Not since Shock And Awe have our enemies been handed such a concentrated victory as they gained today. Two winners: Republicans. And terrorists. Their alteration of our government is nearly complete.
What worse things will happen to our prisoners now? How long before there are stories of further atrocities? They don't need to hide their barbarism in the shadows any longer. How long before the determination of who is an "enemy combatant" is redefined by Yoo or Cheney?
I'm sorry, but I see no way to redeem ourselves.
From Sen Clinton's remarks-
...Washington led his soldiers across the Delaware River and onto victory in the Battle of Trenton. There he captured nearly 1000 foreign mercenaries and he faced a crucial choice.
How would General Washington treat these men? The British had already committed atrocities against Americans, including torture. As David Hackett Fischer describes in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, "Washington's Crossing," thousands of American prisoners of war were "treated with extreme cruelty by British captors." There are accounts of injured soldiers who surrendered being murdered instead of quartered. Countless Americans dying in prison hulks in New York harbor. Starvation and other acts of inhumanity perpetrated against Americans confined to churches in New York City.
The light of our ideals shone dimly in those early dark days, years from an end to the conflict, years before our improbable triumph and the birth of our democracy. General Washington wasn't that far from where the Continental Congress had met and signed the Declaration of Independence. But it's easy to imagine how far that must have seemed. General Washington announced a decision unique in human history, sending the following order for handling prisoners:
"Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren."Therefore, George Washington, our commander-in-chief before he was our President, laid down the indelible marker of our nation's values even as we were struggling as a nation – and his courageous act reminds us that America was born out of faith in certain basic principles. In fact, it is these principles that made and still make our country exceptional and allow us to serve as an example.......
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_24_atrios_archive.html#115947389727117828 Can there be a road back from here? My God, the Senate! And you better believe the world was watching.
I've got to take a break -look for some perspective.
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