why? because bush says so. that's why.

The biggest problem I have with the "torture first and maybe ask questions sometime later, if at all" crowd is that imprisoning people without trial never gives them a chance to prove if they are innocent or not.

This is important: just because the government, or a prosecutor, or even the King Himself George Bush says it is so, does not mean that someone is guilty. A trial may prove that someone is guilty, but all people who can be seized by this mighty country should be afforded, at the very least, the opportunity to speak in their own defense, and have their case heard by a judge or jury. Until someone is charged with a crime, and given a chance to respond to those charges, nobody, not even the president, can say if they are guilty or not.

So, with that in mind, read Tristero:

After racking my brain, I can come up with only one reason why Padilla was held for 3 1/2 years without charges and tortured. It was not because Padilla had 3 1/2 years of information that needed to be elicited it from him. It was not because what he may have known was a state secret. Padilla was imprisoned and suffered simply because Bush wanted to prove he had the power to do so. To anyone, even Americans.

Why? Why would Bush want to do that? What does he - more importantly, what does the country - gain from this kind of totalitarian behavior? Well, once again, Bush is making a point, that the president has the power to do whatever the president wants, without having to provide reasons to anyone. Especially during "wartime."

And Bush thinks, and the Bush administration thinks, and Republicans think, that it is a Good Thing. They must destroy America in order to save it. Shrink the American government down to nothing, so it drowns, as Norquist once said. What no one ever asked Norquist was what Republicans would replace the American government with.

It occurred to me last night, while listening to the president ramble on about something or another, that this man is simply unqualified to be the leader of my country. All this man and those around him want is entirely unchecked and unchallenged power. After five years of listening to them and their supporters tell me that I am not patriotic, or I am weak, or I wish to aid those who would seek to hurt me, my family, and the country we love, I have finally had enough. It is Mr. Bush, who is weak. It is Mr. Bush who has given the animals who attacked us on September 11, 2001 everything they hoped for, and more. Those people who have given in to terror, those people who are so afraid of their own shadows that they are willing to light our Constitution on fire to drive those shadows away; they are cowards. They are weak. They have allowed themselves to be terrorized, and in their cowardly, shameful rush to unquestioningly line up behind Mr. Bush and give him whatever power he wants, enencumbered by the courts or Congressional oversight, those very people are taking my country away from me.

America is a nation of laws, that has endured a civil war, the great depression, two world wars, and the Cold War. It is shameful that, under Mr. Bush's "leadership," 19 terrorists were able to do what Stalin, Kruschev, and Hitler could not.

I sincerely hope that we are a strong enough people to survive this simplistic, binary, "us vs. them" worldview favored by Mr. Bush, and that all the damage he has done to our standing in the world, and the very things that have always made America such a wonderful country can be repaired.

If not, a lot of people have shed a lot of blood for absolutely nothing, and the terrorists have certainly won, all because George Bush is an unqualified, simplistic, power-hungry man, surrounded by his equals.