For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and we’d never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen
We’ve tried to wash our hands of all of this
We never talk of our lacking relationships
And how we’re guilt stricken sobbing with our heads on the floor
We fell through the ice when we tried not to slip, we’d say
I can’t be held responsible
“The Freshman” by The Verve Pipe
In the fall of 1998, I matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania. During the welcome weekend for freshmen, then-President Judith Rodin addressed the incoming class. She cited the lyrics of The Verve Pipe’s “The Freshman” imploring that we remember that we are not MERELY freshmen, but active members of the community, and as such we are to hold the highest standards in all that we do, because each of us represents our school in that moment and for the rest of our lives. (At least that’s how I remember it. . .) We don’t get a pass but are to be held accountable for our actions.
I’ve been following the recent news that senior Bush officials (VP Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, then-CIA Director Tenet, John Ashcroft, and Donald Rumsfeld) were not only aware of torture, but were active in planning and regulating these acts committed against various persons of interest in terrorism investigations. Here is ABC’s piece on their 5-month investigation:
The two-thumbs up for torture goes all the way to the Oval Office because in a follow up interview with G.W., he matter-of-factly supported their efforts.
President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.
“Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people.” Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. “And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”
Last fall, NYTimes columnist Frank Rich wrote about the apathy of the American people who have silently looked the other way while the Bush Administration violated international laws using rendition and torture to interrogate suspects, when they weren’t busy stripping Americans of their civil liberties.
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.
Now that we know that government officials participated in planning waterboarding and equally perverse forms of interrogation, we must hold them accountable and send message that illegal conduct of this nature and flagrant mendacity will not be tolerated.
Tonight after the latest Democratic Party Debate, TrueMajority.org, Brave New Films, US Action , and Democracy for America took the first shot with the Condi Must Go commercial. The full spot is here, and you’ll see an abbreviated version on television.
As of writing this post, more than 33,000 people have signed the petition demanding that all three Presidential candidates ask Condoleezza Rice to resign her post as Secretary of State. As a first step, you too can join the effort and spread the word.
What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that’s already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can’t prejudge that because we don’t have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.
So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment — I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General — having pursued, having looked at what’s out there right now — are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it’s important– one of the things we’ve got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I’ve said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law — and I think that’s roughly how I would look at it.
McCain will likely be less sympathethic to such a petition. When asked by a journalist if we are better than torture (in general), he responded
I’ve made it very clear, I’ve made it very clear in my statements and in my support of the Detainee Treatment Act, the Geneva Conventions, etc., that there may be some additional techniques to be used, but none of those would violate the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act… And we cannot ever, in my view, torture any American, that includes waterboarding.
Non-Americans, that’s another story.
I’ve unfortunately not been able to find any Clinton commentary as of yet. (Please leave some links in the comments section if you find them first)
What about you? Are our elected officials above the law? or are you ready to hold them responsible?
No related posts.
Wow, watching last night’s debate was scary enough. I mean two candidates that basically very forth right said that as Commander and Chief they would pull troops out and not listen to military advisors that are actually on the ground there, because they (President) has top command. The promises of not raising taxes on middle and lower class, which was an outright lie because their programs wouldn’t just tax the rich. Actually the real mistake was that the journalists didn’t make clear which taxes would be raised, sales, income, local, state or federal or various other ones. I drank a whole bottle of wine just realizing these out-in-the-open words were falling on deaf ears and that people were more concerned with the celebrity than the issues themselves.
To your post, sorry but this type of thinking is very very dangerous. My point will drive an emotional perspective but try to follow me. Those that are against torture probably were not directly affected by terrorists in anyway, be it 9/11 or a roadside bombing or suicide bomber, for good reason you and others say that this treatment is below us and that it diminishes our standards. My point is that if you were not emotionally affected into having a certain trust in torture you might pay an emotional price in the end. If we stop torture and terrorists attack us, those that are against torture will be the first to cry “why didn’t we know this was going to happen??!” or of course blame the Bush administration, the most common of quick slinging excuses from liberals of course. Anyway, so we get attacked, maybe someone you know is killed in this attack, I have a feeling that once you experience that you would want others to never have to feel the lasting emotional pain you are going through. By whatever means possible, we need to extract that premeditated attack information from those we have captured.
How could we live with the possible deaths of so many people on our hands and stand there and be able to say “well we could have possibly prevented all this death had we used torture, but that is below us as a nation”? Below us, yet the tactics that these terrorists use on us and our soldiers is justified and held in high presitige?
Not to mention that you are failing to tell all the facts especially if you are talking about waterboarding. Or government did waterboard, the total amount of time that elapsed for all of the waterboarded “victims” (pfft) combined was under 5 minutes, yea not 5 minutes per person, no these guys usually lasted around 35 seconds to a little over a minute and we DID get information that was useful.
