I am ashamed of our nation’s leaders in Washington for how they have trashed the ideals upon which our country was founded.
From childhood, I learned that we are a nation of laws. I learned that one of our bedrock values is that the Constitution protects the individual from the tyranny of the masses and the tyranny of the government.
Not today.
We are led by an administration that believes that it is above the law and the ideals of the Constitution.
We know for a fact that in 2002-2203, CIA interrogators used waterboarding to interrogate terrorist suspects. Bottom line: Waterboarding is torture. It is accepted internationally as torture. We have labeled it as torture for hundreds of years. And waterboarding is unconstitutional. Therefore, we are NOT to engage in waterboarding, under any circumstances.
Yet, our president refuses to label this abhorrent practice as torture. And now, our new attorney general, Michael Mukasey, has waffled when asked whether waterboarding is torture. He said it all depended upon context.
Context?
Whether waterboarding is torture is not contextual; it is absolute. Just ask Daniel Levin, who three years ago as acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, actually subjected himself to the practice to learn of its affects. His assessment: Waterboarding is torture. Unequivocally.
After he wrote an opinion denouncing the practice as torture, he was forced out of government service.
These are sad days.
I can only conclude that Michael Mukasey waffled on his opinion concerning waterboarding to protect our administration.
Who exactly authorized torture to be used as a means to obtain “information” from terrorists is unclear. Was it Donald Rumsfeld? Richard Cheney? George W. Bush?
If Mukasey admits that water boarding is torture, then those who authorized it and those who carried it out could be subject to legal prosecution. To keep this from coming to fruition, he cannot – even under oath – state that waterboarding is torture.
I am ashamed that this administration does not believe in accountability. Our top leaders are treating us like sheep, and we are letting them get them away with it.
Any senator who voted to approve Mukasey should not be re-elected. In addition, our legislative branch needs to do its job and hold those accountable who approved waterboarding … even if it leads to the very top of our government.
November 29, 2007 at 9:43 am |
Personally, I have stopped believing that U.S. is a democracy after the 2000 election. Nixon did nothing compared to this administration. More so, this administration ignores and discards the Constitution as if it were an unimportant piece of paper. By law- if that exists anymore- Bush should be impeached; but of course, the persons that are supposed to be representing ‘The People’ are not doing much to get that fulfilled. Yes, I am ashamed of our nation’s leaders; unfortunately, ‘shame’ is not in their vocabulary.
December 5, 2008 at 3:50 am |
I heard that Ann Coulter had a fall, broke her jaw, and it is now WIRED SHUT!!
All we need now if for Dick Cheney to hit a fire hydrant with his car, be trapped in the wreckage with the water spraying on his face (a la “waterboarding”) and we will KNOW there is a God with a sense of humor!