If you think that your country can torture its enemies into safety with no side effects, you're a fucking idiot.

I don't understand how "conservatives" can still support the Bush regime. Not that this is surprising any more, but it still disturbed so much that I couldn't finish the article the first time I read it. This is what I'm talking about. The Justice Department filed a motion opposing the right to an attorney because the suspect (who was arrested in Pakistan and then held in undisclosed locations for three years before transfer to Gitmo) might tell his lawyer how he was "interrogated."

On the face, the government's motion is ridiculous. I think any terrorist out there can be reasonably sure he will be tortured if captured, by this point, whether legal or not. And if you read the Military Commisions Act of 2006, then you know that as long as the "interrogation technique" isn't intended to cause bodily harm or death, it's A-okay. As long as it's done in the name of getting information.

If you consider yourself a conservative and don't want to conserve something as basic as the right to an attorney and a guaranteed fair trial (or even the legal fiction of one), how do you reconcile the difference? Because it makes you "safer"? Bullshit.

What makes you safer is people not hating this country. Which is done when they're not mired in poverty and warfare, when they aren't being subjugated to corporate colonialism in the name of the god Profit. It's the same with crime; crime rates are lowered when the standard of living increases.

Even if you don't agree that the US is a corporate colonial power, you have to agree that people with a low quality of life and high mortality rates have more to be angry about and less to lose by lashing out.

And for those of you who complain that they wouldn't pay back whatever aid, don't be so goddamn selfish and short-sighted. For the same gain in your personal safety, it would cost a shitload less than military enforcement.

So I went off on a tangent. Still, if you think that your country can torture its enemies into safety with no side effects, you're a fucking idiot.