Wherein I blast Shrub in an e-mail exchange with the erstwhile local talkshow radio wingnut

"Erstwhile" means he retired from his radio show. Anyway, when I sent him the item a couple of weeks ago about Shrub's admitting torturing, with my comment that he had "shredded the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions" (among many other things), he sloughed off the torture part, saying that Shrub had made such comments long ago, and he seized on my having broadbrushed the GC's torture prohibitions as being applicable only to uniformed military of nation-states (not rag-taggers from non-countries). He also snarked that he learned in Journalism class that, while we have freedom of speech to say anything, there are things we SHOULDN'T say. I answered him, but he kept harping on the narrow legalism that the GC didn't apply to the people Shrub-CHEENEE used it on.

After two of those high flown corrections of me from him, I said this:



I fully get that the Conventions are among nation-states & specify uniformed military. When I said that Shrub "shredded the Constitution AND THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS" and linked the latter to prohibition of torture of ANYbody, I was being sloppy with language. That is all.

The American documents (Constitution, Dec of Ind) might have been specific to the U.S., but the French Revolution took the next step and called the same rights HUMAN rights: ALL humans.

I don't care about the legal restrictions on the Geneva Conventions. Just as you say that just because we have the free speech to say anything there are things we SHOULDN'T say, well, I expand this to say that just because something is not written somewhere as a legalism it doesn't mean we shouldn't abide by it.

Hence, torture (and other things) ought to be abhored and banned by ANYbody towards ANYbody. Period.

Now, you have already admitted (shrugged your shoulders at "OLD" news) that Shrub fully declared A LONG TIME AGO his having tortured WHOMEVER and would do it again. CHEENEE and his flying monkeys are outright PROUD of themselves over it. Why aren't YOU bothered by the very concept of "torture"---a more to the point question.

When you refer to Shrub as being too decent to "gloat over the GOREs' divorce because divorce is ugly and not to be wished on anybody," here is where we totally differ. I see Shrub as NO DIFFERENT FROM THUGS LIKE SADDAM, or any number of drug or robber baron cartel members. I would say he is only different from them by being too cowardly to practice what he REALLY WANTS TO DO, ALL of it, out in the open. He has been thoroughly movitivated by hatred, rage, vengeance against his own father and his and his family's enemies all his life. The Iraq attack was a personal vendetta, a cartel war, against Saddam, both to avenge his Poppy AND against Poppy himself for being a wimp. He is a sick-o who put firecrackers up frogs' asses, that says it all.