JUST THE FACTS, PLEASE

It would be nice if America's newspapers paid as much attention to the misinformation being spewed from The Bush Administration and right wing pundits as the NSA pays to average Americans


The Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League had a record of four wins and one loss after playing six games. (Actually, they were 4-2, having been beaten by the Indianapolis Colts in their sixth game.)

The action thriller movie “The Kingdom” was playing at the Wynnsong 16 Theaters on October 26, 27, and 28, 2007. (In fact, it left after October 25th).

The words “probable cause” do not appear in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. (Former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden, the guy in charge when the government illegally invaded the privacy of millions of Americans by tapping their phones and e-mail without warrants, said those words weren’t in it. The Fourth Amendment states, “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause...”).

“Big media” has “an auxiliary in the left wing of the Democratic Party.” The “big media” and “congressional leaders” of the Democratic Party viewed it as “the worst possible news” when acts of violence in Iraq decreased one week this October. (Cal Thomas, who never lets facts get in the way of his opinions, says so, claiming that the “big” media and congressional Democrats want American soldiers and Iraqi civilians to die. He didn’t and couldn’t give a single example of a media source or a Democrat to back up his assertion.)

What do all of the above have in common? They appeared as statements of fact in our daily newspaper, The Albany Herald. Every statement was wrong. Every statement was easily proved wrong. Obviously, the NFL standings and movie listings aren’t life changing events, although I did end up seeing the George Clooney thriller Michael Clayton when I arrived at the theater and discovered The Kingdom was nowhere to be found. But we who are the consumers of the daily newspaper are entitled to some basic fact checking on the part of the gatekeepers, whether they be the publisher, the editors, or the reporters and syndicated columnists whose material comprises the words we read and depend upon for accuracy.

As the Bush Administration once again attempts to warp the facts or spew outright falsehoods (Iran is no military threat to Europe or America and it is not “urgent” that we spend billions of dollars to put up a missile defense shield in Poland against an Iranian threat which does not exist), it would be nice to know that someone, somewhere, was making sure that our newspaper will not uncritically publish lies and exaggerations that will once again panic America into a catastrophic military misadventure

ENOUGH

The Press needs a few more modern day Murrows to get the country back on track.

Enough, already. Enough with a clueless and irresponsible President who has ordered the torture of innocent human beings, trashed the Constitution, and degraded the military. Enough with spineless crapweasel Democrats who have the power to stop the war by refusing to fund another dollar without deadlines to get the troops out of Iraq. Enough with an apathetic, dysfunctional press which won’t report the facts, fails to follow up stories, fails to put stories in context, and generally treats words coming out of the mouths of public officials as profound truths not deserving the slightest investigation.

We have had over four years of war, over six years of contempt for the liberties enshrined in our Constitution, and, from day one of the Bush Administration, the most incompetent and lawless government in our nation’s proud 231 year history.

Where is the public servant who will rise up and tell the nation that there is a third option to get us out of Iraq without leaving complete anarchy and a collapsed civilization behind? I’m talking about taking 10 or 20 billion dollars from our seemingly infinite supply of funds for war making ($500 billion and counting wasted on Iraq) and paying Egypt and Jordan enough money to rent half of their standing armies to replace American soldiers in Iraq as peacekeepers. That way, the Iraqi people can sort out what kind of government they want with Arabic speaking Muslims there to prevent all out civil war.

Where is the public servant who will point out that the debate on health care isn’t about socialized medicine- as long as our doctors are their own bosses and hospitals can be privately owned, the medical system isn’t socialized- it’s about devoting our resources to providing health care for life threatening illnesses and catastrophic injuries costing tens of thousands of dollars that would otherwise drain families’ bank accounts and force parents to put out penny jars in local restaurants in a desperate effort to raise funds to pay their sick child’s hospital bills? It’s about letting companies compete overseas without the burden of billions in overhead from medical expenses. It’s about letting people choose jobs based on satisfaction rather than medical coverage.

Where is the Senator Majority Leader or House Speaker who will stand up and tell the President “no more?” No more torture. No more Guantanamo. No more “state secrets” defenses to prevent human beings deliberately injured by our government from obtaining justice in the courts. No more secret spying on Americans. No more fear mongering to railroad Congress and the American people into preemptive war against Iran.

Where is the press that will relentlessly put every word coming out of Washington in the context of what those same people said before on the same subject? When Dick Cheney says that “we will be greeted as liberators” (March 2003) or “the insurgency is in its last throes” (June 2005), then every public utterance by him on Iraq must be accompanied by the context of how profoundly wrong he was every time he opened his mouth. When Paul Wolfowitz says that Iraqi oil will pay for the war, which won’t cost us more than a few billion dollars (2003), then every time the President goes to Congress with his hand out, that quote should be in the headline.

