History Will Not Absolve Us
According to an explosive ABC News report on April 9, dozens of top-secret meetings took place in the White House, beginning in 2002, in which the president’s top advisors approved the use of torture. Those involved were members of the National Security Council’s “Principals Committee” — Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft. Unfortunately, however, these dramatic revelations have been largely ignored by the media and the public. Yet we now know more clearly than ever before that it is because of these senior officials — and not just Animal House on the night shift — that America is regarded around the world as a Torture Nation.
The techniques that the advisors not only approved, but reportedly even choreographed in particular cases amount to torture by any reasonable standard. Near drowning (waterboarding), sleep deprivation, subjection to temperatures of extreme cold (hypothermia), physical assault and stress positions are proscribed by international and domestic law. They are gulag tactics that have no place in a democratic society. John Ashcroft rightly asked at one point: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.” But according to the report, Condoleezza Rice prevailed, telling the CIA: “This is your baby. Go do it.”
Nor does it seem that the president was insulated from these decisions. As the head of the National Security Council, he signed a decision memo in which torture was effectively authorized (February 7, 2002). He has also admitted that the new report is accurate: “And, yes,” he told ABC News, “I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.” Commenting on these developments, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley stated bluntly: “This was a torture program . . . and it goes right to the President’s desk.” He added: “I don’t think there’s any doubt that [the president] was aware of this. The only doubt is simply whether anybody cares enough to do something about it.”
No one up the chain of command has been prosecuted for the torture that has come to light. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, at the center of the Abu Ghraib scandal, offers an instructive case. Miller became commander of Guantanamo Bay in November 2002. In August 2003 he was instructed by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to brief Army officers in Iraq on interrogation techniques. He favored methods that were outside the Geneva Conventions. Although he denied permitting the use of dogs to terrorize prisoners at Abu Ghraib, he was later contradicted under oath by Col. Thomas Pappas. Observers believed that Gen. Miller could have been a key to determining whether the Abu Ghraib abuses were the result of a few rogue soldiers (”bad apples”) or whether responsibility lay higher up the chain of command. He eventually testified in May 2006 without being probed.
Others involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal suffered a different fate. Low-ranking Pvt. Lyndie England, having received a dishonorable discharge, was sentenced to three years in prison. Her compatriot Pvt. Charles Graner was sentenced to 10 years, with a dishonorable discharge and the loss of all benefits. By contrast, Gen. Miller retired from the Army in July 2006, being awarded the Distinguished Service Medal at his ceremony and praised as an “innovator.” At the highest levels, Condoleezza Rice was elevated to become Secretary of State, while former CIA director George Tenet, another member of the Principals Committee, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In short, while the lackeys are punished, the dignitaries are promoted and rewarded with impunity.
As Darius Rejali, the world’s leading authority on the history of torture, has pointed out, if torture is to be stopped, structures of accountability must be strictly observed. Where there is no clear accountability, the situation will rapidly deteriorate. Not only does abuse proliferate through the ranks, but professional interrogators who pride themselves on obtaining reliable information by honorable means get disgusted and leave the system. A process that drives out the professionals, while at the same time rewarding the abusers, can only lead to multiple disasters.
These are the disasters that now beset us. The authorizing of torture and abuse, the dissembling in high places that obscures it, and the rewarding of those who practice it or, like Attorney General Mukasey, condone it — this is the tarnished legacy of the outgoing administration, the scandal that history is likely to judge most harshly.
Adequate words are lacking to express how necessary it is for us, as a nation, to face what we have done, to stop all cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as well as torture by our own government, to close all the loopholes, all the secret prisons, all the facilities that shame us, like the one in Guantanamo Bay.
Torture’s disasters are multiple. For while torture yields notoriously unreliable information, and attacks the foundations of the rule of law, at the deepest level its costs are spiritual. Torture corrupts the society it claims to defend. Doctors, lawyers and psychologists are increasingly tainted by the shame of being accessories to government-sponsored abuse, while religious leaders are tainted by their silence. Torture degrades everyone involved-not only planners, perpetrators and victims, but also bystanders, and finally society as a whole.
