The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, March 18, 2005, Page 6, Image 6
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Friday, March 18, 2005
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EDITORIAL BOARD
EDITOR
Michael LaForgia
NEWS EDITOR
Jon Turner
VIEWPOINTS EDITOR
Wes Wolfe
THE MIX EDITOR
Jennifer Freeman
ASST. VIEWPOINTS EDITOR
Patrick Augustine
SPORTS EDITOR
Jonathan Hillyard
DESIGN DIRECTOR
Chas McCarthy
COPY DESK CHIEF
Steven Van Haren
IN OUR OPINION
America must cease
ΓΜ
exporting its torture
Once again, the Bush Administration has adopted a "do as
we say, not as we do" policy when it comes to international
human rights. Porter Goss, the Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) stated before Congress on Thursday
that the techniques used by his agency "at this time" conform
to international standards and do not include torture. However,
what is important when the nation's top intelligence man speaks
is not what he says, but what he omits.
The CLA has been roundly criticized in the mainstream media
lately about allegations that it kidnapped European nationals
from their home countries and flew them to Syria for interroga
tion, sometimes holding them
America's greatest
asset is to persuade
people into adopting
its example, a form
of "soft power" it
risks losing.
for years before they were
released. These stories are cor
roborated by a Canadian man
who claims he was tortured
before his captors decided he
was not connected to al Qaida
or other terrorist organizations.
Coupled with the scandals from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, clear
Indications exist that the United States has flaunted treaty bans
*
•on torture by exporting its dirty work to the "rogue nations" it
'publicly decries for their human rights records. Also, since the
passage of the Patriot Act, domestic guarantees of due process for
even American citizens have been in limbo because of the Bush
administration's creative reinterpretation of the Constitution.
If the United States wishes its status as global superpower to
have not only military but also moral weight, it must cease any
•practices that follow the letter but not the spirit of international
law banning coercive methods from entering into the lexicon of
civilized nations.
It is ironic that an administration that ran on a platform of
public morality chooses to apply a different standard to its own
global relations.
I America's greatest asset is not its ability to obliterate enemies
»
"halfway around the world but its ability to persuade people into
adopting its example, a form of "soft power" it risks losing if it
strays from the high road.
If you see an error in today's paper, we want to know. E-mail us at
gamecockopinions@gwm.sc.edu.
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ABOUT THE GAMECOCK
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Michael LaForgia
DESIGN DIRECTOR
Chas McCarthy
COPY DESK CHIEF
Steven Van Haren
NEWS EDITOR
Jon Turner
ASST. NEWS EDITOR
Kelly Cavanaugh
VIEWPOINTS EDITOR
Wes Wolfe
THE MIX EDITOR
Jennifer Freeman
ASST. THE MIX EDITOR
Carrie Givens
SPORTS EDITOR
Jonathan Hillyard
ASST. SPORTS EDITOR
Stephen Fastenau
SENIOR WRITER
Kevin Fellner
PHOTO EDITOR
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SPORTS PHOTO EDITOR
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Jordan, Jessica Ann
Nielsen, Megan Sinclair
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McNair, Daniel
Regenscheit, Jason
Reynolds, Katie
Thompson, Shana Till
! ONLINE EDITOR
Ryan Simmons
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Jane Fielden, Katie Miles
CONTACT INFORMATION
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<
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CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS
Oh, what they wouldn 'f do for linen
■ Two football players'
lust for bedsheets risks
Gamecocks' reputation
Imagine: Two players on the USC
football team — gods on the field
and celebrities on campus. They're in
the spotlight. They're almost like a
rock stars. They hire strippers and
pour champagne off their asses. Their
teeth are gold. Their shoes are made
of solid platinum. GPA is their
favorite rapper.
Then they get busted for stealing,
among other things, a set of
bedsheets.
Bedsheets? Bedsheets? On Feb. 23,
Moe Thompson and Kevin Mainord
risked their academic, athletic and
legal records, as well as the credibility
of Steve Spurrier's already
diminished roster, to steal bedsheets.
Oh, the humanity.
This had to have been a crime of
passion. Because the abducted linens
were stolen from East Quad, I'm
guessing they were twin-size.
Premeditated logic fails right there,
because a football player couldn't
even fit his bicep on a twin-sized bed.
I'm thinking full-size, bare
minimum, would constitute a
comfortable night's sleep for these
guys. They should've hit up a cushy
hotel.
Hey, hey — put those dunce caps
away. They stole other stuff. A TV
and DVD player were stolen, as was
$12 cash. One can only assume they
plotted to watch bedsheet-related
programming with the TV and DVD
player, and use the $12 to buy more
bedsheets on the black market.
