colored the way I will vote. If the Bush administration cannot in truthfulness protect America and avoid war at all costs then I cannot depend on them to honor their pledge to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.

In my eyes, this Administration is no better than the very terrorists who are out to destroy America.

Vote for peace.

Libby