How can we imagine that history will absolve us for permitting, obscuring and rewarding enormities that are universally condemned by law?
What does it profit a country if it should gain the whole world but lose its soul?
George Hunsinger teaches at Princeton Theological Seminary. His book Torture Is a Moral Issue will appear this fall.
BUILD A GALLOWS ON THE LAWN OF CONGRESS WITH 7 ROPES
Seven ropes wouldn’t be nearly enough. It would be a good start, though.
“Torture degrades everyone” Well said George Hunsinger. This should be getting round the clock news media coverage, but they’re busy reporting on things that make us a little less likely to get out and take action—celebrity gossip, or Rev. Wright loops that drive white fear of angry black men, and that serve to push the boot a bit deeper into our collective necks.
I’m hopeful that some good may yet come from their getting away with it now; because if they were brought up on charges they would all get off on presidential pardons. If we elect the right person in November, then maybe next year the Justice Dept. will go after them all and we’ll make some real progress for a change.
madcow writes (11:59) “…If we elect the right person in November, then maybe next year the Justice Dept. will go after them all and we’ll make some real progress for a change…”
- There’s zero chance of that. I’ll concede that in some ways, Obama is a pretty decent guy — esp. when compared to the other 2 monsters — but you’re just kidding yourself to imagine that he’d get anywhere near holding members of the Bush admin accountable for any of their crimes.
Here’s hoping a 527 will put out hard-hitting truthful t.v. ads exposing these crimes and criminals; if the mainstream media won’t do it’s job, then we’ll have to start doing it for them.
The people don’t care about crimes committed against Afghanis and Arabs. The commercial media has already sub-humanized them to the degree that people care more about the sick cows being forklifted to the meat grinder. When Russ Feingold exposed the unviability of Alberto Gonzales’ position, nothing happened. There was no outrage, and Gonzales knew there wouldn’t be. All the Bushies have learned this lesson. Why do you think he smirks all the time? The country was his toy; he smashed it; and “there ain’t thing one you can do about it, you liberal wienies!”
(to fabricate a statement reflective of his mindset)
There has to be some way to resolve this Constitutional crisis if any possibility of democracy surviving is to remain. John Dean suggested that we start with the impeachment of some lower-level officials to at least discourage future appointees from engaging in such criminal activity.
There’s an old African proverb that say’s, “Only when lions get to write history will hunters cease to be heroes.” The United States has not yet answered for genocide and slavery for it is presently enjoying the role of the hunter. Someday though the writings will shift as will our position in the world and oh what a dark day for the perception of America by all of humanity. If another free and democratic society ever had the luxury to consider a sober look at what the USA has done in its course of time they would not see us as kindly as we portray ourselves. For all of the good the US has done it is overshadowed by greed and cruelty of those few who took the low road. Pity…
The soulless leaders of the American war machine could care less about torture. Those elected to stop them have failed. A powerful American evil is loosed upon the world intent on igniting world war three. Their propaganda machines, their private armies, their prisons, their carrier battle groups, and their necessary legal licenses are in place. What’s to stop them now?
In fact, they care more about dogs and cats and contaminated pet food than they do about the fate of millions of “foreign” human beings who have been displaced, imprisoned, tortured and murdered outright by their government’s war crimes.
And don’t give me that “we’re helpless victims too” bull-crap. Every time you vote for the “lesser of two evils”, you legitimize their agenda and make yourselves complicit in the crimes.
No, history definitely will not absolve you! And neither will those you have thus dehumanized when the time for retribution arrives as it surely will. Consideration and mercy for your self-proclaimed “innocence” will equal that which you yourselves have shown in your indiscrimate treatment of other nations and their peoples.
The U.S. leadership and most of the general American population believe that if their survival or well-being is threatened then any counter measures are justifiable.
Of course, Hunsinger is correct, torture corrupts and drains the soul of morality.
The U.S. has overreacted. One day, 4 planes, piloted by fanatics, caused destruction and deaths of 3000+ Americans. In response, America has killed over 1,000,000 Arabs during the past 5 years, and threatens a to expand this conflict with no end to this destruction in sight. It’s time to stop this immoral action.
