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Presidential Scholars Tell the President 'No' on Torture
President Bush got a lesson from a group of recent high school graduates. They were Presidential Scholars, a program designed "to recognize and provide leadership development experiences for some of America's most outstanding graduating high-school seniors."
The 141 Presidential Scholars were being honored at the White House. One of them, Mari Oye, from Wellesley, Mass., describes what happened: "The president walked in and gave us a short speech saying that as we went on into our careers, it was important to treat others as we would like to be treated. And he told us that we would have to make choices we would be able to live with for the rest of our lives. And so, I said to the president, 'Several of us made a choice, and we would like you to have this,' and handed him the letter." It was a letter Mari had handwritten. It read:
"As members of the Presidential Scholars class of 2007, we have been told that we represent the best and brightest of our nation. Therefore, we believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions. We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants."
The letter was signed by close to 50 of the students, more than a third of the Presidential Scholars.
Mari described Bush's reaction to the letter: "He read down the letter. He got to the part about torture. He looked up, and he said, 'America doesn't torture people.' And I said, 'If you look specifically at what we said, we said, we ask you to cease illegal renditions. Please remove your signing statement to the McCain anti-torture bill.'
"At that point, he just said, 'America doesn't torture people' again."
In fact, after Bush signed the bill that outlawed the torture of detainees last year, he quietly issued a "signing statement" reserving the right to bypass the law, as he has more than 1,100 times, issuing more signing statements than all other U.S. presidents combined.
Mari knows a little bit about detention. Not high school detention, but detention Guantanamo-style. Mari recounted this to the president: "I said that for me personally, the issue of detainee rights also had a lot of importance, because my grandparents had been interned during World War II for being Japanese-American." The government has since apologized for imprisoning more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans during the war.
Mari said she was also inspired to act by her mother, Willa Michener. She, too, was a Presidential Scholar-40 years ago, in 1968-and had wanted to confront President Lyndon Johnson with her opposition to the Vietnam War. She deferred to a teacher, who Mari said "stressed it was important to stay quiet when you're in the presence of the president." Willa Michener has regretted it since, Mari said.
Mari called her mother as soon as she left the White House to tell her what she had done. "She was actually in the Holocaust Museum in the last room when I called her to say that we had given the letter. She didn't know there was a letter beforehand. ... And she said that she walked out into the bright sunlight with tears streaming down her face, but since a lot of people walk out of the Holocaust Museum that way, you know, no one noticed anything out of the ordinary."
Another Presidential Scholar, Leah Anthony Libresco, from Long Island, N.Y., helped write the letter. She, like Mari, is remarkably eloquent. "If I'm going to be in the room with the president, I've got to say something, because silence betokens consent, and there's a lot going on I don't want to consent to." Her middle name, Anthony, comes from the famous suffragist Susan B. Anthony.
Afraid that Mari's letter would be confiscated before she was able to deliver it to the president, Leah had a handwritten copy of it-yes, up her sleeve. She handed it to a reporter, as she said later in a blog, "at The No Child Left Behind photo op for which the Scholars were apparently supposed to be a backdrop."
With young leaders like Mari Oye and Leah Anthony Libresco speaking truth to power at so young an age, and demonstrating such eloquence, courage and discipline, the only thing that looks likely to get left behind are politicians like George Bush and his torture policies.
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.
© 2007 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate
22 Comments so far
Show AllMaybe there is some hope.
Bravo to a young group of scholars. They did the job that so many elected representatives are to cowardly to confront. This should bring shame to them!
This is really encouraging. If this next generation ever has a chance to vote, there may be a real upheaval of this corrupt system our democracy has become. What courage! And what guts for the possibility it would be taken away before she had a chance to make her point!
While there will always be some scholars emerging, the problem at this point is the dumbing down of our educational system by the so-called "reform" being imposed on school districts nationwide by business and their bought-out politicians.
A real eye-opener book is Kathy Emery and Susan Ohanian's WHY IS CORPORATE AMERICA BASHING OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS ( publisher: heinemann.com). All teachers/administrators/parents and people who seriously care about the future of public education need to read this.
This interview was one of the highlights of last week's news. Three cheers for Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/03/1433227&mode=thread&tid=25
What these girls said helps to make it seem possible that Bush is innocent & naive, that Cheney and the others intentionally leave him in the dark.
The People, the fine People of the US, are starting to make the turn. Can you feel it? I can.
Thank goodness for courageous youth. They make a fool out you (bush fool) because you stand for nothing of value. Nothing in. Nothing out. You are Mr. Nothing and your time is running out. You and the rest of your ilk.
Lets keep the momentum for PEACE going. In fact, lets all start pushing harder. Walking, talking, and speaking out. These heartless & senseless politicians have some serious lessons to start learning. They can learn it the hard way or not. I don't care. I just want some learning to happen.
Peace,
Ken Hausle
* I support HRes333 - Impeach the VP
**** the time is NOW ****
Heroes, all. Can somebody make certain Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid read this story? They could learn something.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a future for America with young people like these coming up into the world.
Then again, another fool like Bush could become president again, and send these beautiful young people off to fight and die for another lost cause.
Let's all hope that the former comes to pass.
Yellow Horse
What a perfect picture for a photo op!
The president and all his handlers caught!
Skewered by some PR of their own invention,
It all seemed like such a good intention.
President and all the scholars stood
To tell all students that they should
Study and work and stick with the grind
And not become a child left behind!
