There's hope for us yet. In what is called by the
BBC a "bitter personal defeat for Vice-President Dick Cheney, who had telephoned every Republican senator to try to get the measure derailed," Bush has apparently decided to take one step back from the dark side. More on the flip. Couldn't find this diaried, not on current list, sorry if I'm mistaken.
The news in brief: "President George W Bush has announced he will support a new law banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of terrorist suspects."
We have all been watching. 90 Senators were already on board with this, but "Chainy" was making his midnight rounds to tempt and cajole "every Republican senator" to sell his soul and derail it. Societal tumors such as Charles Krauthammer tried to distract us with discredited theoretical situations such as "the ticking bomb scenario." John Yoo tried to have us believe that torture is ok because he had found some legal loopholes.
In at least this one instance I don't particularly care whether shrub buckled due to political pressure, a brief trip outside his bubble to listen to voices wiser than his mandarins, or a rare moment of actually giving a damn what the right things to do is:
What matters is this:
- maybe somebody somewhere will be released from his waterboard;
- somebody will have his thumbstraps taken off;
- someone will be unbound from his "stress position,"
- someone will be allowed to speak to another person for the 1st time in many months
- someone will be allowed to see light, to step outside, to eat something besides bread
- to have hope that he would be released from his living hell into which he had been thrown for having the same name as someone else on a list made by someone else who had been tortured.
- And we'll all be safer because of this. If Bush had vetoed this, that would have been one more grenade going off to send shrapnel into more hearts and minds that may have someday wanted to harm us
I'll say it again: "Bitter personal defeat for Dick Cheney." Kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? And especially since the defeat is for something as basic and important as banning torture.
McCain says that "We have sent a message to the world that the US is not like the terrorists." You know what, Senator McCain? Not only that, but we've sent the same message to malignant forces within our own society.
So hats off to all of those who supported this.
I'll borrow one of shrub's own catchphrases: "Freedom is on the march." And Dick "Chainy" can't stop it.