There is nothing new about the use of torture. What is new is that it is now openly tolerated.
What’s next? The current direction is clear. It’s like we’re glissading down a steep slope with a pile of sharp rocks waiting at the bottom.
kathyodat
The fact that torturing people is even up for debate in the US is a clear example of the sickness that is inflicting the entire country. No sane human being could possibly think that torture is a good thing to do. But this sickness goes way beyond torture. The US is preparing to launch another war and the public is, for the most part, silent. Humanity needs to stand up to the US and say “Enough of your evil ways. We’re not going to take it anymore!” The time for working within the system is over.
Once upon a time, in the early days of your republic, the people weren’t afraid to hold the ‘leaders’ accountable. There has been numerous cases of the public storming a jail and releasing political/economic prisoners, or marching on a court and demanding the judges address their concerns… NOW it is time to storm congress and perform a citizens arrest of the government. They are the enemies of humanity and we need to treat them as such. We can scream war criminal all we want and nothing will change. We can go online and vent our frustrations, but nothing will change. We can protest and march and yell until we’re blue in the face, but nothing will change. WE the people MUST remove these evil people from power to show the world that this aggressive, warlike behavior will no longer be tolerated.
Don’t forget who America learned from!
Being Welsh, its instructive to remember that we were under the Roman boot for 600 years and the Anglo-Saxon boot for 1000 years. Nothing changes, each empire learns from the one that preceded it
They have it all set up…if you question them, challenge them, dissent against them…they have the handy “terrorist list” to place you on. They go after your business. They send the IRS in on you. They use any pressure at all to back you down….no sweat off their backs to punish you for not agreeing.
I wonder where and when the next ‘Nuremburg’ tribunals will be held.
a. site of 9/11 ‘Reichstag’ massacre?
OR
b. a well-known ranch in Crawford, Texas
OR
c-z - you pick it!!!!!
History will not absolve “us”, nor will the World Criminal Court.
Poor Professor Hunsinger–trying to explain the concept of history’s judgement against a people whose chief indulgence seems to be squandering the inheritance entrusted to them to pass on to their progeny is a little like trying to explain sobriety to a life-long drunk.
Still, it is good that he is trying.
Not only are we forever tarnished by the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Diego Garcia and dozens of other hellholes approved of by Bush’s Central Committee at the NSC, but we’ve turned all of Iraq and much of Afghanistan into an open-ended torture chamber without walls. We’ve tortured Iraq now for over 5 years, killing about a million Iraqis and making about 4 million of them permanent refugees, not to mention all the injuries that will be permanently incapitating.
Also, Bush-Cheney have been concurrently torturing THIS country every which way but loose. So when I see that bumper sticker Common Dreams is now selling, “My America Doesn’t Torture!” I have to laugh, thru tears of rage, no less. Of course my America tortures, because I don’t have my own private America where the sun always shines, the birds sing merrily and everyone is treated fairly all the time. There’s only one America, and it’s the one Bush has made into the monster of the earth. We are all about torture and have been for some time. If we didn’t torture the entire world one way or another, most often thru economic pressures, threats, sanctions, and warnings that we’ll reduce country X to rubble if they don’t do as we say, we couldn’t get away with all our crimes.
Torture is us, and will continue to be until those responsible are brought to justice. That “Principals Committee” of Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft and their moronic commander George W. Bring them to justice or watch the torture train just keep on rolling down the tracks, with blood all over them.
We are aware, doing nothing makes us just like the ‘Good Germans’ we vilified after WWII.
For all the bible-thumping and all the holier than thou attitiude that this administration does, they sure have a odd way to show how to turn the other cheek, be kind to their fellow man, and many of the other commandments that they hold in esteem.
Unchained said on April 25th, 2008 at 1:42 pm: “They have it all set up…if you question them, challenge them, dissent against them…they have the handy “terrorist list” to place you on. They go after your business. They send the IRS in on you. They use any pressure at all to back you down….no sweat off their backs to punish you for not agreeing.”
