Mother Davis searches for the last shred of soul left in America as she reads,
I do not ordinarily use the space I have here on Irregular Times to repeat the words of another. However, I have tonight found an article that so exactly expresses my sense of despair and anger that I cannot do better than to reproduce it here.
This is a time when the United States of America is passing into a state of lawlessness at the highest levels of government. Our national history of principled freedom and human decency is being torn to shreds. Yet, it seems that the very people who claim to still stand for freedom, the 48 percent who voted against George W. Bush, have been beaten down so far that they just don’t have the energy to try to make a difference anymore.
Reading this article tonight, I heard a lone voice of outrage, still trying to make a difference, but at the edge of exhaustion. This voice asks us: Will we give up? Will we allow our sorrow, our humiliation, our exhaustion to overcome us? Do we yet have any sense of shame?
Reproduced here by permission of the author (at Imprison Bush):
The news that came out this weekend should have been on the front page, but I found it after news about Vin Diesel’s new movie in which he makes jokes about changing diapers. Diaper jokes get better play than news about the President of the United States breaking the law to enable to CIA to torture people these days. I call that a shadow across the dignity of America.
It turns out that President Bush himself authorized a plan to round up people in the United States, then send them to countries like Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, where the prisoners would be “interrogated†in ways that are not legal in the United States. In short, President Bush authorized torture.
Reuters news agency cites a high-ranking source within the Bush White House as saying that this is okay, because, although many of the prisoners were tortured, none of them died as a result of the torture.
This is the new standard of morality in the Republican Homeland, once known as the United States of America: Torture is just fine, so long as you torture people in such a way that you don’t kill them.
Yet, I don’t see anyone today who seems very bothered by this news. “Things happen,†they say, and go about their ordinary business.
Someone, somewhere in America needs to stand up and ask in a loud voice, “Do we have no shame?!?â€
No one else will ask the question, so let me be that person tonight. Do we in America have no shame anymore?
It is clearly, explictly against the law for prisoners to be shipped overseas to nations that are known to torture their prisoners. Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are nations that are known to torture their prisoners. President Bush ordered prisoners to be sent to these nations to be interrogated using extreme methods. President Bush broke the law.
It is also clearly, explicitly against the law for anyone in the American government to order torture to occur – anywhere at all, not just within American borders. Yet, President Bush sent prisoners to nations knowing that they would be tortured there. Indeed, President Bush appears to have sent these prisoners overseas so that they would be tortured. President Bush ordered torture. President Bush broke the law.
It is also clearly, explicitly against the law for the President of the United States to take people prisoner within the United States and deprive them of their legal rights to be told what crime they are being charged with, to be tried in a court of law by a jury of peers, and to be represented by legal counsel. President Bush ordered prisoners to be held without being charged with a crime, without trial, and without legal representation. President Bush ordered prisoners to be sent overseas so that the government could keep the prisoners secret, and make the prisoners incapable of making appeals for their rights under the law. President Bush broke the law.
President Bush broke the law, over and over again, not just to keep his wife from finding out that he got a blow job on the side, but in order to torture hundreds of human beings.
This is serious stuff, America. This is the kind of thing that Americans fought to be free of back in 1776! Are you so lazy, America, that you will allow a new King George to treat the law like a little plaything that he owns, and can use and abuse at his will?
What will it take, America, for you to stand up and demand that President Bush be brought to justice for his crimes?
Have you no shame, America? Have you no shame?!?
If there is a single American left out there tonight who is willing to do one small thing for the sake of their country, I ask you to stand up and take one simple action: Call, write, email one other American to spread the word without apology. Tell just one other person about this story. Tell them that you are tired of the torture being committed in your name. Tell them that you are not willing to sit down silently while the good name of America is beaten to a bloody pulp in foreign prisons. Tell them that you still have a sense of shame.
Ashamed, ashamed, ashamed,
Mother Davis
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Excellent rant, my dear Mother Davis. I have been doing exactly what you have suggested here. I have been having exactly this heated conversation with my mother, who is a moderate Republican. Guess what? The other day, I got her to say the words, “You’re right, they’ve gone too far.” I’ve been pressing this point over and over again with her ever since the election, and it’s working! I think I’m winning her over.
I did. All day today. I heard about it on 60 Minutes last night. “Ashamed” really is too weak a word to use, even though I’m perfectly aware of the historical parallels with my own war (Vietnam), but the horror of these new revelations makes even those experiences pale into insignificance. And all this from a man who dodged the draft with a political appointment into the Texas Air National Guard. My God, what are they doing to my country? And to think they were ready to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about extramarital sex. Guess we can see where the Republinazis place their sense of values…if, indeed, they have any…
CBS News (of all places) lists the laws which Bush has violated in this “extraordinary rendition” policy:
1. Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991
2. United Nations Convention Against Torture
(3. CBS News falsely reports of the existence of a law, the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, that would make rendition illegal. A quick check shows the bill, H.R. 1757, was passed by both houses of Congress but was vetoed by Bill Clinton, the prick. Doesn’t matter, there’s still #1 and #2 that carry the force of law.)
Contact your Member of Congress and tell them in no uncertain terms that they must support H.R. 952, a bill which reiterates in explicit terms that extraordinary rendition is illegal.
Why has your member of Congress not cosponsored the bill? As the righteous rant from Imprison Bush puts it, has he or she no sense of shame?
I want to know why, if this was on CBS news, why there is not an immediate impeachment of this President??? Did they just slide this over as if it is not true. Why are we Americans who have seen this not spreading this information. I am going to forward this to every newspaper, TV station, and Journalist.
i agree with annette. why can’t we impeach this guy? how can they have had impeachment proceedings over a blowjob and sweep these war crimes under the rug?
come on!
please, tell me paul wellstone wasn’t the last american elected that was willing to denounce these assholes. i guess you have to be willing to die to make a difference. of course that just gets swept under the rug as well
so much for american martyrdom
Actually, Randy, you don’t have to die to make a difference. You just have to vote in 2006.
You want to impeach Bush? Okay, I would too. The first step is to replace the current rubber stamp Congress, and the next congressional elections are in 2006.
The reason we can’t impeach Bush is that the Republicans control the Congress, plain and simple. If the Republicans were not in control of Congress, Bush would have been investigated and impeached a long time ago.
WE MUST INSURE THERE IS HONESTY PN VOTING
if you really want to make your vote count, you will have to make sure there are no computer
votes the arsehole has all of these geeks ready and willing “for just a buck or two”to fix the
numbers….windows is the champion!, “thanks bill(dork)”…you could also get Pat Robinson
to kiss him…that rattlesnake is venomous, hopefully it would be a “kiss of death!”.
your big problem is that Bush is just a small time puppet…the real skanks are rove and rumsfeld
…and they are puppets for someone else……etc.etc.so where will you start and where will you finish.
please don´t forget when you feel the shame, that your recent laziness or whatever….affects us all
over here in europe as well….and we didn´t even get the opportunity to NOT vote for the number one
arsehole…..good luck to you all………!