Grieve for your country

It seems to have reached the point now where there is really not much left to say. The current Administration is so corrupt, so dishonest, so secretive, so thick skinned and unresponsive to any reasonable request or question there is not much more to be done short of impeachment.

The Plame scandal. Nothing happens. The Enron scandal. Nothing happens. The secret energy meetings that were supposed to go back to a lower court. Nothing happens. The 9/11 failures. Nothing happens. The lies that led us into the Iraq fiasco. Nothing happens. Lies about the cost of Medicare. Nothing happens. War profiteering. Nothing happens. The unprecedented national debt. Nothing happens. The absolutely failed “war” in Iraq. Nothing happens. The torture scandal. Nothing happens.

Does anyone actually believe that a small group of West Virginian enlisted personnel sat down together and decided what kinds of interrogation techniques would work to break down Iraqis? Iraqis hate nudity, one of them must have said. Oh, yeah, and they hate being made to masterbate in public. Oh, and I think putting a leash around the neck of a naked man might be a way to break them down. How about making them act out sexual acts? I bet they wouldn’t like that. Better yet, let’s threaten them with female interrogators, you know, threatening to menstruate on them, teasing them before their prayers, stuff like that. I think making them think they’ll be electrocuted might work. And keeping hoods over their heads. I bet they wouldn’t like that. How about forcing them to kneel in awkward positions for hours on end. Or better yet, let’s let them think we’re drowning them. Of course we could always beat or rape their children in front of them. I bet they would especially hate it if we raped one of their boys and they had to listen to the screams.

This is not the plan of a few enlisted men and women. It is obviously a plan developed by someone in the CIA or elsewhere that studied Iraqi culture beforehand. It was a systematic attempt to use techniques that would specifically offend members of this particular culture. It was deliberately planned and passed down to others to execute. There was no little group of “bad apples” just having fun. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just plain naïve, if not downright stupid. But you notice no one above the rank of Sergeant is being held accountable. A blatant cover up. And like everything else. Nothing happens. As far as I am concerned the United States has gone mad. This is not the country of my childhood. Not the country I have been so proud of most of my life. Certainly not the country I want it to be.

I want action now! I want Bush/Cheney impeached. I want the neocons held responsible for this terrible disaster that has turned my wonderful country into this pathetic international pariah. I don’t want a President who is regarded as the world’s most reviled man, a world that regards my country as the number one terrorist organization, the gravest threat to world peace. I cannot believe this has been allowed to happen, that roughly half of the population of the U.S. seems to think this is all fine and good. What is the matter with these people? Have they no decency whatsoever? It’s obvious that our Republicans have none. And Democrats for the most part don’t seem much better. I grieve daily for what we have lost. I want it back.