Yes, Unchained, they do have the full weight of the state to bring down on those that dissent. That being said, don’t let that be a deterrent to standing up for what’s right. Yes, Sacrifices will be made, Pain and Hardship will be dealt out… Some may even lose their lives… But what you have to ask yourself is this: Are you willing to sacrifice for the greater good? Are yoU?
Actually, are you optimistic about thinking that there will be ANY future history, the way most of the people in the world are complacent about destroying Mother Earth? and complacently thinking that any of the so-called major candidates keep their candidate promises? Hillary, at least, is honest about being gung-ho for war.
“Torture corrupts the society it claims to defend.”
Unless said society is already corrupted beyond imagining.
Like, for example, a society that illegally invades another, killing and maiming millions of innocents, then re-elects the murdering illegal invaders.
From his straight talk and the way he is distancing himself from Bush l am sure President McCain will go after the scoundrels and through them in dungeons so deep the sun never shines there. He will bring the GOP back to the principals of Lincoln and restore America’s prestiege around the world.either that or he will pardon them all and have a nice big payoff from his cronies when he leaves The Whitehouse in eight years. To many people hate Clinton and despite the progress this country is to bigotted to elect a halfbreed no matter how passionate, astute, worldly, and qulaified for the job.
RE: frank1569
“Torture corrupts the society it claims to defend.”
“Unless said society is already corrupted beyond imagining.
Like, for example, a society that illegally invades another, killing and maiming millions of innocents, then re-elects the murdering illegal invaders.”
Where have you been?!
This country has not been permitted to “elect” anyone since 2000. And Scalia tells us on 60 minutes this weekend to just “Get over it.”
The only way America gets taken down now is from the outside or by a revolt of its own military. We are all prisoners now. No way to protest and take out congress without a short notso happy ride to a KBR prison or an early grave.
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Nuf said.
One use of torture is to hold an empire together with minimal use of occupation troops. The Romans used crucifixion for hundreds of years. Its why Christ was crucified. The Limbaughs and Hannitys of the era wanted to make an example of this revolutionary who might mess up the status quo and piss off the Romans.
Lets hope the next administration strongly renounces this policy, and we don’t become any more hard hearted about torture than we are already.
Silence is consent.
Earl Simmons:
“..halfbreed” Woah!
RE:President McCain
“From his straight talk and the way he is distancing himself from Bush…”
McCain has said”
-”Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran…” ,
-”US forces should stay Iraq another 100 years…”
-McCain recently voted to support the CIA’s torture practices
Unfortunately, McCain is embracing Bush’s policies not distancing himself from them.
You might follow McCain more closely.
When GWB was asked one time how he thought history would judge him, he shrugged and said, depends on who writes the history.
Former CIA director William Casey supposedly said in a 1981 staff meeting: :”When everything people believe in is a lie, then we will have accomplished our mission”.
Your history of the last 150 years is essentially a myth. One hundred years from GWB’s death, human sacrifices will be offered by the Luciferian Globalist elite in celebration of his great deeds that led to the One World Totalitarian Government that reduced the population to under 1 billion and saved Mother Earth for the elite.
History will look back on the fate of the sheeple with contempt. They were being led to their demise, pretending ignorance as to what was happening in the hope of someone coming to rescue them from the wolves, be it Obama, or a returning Jesus who would rapture them. History will say it was a necessary culling of the herd of human beasts, so the elite gods and their ancestors could have a rosy future, made possible with the remnants of the human beasts who work as their slaves.
Wonder on the focus of collecting DNA samples? This is to determine who gets culled and who does not.
Wonder about FDLS? This is to condition you on the states right to take your children.
Wonder about the attacks on Catholics, Muslims, and other Christians? This is to condition you to believe that religion is bad and should be eliminated or replaced with a secular humanist religion.
Those who survive the culling will have no religion, no family and no rights. You will be slaves to the global corporate state. If you don’t work, as Stalin said, you won’t eat.
Marx recognized that the Communism he envisioned would need to be Global, and that Capitalism was required to industrialize the world before it could be implemented. Many of those who have been slandered by history or assasinated over the years, were simply victims of those hiding behind the conspiracy, as they were a threat to global communism, which is simply a synthesis of socialism and capitalism. Many of your heroes were simply instruments of the conspiracy. It is an Orwellian Truth=Lie that has come to pass, well done Mr Casey & company.
