One Presidential Nomination For Sale. The Cost: Your Soul
I can't believe I'm writing about politics again. So do forgive, but the recent deal struck 'tween McCain and Bush over the Geneva Convention was, IMO, vacuous, substanceless, and utterly immoral. What it did was "affirm" the Geneva Convention and it's stipulations against torturing "Enemy Combattants" while giving the President full power to define what constitutes both torture and an "enemy combattant."
It was fascinating (and sad) to see McCain compromise in this fashion. He quite literally had the power to implode the entire situation, and conventional wisdom is such that were he to have do so it would have destroyed Republican's chances to hold both the Senate and Congress. I have a hard time believing that was motivation enough for McCain to compromise, given in the very least his own experiences with torture.
The Times London has an incredible article on the event here. They suggest he did it for the Presidential Nomination in 2008.
What I don't get is, why on earth does Bush want to be able to torture combattants (or possible combattants) and never bring them to trial? I just don't get it. Is it just an unfortunately inconvenience they simply don't want to deal with? Is it like, a hassle or something?
| By Josiah Roe | 12:28 PM
Comments
I can see why we'd want to torture combatants. Don't get me wrong, I think there should be limitations. But say something like 9/11 were being planned and we captured some of the terrorists planning it. Surely slapping them around a bit would get the necessary information to save thousands of lives? This reminds me of the Hiroshima bomb controversy. Should we have dropped the bomb(s)? Anyway, I think the idea is to save lives overall, but there should definitely be strict regulations.
Posted by: Strow at October 5, 2006 4:05 PM