If indeed this was a crime of
passion,
bcdsheet
pandemonium
should have
gripped the
countryside:
"Lock up your
sheets, and the
sheets of your
STEVEN
VAN
HAREN
loved ones!"
THIRD-YEAR
MECHANICAL
ENGINEERING
STUDENT
There was
no rioting in
the streets, and
I think I know
why. Most of
the other
football players
would not be
so stupid as to risk it all for bedsheets.
In an on-campus dorm. Disguised as
a 6-foot-4, 200-something-pound
defensive titan. I imagine that a
defensive end or tackle could sneak
around an apartment with all the
grace of a sledgehammer.
Why'd you do it, guys? This
offseason has already been a war of
attrition. Stupidity is rampant, and
the biggest injustice is that, yet again,
most of the football players, as well as
USC's other student-athletes, aren't
this stupid. They can't be. I would
cry.
But I've got to hand it to them.
Student-athletes get a lot of flak for
getting an easy college ride. They're
always being accused of getting other
people to shoulder their academic
workloads. Thompson and Mainord
set out to disprove this ugly myth by
committing their own larceny. Some
bedsheets require personal attention.
The thread count must have been
astronomical.
I can hear Spurrier, in a Southern
drawl, say "Damn!" every time he has
to boot a player. We've test some
marquee Gamecocks this offseason,
including Thompson and Demetris
Summers.
But. there's, something not quite
right about all this. Something shady.
A glaring double standard. I almost
couldn't look past the bedsheets to
see it.
Six players broke in to Williams
Brice Stadium in January, stealing
stuff. Blah blah, we've heard this
already. One of those players was
Syvelle Newton, a guy on the cusp of
marquee-ism. As of today, Newton's
still on the team.
Boot him. Boot him good. He
shouldn't be a Gamecock anymore,
nor should any players who break the
law. What the hell is Spurrier
thinking? Does he think his players
will strike more fear into opposing
teams if they come stocked with
criminal records?
Honestly, it would work for me. I
wouldn't want to line up against a
guy who spent 24 hours in the county
pen.
Wide receiver David Smith just
got booted, almost immediately after
he broke into his ex-girlfriend's place
and tried to strangle her. That brings
the casualty list to about nine. Why is
Newton excepted? His ass should be
dropped, regardless of whether the
team will sink.
"Thug" is not, as some people say,
the proper term. I've met my share of
cosmopolitan thugs. "Smart as a
tackling dummy" is more appropriate
— for those football players, and any
other students, who throw caution to
the wind for cotton-stripe pillow
cases.
Γ II try puking in Columbia this year
■ Savannah has been
good to me, but it's
time to try local revelry
Green beer. Green puke. Green
dollar bills flying out of my wallet
like ticket stubs at the New York
Stock Exchange. That's pretty much
St. Patrick's Day anywhere you go,
but living only two and a half hours
away from Savannah, Ga., why not
do it like it's the last one you're ever
going to see? I heard someone say
that St. Pat's on River Street is the
second-biggest Patty's Day party in
the world or something, and,
unfortunately, the only thing I have
to remember of last year's is the 64
megabytes full of photos on my
friend's digital camera. But that's
about it. I do remember driving
home from Georgia the next day,
though, and how my brain felt like
the dry-erase board in your freshman
dorm that had a whole bunch of
important things written on it until
someone walked by and wiped it
clean with their sleeve. Or how for
the rest of my life, when I'm sitting
here banging my head against the
keyboard because there's a word I
can't remember, I'll have to think
back to that two-day trip to Savannah
and remember that, because of it,
there's a tiny part of my brain dyed
shamrock- and street-litter green with
a stake in it and a sign that says,
"Sold."
I'd like to say I'd do it again in a
heartbeat, but I think I'm really going
to take a year
off. I mean,
there's nothing
like seeing
boats blasting
columns of
green slime
into the river,
or the girls on
COREY
HUTCHINS
FIFTH-YEAR
ENGLISH
STUDENT
the balconies
pulling up
their shirts for
green glow .
sticks and
beadstrings. Or
how walking
from one side
of the street to the other takes 20
minutes, but it's OK because not
only can you drink on the street, but
if you run out all you have to do is tip
your head under a rain gutter. Or
when it's all over, how the cops form
that police line with their batons and
just push the crowd off River Street
and up the stairs to the city so you
can walk, trip, roll and puke your way
to the Savannah College of Art and
Design or whichever hooker hotel
you're staying at.
The truth is, though, I've never
stayed in Five Points for the St.
