The obvious danger for America and the rest of the world in having someone as apparently stupid as George W. Bush as the President in the Whitehouse, is that he is not capable of distinguishing which of his advisers is providing him with good advice and which are providing him with bad advice.
The problem with The War Against Terror is that it is too vague a concept for rational understanding. Those concepts that can be understood are the State versus the Individual, the Individual versus the State, and the State against another State.
It would appear that what George W. Bush has done is as an Individual he has taken on the world. Anyone he sees as an enemy is an enemy in his private war and he describes them as "illegal enemy combatants". That is, they are illegal under Bush Law, because Bush has gone against American law, International law, and has suspended the Geneva Convention. It is terrifying that he has thrown off any civilised restraints upon human conduct. In effect, it is Jungle Law, and Bush is claiming that he is King of the Jungle. This hairy ape sees himself as Tarzan.
The Bush Administration claims that the arrest and detention of suspected terrorists is a very highly classified area and that neither the public nor the courts can question this. Furthermore, the so-called justification for this approach is stated as there was a before 9/11 and there is an after 9/11 and after 9/11 the gloves came off. Bush has set himself up as the judge, jury and prosecutor. His legal advisers were wrong to tell him that he had unfettered discretion in his prosecution on The War Against Terror. It means that the biggest terrorist threat that the world is facing comes from George W. Bush himself.
There is legal and illegal, judicial but no extra-judicial, and moral and immoral. Given that George W. Bush on 27 January 2005 made the statement that "torture is never acceptable", why has he unlawfully authorised the CIA and Military to engage in the torture of suspected terrorists? Bush added "nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture". Then why did America hand over Maher Arar to Syria where he was not only subjected to brutal interrogation, but also torture? Maher Arar is innocent of any links to terrorism, and yet he was kidnapped by the American government and subjected to the secretive programme "extraordinary rendition" a euphuism for kidnapping. Maher Arar asks a good question, "Why, if they have suspicions, don't they question people within the boundary of the law?".
The law is what separates the law-abiding from the lawless. George W. Bush has become an outlaw. He is as much a war criminal now, as Hitler was during World War 2. How is is that "The most common destination for rendered suspects are Egypt, Morocco, Syria and Jordan, all of which have been cited for human-rights violations by the State Department, and are known to torture suspects"? On what and who's authority is the CIA holding dozens of suspected terrorists outside of the territorial jurisdiction of the US? These are in addition to the 550 detainees in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Who governs the secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Qatar and Thailand, amongst other countries? Who guards the guards against abuse of the prisoners?
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
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