# Our freedom is on it's last legs. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 7, 2005, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856 "2005-11-07T02:10:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2005, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/321 "2005-11-19T16:28:46Z")
> [@New Iskander](#): > > BTW, what the conclusion about Freedom’s legs? Isn’t it high time you contribute something other than tossing out the occasional stupid question? ---
**Author:** ![New\_Iskander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/db5fbb/32.png) [@New\_Iskander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Iskander)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2005, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/322 "2005-11-19T21:12:16Z")
> [@SteveG1](#): > > Isn’t it high time you contribute something other than tossing out the occasional stupid question? OK, Buddy… Screw You! Discuss. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/323 "2005-11-20T02:26:17Z")
> [@New Iskander](#): > > OK, Buddy… > > Screw You! > > Discuss. You’re not my type. ---
**Author:** ![lonesome\_loser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c68b51/32.png) [@lonesome\_loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lonesome_loser)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/324 "2005-11-20T02:28:14Z")
> [@SteveG1](#): > > You’re not my type. I really can’t see him as anyone’s type. Coulter maybe. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/325 "2005-11-20T13:42:04Z")
> [@lonesome loser](#): > > I really can’t see him as anyone’s type. > > Coulter maybe. [Mister Pratt]They breed in the crawl spaces[/Mister Pratt] ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/326 "2005-11-20T14:43:46Z")
Working on a screenplay for a movie about a family victimized by an evil spirit, a shrieking hag/harridan that rises at night to feed on the flesh of the living. Working title: _Coultergiest_. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/327 "2005-11-20T18:35:20Z")
This just in - President says we are NOT traitors. [http://abcnews.go.com/International/IraqCoverage/wireStory?id=1330924](http://abcnews.go.com/International/IraqCoverage/wireStory?id=1330924) > [@CBS News](#): > > **President Bush Lowers the Temperature of Iraq War Debate, Says Criticism Is Not Unpatriotic** > BEIJING Nov 20, 2005 — After fiercely defending his Iraq policy across Asia, President Bush abruptly toned down his attack on war critics Sunday and said there was nothing unpatriotic about opposing his strategy. > > “People should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions about Iraq,” Bush said, three days after agreeing with Vice President Dick Cheney that the critics were “reprehensible.” > > The president also praised Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., as “a fine man” and a strong supporter of the military despite the congressman’s call for troop withdrawal as soon as possible. … > Thousands of miles from home, Bush and other White House officials have not let a day go by without a tough counterattack against Democratic critics of the president’s Iraq policies. But the president replaced the no-holds-barred approach with a softer tone Sunday. > “I heard somebody say, `Well, maybe so-and-so is not patriotic because they disagree with my position.’ I totally reject that thought,” Bush said. > > “This is not an issue of who’s patriotic and who’s not patriotic,” he said. “It’s an issue of an honest, open debate about the way forward in Iraq.” Personally, I think he is just backpedalling because he got his tit in a wringer and still deosn’t have enough balls to stand by what he said in starting the latest shit storm, but whatever. There you go, it’s official. No matter what kind of sherm you’re smoking, the Prez says we ain’t traitors. Wow. I’m relieved (not really, I don’t give a shit). ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/328 "2005-11-20T18:40:12Z")
> [@SteveG1](#): > > …Personally, I think he is just backpedalling because he got his tit in a wringer and still deosn’t have enough balls to stand by what he said in starting the latest shit storm, but whatever… And this years SDMB Award for Excellence in Trans-Gendered Metaphor goes to…may I have the envelope, please? ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/329 "2005-11-20T18:49:57Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > And this years SDMB Award for Excellence in Trans-Gendered Metaphor goes to…may I have the envelope, please? I apologize to any and all transgendered members and guests. I would never deliberately compare them to Bush, as that would be the grossest of insults to them, and totally undeserved. I think a really good word, taken from himself (or was it Cheney?) is **CRAVEN**. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/330 "2005-11-20T20:23:59Z")
Version 1: Not supporting the troops. Aid and comfort. Craven. Rewriting. = treason Version 2: Disagreeing is A OK. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. I voted for treason before I voted against it. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/331 "2005-11-20T22:50:40Z")
