Right-Wing Mailbag, "Hate Is the Only Thing We Have" Edition

Letters | The Journal Gazette, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Government awards billions to failing banks, blames them for the economy, then takes them over. Government demands change from private companies, and when they fail to live up to expectations, government takes over them, too. As a result, hundreds of thousands are losing their jobs.

The killing of the unborn is redefined as decent, and those who would protect the innocents are labeled as radicals.

Former officials who acted to protect the country are now being hunted down and prosecuted as war criminals while those that sought to destroy the country are awarded rights, safety and civility.

Government authorizes the spending of trillions of dollars that does little to stimulate the economy while the citizenry is told to give back and cut back.

In my company, employees who perform like this would be fired. Our company could not survive with such behavior and results. But I’m not describing my company or yours.

Welcome to America! You get what you voted for.

JIM JOHNSON Fort Wayne

Mr. Johnson, I'm going to be blunt: Shut the fuck up. Shut your tantrum-throwing whine-hole and sit down. Your desperation is showing.

Your kind has, in the past months, ramped up the violent, hateful rhetoric they spew, and you dare not denounce it for fear that you might not have time to denounce people like me. You show yourself to be an ally to the criminals of the past administration, an ally to the ignorant masses who don't undersdtand the economy, and an ally to the destruction of this country by your own kind.

But most of all, I'd like to remind you that your kind took away a brave man, a man working to protect women from the creeping control your kind wish to impose, only a couple days ago, by driving someone to murder through the endless dehumanization of your "enemies" and the eliminationist garbage you and your ilk spew. Then you throw a tantrum because your kind are rightly seen as "radicals". The truth hurts. You are a criminal, no better than the common rabble you claim people like me to be.

You will shut up, Mr. Johnson, because you have no more right to speak. You have given that up by declaring yourself the enemy of this country, and the enemy of humanity. You will shut up, and you will do it now.

On Pelosi

Conservatives: "Waterboarding isn't torture! We're saving lives! Ticking time bomb! Ticking time bomb!"
News: "Pelosi may have known about waterboarding-"
Conservatives: "OMGZORZ EVIL BITCH PELOSI IS LIBERAL LYING TORTURER LOCK HER UP IMPEACH HER THROW OUT THE DEMMYCRATZ CUZ THEY KNEW TOO"
Liberals: "Uh, weren't you just saying that waterboarding wasn't torture?"
Conservatives: "WHO CARES PELOSI KNEW SO IT'S EVIL"
Me: "Shut the fuck up."

By the way: For any of you fellow liberals out there who might be thinking that Pelosi needs to be raked over the coals for this, I'd like to congratulate you on once again doing the Right's job for them.

Worst, indeed.

Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Worst Persons, 4/23/2008


Jeez.
Bronze goes to John Ashcroft for defending torture... again. This time, he was at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, which isn't far from where I grew up. Good to know that even out there in the boondocks, they can still stick it to these morons.
Silver goes to the pastor of the Jonesville church of God in Jonesville, SC, who put up a horridly offensive sign saying, "Obama - Osama Hummm Are They Brothers". The pastor claimed it was neither racial nor political, just that "It's because their names are similar" and "it's to realize what could happen if we get someone in (the Whiter House) who doesn't believe in Jesus Christ". Yeah, tell yourself that while you beat the drum over his pastor's comment, idiot.
The WORST PERSON? John McCain, for seeking the endorsement of anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic hate preacher John Hagee. This after Hagee's most recent defense and restatement of his comments about Katrina being "God's punishment" against New Orleans. And remember, McCain sought this man's endorsement.

Go Orange

ACLU: Close Gunatanamo

JANUARY 11, 2008, is the six-year anniversary of the first arrival of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

On January 11, we are calling on everyone opposed to torture and indefinite detention to WEAR ORANGE to symbolize their sadness and disgust with the national shame that is Guantánamo Bay.

The arrows in the background will remain orange all of today to show that we, as do so many others, want the facility at Guantanamo Bay closed.

More torture? Who's surprised by this?

From the New York Times: In Secret Unit's 'Black Room,' a Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse

In Secret Unit's 'Black Room,' a Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse

By ERIC SCHMITT and CAROLYN MARSHALL
Published: March 19, 2006

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In June 2004, Stephen A. Cambone, a top Pentagon official, ordered his deputy, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, to look into allegations of detainee abuse at Camp Nama.
In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

Yeah, real smart, guys, torture people to get info when you KNOW that it doesn't work and they'll give you a bunch of crap.

The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.

Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it."
According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.

Oh, but we don't torture people! We shoot them with paintball guns, beat them, basically treat them like animals, but it's not torture! And we HAVE to so we can get information! Ticking time bomb! WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM?!

Seriously, you know that they're going to start trying to either cover this up or cover their own asses by calling these people "isolated cases" and "not under orders".

Sooner or later, you just know that all this torture stuff's gonna end up biting them on the ass somehow. The insurgents are going to get pissed off about this and more people are probably going to die, Iraqi and American alike. I hate that. I wish that wasn't the case. But it's going to happen, I'm sure of that.

If there was some magic wand I could wave over this war and make it end, if I could bring all the troops home and give Iraq whatever it wants and needs, if I could fix all the problems we have right now, oh, you KNOW I would...

...but I can't. That's why I do this - short of magic, all I have is this one voice. And I'm gonna use it.