[Osx-nutters] Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty in Florida - Google Video

[Chuck Bennett]

On Jan 8, 2007, at 4:57 PM, Kevin Callahan wrote:

> video here:
> <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4291694866835252763&q=bush 
> +death&hl=en>
>
> related story:
> <unknown.gif>
>
>
> JAMES CARROLL
> The lynching of Iraq
> By James Carroll  |  January 8, 2007
>
> THE HANGING of Saddam Hussein Dec. 30 offered a view into the  
> grotesque reality of what America has sponsored in Iraq, and what  
> Americans saw should inform their response to President Bush's  
> escalation of the war.
>
> The deposed tyrant was mercilessly taunted. As he stood on the  
> threshold of the afterlife and was told to go to hell, the world  
> witnessed a chilling elevation of the ancient curse, making an  
> absolute villain an object of pity.
>
> And then, in chanting the name of Moqtada al-Sadr, whose family had  
> been a particular target of Hussein's his executioners made clear  
> that the execution was an act of tribal revenge, not of national  
> restoration, much less justice. It was a lynching. This Shi'ite  
> brutality is guaranteed to spawn Sunni savagery. Iraq itself is hell.
>
> Officials of the United States, from military commanders in Baghdad  
> to members of the Bush administration in Washington, sought to  
> distance themselves from the bedlam, but they are essential to what  
> happened at the last moments of Saddam's life. Decorum would have  
> been the main note of his death if Americans had managed it, but  
> the execution would have been no less an act of false justice.
>
> The harsh fact is that the Shi'ite dominated government of Nouri al- 
> Maliki, in its contemptible treatment of a man about to die, laid  
> bare the dark truth of Bush's war. This is what revenge looks like,  
> and revenge (not weapons of mass destruction, not democracy) drove  
> the initial US attack on Saddam Hussein every bit as much as it  
> snuffed out his life at the end. The hooded executioners took their  
> cue from George W. Bush.
>
> And why should they not have? Let's remember who this man is. As  
> governor of Texas, he presided over the executions of 152 people,  
> including the first woman put to death in Texas in a century. Her  
> name was Karla Faye Tucker. Bush's response to the world-wide plea  
> raised in her behalf was an astounding display of cruelty, a  
> mocking imitation of the woman begging not to be killed.
>
> Bush rejected appeals for clemency in every death penalty case that  
> came before him. The Texas death chamber, with its lethal injection  
> gurney, is a place of decorum. And savagery. That executions  
> defined the main public distinction that Bush brought to the US  
> presidency sums up the national disgrace, while suggesting also how  
> little surprise there should be that America is presided over now  
> by an executioner-in-chief.


Completely  disingenuous..  In Texas, the Governor has very limited  
power over executions.

Almost all of the power lies with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles

Clemency

When the entire appeals process has been exhausted, the Governor of  
the State of Texas still may have a limited power to grant clemency  
to the prisoner. In capital cases, the Governor has the  
constitutional authority to grant an offender one 30-day reprieve of  
a scheduled execution without a recommendation from the Texas Board  
of Pardons and Paroles. Upon recommendation from the Board, the  
Governor may grant one or more reprieves in a capital case for any  
period of time that does not exceed the period recommended by the  
Board members. If the prisoner submits a timely request for a  
reprieve of execution, the Board must determine, by majority vote,  
whether to recommend to the Governor that a reprieve be granted.  
Similarly, if a death row inmate files a timely petition to the Board  
from for a commutation of sentence to a lesser punishment, such as  
life imprisonment, the Board will vote on whether to recommend the  
commutation to the Governor

<http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/vlibrary/outlines/deathpen.html>

So, unless the appeals board recommends it, the governor can only  
grant a single 30 day reprieve.

Otherwise he simply has NO say in the matter.  Period.

If James Carroll has bothered to actually read Texas law the dumb  
shit would know that, but I guess it just wouldn't fit the tone of  
the piece.

