....but for three years I had roses, and apologized to no one...
Good evening, America.
Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration and in lieu of current events, I thought we could mark this moment by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.
There are of course those who do not want us to speak. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. Even if in the truth of the words we find circumstances which surprisingly may be un-American, so to speak. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?
How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, disease, terrorists...There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now President of the Free World, George W. Bush. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. He has given you chaos and called it order.
We have given a writ to a mortal man that insists that, “the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values,” while photos of the Abu Ghraib Prison surf the net and the stories of Waterboarding broach our attention. This is a man, our leader and president, who at the signing ceremony of the bill remarked that, “These military commissions will provide a fair trial, in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney and can hear all the evidence against them.” It is very possible he was alluding to some other form of documentation I imagine, since the very paper at his fingertips specifically points out in Sec. (5): Prohibits a person from invoking the Geneva Conventions in any habeas corpus or other civil action to which the United States... is a party as a source of rights in any court of the United States or its states or territories. An interesting excerpt, I found this among my old social studies textbook, as I searched for insight and view for the entity before us, "Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government,” from Jefferson - the Declaration of Independence. Interesting.
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Oh, and by the way....if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for "foreign powers," as remarked earlier in my day, take some time, have a sitdown, order a coffee, and think: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an “unlawful enemy combatant,” or a "conspirer to a foreign power"-just exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you? Who will you cry to?