Joe Klein, writing in Time Magazine, says that the most despicable act of the Bush administration occured on Feb. 7, 2002, “ when Bush signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention — the one regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners taken in wartime — did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban.”
Klein says that it was this act by Bush that led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. “It was his single most callous and despicable act, “Klein says, “It stands at the heart of the national embarrassment that was his presidency.”
Klein refers to a book by Jane Mayer: “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals”
In her book, Mayer writes about Bush’s decision to ignore the Geneva Conventions: “For the first time in its history the United States sanctioned government officials to physically and psychologically torment U.S.-held captives, making torture the official law of the land in all but name.” In the book, the author “meticulously demonstrates” that the Administration, fully aware that as many as a third of the detainees in Guantánamo may have had no connection to terrorism, still proceeded with medieval treatment that the Red Cross warned was ‘categorically’ torture.
Who is Joe going to hate now that George is gone. Thankfully the Joe Kleins of the print media are becoming more irrelevant with each passing weak. Soon, but not soon enough Time magazine will go the way of the dodo. Then who are you going to hate and blame Joe?
We have heard a lot from conservatives that Bush’s detractors are just “Bush haters” rather than people who don’t think torture and other things that Bush enabled if not implemented. This is a cheap way to demean the significance of an argument with an ad hominem attack.
Also prediction that Time magazine and the print media are becoming “irrelevant.” Does this mean that soon everyone will be reading blogs and listening to talk radio and politicized tv news shows, probably the ones they agree with which will essentially fragment the country . This would eliminate some media that are somehow universally significant (if not necessarily accurate). That is not necessarily a good thing. Read the book “The Big Sort.” It may happen, or maybe Time and Joe Klein will just be on line instead of in print.
Anyway we all know the scene where the King is mad at the Archbishop Thomas a Beckett and says to his underlings “who will rid me of this troublesome priest” then is surprised when someone does. Bush is at best at the same category, and at worst he and his security people decided that stopping terrorists was the only thing that mattered and if we need to torture them than we do it. The end justifies the means rather than the means destroying the end, in this case the moral authority of America. And it happened on our watch.
I am not defending Bush as you imply, I only asked who is Joe going to hate after George is gone. All of Joe’s arguments about George are premised with hate. Fact, not cheap. Print media’s time is limited whether you, me, or Joe like it or not. Just as the horse and buggy gave way to the automobile, so will print media to online technology.