Really, really needs you to be afraid.
From Newsweek:
Boehner Raises Alarm Over Gitmo DetaineesIt must make the hundreds of thousands of public servants who work their asses off every day in the dangerous professions of law enforcement and corrections so very proud to know that Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner believes they are a bunch of bungling rubes, so casual about their duties that this
Katie Connolly
House Majority Leader John Boeher penned an op-ed that appeared this morning in USA Today urging Americans to support the "Keep Terrorists Out of America Act". This legislation aims to prevent the transfer of detainees from Gitmo to the United States. It would require the President to seek approval from a state's Governor and legislature before transferring any Gitmo prisoner to a U.S. facility. Obama would also have to demonstrate to Congress that prisoners don't represent a security threat. The Act is an attempt to undermine the President's pledge to close Gitmo within the first year of his presidency. And the op-ed is an exercise in fear-mongering. Boehner writes:Unless the president reverses course, more than 200 of the world's most dangerous terrorists soon will be released or transferred from the Guantanamo Bay prison. Where they will end up is anyone's guess; even the administration won't say. Nonetheless, it's possible that some may be imported into America, the country they have dedicated their lives to destroying....
That's alarming to an overwhelming majority of Americans, a growing consensus in Congress, and even Democratic Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, who opposed it as Kansas governor. That's why House Republicans are building support for the Keep Terrorists Out of America Act.
These are not common criminals. Not when you consider that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, who allegedly trained the hijackers, are detained at Guantanamo. Simply put, importing them would be a strategic mistake and an incredible risk — one that Americans have every right to be concerned about, which is why more and more states and communities are speaking out against it.
is the best the citizens of the United State should expect from them by way of protection from human predators.
Except, of course,
on pick-along night.
The criminal justice system kept mass murderer John Gacy safely contained for the 14 years between the date of his conviction and the date of his execution, and the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin kept the public perfectly safe from serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer until the day he was clubbed to death inside the prison.
And while no one in their right minds would consider Gacy or Dahmer “common criminals”, even those horrific examples pale in comparison to sheer number of genuine monsters the United States has kept securely under lock and key for years at the the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum (Supermax) Facility in Florence, Colorado.
A partial list of Florence’s current and former residents includes;
Ramzi Yousef: 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspirator, convicted and serving a life term.
Ted "Unabomber" Kaczynski: Domestic terrorist, serving life.
Omar Abdel-Rahman: "The Blind Sheik" involved in 1993 World Trade Center bombing, now prisoner #34892-054.
Mahmud Abouhalima: Prisoner #28064-054. 1993 World Trade Center bombing implication. Serving 240 years in prison with no possibility of parole.
Eric Rudolph: cop-killer, domestic terrorist and anti-gay/anti-abortion Wingnut Hero First Class, now serving two consecutive life terms without parole (murdering a police officer) and three consecutive life terms (Atlanta bombings). Prisoner #18282-058.
Mohammad Salameh: 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Matthew Hale: White supremacist leader, convicted of soliciting the murder of a federal judge. The World Church of the Creator’s Reichfuhrer is now know as 15177-424.
Ahmad Ajaj: 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Serving a 115-year sentence.
Timothy McVeigh: America’s top domestic terrorist was #12076-064 and kept safe and sound in a deep, dark hole at Florence until he was executed on June 11, 2001.
Wadih el-Hage: 1998 United States embassy bombings now serving life without parole.
David Lane: Another home-grown wingnut Neo-Nazi hero who was involved in the murder of Alan Berg and was inmate l12873-057 until the day he died.
Zacarias Moussaoui: 9/11 hijacking plotter and prisoner #51427-054.
Terry Nichols: Oklahoma City bombing conspirator and mass-murderer now inmate #08157-031. Doing 161 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
Richard Reid: Thought he could blow up a plane with a shoe, and will now rot in prison until the end of his life.
So enough with the infantile lies and fearmongering bullshit.
The United States has been routinely keeping honest-to-God, “I live to kill Americans” terrorists -- both domestic and imported -- walled up as tight as Fortunato for decades, and no one on the Right said “boo” about it. Only after The Evil Socialist Black Guy threatened to start shutting down their extra-judicial playpen did Conservative war criminals like Cheney and Conservative sock-puppets like Boehner suddenly decide that Federal Bureau of Prisons was too fucking inept to do the very job for which it was created.
Which makes Boehner’s knowledge of the criminal justice system second only to his
mastery of science.
10 comments:
Thanks, Driftglass. Leave it to bloggers to point out the obvious, and leave it to the mass media to ignore it. What's going on now between the press and the Republican Party is so much more than a "scandal". I'm not sure there is a word to describe the sheer volume of overt stupidity that our mass media is willing to promulgate as "news" rather than identifying it as the consciously destructive exercise in dysfunctional government that modern Republicanism really is.
They've got to be opening up a whole new wing in Democracy Hell for the media fools who let swine like Boehner get away with it.
There are times when I have deep sympathy for Americans, when I'm not having a private chuckle at the dark overlapping comedies that are consciously and subconsciously writ large by your leaders and their factotums.
The oscillating dichotomy between desiring to act as the biggest, baddest bunch of big-nosed bravos ever to strap on a pair of clanging star-spangled cojones and show the rest of the globe who's boss, like it or don't...And the scurrying, timorous superheated urge to hide from the self-generated bogeymen locked away 23 hours a day behind acres of cement, steel, and razor wire with an hour to exercise under trained rifles that is contained within the same people would be quite a bit to process even for someone capable of rational non-dogmatic thought.
All Boehner and his buddies have left is stimulation of the limbic system and the lizard brain. Considering their main audience is their base, I don't think they are aiming too high in the neural hierarchy. The rest of us can actually use the cerebral cortex and apply this interesting thing called "reason" and "rational thought". Someone should alert the media to these things.
"Keep Terrorists Out of America Act". Where the fuck does Boner think the 1993 WTC bombers are being held? Timbuktu?
I don't recall them wandering away from custody and bombing Wal-Mart in East Sisterfuck, Alabama while on weekend furlough, so I think the United States has sufficiently secure buildings known as 'prisons' which will be capable of restraining people tried and convicted of terrorist acts - just like Republican poster child Eric Rudolph.
Republican pants-pissing stupidity is, like the reputation of Dos Equis Man, expanding faster than the universe.
What they're really worried about - and this includes the democrats - is that they don't have jack shit on most of the prisoners in gitmo. And by now all the testimony has been tainted by hearsay, abuse, and torture. This would all be revealed in open court should the trials be held here.
jebus, I am soooooo tired of pants-pissing right-wingers
fucking cowards (especially on 9/11)
if there's one thing the US does -- it's prisons -- no one beats us on that front
I wanted to say what darkblack said.
The trucknutzer amendment duos american power projecting chuck norris wannabees are ascared?!??!
holy fuck, this is probably amusing to someone somewhere
Not that it matters, but the store "Fountains of Wayne", the inspiration for the band of the same name and presumably, this post title, is no more -- a casualty of the recession. The store's inventory of cement lawn Jesii and such (like I should talk, I have a cement Buddha sitting peacefully on a bench amidst the tiger lilies and hosta in MY yard) was sold at auction, and the property is now up for sale.
But...but...what about their magic power to cause yellow and brown stains to appear in the underpants of wingnuts thousands of miles away? It's unbelievable! It's like something out of Heroes! If Obama is gonna let them into the USA heartland, he might just as well step aside and let that brain-eating guy be President instead!
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