Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

June 1, 2011

Thirteen-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb was seized by the Syrian secret police. One month later, Hamza?s lifeless body was returned to his family. He had been whipped with heavy cables, shocked, and castrated.

The secret police sought to break the resistance of Hamza?s father, whom the Syrian government regarded as a terrorist. And this behavior is entirely appropriate ? at least according to John Yoo, a key legal adviser to George W. Bush. Yoo notoriously said that a president has the supposed authority to order to sexual torture of a child in order to gain leverage with his parents.

?I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that,? Yoo insisted during a debate at Notre Dame when asked if the president could order an interrogator to crush a child?s testicles. That view of limitless executive authority is shared by the regime of .Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad

The Bush administration used the same Syrian secret police as torture subcontractors as part of its so-called war on terror. The government ruling us is no better, in principle and increasingly in practice, than the one that murdered and mutilated 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.