Republican Values: The Secret Prisons

To begin with, I have to express a bit of schattenfreude. Poor President Bush, he can't buy a break these days. To add to all the bad news of the last few weeks, his nomination of Judge Wingnut Scalito to the Supreme Court is overshadowed by Harry Reid calling his hand on the misdirection, misinformation and miscalculations in Iraq and by mainstream media's reporting on secret black prisons for prisoners in the war on terrorism. Since the CIA placed them in Europe where such things are illegal, the Administration has little chance of dodging this investigation.

Before we continue let's get one thing straight: George W. Bush is completely representative of the Republican party. The Party of Lincoln has been completely pre-empted by the radical right political wing and radical evangelical Christianity. The party I was once a member of, the party of Ronald Reagan, has been subverted into a platform for the most radical of the right wingers and in George W. Bush, they found their perfect dupe. A C-average frat boy, reformed party animal, born-again Christian and all-hat-no-cow rancher, he looked like an updated version of Reagan. He had a track record of hands-off leadership as evidenced by the string of corporate failures he watched happen. He was the perfect representative of the new Republicans. They got him elected on a platform of values, of returning honor to the White House, then pushed all the moderates out of the party. For five years, he's been able to hide behind the lies.

One more bold-face statement before I continue: The values evidenced by the Bush administration are exactly those of the Republican party. If the party had the values they espouse, there would already have been investigations into the "intelligence failures" leading up to the Iraq war. The 9/11 commission wouldn't have been an uphill fight. Tax reform would be fair to the lower end of the taxpaying spectrum. Tom Delay wouldn't be facing felony charges in Texas, Bill Frist wouldn't be facing insider trading investigations, Scooter Libby wouldn't have had to lie to protect his boss and we wouldn't be at war in Iraq. The Gang of Fourteen wouldn't be facing two defections merely because the Wingnuts say Scalito is the best thing since pantyhose in an egg. All these failures of values indicate that there is no difference between Bush's values and the Republicans' values in general.

So, since shortly after 9/11, we've had secret prisons run by the CIA in out of the way places, mostly former Soviet gulags, if one is to believe the news reports. Ironic that they would use precisely those facilities. The White House has refused to confirm or deny their existence but come on, if they didn't exist don't you think they'd deny it? Rumors of these sites have been floating around for at least a year, tales of people disappearing, of extraordinary rendition (exporting people to other countries where the laws of the U. S. don't apply such as Cuba). So what does that tell you of Republican values?

The Republicans think that the Constitution of the United States is at best an inconvenience. The constitution guarantees the right of access to an attorney, of habeas corpus, to a swift and speedy trial but most importantly, it forbids the Government from holding prisoners without charges. How do we get around this? Move the prison offshore where U. S. law doesn't apply. Also indicative of this is the Republican contempt of law. In June 2004 the Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners at Guantanamo have the right of access to the U. S. court system. Today they sit there without access to attorney or to the courts while the Bush administration thumbs its nose at the order. The Republicans also think the means justify the ends. Torture is allowed as long as it's in defense of the nation. Unlimited detention is also fair for even U. S. citizens as long as they can be connected to terrorism. Look at the Administration's plight and see Republican values. They're the values of power corrupted absolutely.

I suppose the most telling thing about the "black sites" is that they're kept so secret. If they're doing nothing wrong, why are they secret? To protect the identity of the prisoners? Don't you think they bad guys know who is missing and don't you think they even know who's in these facilities? They're being kept secret because they violate American values and the Constitution, something the Republicans really don't want you to know about.