Or maybe it is Truth=Myth as JFK said.
“The greatest enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” –JFK, June 11, 1962
So change will only come from those who dare speak against the Lie or the myth. Obama, Hillary and McCain and certainly not doing that. Why? Consider this (pulled from a EIR article)
“Tony Barber, writing in the Financial Times online edition April 8, issued a not-so-subtle death threat against Italian economist Guilio Tremonti, under the title “Tremonti and the Serpent’s Egg.” Quoting Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” Barber urges free-trade advocates to look at Act II Scene I, where “Brutus, when looking for a reason to justify Caesar’s assassination, said that the point wasn’t Caesar’s actions so far, but the future danger Caesar represented. And therefore, ‘think him as a serpents egg/ Which, hatch’d, would as his kind grow mischievous,/
And kill him in the shell.’ ”
Barber begins by noting that when they first met in 2003, Tremonti was wearing braces (suspenders), smoking a cigar, and looking the part of a finance minister. He lambastes Tremonti’s recent book, Fear and
Hope, which “lashes out at globalisation and condemns the dictatorship of the market,” and calls for “a new Bretton Woods.” And then Barber ends, “So the message to Tremonti must be: Giulio, wear those braces if you must, but we can’t let the serpent’s egg of protectionism grow to full size.”
Protecting your nations interest at one time used to be considered Patriotism, today it means you are a serpents egg needing to be boiled or crushed, and then cooked sunny side up. Nobody wants to be a serpents egg that gets crushed by the Luciferian elite, especially if their reward is not being culled and given elite status.
“The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.” — James Madison
But think tanks will, because that is where all the real historians are making a good living on the largess of their corporate overlords.
We know from the Zimbardo prison study, replicated confirming his results, that normal people, put into positions of power over, will extend that power to its limits without clear instructions, prohibitions and oversight. We have watched it happen at the Lyndie England level and the presidential level. It happened in Massachusetts in the 1600’s, all over Europe during the Crusades and in Germany in the 20th century. England made decisions to bomb civilian populations. Only a transparent government can control misuse of power - with the oversight of the people through their elected senators and congressmen. We did not have that for most of the Bush years.
Nice article. The fact that this entire administration isn’t behind bars at this point is a travesty in itself.
This unnecessary war and the subsequent violations of international law will go down as one of the darkest periods in this nation’s history.
~OnTheLeft.org
Trailer for : Washington ,You’re Fired
http://www.livevideo.com/video/genefire/EAC73FE426334E7498C474CF51189562/washington-you-re
I have often wondered about what Congress is spending my tax dollars on. No Child Left Alive…
GAZA (Reuters) - A 14-year-old Palestinian girl was killed on Saturday during clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants in the town of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, medical workers said.
Seven ropes wouldn’t be nearly enough. But a head mounted on each picket of the fence…
Canuckchuck You don`t need rope, just put their heads on sticks on the White House lawn
History will never absolve us.
But,
It will absolve them.
Who do you think writes his-story anyway.
They Do!
Wake up and smell the Coffee.
All these stinking neo-con shills are
Writing their memoirs right now
How I Funked America
And
Laughed all the way to
The Rotschild Bank.
Everything is scripted.
Read between the lines.
The King has got no cloths!
The Sheeple are Starving.
And The Wheel Turns
Round and Round.
Get Ready for Round III
The official American narrative may have many grand delusions, but the Truth is out there and those with eyes to see recognize it. The same will hold true of this diabolical debacle in the form of the not-so-bloodless (911 as planned trigger) coup that’s taken over this nation and turned it into a rogue entity with an absolutely MONSTROUS military.
Those who ask why citizens don’t rebel as prior, well, one reason is that we’re in a state of lock-down… there are SO many armed “guards” who answer to the power structure, itself run by a mad man and his team. Second is the propaganda that’s anesthetized those who might project a collective force IF they understood what was going on; but they don’t.
