Senate backs Bush over terror suspects
The US Senate has voted for legislation endorsing President George Bush’s plan for tough measures to interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects.
The new laws will grant the president permission to authorise interrogation techniques viewed as illegal under international conventions and allow the setting up of “military commissions” to prosecute terror suspects.
The 65-34 vote gives final approval for a bill seen by Republicans as a chance to highlight their tough stance against terrorism in the run-up to congressional elections on November 7.
Senators voted predominantly along party lines, though 12 Democrats voted for the bill and one Republican against it.
President Bush welcomed the news last night, saying in a statement: “The Senate sent out a strong signal to the terrorists that we will continue using every element of national power to pursue our enemies and to prevent attacks on America.”
The House of Representatives passed almost identical legislation by 253-168 on Wednesday. It must make a technical change to bring it in line with the Senate’s measure and Bush is expected to sign the bill soon afterwards.
Does Bush ever say anything that doesn’t sound like it’s been cloned from, and created for a soundbyte? I mean, damn. They ask him about just about anything and he responds with ‘freedom and democracy, terrorists are bad, we will protect America’. One of the blogs I like has a fitting description for this: Smirking Chimp.
Meanwhile, this is a precedent. Just watch the ‘evil’ countries now doing a little bit of ‘clarifying’ of their own.
Who needs international standards?! Anarchy and self-governance is better. After all, we do it in the name of democracy. What better way to convince someone to convert to democracy than by torturing them? Oh, we’re so clever. So, so clever.
So far, this blog has been about film, music and arts. Not anymore. I’ve had a lot of things on my mind lately, and I need an outlet for it all. It’s all interconnected, and all to do with the state of our world. And so, I have a feeling that the posts you’ll be seeing from me now will be to do with these types of issues. [E.g. politics, poverty, social problems and issues, human rights, and general world affairs.]
And so, with that.. I recently finished reading a book: The Bubble of American Supremacy by George Soros. He had some interesting things to say, though he seemed to take some things for granted which I would argue.
Here are a few excerpts which I found particularly interesting:
