September 15, 2006- Double Jeopardy

   I know that today's title refers to the exciting second round of that unforgfettable American TV game show, Jeopardy, where the contestants get to double their money so that the show looks like it is exciting, but if you are looking for a piece on Alex Trebeck or whatever, you wil be disappointed, because I have the other meaning of that term in mind, the one that the TV people stole when they started that show.  American jurisprudence is supposed to be set up so that  one that is accused of a crime avoids double jeopardy, which is being tried twice for the same crime. Even if someone is acquitted on a technicality even though they are guilty as hell (like OJ Simpson was), they cannot be tried again for that same offense, it is against the law. This is supposed to limit the powers of the Pigs, so that they  cannot keep trying someone until they get the result that they desire, it works  on the innocent until proven guilty theme. Many a criminal in the USA has walked away free because of this provision, which is why some want to do away with it altogether, but like it or not, it is a part of the American legal landscape. However, that sort of protection has been denied to the POW's that America has picked up along the way these last five years, most notably the dudes at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, those cats have been in legal limbo ever since day one.  They have become quite a bone of contention along the way, with many wondering why these guys are still locked up althopugh they are accused  of no crimes and why they are denied any legal recourse at all. The Administration has been on the defensive about this for years now, saying that they need to treat these guys like that because they are not common criminals, but the dreaded "enemy combatants" and that goes beyond the boundaries of law. No matter how much pressure has been put on the Administration, they have stood fast on that one, and the detainees have languished as a result, serving sentences for crimes they have never been charged with. Washington has let hand picked "observers" into Guantanamo Bay to see how things are and to make nice propaganda films about the treatment of the prisoners there, to make Americans think that it is no worse than being in any Anerican prison. Then, they try and sweep it all under the rug again and hope that everyone forgets about it, and  eventualy the subject comes up again. Now it has come up in places like Congress itself, where the politicians on both sides of the aisle are getting into the act. Yesterday, President Bush was trying to justify the methods used there once again and was not getting very far this time, many have heard that song before and wanted to hear a new tune, but Bush did not have one handy, just the same old tired song. The problem is that too many politicians have turned on Bush on that one, and they wanted him to give solid answers this time, and all he had was propaganda, so after a while, the unthinkable happened. Many of the Republican Congressmen got up and walked right outon Bush while he was still speaking, they beat the Democrats to the punch and led the procession out of the place where Bush was speaking. they said that they did so not because it was lunchtime and they were serving lobster  in the dining room, but because they were sick of Bush's bullshit on this issue and wanted him to come clean on it. These were not his political opponents that did this, these were members of his own party, people that have supported him solidly throughout these years, and they walked right out on the dude, a show of disrespect and disunity among the ranks if there ever was one. it looked as if they were making a stand on behalf of the POW's, and it seems to be time that someone did, but were these Congressmen really doing that?

   There has been no doubt that the issue of Guantanamo Bay and the goings-on there have hurt America a lot. For a country that says that it is at war to spread democracy and freedom and the like, they suere have not looked that way when it has come to the POW's. Those guys have been locked up in a gulag that would have made the USSR proud and left to languish there forever. We have heard the stories about them being stripped naked and smeared with shit and zapped with cattle prods and left exposed to the harsh Cuban elements and terrorized with dogs and the like, and that does not sounnd like America to many. After all, this is the country that went apeshit during Vietnam over thew way that the Communists were treating the American POW's, and said how inhuman it was and such, and here they are years later doing shit that would have made the Viet Cong blush with envy. As soon as the first ones go tthere we saw inages of that too, the detainees in sensory deprivation gear kneeling with soldiers pointing guns at them and such, and the  outcry started right away. Washington has always insisted that this is all necessary because these are war prisoners, not criminals, so they forfeited some of their rights when they went that route, even the Geneva Convention says so. yes, it says that POW's are not  criminals and  can be treated differently, but that does not mean that they have zero rights at all and are subject to anything and everything. However, Washington says that the situation os different here, because what they want to get out of the POW's is information, like who is in charge and where they are and  other pertinent information, and in a criminal case, that is not the focus, that is on meting out punishment for the deed done. The only thing that most of these dudes are really guilty of is listening to some asshole Holy Man and getting conscripted into a jihad army and fighting against America.  They might not even have cared about America that much until the Holy Men got ahold of them, and the only reason that they give a fuck about the Holy Men and the jihad at all is because they are being clothed and fed by them, keeping them from dying alone out on the sand somewhere. So Washington says that all they want out of these guys is information, and to get that, they have to curtail some of their rights. What many are saying in Congress is that they have curtailed too much and not gotten enough out of it, despite what the White House may say about "valuable  information" being gleaned from these guys. Nobody can tell if there really has been any valuable information given from these detainees,  or  if they do not really know shit. All that we have to go by is the Administration, because they say yes, but their track record on being honest is pretty bad now, so no one can believe that. That was the bone of contention yesterday that caused the Republicans to walk out on Bush. They are sick of not being informed on what is going on with the war, always being kept in the dark by the Administration, and both parties deal with this, the Administration tells no one much what is going on. That does not play well with the voters back home who want answers from the elected officials and when they can't get any, they get mad. That was why they were pressing Bush on that issue yesterday to begin with, they need information as much as the dude in the Prisoner TV series did. The fact that Bush gave none and stuck to the same old shit makes it look like something is up here and it is.

