Insanity of insanities...

This from here:

Compromise on torture ban said to be close

WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators are close to agreement on anti-torture provisions of a defense spending bill, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Monday in an interview with USA TODAY.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said a final version of the bill should be ready this week. "I think we have enough votes to have a good bill that would satisfy everyone."

House and Senate negotiators are haggling over an amendment to the Senate version of the bill by Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and former prisoner of war in Vietnam.

McCain's amendment, which passed the Senate 90-9 in October, would prohibit torture of any detainees in the war on terrorism and would make the Army Field Manual the standard for U.S. interrogators. The manual prohibits torture and other coercive interrogation tactics.

First, let's take a closer look at this amendment, shall we?

SEC. __. PROHIBITION ON CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT OF PERSONS UNDER CUSTODY OR CONTROL OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.

* (a) IN GENERAL.--No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

* (b) CONSTRUCTION.--Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose any geographical limitation on the applicability of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under this section.

* (c) LIMITATION OF SUPERSEDER.--The provisions of this section shall not be superseded, except by a provision of law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act which specifically repeals, modifies, or supersedes the provisions of this section.

* (d) CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT DEFINED.--In this section, the term ''cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment'' means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading reatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.

So our terrorist friends, those who would just as soon slowly slice our heads off with a dull knife, will be due CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS under the McCain Amendment...Those amendments being:

• Amendment V
  

  No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. (what, compensate him when you confiscate his favorite beheading knife or his favorite suicide bomb vest??)
  

• Amendment VIII
  

  Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

• Amendment XIV (Now, unless the terrorists can elect their own U.S. Congressional representation--which may not be far off the mark at the rate we're going--only the following section of the Fourteenth Amendment appears to apply):
  Section. 1 All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

So let me get this straight. These bozos in Congress and the Senate are busy arguing that these islamo-fascists, who have absolutely no compunction to target and kill innocent men, women and children to further their cause, are to be granted Constitutional rights??

From the get-go, let me say that I am against this amendment first of all for the simple reason that it is based on a false premise: That we in actuality "torture" prisoners. Give me a break!! For once and for all, HUMILIATION DOES NOT EQUAL TORTURE!!! You want torture? Try here or this example (referred to in that instance, incidentally, as a "war tactic"). Abu Ghraib was a friggen walk in the park by comparison. And we are going to give these bastard un-uniformed ENEMY combatants not only Geneva Convention protections (which they do not fall under) but our own Constitutional protections?!?

Thankfully, at least one congressman (who, incidentally, was also tortured) sees the lunacy in this:

“Having to potentially sift through thousands of pages of proper techniques in order to get interrogation authorization would likely compromise our ability to control the process, potentially preventing us from attaining valuable information that could avert future attacks,” Johnson wrote.

The main reason we lost Viet Nam was because we fought the conflict with one hand and one leg tied behind our collective backs due to the actions and inactions of self-serving politicians, who for some god-forsaken reason saw virtue in fighting a half-hearted war.

McCain's amendment is not only built on false pretenses, but if brought to bear, will most certainly once again hamstring our troops in harms' way with the "Viet Nam disadvantage," and will necessarily translate into a needless surfeit of Americans coming home in body bags (or, God forbid again, innocent American men, women and children).

We can no longer afford to fight a politically-correct war, run by self-serving politicians. This amendment must be defeated.


(Filed under Iraq, The Fifth Column, RINOs)