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Forgive this loose and imperfect paraphrase from a book that's somewhere in the house, but not handy:
Mark Crispin Miller wrote of an interview with Bush that may even have occurred before he was installed by the SCOTUS in 2000. When Bush was asked what he thought was the most important quality a president could possess, he replied that a president should be like "calcium"-- the ingredient in bones that keep them strong and straight.
In response to Bush's curious and unexpected metaphor for leadership, Miller noted dryly that this was the first time he'd heard a president liken himself to a "crystalline mineral".
I believe that civilian and military legal authorities have proceeded with the same absolute rigidity-- or rigid absoluteness-- lauded by President Unitard in administering the vile travesty of Guantanamo and the other pathological jurisprudence attending the Global War on Terror.
So, while I don't dispute that the malignant authorities are keeping the prisoners in atrocious and inhumane conditions despite their obvious innocence simply because they can, I also think that they're doing it because they are committed to pursuing their criminal and barbaric conduct because of the top-down dictum to be like "calcium".
It is plain that where GWOT show trials are concerned, e.g. cases such as Omar Khadr and Sami Al-Arian, the authorities are determined to persecute individuals and create pretext after pretext-- denying, of course, that there is anything improper or unjustified, not to say vindictive, about this policy.
They are like those predators who lock their jaws so firmly into the flesh of their victims that they will not desist until they're physically cut away. Which is to say: monsters.
PS: ChillyDogg, when you're right, you're right! (It helps if readers actually read what people write, of course.)
