Bush Flummoxes Kafka, Orwell (Robert Parry)

this a great editorial

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/030306.html

Even Kafka and Orwell, masters at dissecting the cruel absurdities of totalitarian state power, might be at a loss for words in the face of George W. Bush’s latest legal and rhetorical formulations on torture.

Bush, of course, insists that the United States does not torture despite extensive evidence that detainees in the Iraq War and the War on Terror have been subjected to simulated drowning by “water-boarding,” beatings to death, suffocations, coffin-like confinements, painful stress positions, naked exposure to heat and cold, anal rape, sleep deprivation, dog bites, and psychological ploys involving sexual and religious humiliation.

snip

In effect, Bush is calling on the Executive Branch, the Congress and the Judiciary to collude in a charade that lets the U.S. government publicly condemn torture and other mistreatment of detainees, but then permits this criminal behavior to continue unabated while barring the victims any legal recourse to justice.

Bush’s legal arguments turn the Rule of Law inside out, essentially making all branches of the U.S. government complicit in a criminal conspiracy that is perpetuated even as anti-torture laws are held up as shining examples of the American commitment to humanitarian principles.

and in addition to shaming this nation he imperils any American who is captured by another country....