So one day like all too few residents
They'd get a picture with the President
Who would turn to make idle conversation
And a letter receive from the youth of the nation
The ones he just got done telling all
Were role models who stood real tall
Their shining well-scrubbed faces
Beaming as they laid down their aces,
Explaining that torture was unamerican
And his suppport for it was very embarassin'
It's so mind numbing to read how people have to try to tell the president of the United States that we don't represent torture. Rationally, I understand how someone with the, uh, talents of Bush, could have become president, given how we've come to finance campaigns. But emotionally it makes your mind reel.
Experts on the subject consistently say that torture just doesn't yield good information for the obvious reason that people being tortured will fabricate confessions/information to get the torture to stop. Even if you think it's OK morally, as our good president obviously does, it makes no rational sense. Even less so because we've haven't been particularly good at making accurate identifications of the "terrorists" we pick up and hold for years in secret detention centers. Even less so because it sets a really bad example and totally undermines our supposed stand on upholding human rights.
It indeed is very refreshing to see our nation's youth step up and point out the criminal and cruel injustices this Administration inflicts upon people not formally charged with a crime. Another great example is the two youngsters, Michael and Ashley, who are marching across the country in protest of the War. And what is the only thing that blurts out of Bush's mouth while he is in an entire state of denial and disillusionment "we don't torture people." This too gives me hope that we can overcome this failed, corrupt, and myopic Administration led by a prig for a President. Three cheers for these courageous youngsters who have the internal fortitude to do what many of us should have been doing a long time ago.
I should add that I participated in two war protest marches in San Francisco, but that pales in comparison to what all of these youngsters are doing.
Beautiful. This story is pure poetry!
Seriously, listening to Amy's show every day will change your outlook on the world. I for one, am very grateful that she keeps at it day after day, barely ever taking a vacation.
Listen in your area:
http://www.democracynow.org/stations.pl?op=fullsearch&broadcast=all
So what? Bush will be the first to agree that "The US does not torture".
Uh-oh, looks like the right-wing cons are sending out their attack dogs on the message board. Anybody got a dog biscuit?
America doesn't torture people," the little liar quipped.
This is the semantical game Bush, Rove , Cheney and their ilk play! OF COURSE AMERICA DOESN'T TORTURE...a small cabal who have hijacked our govt. DO! This is the word game they use to confuse those not too well versed in the rules of logic. They equate themselves with "America" and then accuse any who criticize them of being un-American. They are not America. This point needs to be stressed as often as possible until people begin to understand that disagreeing with the particular political party in power does not mean one is down on America. The corporate rapists also play this tactic when they say "there they go blaming America again for all the world's troubles." America is not to blame...THEY are through the policies of resource piracy where they reap the profits while we go to war and die to pay for their crimes. When corporate criminals start going to jail for life for their capital crimes, this sort of thing will stop and soon thereafter so will terrorist acts aimed at the rest of us. When we make America live up to the ideals we pretend to hold and share the wealth instead of enriching the top 1% while the rest barely get by there will be peace on earth...for real. Norway has the highest standard of living in the world and nobody is flying planes into their buildings. Why is that? Because they don't rape the rest of the world to achieve their success.
So now The Prez is lying to high school kids? At least he's an equal opportunity liar. I don't feel so bad now. How many more days until this term is over?
When I hear about how we do not torture, I think about truly innocent people that are "not" being tortured. Imagine the perverse logic that increases the amount of torture an innocent person will endure to obtain information they do not have. The case of Khaled al-Masri is a prime example. Tortured over 5 months and it turns out the CIA mistaked his identity.
BTW, I am not advocating torturing anyone. I just think that cases like Khaled al-Masri show how badly this logic is applied.
If you listen to that broadcast (podcast) of Democracy Now!, you will hear how these students wrote that letter in the middle of the night and got 50 signatures in the morning (if I remember correctly), before presenting the letter. If given time, there is a good chance that more of than 50 would have signed it. It is a beautiful broadcast of a wonderful show and I highly recommend taking the effort to hear it.
Peace
What did he think when he denied these girls the truth? Did he think these young people don't know how to read?
"How many more days until this term is over?"
558
George W. Bush is openly called the idiot president and now will forever be known as such. Was it just last year that he was chided for not having studied very hard and done his work?
I wonder what his Papa and Mama think or feel about that. How their cronyism, and connections that were instrumental on getting junior the job of head of the free world and that became a wall of insulation, is the means to their son's downfall and family shame. Money can't buy everything.
Lately, the corporate media is painting him as a lonely figure, trying to shore up some support through . . . pity. But that same corporate media stands by and does nothing to break through and show the real pain of the lonely mothers sifting through their son's belongings after he has been declared dead in Iraq, or the lonely wives, who must carry on with their children, now fatherless for the rest of their lives. Why is there no sympathy for the heartbreak and loss of the thousands of families who have had a loved one die or wounded in horrible ways?
There's "those" kids and then there's "those other" kids --
the ones going to Iraq --
Amy's show today had absolutely fabulous interviews with them about their experiences ---
anyone who missed it, by all means go to the demnow archive and listen or view it ---- really powerful (the latest Nation article as well)
absolutely amazing and stunning
Bush must be reading CommonDreams. Saw him on TV today shamelessly hiding behind men who were wounded in Iraq. (Actually one didn't get to see them, or their families) Now we have more evidence of just who the so-called antichrist is, soothing the families with a thirst for vengence and more blood to flow. Saying that violence must be met with more violence.
On top of that, the vote to bring the troops home, when? April 1? is that a joke? What happened to September? Oh, it'll come after April 1, 2008, and so on, and so on.
And why, pray tell, can we not trust the Iraqis to do the right thing in their own country? After all, it was the U.S. that gave them Saddam, they didn't choose him. Just as we will liberate ourselves from our own leader who does not listen to the will of the people, but think the people must listen to his will. What a test of our beloved U.S. Constitution, and country, and of our own moral fiber.