Patrick's Day festival, and people say
I'm missing out.
I've gone to college here for three
years, and I feel like I almost owe it to
Columbia to stick around and vomit
green spew onto the Harden Street
sidewalks just to say I did it. And
really, to be honest, I just have this
deranged fantasy of Andrew Sorensen
being down there, knee-deep in the
pond scum-green fountain wearing a
four-leaf-clover bow tie, a green
clown wig, emerald spandex and up
chucked Guinness all over the front
of his Oompa Loompa suspenders. In
my little dream, he sees me stumbling
by and snatches me up in one of those
drunken fraternity bear hugs, slurring
into my ear about how now, only
now, can I graduate since I finally did
the Five Points St. Patty's Day thing
before passing out on my shoulder.
Even though the last time I told
someone about that, they took away
my bag of green, um — party favors
— and told me I was cut off, I still
think, "Why not?"
After all, going to Savannah is like
going to New Orleans: After a few
times you start to get used to it. And
when that happens, it's just like most
drugs — the more you do it, the
more you have to take, and then one
day you actually find yourself
wanting to move to the place, and
you realize it was a lot cooler when
you just did it for fun.
1 do, however, totally encourage
anyone who hasn't to go this year to
River Street. Drink the beer, wear the
wristband, piss on the sidewalk, buy
those crazy shirts that read, "I Got
River Faced On S"t Street" and
make them proud.
Me, I'll be looking for that tripped
out Sore-leprechaun in Five Points,
thinking that only now can I leave
Golumbia with a clear conscience.
RETROPOINTS
Editorials and columns from The Gamecock ^past^^sjW
ComingMarch 28 -April 1
Rice primed
to take over
for Cheney,
define GOP
m Service, popularity
show Condi deserves
shot at VP nomination
If you ask Secretary of State Condi
Rice if she's going to run for president,
she'll tell you no. She can even say no
in a variety of ways, as we saw on "Meet
the Press"
recently.
While many
Republicans are
in mourning at
the loss of a
potential
presidential
candidate for
2008, I am not
surprised in the
least. However,
what I would be
surprised of is if
she didn't wind
up on the
Republican
presidential
ticket for 2008. I think the better
question to ask Rice might be if she
plans on accepting the vice presidential
nomination of the Republican Party?
You see, Condi is probably wise in
not running for the presidential
nomination. There will be several
tenured Republicans who take a shot at
the top post, and despite her popularity
in several circles, her inexperience
concerning elected office might hurt
her resume and her ability to raise
funds.
Instead, Rice has opted to stand
back and let the so-called "big dogs" of
the party fight among themselves for
the job of president. Rice is content to
sit back and bank on that whomever
gets the presidential nomination will be
smart enough to offer her the second
spot on the ticket.
JUSTIN
SIMMONS
FOURTH-YEAR
POLITICAL
SCIENCE
STUDENT
There are sevèral reasons why Rice is
suited for the job of vice president.
First and foremost, she is an excellent
adviser. For more than four years now
she has been one of the most, if not the
most, trusted adviser of a president
facing more challenges than any
president in the last several decades.
The length of her service speaks to both
her value in the president's eyes and her
ability to survive the guaranteed
criticism that comes with occupying a
top political post. Rice's talents are
especially suited to the new concept of
what the job of vice president entails.
John Adams, our country's first vice
president, didn't think too much of the
job. In fact, he believed it was "the
most insignificant office that man ever
the invention of man contrived. "
However, the current
administration has transformed the
office into that of a top adviser, in
addition to the vice president's job of
banging a gavel in the Senate. Dick
Cheney has played a crucial role as a
top adviser to President Bush during
Bush's administration. His guidance
was especially needed for Bush, who
was foreign to the workings of
Washington.
Condi could fill a similar role for
whoever is the incoming president.
This is especially true since, judging by
the political landscapes the Republican
nominee could very well be a
Washington outsider, or at the least
someone from a different branch of the
government (Sen. Bill Frist of
Tennessee, perhaps?). The presence of
one of the former administration's top
advisors as the vice president would
insure that there would be a certain
level of policy continuity.
All of the things I have mentioned
are excellent reasons why whoever is the
Republican nominee should seriously
consider Rice as a running mate. But
the best reason is still political.
Condi Rice would bring something
to a major party ticket that this country
has never seen, a black female. Should
the Republican Party put a black
woman a heartbeat from the
presidency, the country would be
forced to re-examine the long-held
belief of which party really is the "party
of inclusion." The vice presidency is no
symbolic cabinet position. It's one step
away from the reins of the most
influential democracy in the world.
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