From Camelot to Camel Lot

Ranger question of the day:
Why are Executive Orders not subject to judicial review?
Secret sites and torture should be subjects
worthy of court attention.

________

Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?

Are we rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the Flag or the Liberty bell
--Are The Good Times Really Over For Good? Merle Haggard
_________

Mr. Merle "Love it or leave it - Fightin' Side of Me - Oakie from Muskogee" Haggard, one-time con pardoned by the venerated then Governor Ronald Reagan -- Merle is now questioning the sagacity of the War. Times are dark indeed.

Further thoughts on the "Black Sites" run by the U.S. military, with the Chief Executive's blessing (The Black Sites):

What is the legal foundation that allows the Central Intelligence Agency, led by an active four-banger, to actually run a secret prison system that incarcerates suspects without the quaint legal point of a trial which fits within civilized standards. Torture need not be discussed, since it could not happen unless the secret prisons held the victims in place.

Intelligence agencies are not police forces nor are they prison masters. This is not their function, nor should it ever be.

Intelligence personnel should be concerned with intelligence. However, Mayer's article suggests otherwise, and makes one cringe at the realities of executing the U.S. Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©).

Imagine a country that allows its agents to focus on anal intrusions to help break down a prisoner's will to resist; it is not comfortable knowledge linking that behavior with America. It does not sqaure with "family values" and all the rest of the rhetoric.

Imagine the existence of secret prisons about which even members of Congress cannot gain information. They are so secret that even asking about them is a security violation. (I hear the Star-Spangled Banner rising faintly in the background.)

The key point is that GWB has issued an executive order that allows the CIA to hold foreign terror suspects indefinitely, and without charges, in black prison sites without family or legal notification, or offering access to legal counsel. Why, and based upon which evidence?

Why does America permit war criminals and planners and executors of aggressive wars to occupy the highest offices of our land? Additionally, why is the term "War Criminal" applied to Saddam, but never to GWB? Both electively and unilaterally invaded foreign countries. If one is a war criminal, then so must be the other.

One thing Nuremberg established as international case law: Planners and executors of aggressive war should hang from the neck until dead.

Secret Suffering

"That explains it, then," Sam said disgustedly. "That's what
you were doing in Vietnam. That explains what the whole
country was doing over there.
The least little threat and America's got to put on its cowboy
boots and stomp around and show somebody a thing or two."
--In Country, Bobbie Ann Mason


Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now
--Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers
in politics as well as morals
--William Penn
__________

The marginalized character Emmett says of himself, "There's something wrong with me. I'm damaged. It's like something in the center of my heart is gone and I can't get it back." This dumbstruck sense of loss and damage is a feeling shared by many in our country now.

There are layers of misery this Ranger has witnessed, as everyone has, and one of them was the Republic of Vietnam. As a participant my perspective was much too personal and immature to fully realize the lie that was the war.

Ranger's life was dedicated to that lie, as that is what professional soldiers do. They ignore the lies and focus on words like duty, honor, sacrifice, country, and courage.

But nowhere in the Vietnam lie were there secret prisons, U.S. government-sponsored torture, murdered prisoners and secret dark sites in far-flung places.

Jane Mayer's piece in this week's New Yorker magazine, "The Black Sites," is a must-read. It won't make you happy, but it will make you informed. Not necessarily one and the same in this America.

Vietnam was still a lie and a circle of misery for the people of Vietnam, and of course, the wounded and killed on both sides bore that misery. But my Army and my war did not embrace such antithetical practices. It is all just part of a new lie.

But where is the protest? I remember protest. Where is the moral indignation? Where are our leaders? Why do we as a supposed beacon of freedom accept that our taxes support "secret sites" and presidentially-sanctioned torture at these sites?

Sending a dozen lowly enlisted men to prison on torture charges does not staunch the bleeding from the gaping wound that has been inflicted these six years on America's democratic principles, nor does it change the fact that American "democracy" is now a cruelly perpetrated hoax and a joke to all who have served and suffered in previous wars.

America never was lily pure, but only the fringes were questionable; now the center is corrupt and the fringes are silent.

Ranger's America is fast-disappearing -- like a mirage. America is not, was not and shall not be synonymous with words like "walking the dark side," secret sites, prisons and aggressive questioning.

Why is America silent? This is how it always starts.

This silence is another level of misery. Like Emmett, America's heart is damaged and the center is gone.

We must get it back, or America is a thing of the past.