These candidates and their policies of negotiating with terrorists and THIS anti-torture banter is the most dangerous thing to happen to this country. The sad part is, and mark my words on this, liberals will never take the blame for anything. If we pull out and we get attacked, it’s because Bush brought us in there in the first place. If Iran gets nuclear arms, it’s because Bush labeled them terrorists. Their inactions will be the end of our liberties once we hit such a rock bottom of security that we must rely on complete government control….communism.
Can we waterboard you for a few minutes Poli, to see if you really believe all this crap?
Sure, that’s the difference here. If in an extraordinary circumstance that in order to secure a non-lethal form of torture that I would have to undergo it myself to save american lives, you bet your ass I would do it.
Despite popular belief that conservatives don’t “care” for other people, this in fact is in place to secure the protection of US Citizens.
Now obviously no lawmakers would ever come to me and say “Chris you have to undergo waterboarding, if you do we will continue using it and if you don’t then we will do away with it.” But I for one would actually die to save one person, ten people, thousands to know that they and their families would not suffer physically or emotionally due to their potential loses.
The fact remains here that you are looking purely at the treatment and not at the person themselves. You want to give a comfort suites room to a terrorist so that they are comfortable and you can sleep at night knowing that “well they killed people but at least I didn’t hurt them”
Ridiculous
Actually, Poli, your remarks make it clear that you believe that people who are against torture (liberals in your mind) don’t “care” about US citizens. But they are US citizens, too. They are as concerned about the safety and security of our country as you whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
What I’ll never understand is the way you can trust people who lie to your face while committing these atrocities behind your and our back.
Your assertion that we have gained valuable evidence from people we captured and have kept in prison for over 5 years is unprovable. On the other hand, the results we have had in Iraq and Afganistan would argue that whatever we learned it sure didn’t help us much. The only ones it actually helped were Bush and the neocons since they could use what they “couldn’t tell us for security reasons” to keep us in fear long enough to get Bush a second term.
Please, same banter I hear over and over again. The “valuable evidence” I speak of CAN be proved…as can the success of the surge. I never said liberals don’t care about national security, but they care about it when it is too late….I can list off how many terrorists attacks there were on American property during the Clinton years as opposed to 9/11. Sure, there were more people lost in 9/11 but has there been an attack on America since then? I’m guessing that the evidence you speak of has lended a hand to that.
As for doing things behind my back, there is an even darker and seedier world behind the scenes than you could ever imagine, those people do dirty work to insure that the rest of us live our lives in peace and give us the freedom to shout “anti-Bush” and “Anti-war” BS in the meantime.
Don’t ever forget that you have the freedom of speech through wars that we have fought over time AND tell it to the soldiers when they are all brought back prematurely and defeated, say it to a soldiers face why you are against the war. I’ll be surprised if you walk away from that confrontation. The soldiers I talk to say they come back here feeling sick to belong to a society full of people that demoralize them at every turn, AND THAT is some behind the back shit as far as I am concerned.
@ Polit
There appear to be a lot of suspicious activities being investigated lately
http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php
Or do you only consider terrorist activities to be the acts of fringe brown people from countries whose languages we don’t teach in schools?
While you’re interviewing returning soldiers, would you mind also slipping in a question? “Knowing what you know after serving in Iraq, do you believe we should have engaged in a pre-emptive attach on their nation? Were we justified?”
Ahhhhhhh and so it is…..another common liberal attack, so by making that brown people statement you are really labeling me as a racist right? I mean since I am conservative it is proper to say that all conservatives are racists…no?
Sure I will ask that question for you…matter of fact I will interview some soldiers that would be glad to even give up their name and rank and let you know how they feel about everything and i’ll get back to you, of course once I do you will say I selected a minor group and that that does not represent the military as a whole in which case has anyone at all done a COMPLETE military survey?
Just attacking my interviews with the predictable excuses that I know are coming at me anyway….
Hardly, Polit.
You said “.I can list off how many terrorists attacks there were on American property during the Clinton years as opposed to 9/11. Sure, there were more people lost in 9/11 but has there been an attack on America since then?” Your word choice “ON America” suggests the attack would come from outside the States. Most Americans haven’t been conditionied to fear the E.U. or Canada, thus I conclude you refer to more Middle East activity? There is plenty of activity assigned the terrorism label committed by Americans within our borders.
I did not say all conservatives are racist, don’t put words in my mouth. I do my best to avoid sweeping generalizations where I can, because labeling is meaningless without context. At best, there are continuums on which the strength of our beliefs slide depending on the scenario, so labeling anyone or any group is pointless.
For any survey to be worthwhile, you’d have to interview a cross section of your target population so that it’s roughly representative of the entire group’s demo profile in terms of geographic origin, class, rank, etc. You don’t need to survey the entire Military, merely a representative sample.
Where is your sample coming from? Where is the population congregating? Would it be a true representative sample or is it expected to be biased in some way?