And when President Bush says that we are in Iraq to prevent Al Qaida from getting a foothold, he should be reminded of his public statements that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks and our military’s findings that Al Qaida didn’t exist in Iraq until we invaded.

So enough already. Give us back our liberty, now. Get our troops out of Iraq, now. Stop torturing, imprisoning, and killing innocent human beings. Take the billions going to companies like Halliburton and Blackwater and use it to insure every sick child in America. Enough.

AMERICA'S POLICY ON TORTURE DEFINES WHO WE ARE

Austrialian David Hicks, who will be free by the end of 2007, out of hundreds held for years, is the only person tried and convicted at Guantanamo

(for outside Albany op-ed):

President Bush, while continuing to deny that America tortures human beings in our custody - “this government does not torture people”- has spoken out in defense of torture, saying “[t]he American people expect us to find out information, actionable intelligence, so we can help protect them. That’s our job.”

It’s amazing to anyone familiar with the history of our nation to believe that we are having a debate on the use of torture against persons in custody- none of whom has ever been convicted of a crime. The hypothetical scenario posed by newspaper columnists and asked of Presidential aspirants at debates is straight out of a fictional television show- “24.” A suspect has knowledge of a ticking bomb about to go off and destroy an American city with loved ones in it. Our hero must torture the suspect to find the bomb and save the day.

I have an answer to the President, the political pundits, and those seeking the highest offices in the land: never. Never is when we should legalize torture of suspects in our custody or control. We don’t permit the police in our country to legally torture suspects, even if there is a kidnap victim being held who will die without the information. We don’t permit police to hold suspects for years in secret prisons, deny them access to counsel and the courts, never tell them what they are charged with, and never give them an opportunity to confront their accusers. We have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that prohibit this misconduct. Our laws, the bedrock of America, provide for a presumption of innocence, speedy and public trials, the assistance of counsel, the right to confront one’s accusers face to face, and a trial in front of a fair and impartial jury.

Yet America’s military and the CIA, using secret memos from the Bush Administration to justify ignoring and discarding 220 years of legal precedent dating back to the 1787 enactment of our Constitution, have violated every one of our fundamental freedoms. As a result, we have arrested, brutally tortured, and imprisoned for years without any trial, human beings whom the U.S. Defense Department later admitted were completely innocent. Some were arrested by mistake by our military or CIA. Many were captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan in exchange for $5,000 bounties paid to local tribesmen who wanted to settle old scores or who just didn’t care who they grabbed.

Out of the hundreds of detainees held for years in Guantanamo, we have never managed to try and convict a single one for committing or planning a terrorist attack against the United States. Only one “successful” trial was held. An Australian- David Hicks- admitted guilt to a minor offense, was returned to Australia in May of 2007 after being held for over four years without a hearing, and he will be set free in two months. Hundreds of detainees were eventually set free and quietly returned to their home countries without ever being charged. The United States has admitted continuing to hold several detainees who were completely innocent because we could find no country to take them. What are the odds, one must wonder, that we have now sufficiently angered and radicalized them and their families by locking them up for years, torturing them when they had no information to give, and keeping them incommunicado from lawyers and their families? They weren’t terrorists before we abused and tortured them; would it be any wonder if they aren’t willing to do us harm now? Could we blame them? Here is what one innocent detainee, Afghan writer Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, wrote in a recent book he published after his release:

"Life in Guantanamo jail is close to life in a grave. That is because the prisoners in Cuba are neither dead nor alive. They are not dead because they have souls ... (but) they have been deprived of all the rights of living people."

In America we don’t permit the police to launch air strikes or blow up houses in neighborhoods where criminals are committing crimes. And we don’t permit our police or military to kill innocent civilians in efforts to target gang leaders. But that is what our military has done in Afghanistan and Iraq, where we have launched air strikes to kill “insurgents” or “high value targets.” We may have killed some insurgents. But it is undisputed that American bombs have also killed and mutilated scores of innocent bystanders, including infants and small children. When Zell Miller took to the Senate floor after the 9-11 attacks, he said that we should “bomb Kabul (Afghanistan’s capital) back to the Stone Age.” Imagine the reaction if a U.S. Senator had said that we should “bomb Buffalo back to the Stone Age” after Buffalo native Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

The sad truth is that the Bush Administration does not torture to extract information to save American lives. If they truly cared about making America safer, they would have made it a priority to inspect air cargo and cargo containers coming into the U.S. ports, and they would not have attempted to turn over management of our ports to a company from an Arab nation with close links to Al Qaida. The Bush Administration has used torture because it wants to erase the boundaries that used to set apart America and our laws from the rest of the world. Americans used to believe in human rights- in Due Process of Law, in the presumption of innocence, in a Constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” (from the Eighth Amendment). Those values defined who we were as a people, as a nation. The television show “24” is just that- a television show. It’s fiction. The United States Constitution and the freedoms protected by it are fact. If we allow legalized torture in our name, then we may as well put the Constitution into the shredder and admit that our enemies have won. They will have managed to convert us- through our unreasoning fear and panic- into being just like them.

