Sitting just feet from the courtroom table where he had once planned to make cases against military detainees, Air Force Col. Morris Davis instead took the witness stand to declare under oath that he felt undue pressure to hurry cases along so that the Bush administration could claim before political elections that the system was working.
[...]
Davis told Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, who presided over the hearing, that top Pentagon officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, made it clear to him that charging some of the highest-profile detainees before elections this year could have "strategic political value."
We’ve seen this time and time again from the Bush Administration. Everything is political, nothing has a purpose or function beyond manipulating public opinion, winning elections and keeping the Republican Party in power.
“Oh, but Democrats do it to,” you may say. Not like this, I answer.
Not like this.
This is the inevitable result of handing the reins of government to a group of people whose entire philosophy is that government doesn’t work. They don’t know how to make it work. All they know how to do is manipulate public opinion so they can hold onto power.
You know, it’s a neat trick turning “government” into a dirty word and telling people to vote for you, year after year and decade after decade, so you can get rid of “government.” Like it’s a flea infestation or something. If you hate government so much, what the hell are you doing making a career out of it?
Lewis Black once said something to the effect of, “government isn’t a building somewhere. It’s people.”
At least, that’s how a former president--a Republican president--saw it, back in the day: “Of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Not anymore. Now it’s just of the privileged, by the cronies, for the sheeple.
