Torture

See below for more updates on last night's protest from John Cobarruvias of Bay Area New Democrats.  He was one of the organizers of the event.  BAND can be counted on to have a significant prescence whenever DeLay is in town, even (like last night) when the event isn't even in the Clear Lake area nor in DeLay's district.

John counted 287 protestors.  I think that's a fairly accurate number, although it was difficult to count because we were spread out over such a big area, some people came late, etc.  The Houston Chronicle said police estimated about 250.

by David Batstone

Christians of strong religious faith and sound moral conscience often end up in disagreement. Human affairs are a messy business, unfortunately, and even at the best of times we only see through a glass, darkly.

Calling for truth and dignity in the nation's conduct

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002625932_floyd16.html?syndication=rss

Near the end of the Edward R. Murrow movie, "Good Night, and Good Luck," Sen. Joseph McCarthy is confronted by Joseph Welch, civilian counsel for the U.S. Army. McCarthy's personal abuse of opponents had reached a peak in the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954.

In his rumbling voice, Welch intoned, "You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

Where is Welch when we need him? (Or Murrow, for that matter?)

And where is the decency of this nation?

Who built the moral cesspool into which this nation has sunk with its secret prisons and secret prisoners, legalized torture, indefinite imprisonment without trial or counsel?

Is it Vice President Dick Cheney, pleading a CIA exemption from the torture ban that passed the Senate with 90 votes?
Is it Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert who, upon hearing leaked intelligence that the CIA is using secret prisons in other countries, beyond the reach of American torture laws, decided to investigate the leak — but not the prisons?

Is it the military commanders who have escaped reprimand while a series of low-level soldiers take the blame for abuses at Abu Ghraib and in Afghanistan? Or the White House and Justice Department lawyers who drafted the "soft torture" rules?
Is it the president of the United States, who never seems to take responsibility for anything, doggedly plunging ahead, "working hard" and "doing my job"? Who is in charge here? Is it really Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a corps of hard-core neoconservatives in the Department of Defense and Cheney's office who run the foreign policy of this country?

by David F. Adams
SojoMail 11-16-2005

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=news.display_article&mode=C&NewsID=5039 

I personally witnessed prisoner abuse during the Vietnam War, and by witnessing and remaining silent became a participant.