The Christmas Spirit Is Alive And Well

My personal feeling is that 20 or 30 years from now, folks are going to look back on the whole EIT torture shame we are witnessing and will feel about it the same way rational people now feel about Japanese internment, McCarthyism and the lynching of Blacks back in the day. Right now, I hear tell, half the good folks of this here United States are reported to be right there with Dick Cheney in saying it was justified. So, for you future readers of Hometown USA, I present some letters to the Post Star. That was a newspaper. You likely won't have them. I'm going to leave the names off the letters, but provide links.

Isn’t it amazing, time after time we are fed these ridiculous stories, news articles from around the world, while the empty suit occupying our White House lies to us, insults and stabs our allies in the back, demoralizes our military, encourages racial strife, and all but destroys the middle class? Then comes this half-made-up story throwing our CIA under the bus, and bam, front page! Let’s embarrass the Republicans. Surprise all our senators, yes even liberal Democrats went along with these proposals years ago. But now that the voters have embarrassed these snakes, let’s take a last shot at tearing down this country.

We pay our police to keep the riff-raff from our door, then tie their hands. We pay our military to fight these murdering cowards, but our know-nothing liberals must guide them. I lost many good friends on 9/11. I still see the falling bodies. I still see three burning bodies hanging from the bridges. I can still feel the pain of the loved ones who saw the bodiless heads of husbands and children. Do I feel anything for these godless cowards? I only hope the next administration has more guts than this one. Hopefully America will again be respected and feared. We are fighting for our lives.

God bless you, John J. Byrnes III. Thank you for your service. Thank you, America’s police officers, America’s soldiers and the CIA.

Number Two:

I think Mr. Tingley should be ashamed of himself for his commentary concerning the Senate report of torture. First of all, this investigation was done solely by Senate Democrats without any input of many key players involved, most notably members of the CIA. It was obvious from the start that this was a totally biased political ploy concocted solely to distract from the many failures of this administration and he bit on it hook, line and sinker. These “enhanced interrogation” techniques are not torture. If you want to know what torture is, ask some of the POWs of World War II, Korea or Vietnam.

I’m surprised of the views of Sen. John McCain considering what he went through. He mentioned Mai Lai and Abu Ghraib. Sure, there will always be a few atrocities in war, but why not concentrate on the atrocities perpetuated on totally innocent people by the most inhumane barbaric savages of our time?

For anyone to have sympathy for any of this ilk being banged against a wall, have water poured on them or being “inconvenienced” in some way is totally beyond belief.

Yeah, what the hell? They pour Gatorade on coaches all the time. The third contestant for humanitarian of the year:

According to the Dec. 17 Post Star, 141 people, mostly children, were massacred in Peshawar, Pakistan, by the Taliban.

On Page A2 is an article about the killing of at least 25 in car bombings, including a school bus, on which at least 15 primary school students were killed in Sanaa, Yemen, which is blamed on al-Qaida.

Now tell me again why, if some of these terrorists were captured, enhanced interrogation would not be justified to help find the rest of the cowards who perpetrated this outrage.

Yes, won't you think of the children? Of course, if they had grown up she'd have had no problem with their being tortured because they were wrongly "fingered" by someone else being tortured who gave out their names. That's the way the witch trials in Europe and America went, I do believe.

And here is a Christmas gift for Matt Funiciello. This is one of those cases where I cannot argue against the fact that on some levels the Obama WH is absolutely as evil as the Bush/Cheney WH. 

Four years ago today, frustrated Tunisian vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire and started a wave of uprisings in the Arab world that continue to reverberate to this day – though not in the way that many expected.

Sadly, the promise of what some call the Arab Spring has not come to pass anywhere yet, except perhaps in Tunisia, the small country where it all began.

Since then, a democracy protest movement has been crushed, with Saudi Arabian help, in Bahrain, the kingdom that hosts the US Fifth Fleet; Syrian protests for change have deteriorated into the world's bloodiest current civil war, with 200,000 dead, millions displaced from their homes, and the US fighting jihadis who became dominant in the uprising, not the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

Yeah, the evil part:

Yet while President Barack Obama spoke of democracy and a change in the way the US does business in the Middle East in those heady days, today his administration and the US Congress, Republican and Democrat, are getting back to business as usual, with security and strategic concerns trumping the lip-service paid to democracy and open societies.

Earlier this month Congress approved a spending bill that calls for $1.3 billion in US cash and weapons for Egypt's military to be conditioned on tangible progress towards democracy. But lawmakers also allowed Mr. Obama to waive this requirement if he thinks security or other interests are more important. Yesterday, State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the administration was delighted with this "flexibility."

OTOH, Obama did take actions in regard to Cuba that neither McCain nor Romney would have done in a million years. And voting for Jill Stein isn't going to make it so.

Oh, and here's Digby on GOP hypocrisy regarding Cuba. 

To think that just last week the man who is preaching today about America’s commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was exhorting us all to thank the people who used torture techniques like “rectal feeding” on prisoners in American custody.

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(A)s Dick Cheney put it a few years back:

“They’re living in the tropics. They’re well fed. They’ve got everything they could possibly want.”

Fidel Castro couldn’t have said it better himself.

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(W)hen you endorse torture, the least you can do is have enough shame not to sanctimoniously lecture others about morality and high ideals of civilized behavior.