  It looks for al the  world like America just  wants these POW's to use to show the world  how strong they are and what happens to those that cross them. When we saw thos eimages of the detainees in the sensory deprivation shit, it looked a lot like America was just taking out its anger on these poor souls. Americans were so traumatized by the events of September 11th, 2001 that they needed a scapegoat to kick its ass, and these detainees were  it, ass kicking  courtesy of the US military. Ever since then, the detainees have still looked like scapegoats, dudes to punish in lieu of the likes of Bin Laden being out on the loose still, and that is not right at all.  Yes, they are enemy combatants and took up arms  against America, but they had to do so if they wanted to be fed and clothed and such and should not be made scapegoats for an angry America. However, Washington seems determined to use them to show everyone across the world what can happen if you fuck with America, and for a time that seemed to work, but it has lost all of its luster now in the wake of all the scandals and controversy. So that is no longer a reason to hold these guys forever, and neither is revenge for America, because by now, they have killed so many times more Muslims than the  people thjat died on September 11th, 2001 that it is no longer a point. that make one wonder just what use that they could be to anyone now, many have been locked up for years now and any information that they  might have had is useless and dated by now, so even that reason is no longer vaild. That makes it look more and  more like Washington is just using these guys to show off their power, that they'll get released when Washington says OK, not before, and that if you do not like it   too bad.  The problem in that thinking is that this wrecks America's image to the rest of the world irrepairably, makes them look like exactly what they say they are fighting against. That is how this is being seen even amongst America's closet allies now, and that damages what fragile coalitions Washington has and the last thing that America needs now is for more of its friends to desert it.  That is why the politicians say they are now so upset with Bush over this and why they walked out yesterday, it is a matter of American policy here, and that policy needs to be made into a more humane thing, and not keeping these dudes locked up forever is part of that. However, the Administration has seemed obsessed  from the beginning to use every conceivable thing they can to show off and consolidate their powers over someone, whether that be POW's, or Iraqis or ordinary Americans, they are obsessed  with wielding power over  all. That has caused any goodwill that America got from the rest of the world after September 11th vanish like the morning mist and that is hurting the war effort in the eyes of many. The Congressmen say that their eyes are some of those that feel that way, and  since the Administration does not allow them to air their grievances and such in much of any way at all, they had to resort to juvenile shit like walking out on Bush when he was speaking. That makes it look as if the detainees finally have a chance at last to get their cases heard and get this all straightened out, but as with everything Washington does, appearances can be deceiving.

   To begin with, the idea that these politicians give a fuck at all about these dudes at Guantanamo Bay is utterly absurd. They look at them as people that were out to kill them, so they do not at all mind seeing them locked away forever  on no charges at all. Politicians are a notoriously paranoid lot, and they see an army of potential assassins locked safely away in Cuba, and as far as they are concerned, there they can stay forever. Then why are they looking like they are sticking up for them? The answer is simple, they are playing politics. What they are doing is making it look like they are not  all toadies for Bush, because that reputation is no longer playing well with the American people, so they picked a totally safe issue to look as if they are against him. No one in America outside of a few glory hunting ACLU lawyers gives a fuck at all about these guys locked up in Cuba. Many feel that if these guys were set free, that they'd go right back to the Holy Men because they would have  nowhere else to go and they'd get right back into the jihad and try to kill Americans, so they feel safer with them locked away. If the avergage American wants to see people arrested for shit like drugs locked away for decades so they can feel safer,  then  they never want to see these jihadis go free. It just does not look good when they do shit like get whores that are menstruating to smear the blood on the prisoner's  faces and so forth, that embarasses Americans. They want to see these guys locked up forever, but never heard from again, like the detainees that were taken during America's invasion of Grenada back in the 1980's, the ones that are still locked up today. The politicians know that, they know that these guys will never get out alive in most cases, so they are free to take the issue and twist it into an anti-Administration type of thing, showing that they can think and act for themselves, and scoring political points in November.  That means that these guys in Cuba have been subjected to double jeopardy like the American system is supposed to protect against, they are locked up eternally and not charged with anything, and American politicians use their status and plight to make political hay in America. These guys just cannot win at all here. they have now been politicized in America and made into an election year issue, like that Willie Hortomn dude was back in 1984. That guy was a violent offender that was alowed out on parole in Massachusetts and then killed some more, and  Michael Dukakis was the Governor of Massachusetts then and was running for President in 1984, so Willie came back as  an election year issue and helped defeat Dukakis. Now we have these detainees in Cuba that are going to be used so that the Administration's opponents can get their people elected not only this November, but in 2008 as well. That was why these Congressmen suddenly grew balls and walked out on Bush and made a big scene out of it yesterday, because they are using these POW's every bit as much as the Administration has,making them political footballs to be kicked around a bit. That takes care of the showing the world how tough America is part, but instead of torturing the detainees eternally,  as they are pretty much tortured out by now,  we see the detainees made into political issues here in America, which is just another way to torture them, because that assures that they'll never get out of Cuba, at least not as long as Bush is around, and probably well beyond that, assuring their use as political issues for years to come. That's why they are staying right where they are and why nothing will be done to help them either, they are just too valuable to many over in Washington for so many reasons.

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