Bush knew prisoners were innocent

When 9-11 hit, everybody wanted to plant a bullet inside Osama bin Laden's brain.

OK, maybe not everybody, but I'm sure outside of Ghandi, Jesus and Buddha, everybody else was debating whether to nuke the terrorists or shoot them into the stone age.

The feeling was so great that, as Glenn Greenwald writes in his book "How Would a Patriot Act", after 9-11:

The bipartisan support for President Bush was so great that Democrats waived their right to present the traditional response to the president's address.

Anything Bush asked for the country gave him. New powers to wiretap people? Go for it. A war with Afghanistan? Awesome. Expanded military? You got it.

Turns out, it wasn't enough for the the Bush administration. Now we learn Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld knew there were people innocent of any crimes whatsoever, and wanted them kept in Guantanamo prison because it would hurt their case against Iraq.

A man taken from his home, his family, locked into a cell for no reason. Not even a chance at a trial so he can stand before a judge and say "I didn't do it", and people in power, people who swore an oath to defend the values of the Constitution that includes the right of habeas corpus - the right just to question why you've been arrested - they decided that "Well, we could do the *right* thing, but then we couldn't have this awesome war against someone who had nothing to do with 9-11 except that he's brown too."

Oh, I know, I know - "It was all in the past, John." "It was another time, John." "We need to look forward, not backwards."

Only whenever Cheney or his daughter step out to defend those policies, all I can see now are people who when they're confronted with the fact that they've done horrible, monstrous things, the response is a smirk and "So?"

If there's any reason to take any of them seriously, to ever accept them into polite society again, I can't think of a one.

Oh, Dick Cheney - You're Still an Evil Lying Bastard

KARL: OK. So -- so was it a mistake when your administration took on the Richard Reid case? This is very similar. This was somebody that was trying to blow up an airliner with a shoe bomb, and he was within five minutes of getting taken off that plane read his Miranda rights, four times, in fact, in 48 hours, and tried through the civilian system. Was that a mistake?

CHENEY: Well, first of all, I believe he was not tried. He pled guilty. They never did end up having a trial.

Secondly, when this came up, as I recall, it was December of '01, just a couple of months after 9/11. We were not yet operational with the military commissions. We hadn't had all the Supreme Court decisions handed down about what we could and couldn't do with the commissions.

KARL: But you still had an option to put him into military custody.

CHENEY: Well, we could have put him into military custody. I don't -- I don't question that. The point is, in this particular case, all of that was never worked out, primarily because he pled guilty. (Source "This Week" transcript 2010 February 2)

Let's put a few things under consideration.

1. "Well, first of all, I believe he was not tried. He pled guilty. They never did end up having a trial."

I want to make sure I get this straight. A guy showing up, in court, in handcuffs, before a judge who asks for his plea, then decides the man's guilt or innocence, then issues a judgment - that's not a trial.

Evidently, Obama is making us unsafe by using the court systems. Because that's giving the terrorists what they want - a chance to escape and inflict harm upon people by using their super secret "Islamic ninja skills" to escape. That's why we need military courts, because only those He-Men with their big guns can keep us safe (as opposed to, in Cheney's mind, those nancy-pants who call themselves the New York Police Force).

Unless the guy pleads guilty. Which "isn't a trial." It's just everything that a trial does except for more talking in the middle with all of that messy "evidence" and "witnesses" and stuff.

2. "We hadn't had all the Supreme Court decisions handed down about what we could and couldn't do with the commissions."

So let's get this right. The Supreme Court has said "You can't arrest someone, say they're not a soldier, and then put them in a military tribunal. We decided that in 1866 with the Milligan case, and then in 2006 the Supreme Court rules 5-3 that the Guantanamo prisoners can't be tried in military tribunals, which is also against the Geneva convention.

So Dick Cheney, the man who once swore to defend the Consitution, is now going out saying "You know what? Fuck the Supreme Court. What do they know. Fuck the Constitution. Screw treaties and laws. I'm peeing my pants here because some brown guy tried to set his crotch on fire on an airplane - and Obama had the nerve to actually follow the Constitution and the rule of law for a human being taken into custody on American soil - which the Supreme Court says you have to give him Miranda rights and all of that messy law stuff."

With his own words, Dick Cheney describes what he wants. He doesn't want the Constitution, he doesn't want the Law - all he wants is to do whatever he wants to do, torture whomever he wants, have war without asking permission - and, of course, that makes him the most qualified to be in government.