Why let the truth get in the way of a good rant?


>
> Capital punishment is to individuals what aggressive war is to  
> nations. The 20th century, for all its brutality (or because of  
> it), marked the watershed era when world opinion shifted against  
> both. Once, princes exercised life-and-death power over subjects  
> with unchallenged authority. Once, the only check on a state's  
> freedom to attack another state was its power to do so.
>
> These two absolutes of realpolitik have changed. From the Kellogg- 
> Briand Pact of 1928 to principles laid down at the Nuremberg  
> tribunals to the United Nations itself, wars of aggression stand  
> condemned. The force of state violence is to be exercised only in  
> self-defense or in defense of a victim people, in circumstances  
> defined by international agreement.


So torture chambers and gassing his own people didn't qualify under  
the "Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928" as "in defense of a victim people"

WTF?

> Similarly, nation after nation has abolished the death penalty,  
> understanding the absurdity of defending human life by destroying  
> human life. If killing can ever be justified, individually or  
> communally, it is only as an absolute last resort. In sum, an  
> international moral consensus has taken shape against unnecessary  
> violence, whether targeting a criminal or a rogue state.

Oh I get it.  It's just another anti-death penalty rant.    Saddam  
was just low hanging fruit[1] for the argument.

>
> With his lies at the beginning of this war, and his fantasy now  
> that an honorable outcome remains possible, the president is a  
> taunting killer, caught in the act. He lacks nothing but the black  
> hood. Stop this man.


All and all, standard Bush Derangement Syndrome ranting.

Then again, he felt this way about Clinton intervening against the  
Serbs.

"Clinton's War: The American People, Once Again, Must Find Ways To  
Say, Stop The War!"

<http://www.commondreams.org/kosovo/views/carroll2.htm>

I'll grant the pacifist  idiot consistency, but a but a lot more  
people would be dead if we listened to him back then.

Locations of serbian concentration camps. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ 
pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/atrocities/map.html>

"NATO troops have found 60,000 ethnic Albanian refugees held in what  
are being described as concentration camps.
The refugees have told British journalists they were taken prisoner  
by the Serbs and were to be used as human shields in case of a ground  
war with NATO. They say they were held hostage there for over a month."

<http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/1999/06/20/refugees990620.html>

Want to read about the rapes that happened to the women at the  
Omarska concentration camp?

<http://www.wcl.american.edu/hrbrief/v4i2/omarsk42.htm>

*spit*  Fuck James Carroll.  If he didn't think we/NATO should have  
involved ourselves there then he is both and idiot and a coward.

To put it another way.   If  he was on fire, I wouldn't walk across  
the street to piss on him

Everyone reading this knows that Milosevic would have finished the  
whole ethnic cleansing thing if Clinton hadn't have intervened.

Europe was sitting there with it's collective thumbs up it's asses,  
doing nothing, as usual.    Only the US and the Brits had the balls  
to force an end to it  and in doing so dragged the rest of NATO  
along, kicking and screaming.

Was Clinton sending 'sweet faced' boys to their death?

Perhaps.   Did that make him a 'black hooded executioner"?

Of course not, but James Carroll is afraid to confront evil directly.

Death is what happens in war and it happens to young "sweet faced" boys.

That is a horrible truth, but there is evil in the world and you  
ignore it at your own peril.

Burke said that   "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is  
that good men do nothing."

I have a feeling that James Carroll  would always choose "do nothing"

Winston Churchill put it another way

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win  
without bloodshed, and still yet if you will not fight when your  
victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment  
when you will have to fight with all the odds against you, and only a  
precarious chance for survival. - There may be a worse case. You may  
have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is  
better to perish than to live as slaves."

I shudder to think what Carroll would choose for himself or choose  
'for' people like the Kurds or the Bosnian Muslims and Croats.

=c=


[1] Sorry, I couldn't help myself.