What moral authority?

Glenn Greenwald is rightfully outraged by how BushCo has destroyed any moral authority the U.S. once had. You don't need due process... you're a terrorists if BushCo accuses you of being a terrorist. Arrgh! These bozos are a disgrace.

So on top of operating secret torture gulags in Eastern Europe, we also kidnap people, charge them with no crime, give them no opportunity to defend themselves, deny them contact with their consulate in violation of international treaties (as the Canadian report complained about), send them off to be tortured for months, and then when it turns out that they are completely inncoent, we block them from obtaining compensation in our courts because our Government claims that national security would be jeopardized if they were held accountable for their behavior.

How can you be an American citizen and not be completely outraged, embarrassed, and disgusted by this conduct? What the Bush administration is doing on so many levels is a grotesque betrayal of every national value and principle we have always claimed to embrace and for which we have fought, and which we claim we are defending as part of our current "war".

Can it even be debated at this point that the Bush administration has so plainly, as Billmon described it the other day, "forfeit(ed) forever its ability to chastise the human rights abuses of others without triggering a global laughing fit"? Who would ever take seriously the notion that a Government that engages in this behavior can lecture anyone on human rights abuses or import democratic values around the world?

And how much more potent of a case could there be to underscore the point that being detained by the Bush administration. or being accused by them of being a terrorist, does not mean that someone is a terrorist -- a most basic logical axiom which Bush followers constantly violate because the media allows them to? Advocating minimal due process protections for military commissions before people are executed for being "terrorists" cannot honestly be described as "giving rights to terrorists" because they are not terrorists solely by being accused -- and anyone who describes it as such is engaged in deceit and distortion, not "framing" techniques or political spin. The same is true of oppositing torture ("advocating terrorist rights"), warrantless eavesdropping ("opposing spying on terrorists") and every other related debate -- conflating accusations of terrorism with being a terrorist is not political advocacy but outright dishonesty and the media has the responsibility to describe it as such.