Outlaw Torture, Defend the Torturers & A Rigid Foreign Policy

Here is another example of the incredible contradictions in US policies. We are going to close Guantanamo as a detention center for torture (let us not discuss what is still going on in prisons in Iraq, and, apparently Obama is going to ratchet up Rendition), while our Gov't will spend millions of $$ to defend the likes of John Yoo. If, as some demand, Dubya, Cheney, Rummy and other higher ups, who instituted these policies (Yoo only sought to justify them) are also brought to trial, can you imagine the comedy of one part of the Justice (?) Dept. bringing these charges, quite apart from Int'l Courts, while another part of the Gov't shells out more millions to defend these people? And, of course, the great Demos, the Vox Populi, who elected, and then re-elected them, are not responsible for any of this, are they?

Suppose at Nuremberg in 1946, we had said,"Well, we now have laws against Genocide, so let's pay for some lawyers to defend these poor fellows who devised and carried out this policy against Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and others." Years ago, in discussing the evolution of civilizations, I wrote about the institutionalization of real Law into"Legalism." We are now loaded to the gills with that kind of so-called law which always accompanies Empire.

Here is another piece, by Bill Pfaff, on the rigidities of US Foreign Policy, where the bureaucratic rot in the State Dept. is at least as great as in Justice, and, let us not even think of the Defense Dept. as well as the various Welfare bureaucracies.

But, have faith, Hillary Clinton will rescue the situation, with what is now being touted as"Smart Diplomacy," which one can only hope is a great deal"smarter" than her Health/Welfare plan of the early 1990s.

"Tired Empires never die, they just rot away." And, the stench from such a rotting carcass can have one God awful smell, even unto the heavens.