(to Albany Herald)

President Bush, while continuing to deny that America tortures human beings in our custody - “this government does not torture people”- has spoken out in defense of torture, saying “[t]he American people expect us to find out information, actionable intelligence, so we can help protect them. That’s our job.”

In response, the Albany Herald’s Editorial Board (Saturday, October 6, 2007), has trouble distinguishing when it would be appropriate to torture suspects in American custody. The hypothetical scenario from its editorial is straight out of a fictional television show- “24.” A suspect has knowledge of a ticking bomb about to go off and destroy an American city- Savannah is the example used- with loved ones in it. Our hero must torture the suspect to find the bomb and save the day.

I have an answer to the Herald: never. Never is when we should legalize torture of suspects in our custody or control. We don’t permit the police in our country to legally torture suspects, even if there is a kidnap victim being held who will die without the information. We don’t permit police to hold suspects for years in secret prisons, deny them access to counsel and the courts, never tell them what they are charged with, and never give them an opportunity to confront their accusers. We have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that prohibit this misconduct. Our laws, the bedrock of America, provide for a presumption of innocence, speedy and public trials, the assistance of counsel, the right to confront one’s accusers face to face, and a trial in front of a fair and impartial jury.

Yet America’s military and the CIA, using secret memos from the Bush Administration to justify ignoring and discarding 220 years of legal precedent dating back to the 1787 enactment of our Constitution, have violated every one of our fundamental freedoms. As a result, we have arrested, brutally tortured, and imprisoned for years without any trial, human beings whom the U.S. Defense Department later admitted were completely innocent. Some were arrested by mistake by our military or CIA. Many were captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan in exchange for $5,000 bounties paid to local tribesmen who wanted to settle old scores or who just didn’t care who they grabbed.

Out of the hundreds of detainees held for years in Guantanamo, we have never managed to try and convict a single one for committing or planning a terrorist attack against the United States. Only one “successful” trial was held. An Australian- David Hicks- admitted guilt to a minor offense, was returned to Australia in May of 2007 after being held for over four years without a hearing, and he will be set free in two months. Hundreds of detainees were eventually set free and quietly returned to their home countries without ever being charged. The United States has admitted continuing to hold several detainees who were completely innocent because we could find no country to take them. What are the odds, one must wonder, that we have now sufficiently angered and radicalized them and their families by locking them up for years, torturing them when they had no information to give, and keeping them incommunicado from lawyers and their families? They weren’t terrorists before we abused and tortured them; would it be any wonder if they aren’t willing to do us harm now? Could we blame them? Here is what one innocent detainee, Afghan writer Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, wrote in a recent book he published after his release:

"Life in Guantanamo jail is close to life in a grave. That is because the prisoners in Cuba are neither dead nor alive. They are not dead because they have souls ... (but) they have been deprived of all the rights of living people."

In America we don’t permit the police to launch air strikes or blow up houses in neighborhoods where criminals are committing crimes. And we don’t permit our police or military to kill innocent civilians in efforts to target gang leaders. But that is what our military has done in Afghanistan and Iraq, where we have launched air strikes to kill “insurgents” or “high value targets.” We may have killed some insurgents- but it is undisputed that American bombs have also killed and mutilated scores of innocent bystanders, including infants and small children. When Zell Miller took to the Senate floor after the 9-11 attacks, he said that we should “bomb Kabul (Afghanistan’s capital) back to the Stone Age.” Imagine the reaction if a U.S. Senator had said that we should “bomb Buffalo back to the Stone Age” after Buffalo native Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

The sad truth is that the Bush Administration does not torture to extract information to save American lives. If they truly cared about making America safer, they would have made it a priority to inspect air cargo and cargo containers coming into the U.S. ports, and they would not have attempted to turn over management of our ports to a company from an Arab nation with close links to Al Qaida. The Bush Administration has used torture because it wants to erase the boundaries that used to set apart America and our laws from the rest of the world. Americans used to believe in human rights- in Due Process of Law, in the presumption of innocence, in a Constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” (from the Eighth Amendment). Those values defined who we were as a people, as a nation. The television show “24” is just that- a television show. It’s fiction. The United States Constitution and the freedoms protected by it are fact. If we allow legalized torture in our name, then we may as well put the Constitution into the shredder and admit that our enemies have won. They will have managed to convert us- through our unreasoning fear and panic- into being just like them.