What Will You Tell Your Children's Children?

Greetings All,

I have been down with the flu this week and my friend and contributing author Christopher Wilcox has come to my rescue with this great post about what is sure to become one of the saddest chapters in the destruction of our nation unless "We The People" put a stop to this madness NOW.

Our apathy, loss of conscience, dubious integrity and a President who does not know the difference between common decency and inhumane acts have all met at the crossroads of history. What will we choose?

What Will You Tell Your Children’s Children?
Christopher David Peter Wilcox

I shouldn’t be surprised but I am. The House of Representatives passed resolution number HR 6166 by a vote of 253-168. This draft law authorizes special military tribunals to prosecute the Guantanamo detainees and allows for secret CIA-run prisons without further clarification of what cruel and unusual punishment is when interrogating detainees. Detainees would be deprived of all legal recourse to protest the conditions of their detention. The legislation allows interrogators to continue using "alternative" methods of questioning that include a simulated drowning technique known as "water boarding," sleep deprivation, and subjecting suspects to extreme temperatures. The House of Representatives of the United States of America actually passed a law that turns a blind eye to torture! It is as if I am in a bad dream and can’t wake up.

House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi argued against the measure, saying "permitting indefinite detention under conditions that cannot be challenged in court is contrary to our history and values." Um, yah, just a little but Republicans are so far over the top with having nothing substantial to run on this November they have trumped up the war on terror to some “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” hysteria that plays on the fears of the American public. Or at least they hope it will. I can only hope that we as an electorate are not so blind, so arrogant, and so easily mislead to buy into the false sense of security that the GOP is selling.

What else could you call it but arrogant to believe that we could pass a law that would hold us outside international convention on a matter as critical as the fair treatment of detainees in a time of war? What do we think will happen to our soldiers when they fall into the hands of our enemies? They will you know. And when they do will we be outraged when our troops are mistreated? Have we forgotten how we felt when we saw the corpse of one of our soldier’s drug behind a vehicle in Mogadishu? This is bad legislation and Congress has so far lost touch with the people they represent and the values of what it means to be an American that it is now up to us to set them straight.

I would loathe the day when I had to tell my children I sat back and did nothing when our Congress was considering this legislation. Some day in the future when my children or grandchildren look up and me and say, “How could that have happened?” I don’t want to have to tell them “I don’t know. I did nothing.” The Senate bill number is S 3930. Your Senators need to hear from you. They need to know you oppose this bill. You can get their phone number or email address here: US Senate. What are you going to do?

Courtesy of Red Hog Diary