Thursday, May 14, 2009

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

This letter is a plea for simple justice however it will not be couched in diplomatic terminology, bromides, platitudes or flattery; nor will it mince words because I am incapable of anything but telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

First of all your reason for failing to release additional photographs depicting the atrocities committed in Abu Ghraib prison is not only reminiscent of the spin foisted on the American people by the Bush Administration, it is entirely spurious, perniciously specious and totally fallacious.

These incidents occurred in 2003:

SALON.COM

The abuses at Abu Ghraib that were photographed on Oct. 18 and 19, along with detainee testimony, show the visceral effects of the interrogation tactics once sanctioned for detainees at Guant�namo by Rumsfeld. Many of the photos depict a single detainee shackled naked to a bed with underwear on his head. A July 1, 2004, report on Abu Ghraib by the Army's CID said this man was "possibly" a detainee named H-----. Graner, however, whose camera was used to take most of these photos, told CID investigators on April 6, 2005, that these pictures showed another detainee named W-----, whom Graner called "Taxi Driver." Graner said he was ordered by a civilian interrogator working at Abu Ghraib to strip, shackle and hood the detainee as part of a sleep deprivation program.

Regardless of which detainee these pictures show, both H----- and W----- told eerily similar tales to Army investigators. "They stripped me of all my clothes, even my underwear," H----- told CID investigators on Jan. 18, 2004. "They gave me woman's underwear that was rose color with flowers in it, and they put the bag over my face. One of them whispered in my ear, 'Today I am going to fuck you,' and he said this in Arabic."

The people of Iraq who are in a position to do harm to our troops do not need photos to inflame them, they have access to the reality; if indeed children were sodomized while their mothers watched, those children and their mothers, those who have survived this act of naked aggression can provide eyewitness accounts of these atrocities; and, those who along with members of their families who entertained thoughts of revenge must have acted on these by now, or failed to act on these long since.

If the memories of these atrocities deeply embedded in the psyches of victims, that all Iraqi citizens must be aware of, have not put our troops in danger, how in the world could mere photos, pale reproductions of these horrors have this effect.

The intent of your refusal to release these photographs is political, it is driven by the fear that the conscience of Americans will be belatedly be ignited and that they will demand that justice be done.

As a human being, a member of the human species, I demand that justice be done, I demand that President George Bush be impeached, these photos document war crimes, crimes not only against members of the Iraqi population but against all humanity.

If you fail to do all in your power to ensure that justice is done, I hold you an accessory after the fact to these crimes and just another corrupt agent of the political culture that exists within the Washington Beltway - and beneath contempt.

I call upon you to act consistent with the fundamental decency Americans discerned in you that caused them to flock to your meetings and afford you an overwhelming majority in the November elections.

I say to you, whether you are aware of it or not, the road has forked for your Presidency, either you will take the high road of morality that will ensure that:

this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Or you will walk the low road of political expediency, opportunism and back door deals that holds no one responsible for their actions that will destroy beyond recapture the thus far unfulfilled hope and promise of democracy.

This is our Sacred Mission to preserve democracy for with all its manifest inadequacies and inconsistencies it represents the key to freedom, it is time for you to move beyond rhetoric and campaigning, beyond high flown high sounding concepts to action consistent with American values, it is time for you to take a stand for simple justice.

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