Recently everyone has been in a tizzy over the passing of the so-called “Torture Bill” through the U.S. Senate. And rightly so. But I don’t have much to say about it, personally. I do have a lot to say about what certain others have been saying about it. I happen to have a number of 9/11 truthers and NWO conspiracy loons in my MySpace network (they’re otherwise perfectly nice people, but Jebus), so I’m subjected to an onslaught of bulletins after events like this.
No matter which particular source they get their news from, I notice that it’s all obviously filtered down from Alex Jones’ Prison Planet website. Anything that gets posted on that site is reposted, most of the time in full, all over the kookosphere within less than a day. Here’s the most recent tormentuous bit of text, from an article titled “Torture Bill States Non-Allegiance To Bush Is Terrorism” by Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones:
“Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct.”
And, for the most part, that’s all they quote, when they don’t mindlessly cut-and-paste the whole thing. A teensy bit of the bill, with part of a sentence in bold. From this, and the title of the article, they jump to the conclusion that they are all now enemy combatants (and have taken a liking to referring to themselves with this title, as if it were a badge of honor) because they think George W. Bush is a doo-doo head, and once said so on their Livejournal. Um. No. Here’s a little bit of re-bolding:
“Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct.”
Tells ya right there what you need to do in order to be considered an enemy combatant. And I would really doubt that your participation in a MySpace 9/11 truth group fits the bill, kids. Either way, intentionally aiding the enemy was already illegal. They call it treason. If they can fuzzify the above bit of this bill enough to make you a criminal, they could have fuzzified the laws that were already in place. Yes, this bill bumps up the possible punishment for such crimes pretty steeply, to say the least. Yes, it can apply to U.S. citizens. Yes, that’s pretty nasty. But it doesn’t make terrorists out of all non-Republicans. Sorry, you dopes are just not that special.