With the Justice Department's release this week of previously classified documents involving enhanced interrogation techniques, Democrats have a new excuse to be outraged at Bush, Cheney, and company. The so-called "abuses" perpetrated on detained terrorists by the CIA include such unorthodox techniques as faked executions, false threats against their family members, and in at least one case a drill held behind a captive's head like it might be used to pick his brain.
Of course, no actual harm was done in any of these cases. Without harm, how do you define abuse? It's ridicule maybe, psychological trickery most definitely. But abuse?! Heck, if this is abuse, where do I sign up? Because given the choice, I'd rather face a mock execution than an Obamacare death panel any day. Who wouldn't?
What a wonderful time to be a terrorist. If you are an Al-Qaeda member detained by the United States, you have a White House and an attorney general in your corner. The ACLU is fighting for your rights. You have hundreds of the best lawyers championing your cause. You'll be back on the battlefield in no time, Allah willing, perhaps with a prosthetic limb that we provided in a rare case where we actually should have rationed health care.
If you're a Libyan bomber in Scotland and you are responsible for the deaths of 260 innocent airline passengers, even if you are found guilty and sentenced to a minimum of 27 years in prison, you can be set free after only eight years under the guise of compassion. The bomber, al-Magrahi, received a hero's welcome back home, which had tyrants and terrorists joyfully singing."It's springtime for Gaddafi, winter for Lockerbie. We're marching to a jihad's pace. A Scottish judge threw out the case."
You'll excuse me for not singing along.
Everyone on the Left seems to be concerned about the most constitutional, humane, and compassionate way to treat the least compassionate, most vile jihadist, the undignified cowards often responsible for plotting to blow up innocent women and children. We must stand up for their liberties! But if you're an everyday American, not so much. In fact, if you've been speaking up at town hall meetings, please shut up. Your speech is offensive, radical, racist, and dangerous. Which reminds me, why haven't we passed the "Fairness" Doctrine yet?
Welcome to Obama's America, where we are supposed to be outraged over pretending to execute terrorists, but gladly volunteer ourselves to appear before real health advisory boards who can, for all practical purposes, hand out death sentences by rationing life-saving treatments. You can mock Sarah Palin all you want for calling them death panels, but just because they aren't supposed to officially kill people, doesn't mean they haven't had that effect.
In the U.K. for example, depending on where you live and what your income level is, the chance of receiving effective cancer treatment varies greatly. As many patient advocates have said of the poor single-payer system, it's a health care lottery. You are 400% more likely to survive most types of cancer in the United States than in Britain. Given that data alone, why change our system to look more like theirs when you've got to ask yourself, do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, statist punk?
Our vicious CIA interrogators might issue false threats against family members of Al-Qaeda operatives, but our bold health care reformers want to send end-of-life counselors into our homes to interrogate our vulnerable, eighty-year old moms and dads. Maybe we should be sending these bureaucrats out to visit the family members of Al-Qaeda, signing up terrorists for hospice and encouraging do-not-resuscitate orders. But the ACLU would probably suddenly step in and call it torture. It's amazing what you can get away with if it's against your own people, especially if the perpetrator is progressive and the victims are perceived to be old, white, and against progressivism.
As C.S. Lewis said more brilliantly than I ever could:
"A tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their conscience."
I, for one, would appreciate the enhanced interrogation technique of a mock death panel. Pretend the person in the room next to me is having their treatments rationed for the benefit of the state's bottom line, and I'll give up almost any information. Just don't let the government decide how long I can live based on what treatment they will approve. If only it was all pretend. But the takeover is real. Obama and the Democrats are doing everything they can to make it happen. Even if there are constitutional questions that haven't been addressed. I'd tell Eric Holder and the boys over at Justice to look into it, but I understand they have their hands full protecting the civil liberties of wannabe suicide bombers.
Meanwhile, real atrocities are being confirmed in prisons in Iran, where protesters against the government's stolen election have been jailed, beaten, tortured, and raped. Funny, but I haven't heard any uproar coming from the U.N. or human rights activists who were so worked up about a few nude photos taken at Abu Ghraib. I haven't seen any outpouring of support from the Muslim world or massive demonstrations against this cruel oppression.
President Obama hasn't said a thing about the rights of these prisoners. Which is too bad, because his silence is the soothing sound of comfort that tyrants and terrorists are all too glad to hear. His silence gives hope to our enemies around the globe. That's probably not the kind of hope most people thought they were voting for.
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