Everyone is talking about Bill Frist.
The senator from Tennessee admitted to reporters that he does not care about what goes on in secret CIA prisons, but he does care very much about the fact that said prisons are no longer a secret.
In other words, torture is not a problem, but damn it, the American people weren’t supposed to know.
CNN:
Frist told reporters Thursday that while he believed illegal activity should not take place at detention centers, he believes the leak itself poses a greater threat to national security and is “not concerned about what goes on” behind the prison walls.
“My concern is with leaks of information that jeopardize your safety and security — period,” Frist said. “That is a legitimate concern.”
Frist was asked if that meant he was not concerned about investigating what goes on in detention centers.
“I am not concerned about what goes on, and I’m not going to comment about the nature of that,” Frist replied.
This utter absence of concern for the pain of the tortured and the immorality of the torturer comes as no surprise to the many Tennesseans who have waited in vain for Frist to show some sign that he cares about the fact that the people of his state are in the throes of a devastating health care crisis.
Privileged all his life, the doctor cannot imagine life without health care. Nor can he imagine a scenario in which he would be the tortured rather than the torturer.
When a delegation of community leaders and citizens went to Washington two weeks ago to plead with the Senate Majority Leader for some help with the state's crippling health care crisis , Dr. Frist was unavailable.
The delegation was led by Reverend Henry Blaze of Nashville who noted, "We are here for the people of Tennessee who are dying because of the system and we need help. Senator Reid's staff was very gracious to meet with us and provided us with some ideas and avenues we will consider. Senator Frist, our Senator, was unable to meet with us and his staff, while courteous, could not give us the basic answers to the questions we asked and Tennesseans have been asking for several months. I am very disappointed by that."
More than 150,000 Tennesseans have been removed from the TennCare enrollee program and the total will reach 230,000 by January. Others who remain in the system are often forced to choose what prescription medications are most important since they are limited to a strict quota of prescriptions based on the Governor's new guidelines.
What if we change our names to Terri Schiavo?
Senator Frist's response to this growing medical genocide in his own state has been that it is not politically proper for him to interfere with the governor. This is the same Bill Frist who thought nothing of challenging the United States Supreme Court over the "right to life" of Teri Schiavo in Florida, who was later found to have already been brain dead. I find the word "hypocrisy" here far too lenient of a concept when attempting to explain my feelings regarding these two polar opposite responses. On the one surgeon’s hand, we have a purportedly overly-sincere physician decrying the ruthlessness of our government's highest court over one individual in a state he has no elected political business being involved with and on the other self-contradicting hand, while thousands of people most definitely still alive are experiencing horrible suffering and are expected to die, Frist has suddenly become the national poster-boy for political politeness.Please excuse me for stating the obvious, but the biggest problem this country faces is an utterly rotten-to-the-core immoral leadership. Dr. Frist, you are part of the problem.
Bill Frist Torture CIA Prisons Health Care TennCare Medicaid Tennessee Frist Republican Corruption