DOOM & GLOOM: Excellent post. I generally agree with much that you submit in this forum, and wonder, don’t you believe in a higher power? Sometimes things happen… could be a gigantic dust storm, earth quake, plane crash that wrecks the plans of ego-driven men. Many wonder how “God could allow” the tragedy already so deeply at play in Iraq, and the answer as I understand it distills to free will. God, as the Creative principle, may not directly act as a SUBSTITUTE for human free will which in a very slow evolution is intended to GROW more God-like, and as the Masters have ALL taught, that begins with compassion and treating our fellow man/woman as we would prefer to be treated. The maiming of children, the residue of depleted uranium a trail from Hades, the disruption of lives, the MURDER of a nation are hardly what JESUS would do. I find it most abhorrent that religious people (of all 3 major patriarchal stripes) have used their sense of righteousness AGAINST their brothers and sisters of other hues and spiritual orientations.
I PRAY that Iran be spared. The stench and stink and blood bath of this White House MUST BE STOPPED. One could act as bravely as Rachel Corrie and be run over by one of their tanks, but would it stop the machine? ONLY the Truth can set our population free… and as someone else noted, I, too, am hoping the military itself mutinies… it’s amazing how programmed some of these people in uniform really are… they can’t see beyond their own promotion to the fact there may be no viable world left for their egos to parade around.
Good points: EL MYSTERIOSO, EPHRAIM, OLD PRO
If anyone votes for a Republican or Democrat in the next election, that person is supporting a system which will continue abusing the law and morality.
One could not vote for the NAZI and remain free of the justifiable guilt of those crimes of the NAZI.
If you don’t work, as Stalin said, you won’t eat.
St. Paul said it first (2 Thessalonians 3:10), Mr. Religious-child-abuse-is-good Environmentalism-is-evil.
You know what really bothers me-I’m 78 and I won’t be around long enough to see these mother fuckers swinging from the yardarm.
Sorry George, If you would like to know what torture is why not go to Iraq and help pick up what is left of people that has been tortured. And come back a write the truth.
Tom did you read me all? it was factious. l am tired of hearing Obama called black, he is as white as black and the way the term black is applied to him is not in a positive way but plays on white racism. The white man is afraid. He is being dominated in football, baseball, basketball, tennis, track and field,and now that last bastion of whiteism golf, the entertainment industry; whats left but politics and there we we have Colin Powell and Condie Rice. My God the sky is falling.
Notice that the sanctimonious Ashcroft based his reservations not on Christian theology, as one would expect of a Christian, nor on law, as one would expect of an attorney, nor on ethics, as one would expect of any decent person of any faith or none at all. No, he based it on vanity (and possibly fear of prosecution, although apparently not otherworldly consequences).
So many comments seem to typically contain the hidden assumption that it takes some external force, person, situation, to change things, usually something despairingly powerless in the current state of affairs. I hear the despair.
I have become convinced that I have the power to change the world, that I can do it, and that’s all it takes. This turns conventional thought on its head, and would appear to be insane to most people, a kind of megalomania, which it is not, it is the exact opposite of megalomania. I believe that all it takes to change the world is for me to change myself into a more mature, responsible, and loving person. That’s all I have to do, nothing more than that, and nothing less. The ripple effect from that change is immeasurable, and it has the power to tear down the largest mountain.
I do not accept that I am the victim of the military-media-industrial-government conspiracy. I am 100% responsible for it, another apparently “insane” idea, and yet what I mean is that I am 100% able to respond to it. I have an answer. I have more than one answer. Having a better idea is far more effective than recrimination and revolt. Very soon the world will be ready to hear hundreds of thousands of people like myself, who also have changed themselves internally to be the change, and not demand the change from some external source.
The wave of change is happening all around us if we are open to perceiving it, and it is time to paddle like hell to match speeds with the wave so that when it breaks we are moving forward and not left behind. Those who ascribe to the “Left Behind” series of fictions, those who cling to blaming others and feeling superior, who refuse to accept that we are all in this together, are in for a big surprise.
“Toture Nation” we have a lot of competition. I don’t think we would even be in the finals look at the countries of the mid east, Cuba, Venezuela, Peru under Fujimoro, Russia, China, Korea, many of the African Countries. You use exaggeration and you lose credability.