LAT: We now will allow Bush and Cheney to put us shoulder to shoulder with Pol Pot

[kpete]

latimes.com
By TIM RUTTEN, REGARDING MEDIA
November 3, 2007

....

It’s the kind of he-said-she-said news coverage that would have reported the Sermon on the Mount this way: “On a mountainside in Galilee today, a popular young rabbi argued that ‘the meek shall inherit the earth.’ Other religious authorities, however, pointed out that if God did not want the rich to fleece the poor, he would not have allowed them to behave like sheep.”…

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are insistent that any discussion of torture is precluded by the exigencies of national security and the war on terror. Cut to the core of their real argument, however, and it boils down to the naked assertion that whatever the president says is legal is legal — including torture, which isn’t torture, if the president says it isn’t….

“Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration — usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right, it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threatened with its use again and again.”…

What’s really at stake is whether this country will continue to stand with the framers of our Constitution and our authentic moral traditions or whether we now will allow Bush and Cheney to put us shoulder to shoulder with Pol Pot.

more at:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-rutten3nov03,1,3796711.story?ctrack=7&cset=true