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Franklin bifocals Saturday, December 22, 2007

Winter - digging out
[Winter Solstice]


John Paul Jones in US Navy Uniform
[1775 - Congress commissions first naval officers including Lieutenant John Paul Jones]

Giacomo Puccini
[1858 - Giacomo Puccini, opera composer, born in Lucca, Italy]

Baseball Hall of Famer Connie Mack in dugout Connie Mack Baseball Hall of Fame Plaque
[1862 - Connie (Cornelius Alexander) Mack (McGillicudy), Baseball Hall of Fame catcher and manager born in East Brookfield, Massachusetts]

Pulitzer prize-winning poet Edwin Arlington Robinson
[1869 - Edwin Arlington Robinson, Pulitzer prize-winning poet, born in Head Tide, Alna, Maine]

Academy Award-winning Actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft
[1907 - Dame Peggy (Edith Margaret Emily) Ashcroft, Academy Award-winning actress, born in Croydon, England]

Bee-Gee Maurice Gibb
[1949 - Maurice Gibb, singer, songwriter, born in Douglas, Isle of Man]

A Tortuous Path

When the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal broke, the President went on Arab TV to tell the world that as a people we Americans are not like that, and the terrible events of torture were just the work of a few aberrant night shift personnel at the prison who had disobeyed orders. That position was undercut when we learned that the International Committee of the Red Cross had repeatedly complained of conditions at the prison the previous Fall, but we were initially inclined to give the CinC the benefit of the doubt.

Reports from the Pentagon Inspector General, from FBI files, and from a variety of reliable sources have established a widespread, multi-year pattern of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan by US Army and Special Operations troops, a series of torture acts by US Marines in Iraq that involve dozens of men and resulted in numerous court martial convictions, secret CIA torture prisons and transfers of captives to nations with no reluctance to torture captives, and a continuing history of abuse and torture of the prisoners that have been held without charges or trial for up to six years at the Guantanamo Naval Base Prison. We now have clear evidence that the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, the CIA and FBI Directors, the Attorney General, and countless other lower ranking PooBahs were aware of what was going on.

Anyone who has been in combat knows that passions run high, and there is no war in which all sides have not engaged in abuse or outright murder of prisoners. The assertions that Americans are somehow morally superior to the other societies on this planet, and immune to such criminal acts, is fanciful nonsense and further evidence of the self-righteous arrogance that characterizes our current leadership. What has enabled this Country of ours to field a more humane tradition in times of past wars has been leadership that appealed to the better side of human nature, emphasized respect for the rule of law and humane treatment of prisoners, and swiftly punished offenders.

When this President and his associates abandoned the moral high ground in favor of assertions of absolute executive discretion, and engaged in ridicule of international law, they invoked as a certain consequence the pattern of abuses that has now emerged. Having let this genie out of the bottle, it will be a difficult task to stuff it back in, but now that they have been exposed, at least our leaders could be honest with us about the scope and seriousness of the problem. I am not suggesting that the President deliberately lied to the American People about such matters.

William's Whimsical Words:

Yes I am.

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