Peace

I am a Muslim and an American. This article scared me in many ways.

One of my teachers once said that God allows a people to prosper as long as they are just. With all their faults, America & The West have had a better track record for justice then many other nations. We have rule of law. The rich and the weak are both regularly held accountable for their actions.

I fear for my country as we continue this never ending "war." Are we going to inch by inch give up the principles that make this country great and strong? Are we going to become more and more unjust?

My greatest fear is that if we as Americans fail to make our leaders accountable for their crimes, and this article seems to implicate the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense, we will lose our place in the world, and the American century will not extend into this new one.

Good on Larry Wilkerson. But where are the cries of outrage from the rank-and-file right wing Christian zealots who helped Bush et al. to victory in 2004? Are they all just ditto-heads? Where is their righteous indignation over the torture, lies, undermining of social protection for "the least among us", and all the rest that's explicit in the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld agenda? Surely their avowed devotion to the Prince of Peace must be inconsistent with the policies of this crew?

And while I applaud Mr. Wilkerson, where's his old boss? Why isn't Colin Powell out there, in the public eye, expressing outrage, indignation -- whatever -- over the way he let himself and his considerable prestige be used by these war criminals? History will record him as a water-bearer, an Uncle Tom for these fascists. He should speak up. As a good soldier, he owes it to the country to do so.

As for the previous letter-writer's last assertion: If the US doesn't renounce its current policies, and reacquire the progressivism we promoted in years past, then the rest of the world will be substantially better off if the US slips off its dominant podium in global politics. (Kurt Vonnegut fantasized about a future in which the US "was balkanized as a threat to world peace". Maybe not such a bad thing.)

I thank Salon for giving us this information, it's what many of us have believed since before the Iraq War started, that there were no WMD and that, to quote the Downing Street Memo, "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy".

Wilkerson believes we are being run by radicals who are overstepping their Constitutional authority and bullying congress.

My question is, will the network news broadcasts ever mention this in the 10 minutes they routinely give to news, after which we get the fluff and infotainment.

The American people have been indefensibly let down in any quest they may have to get real news.

What angers me is how this, and similar testimonies, are coming out now, post Nov 2004 election.

Granted, this country rallied around the President post 9/11 (heck, the whole world did). But then with time, the scales fell from our eyes, and folks began to see the truth. And I realize that everyone goes through this process at different speeds.

So while I'm grateful for testimony like this, which supports my disdain for this administration, I'm also so troubled that former administration officials have waited so long to speak out.

It's too late. The very extreme Bush/Cheney administration was rewarded with four more years.

I agree with Oldandintheway when he points out that "Wilkerson believes we are being run by radicals who are overstepping their Constitutional authority and bullying congress."

The only problem with that diagnosis lays within "radical." In the popular mind "radical" means "leftist," thus giving Bush & Co. a pass from scrutiny by everyone but the leftist commentariat who haven't the popular appeal Bush has.

To echo cgside, Powell's silence is deafening. Not only should he take a strong stand against the hijacking of the government, but take a step forward by arguing for impeachment of the President. One way to get folks to wake up -- especially Republicans -- would be for him to go even further and propose war crimes trials for Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.

Gordon Fearey

Why didn't Col. Wilkerson see fit to bring up his revelations about the extent and source of American torture policies back in 2004? He could have made a difference in the election, had he spoken up. Instead, he bowed out the moment the Administration's second term started.

Was he worried about losing his cushy pension, if he exposed Cheney/Bush's torture record before retiring? Afraid to be Swift-Boated along with John Kerry for offending his Dear Leader? Or was Col. Wilkerson looking to cash in with an expose, and the lucrative speaking tour that would accompany it?

Maybe that's it. He did Bush's right wing dirty work, like a good soldier, and when it no longer mattered, left the administration to rake it in bigtime from the lefties.

I was hoping that the outrage over prisoner abuse in Iraq would translate to outrage over prisoner abuse in California, but the prison guards' union just forced the new prison director out of his job and the reform program now looks very endangered.

And the elections are coming up and the prison guards' union is wealthy and powerful and they're probably going to have their way with the so-called "Democrats" in California.

I still cannot understand why Iraqi prisoners deserve more rights than the ones in California.

I guess they're not really "human" rights after all.

But thank God, in Abu Ghraib, some of the abusers actually got held accountable, and that tiny bit of justice is like a miracle in the field of prisoner abuse.

You will never, ever, ever see that much accountability in California.

While I suppose hearing Col. Wilkerson's allegations is better than not, it really means little in terms of holding the Bush Administration accountable. That time has passed. Wilkerson's comments, while admirable, smack of the same kind of Monday morning quarter-backing that is common these days when discussing Iraq. It now appears the EVERYONE, with the exception of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfewitz and Bush himself, was against invasion and felt the intelligence was weak. The point is: no one of any caliber, including Col. Wilkerson, stood up when it mattered and went public with their concerns.

Col. Wilkerson's public statements amount to little more than a DNA exoneration of an already-hanged man.