Roll Over, Beethoven...or any Senators will do!!!
What a farce! All the while knowing full well they were going to roll over and fold when Bush called their bluff, senators McCain, Warner, and Graham made a big to do over the fact that they were standing up to the president. Remarkably, today the three amigos and the president were able to reach a "compromise" and show party unity, heading into the election season, at the expense of America's integrity!
All this president wanted was a bill that he could sign to try and minimize the risk of any members of his administration being tried for war crimes, and lo, and behold, these three "honorable men" were more than willing to play their part. As with every law that Congress has sent to this president, any part that he doesn't care to abide by, he wipes out with one of his "line item veto" signing statements, making it impossible for Congress to have the opportunity to override a true veto. Tell me where the checks and balances are in this current government of ours!
The corporate media ( there is no way that they can be called "news agencies") refuses to address any of the issues of this president's abuse of power so that the American people might tune in, become informed, and vote this "rubber-stamp" Congress out in November, thereby stopping the would-be king from totally abolishing our Constitution.
McCain, Warner and Graham appear to be suffering from memory loss, or just decided to ignore instances where the president has obeyed legislation as long as it was expedient for him to do so . The torture ban legislation that Congress overwhelmingly passed, in a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, was sent to our illustrious leader who gutted the bill with one of his roughly 800 signing statements. If reports are correct, the president will be spared from having to use another signing statement because the good senators were kind enough to frontload this agreement with the authority to interpret what defines torture being given to the president. How convenient!
This president has shown time and again that he is not to be trusted. Unless there truly is a conspiracy to bring down the United States, I cannot fathom a scenario where the members of Congress would believe that this president would adhere to legislation that leaves the Geneva Convention's rules of treatment, especially the 1949 enacted "Common Article 3", intact. The president believes that it is in his authority to misrepresent the facts ( a polite way of saying "lie") to Congress and the American public, and conceal information from them, any time he deems it necessary.
People disappear, and are sent to countries where torture is allowed and our media calls it "rendition". If Hitler would have had this present group of "journalists" reporting on the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, etc., they would have reported that the camps were "weight-loss clinics".
Take the case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, a software engineer, who, it now appears, was wrongly identified, by the Canadian police, as an Islamic extremist and was arrested in the U. S. and sent to Syria. Why Syria, when King George has maligned Syria as being one of the countries, along with Iran, that has supported Islamic extremist groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and al-Qaeda in Iraq? Because, In Syria, Mr. Arar could be, and was tortured for almost a year. You can check out the AP/Reuters article on this story here. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/September2006/190906Suspect.htm
Why would our news agencies fail to report stories, or if they are reported, distort the facts? The majority of the "free press" in the United States is owned by a handful of monolithic corporations, Including General Electric, Time-Warner, Disney, and News Corp. Many of these companies are profiting from our current administration's policies and would like nothing more than to maintain the status quo. To them, it makes good business sense to misrepresent the facts or bury stories that might bring unwanted attention or criticism upon BushCo.
An example of the misrepresentation of the facts by the "people you can count on", was the story of the young girl that was allegedly raped, and murdered along with several members of her family in Iraq by U. S. servicemen, she was reported as being a "woman" by our news media for weeks, even though it was being reported by international and "alternative" news websites, that she was a young teenage girl (14 or 15 years old). I guess the news moguls thought that it would sound better if it was a woman that was raped and murdered! The use of cluster bombs by the U. S., and recently by the Israelis on civilians in Lebanon, has been almost totally buried.
The war in Iraq is costing U. S. taxpayers over $3300.00 per SECOND! We were led to believe fabricated evidence by an administration that was aware of the fact that al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq had no connection, and that Iraq was not actively seeking or developing weapons of mass destruction. The American people have been repeatedly lied to by the president, and he will lie about this CIA program if Congress "cuts a deal" with him.
In November, remember to elect someone new in every race. In other words, VOTE THEM ALL OUT!