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Re: The Truth can be ugly and painful, or Why America doesn't count for much anymore.
bowser — (archived)

Some interesting points, and they don't answer the question. If there is not "liberty and justice for all", if America cannot be trusted to keep it's word either domestically or internationally, if laws apply only to the poorer, what makes it different from any other rogue nation? Why should Americans die for it. What kind of a country is it where a poor black man get 20 years in prison for selling crack cocaine and a wealthy politician gets medals for illegally killing, maiming and torturing innocent people?

I know American history is full of American horrors. However, Bush, et al are the perpetrators of the major one in my time on the planet, the one which cries for justice now, the one where my voice can join others in asking for appropriate accountability.

What good is torture if it costs America's soul? Torture is far, far harder on the torturer, individually and collectively, than it is on the one tortured.

I'll agree there are no more goodguys. There used to be and could still be if they were used to bring "liberty and justice for all", if they accepted that being a goodguy means you don't fall into the temptation of having to excuse bad behavior by claiming "they made me do it", if they were fighting for a system which brought the Norths, Bush's and Cheney's to justice.

I'm not talking about tactical events where the heat of battle is messing with younger minds, there is an adrenaline overload along with an overwhelming temptation to save goodguy butts by extracting information from what is to you a real, honest "badguy" and who at that moment isn't really a person at all. That's not OK, and it's very understandable. It's a true "ticking bomb" situation.

I'm talking about torture as an instrument of national policy, approved and carried out in the cold dark of night, secretly in secret prisons by secret people because everyone knows it's wrong, against the law, and immoral. If they didn't know it was illegal and immoral they wouldn't have lied.

So, as the article stated, for whatever reasons America has lost her soul (again), while ostensibly fighting for, well, what? Follow the money, who is gaining?

Arf

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