Well, just remember, as long as they’re ‘abusing’ someone to death and they don’t ask any questions, those who say that’s torture are _stil_l lying malicious traitors for not using the obfuscatory bullshit that’s mandated of all True Patrots[sup]tm[/sup]. How _dare_ you claim that beating someone to death has anything to do with torture? Aint no flip floppin’ on that point, boy howdy. ---
**Author:** ![Fritz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c57346/32.png) [@Fritz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fritz)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/332 "2005-11-20T23:23:43Z")
This just in: [“There’s no question in my mind that we did. There’s no question in my mind that we may be still doing it,” former top State Department official Wilkerson said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”](http://http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/20/torture/index.html) ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/333 "2005-11-20T23:27:32Z")
Odd, for some reason that link, even if I cut and paste it, just takes me to [microsoft.com](http://microsoft.com) ---
**Author:** ![Fritz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c57346/32.png) [@Fritz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fritz)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/334 "2005-11-20T23:30:57Z")
Huh…sorry. Try this: [Fixed](http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/20/torture/index.html) ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856/335 "2005-11-21T02:45:39Z")
From an editorial over at CNN - [http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/15/morton.torture/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/15/morton.torture/index.html) > [@CNN](#): > > I never thought, though, that I would have to write about a debate over Americans using torture on their enemies. Bad guys used torture, I thought; we didn’t. I was, of course, wrong. … > The administration is ambiguous. The president said, “We do not torture.” But he said it a year-and-a-half after the Abu Ghraib pictures came out, and on the news wire I was reading, his statement was immediately followed by a story about more soldiers being charged with prisoner abuse. > > Vice President Dick Cheney took a different approach, suggesting to McCain it might be OK to have a bill stating soldiers couldn’t abuse detainees, as long as it didn’t cover the CIA. > > The debate is a little wider than just torture itself. McCain is also against holding detainees without a trial, noting that even Adolf Eichmann, Hitler’s man in charge of killing Jews, finally got a trial, although it was in Israel years after World War II ended. > > The administration’s position is that the commander-in-chief can do whatever he wants; he can imprison anyone – not just foreigners, to whom the Constitution doesn’t apply, but Americans – indefinitely, without having to charge those people with any crime and without letting them see a lawyer. The president also suggested the other day that Americans not criticize him. Criticism, he said, helps the bad guys. > > But American history is clear on that point. Free speech exists, criticism of our leaders is OK. As president during the Korean War, Harry Truman took lots of it. “If you can’t stand the heat,” Truman said, “get out of the kitchen.” > Lyndon Johnson drew such hostile crowds during the Vietnam War (“Hey, hey, LBJ,” the chant, went “How many kids did you kill today?”) that toward the end the only places he could speak without hecklers was on military bases. Criticism is in the American tradition. > > But torture? The worst thing about it, McCain thinks, is that it hurts us with other countries. “After Abu Ghraib,” he told CBS, “public opinion about the United States in the Arab world and throughout the world, plummeted.” > Abu Ghraib may have done this country more damage overseas than Watergate, which many Europeans dismissed as some curious American muddle – nothing serious. … > So a majority of Americans disapprove of torture. But I still never thought we’d be having a debate about it. Nice editorial, and it hits on both “hot button” issues in this thread - constitutional freedoms and torture. It is really all part of the package. The prez wants absolute authority to do whatever he wants, and it is not limited to those foreign “bad people” as he called them. Apparently it applies to American citizens too (not that it makes it alraight, it doesn’t). Further, I still want to know why the Patriot Act, which was supposedly a temporary (yeah right) emergency measure to fight terror, why the fight in Congress right now over making it permanent? Remember what Sandra Day O’Connor said about blank checks. I would add as a friend would say “Mr. Prez, don’t write checks you can’t cash”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/our-freedom-is-on-its-last-legs/329856.md?page=16)