A Few Thoughts
I was reading the letters to the editor regarding the torture memos and thought of a couple of things that I wanted to say.
1. The objective of the memo seems to be to find ways to legally extract information from prisoners. It reportedly contains extensive legal analysis that is attempting to show which rules and regulations apply during interrogations and which do not. The object is not to directly violate the law, but to toe the line and use interrogation techniques that are arguably legal - even if the arguments are thin. Thus it seems to be a mischaracterization to say, as I did in an earlier post, that the executive branch was trying to act above the law.
2. As the author of the third letter asks - why didn't the Bush Administration condemn this memo on moral grounds? My opinion is that the administration requested this memo to see what it could and could not get away with - to push the limits. If Bush was the true champion of the religous right, he would have been appalled by the memo and flatly rejected it. But he didn't.
3. So finally - why does the Religious Right support Bush? Apparently it's gay marriage and abortion, because torturing prisoners (the dark-skinned ones) hasn't dampened their support as far as I can tell.
Sadly, this reminds me of that movie about Medgar Evers (staring a Baldwin and Whoopie). At one point they show an interview with De la Beckwith (played by James Woods) where he mentions God putting the white man on the earth to rule the "dusky races". I feel like that same mentality might be alive and well in a good portion of the religous right, just not on the surface of course.
I was reading the letters to the editor regarding the torture memos and thought of a couple of things that I wanted to say.
1. The objective of the memo seems to be to find ways to legally extract information from prisoners. It reportedly contains extensive legal analysis that is attempting to show which rules and regulations apply during interrogations and which do not. The object is not to directly violate the law, but to toe the line and use interrogation techniques that are arguably legal - even if the arguments are thin. Thus it seems to be a mischaracterization to say, as I did in an earlier post, that the executive branch was trying to act above the law.
2. As the author of the third letter asks - why didn't the Bush Administration condemn this memo on moral grounds? My opinion is that the administration requested this memo to see what it could and could not get away with - to push the limits. If Bush was the true champion of the religous right, he would have been appalled by the memo and flatly rejected it. But he didn't.
3. So finally - why does the Religious Right support Bush? Apparently it's gay marriage and abortion, because torturing prisoners (the dark-skinned ones) hasn't dampened their support as far as I can tell.
Sadly, this reminds me of that movie about Medgar Evers (staring a Baldwin and Whoopie). At one point they show an interview with De la Beckwith (played by James Woods) where he mentions God putting the white man on the earth to rule the "dusky races". I feel like that same mentality might be alive and well in a good portion of the religous right, just not on the surface of course.
posted by jonnyargyle at 8:14 PM
