How low can you go? Had you asked me yesterday whether the US administration could sink to a new moral low, I would have had my doubts. They've pretty much hit bedrock, I'd have argued. Nothing lower but the pits of hell.
Then I read
this editorial in today's New York Times:
quote:
Speaking this week on Federal News Radio, a Web site and AM radio station offering helpful hints for bureaucrats and helpful news for the administration, Cully Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, tried to rally American corporations to stop doing business with law firms that represent inmates of the Guantánamo internment camp...
...In his interview, reported yesterday by The Washington Post editorial page, Mr. Stimson rattled off some of the most respected law firms in the country that, after initial hesitation, have courageously respected that right. He called it “shocking†that they were “representing detainees down there†and suggested that when corporate America got word of this dastardly behavior, “those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.†He added: “We want to watch that play out.â€
It's not as if abandoning the principle of legal representation for all (let alone for those who have been illegally detained without trial for five years) is enough: Stimson wishes to do so by coercing US corporations into withdrawing contracts. The final turd atop Stimson's squalid shit pie are the dark hints that those law firms are being paid by The Sinister Other:
quote:
When his interviewer asked who was paying these firms for the work, Mr. Stimson said, “It’s not clear, is it?â€
Actually, it is quite clear. Mr. Stimson surely knows that the vast majority of those cases are being handled for free by law firms that have not signed on to Mr. Bush’s post-9/11 revision of the American rules of justice. Still, he persisted, saying some lawyers were “receiving monies from who knows where.â€
It's so morally repugnant I almost admire it. That Stimson could rise to a position of power and responsibility when he is so utterly devoid of any moral compass is startling: but then, perhaps it's a prerequisite in the Bush cabinet.