Let's say you have a prominent critic. He's a university professor. He blasts your policies on Israel and the Middle East as being fundamentally immoral, and backs this up with facts. The weekly talk shows are starting to invite him on, and his presentation there is devastating -- he comes across as a regular dude with a lot on the ball, rather than some kook. What do you do, if you're a Bush Administration official?
Well, that's simple. You destroy him. You have your sycophantic fans in the right wing media organize a smear campaign and get him fired from his job at the college. Then, to cap it all off, you have him arrested as a terrorist, despite the fact that, as far as anybody knows, he has never even advocated violence, much less committed any.
And thus he sits in jail. And sits in jail. And sits in jail. And three years later, even when prosecutors cannot convince a jury to return a guilty verdict, he still sits in jail.
But more important is the effect upon other potential critics of the administration. Because just about anybody who opposes American policy has been branded a terrorist by the administration, if you've ever even talked to one of these folks, you yourself could be arrested. Thus you keep quiet. You don't speak out about the injustices being perpetrated against your people. You keep quiet, and hope this will keep that knock away from your door, that knock where you, too, are destroyed, utterly destroyed, never again to have a normal life.
That burning smell? Pay it no mind, that's just the Bill of Rights, you know that those Commie founding fathers were all objectively pro-terrorist anyhow to write such silliness into our Constitution, right?
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
There are so many ways to suppress free speech and so many people are pursuing that particular past-time. It makes me sick!
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