I saw Colin Powell, probably the only Republican I liked and respected, wipe his black brow and think of the compromises he had made to get to this point. In front of Congress, John McCain not pleased but content with his role as the Great White Compromiser, stood beside him. I saw Bush, a grin on his face somehow inappropriate in a discussion on simulated drowning and waterboardings. If he had read the news, he would have found that his government after finding a detainee proven innocent of all Al-Qaeda ties had just released this "detainee" who witnessed three years of "coercive questioning".
I saw Bush cheerful because he was now allowed to define the rules of the Geneva Convention more clearly, so he could continue beating people with cables. False confessions, as John McCain himself was witness to from his own experiences, rang in the cells of Guantanamo Bay with the screams and the sounds of the tools of questioning. In my mind, the words of Mr. Hugo Chavez, the loud Venezuelan President also resonated. Loud people often stick in your head. "Yesterday, the Devil came here, to this spot. Yesterday, the Devil came here, and it still smells of sulfur."
I believe that 100% of the detainees are human beings, who deserve the right to defend themselves in a tribunal! The other issues aside, where does it end? If our President could imprison people, snatch them to another country where no one cared about excessive measures taken to extract faulty information, then how could things possibly get worse for our nation? How could Powell and McCain back down from preventing the acts that would only hurt our country's image in the outside world, especially among our friends in Iraq and other nations in the Middle East who so quickly become enemies if not handled with respect?
So many people didn't see what happened afterward.
I see MSNBC, on the couch, eating some spaghetti, and the Breaking News says, "The President signs a statement to be able to hold these detainees indefinitely." A slippery slope which had led us in a matter of weeks to a President who could take American citizens who were suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely WITHOUT TRIAL. Presumably, the questions would never cease.
Not until the Bush administration received more tortured lies would the torture cease. The man who had led us into Iraq was leading us into being tapped, spied on, and perhaps kidnapped in the middle of the night made my skin crawl, simply because he was still smiling.
Why would anyone be happy about wanting to do those things to human beings?
Maybe Bush's grin finally got to Mr. Powell. He had after all been bearing the silent burden since his peers met in a torture sewing circle, and watching the simulated techniques displayed perhaps seems incongruent with a contented Cheshire Cat smile. Perhaps Mr. Powell simply wished Bush would vanish behind that grin.
I saw Colin Powell, probably the only Republican I liked and respected, wipe his black brow and think of the compromises he had made to get to this point. Mr. Powell resigned, because in times of war, the only way to speak out against an administration's tactics is to resign if you are a soldier. I don't know if I still like him, but I do respect Mr. Powell for being strong enough to leave a legacy behind him of doing what he felt was right; I respect him more because he can admit his errors in pursuit of that cause.
