Between rage and outrage

I see George W. Bush as a direct threat to the national security of the United States. His obscenely reckless administration has turned American soldiers into an unprepared international police in an uncharted, unplanned and unnecessary war in the most volatile region of the world. Election day will be a declaration to the world of America's political preference for president. Who we choose will shape global policy. Today, more people in the Middle East despise George W. Bush than Osama bin Laden. The simple ideals of liberty and freedom that our president wields with such vigor have been disproved as a system of torture and human rights abuse.\nAfter the recent trial of Abu Ghraib perpetrators, neither intelligence officers who conducted brutal interrogations nor anyone else higher on the chain of command have been charged. However, Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command (by the journalist who broke the My Lai story in 1968) said Abu Ghraib was "not the work of a few bad apples, but the direct consequence of the reliance of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on secret operations and the use of coercion - an eye-for-an-eye retribution - in fighting terrorism." These abuses, therefore, were condoned and encouraged from above. \nPat Robertson's recent comments about a conversation where George W. Bush expressed the notion that he "did not expect casualties" in Iraq clearly demonstrates the fantastical naiveté and/or gross incompetence of this administration's execution of the Iraqi war. Because of the unexpected insurgency that arose in the post-Saddam Iraq, it was necessary to capture Iraqi citizens and get agents in this new war. Hersh argues in his book that taking humiliating pornographic pictures and keeping them as blackmail for young Arabs would, in effect, produce a number of agents willing to infiltrate the insurgency campaign. \nSoon after 9-11, Bush issued orders to send teams of special operations groups to scatter across the globe to capture, interrogate and rub out terrorist cells. However, these teams were authorized illegally. Moreover, according to The Economist, Bush "later issued an order declaring that any captured al Qaeda or Taliban fighters would NOT be deemed prisoners of war covered by the Geneva Conventions; in the war on terror Bush believed he had the right to suspend the conventions whenever he wished." All Americans know the particular disdain Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney have for the Geneva Convention and of John Ashcroft's brazen trampling of civil liberties awarded by the Constitution. \nIs the war on terror a blank check for this administration? Bush and his sycophants seem able to railroad the Congress, bulldoze the Constitution with the Patriot Act, overstep the United Nations and ignore international law. \nWho can stop them? I can. \nWith a solitary vote - one punch of the card - I can make my declaration that I still believe in the integrity of our constitution and am unwilling to circumvent it just because cells of radicals wish to harm us. \nI can stop Bush because I believe the torture and interminable detention of prisoners without trial is not only unconstitutional it is reactionary, regressive and destructive to America's once eminent reputation in the world. \nRecently, after my article "Cheap Shots At Republicans" was published, I was told that my "rage" towards George W. Bush is indicative of the vacuity and desperation of liberalism. However, my feelings for the president go well beyond rage and travel into the fiery realm of outrage. \nThe world realigned in support of the United States after the dastardly attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Yet, George W. Bush has taken this nation from leading a universal coalition that supported the United States into a pitiful giant battling alone in a worsening war in Iraq. Abu Ghraib has been the progeny of Bush's failed administration and the Frankenstein of unchecked power.