As stated by President George W. Bush in his remarkably rare (for his presidency, anyway) news conference in Chicago yesterday:
“It didn’t say we couldn’t have done — couldn’t have made that decision, see?” Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Chicago. “They were silent on whether or not Guantánamo — whether or not we should have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantánamo, the decision I made.”
In what twisted universe is it that the President of the United States has to be TOLD by the courts that an extra-legal prison that uses “stress positions” and other “coercive” means of interrogation is not only ill-advised in a war that depends more on image than on casualties but also completely contrary to the most fundamental of American values including the rule of law?
I wish I could say this type of “thinking” along with the willingness of many people to actually support it is incomprehensible to me, but it is not. It merely shows how some are willing to twist responsibility into a rationalization of “they didn’t tell me not to” while others are willing to believe whatever their leader tells them. America is not the first nation to support this idiocy, but I had hoped we would be immune.
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Cross-posted to Random Fate.