George Bush Says It's OKAY to Torture American Soldiers

I'm just so amazed at the ability of the Bush Administration to completely ignore the rule of law. So NOW the Republicans, lead by the "I never met a penis electrode I didn't like" guys at the white house, want to arbitrarily sign off of international rules about torture under the Geneva convention. And they're bashing the Republicans who don't want to abide by international treaties that 1) have been in existence for a while and 2) were mainly written by the US, back when we were the good guys. It's very interesting that the people who actually have served in the military, McCain, Warner, Powell, want protections for US soldiers while the guys who sat on their hands and have never been in battle don't.

There was an article in the LA Times yesterday about how this was going to cost McCain big among the evangelical christian right, who also, apparently think it's cool for governments to torture people. In fact, if it wasn't for those terribly Popish costumes, they'd be bringing back the Spanish Inquisition. What McCain and Powell get, and what this administration seems to be clueless about is that we win when we persist in being better.

There has been a shift away from property rights to human rights, and people persist in being confused by this. It used to be that children were the property of their father, a wife her husband, a farmer his landlord, a serf his lord, a nation it's King. But property rights suck. Human Rights don't. And there is a clear and shiny line that even the most Manichean among us can see. Which is you can not harm another person. You can not violate their dignity. Which is why the Geneva Conventions are a shining beacon of humanity, really one of the nicest things us people can point to and say "see, we're civilized."

So of course, the right wing extremists running our government are against it.