All the Republicans and their followers have are lies and denial. The spectacle of Addington and Yoo arrogantly refusing to answer direct questions from Congress was appalling.

There has to be a way to bring all of these people to justice. Even if Bush issues blanket pardons on the way out.

I wish someone would please tell me why the Bush Crime Family is considered morally above Saddam. Everyone of these criminal acts that made it legal for Dubya and his thugs to torture and destroy the principles we live by in this country makes us just as bad as every despot in the world. This is not cheering for a football team we have spirit for, this is being accomplices to crimes that will destroy our standing with the rest of the world for generations to come. It is time to impeach these bastards and it is time for someone to pay for their crimes. Giving the Medal of Freedom to thugs who carry out the orders of a drunken, AWOL, coward, is not to be considered proper. The Medal of Freedom will never have the same meaning after this administration. I am sickened to death.

i thought the nazis were inhuman monsters. but it turns out, they were not so different from some americans, in the pentagon, and in the white house. the only real difference was that they lost their war.

when you reflect on the fact that that dubya's grandfather did time for his active support of the nazis, you can see a certain generational continuity. in that household, the nazis weren't psychopathic monsters, just 'misunderstood'.

nowadays, americans don't shrink from torture, shrug away bombing innocents, regard police-state surveillance as vigilance against some 'enemy' who is everywhere and omnipotent. how ironic that '1984' was worried about the soviet union!

until you start hanging some of these malefactors, or invite brussels to put them in a box, the stench of your nation's character will continue to make you unwelcome elsewhere, save among those who are willing to do business with the devil.

obama isn't going to save you, either. your problems need more than a children's crusade, more than mantras and wishful thinking.

To watch a brief animation that touches on Richard Myers' lasting contributions to history, click my signature or go here:

http://www.ericblumrich.com/buddy.html

Al Loomis,

Prescott Bush did not do time though he hade funds confiscated (and they were returned after the war ended.)

I've read some on Prescott and there is a lot suspect in his past. (Including, they say being in on a plot to overthrow Roosevelt and create a fascist state! where the hell did I put that tinfoil hat?)

One of the things i found surprising is he was a founding(I think)member of Planned Parenthood and the United Negro College Fund.

Who knew?

(and yes, Hitler loved dogs.)

;-/

By the way Al, where do you live?

terrible government no matter who is in power, why vote? I've never missed an election in more than 30 years of voting, from municipal to federal - but I have become completely jaded and cynical over the past 20 years, and on the fast track over the past 8.

How CAN we, as a country, not hold the Bush-Cheney regime to account for their lawlessness?

HOW CAN WE NOT?

I would like to read an article on this subject that never uses the term "harsh-interrogation program" (techniques) but calls it torture from start to finish.

I'll bet Myers is a church going Christian just like Bush and all the rest of these "God fearing" assholes.

Yeah, I'm totally with you. Call it what it is. I think the fact that the media hasn't been calling it torture makes a real difference in the way Americans think about this.

It would really make me feel better if someone responsible actually paid for this monstrous behavior.

For a variety of complicated political and legal reasons, few in Washington think any high-level Bush administration officials will ever face a judge because of their actions.

About all we can hope for is that the Europeans do the needful and issue warrants. They might still never see a judge, but at least they won't be able to travel in the civilized world.

Where's a Spanish judge when you need one?

This is just soul crushing. As an American, as a human being it is deeply shameful and shaming that we are not rioting in the streets to bring this to an end, to force the Congress to act and remove these people from office, from public life, from the freedom to live autonomously among other human beings.

Reading this I am struck even more forcefully of the barbarism of our so called civil society. It is frightening... which sounds trite to me as I write it... horrifying that this has been an agenda that has elements grounded in ego driven competitiveness. In some way these disgusting monsters believe this to be justifiable. Is it purely abstraction to them?

How can any human being believe this to be justifiable?

Has our entire society gone mad?

It seems to me that we are degenerating, our culture has been declining ever more rapidly.

Why is that?

Is it that capitalism has run rampant with no balance or considerations of anything but the bottom line?

Is it because people do not understand that just because we can doesn't mean we should? From the smallest to the largest areas we are adolescent in our need to consume, to do what we want, have what we want when we want it.

We used to be rugged individualists now it seems we have become crass spoiled brats and bullies, without tolerance, decency, civility for anyone who is not on board with us. There is an almost mass cultural malignant narcissism taking over. For proof of that just look at some of the blog sites during the primary. Huffington Post, Kos, Atrios... the venom, hatred, malice, contempt, and verbal violence has been literally sickening. And this from "progressives" against other progressives.

What has happened to us? Who have we become?

Where is our compassion, our kindness, our mercy?

Are we so anesthetized to violence that we are only outraged or disgusted or despairing by it in its most extreme forms? Are we so numb that the daily little and not so little violences we all commit, from shouting an obscenity at the jerk who cut us off to tearing down the fallen pop star we built up to such dizzying heights (KO loves to do that)to eviscerating a Presidential candidate or anyone else we really no nothing about,to the thousand cuts we can inflict on a loved one? Are these things really so acceptable to us now that they are rendered meaningless- like the word fuck? Are they symptoms of cultural decline?

Yes, I know there are stories of heroism and tenderness. A guy risks his life to go into a burning building and pull some one out. A woman starts taking care of an abandoned teenager and a bond is formed that changes two lives and ripples out. There are countless of those kinds of men and women living anonymously among us. But they are not the norm.

When we hear about them it is so striking just because we are living in such a time that seems so barren of such acts.

My favorites are animal stories of devotion or courage. I don't know why. Perhaps it is the utter goodness in those stories. The fact that the animal does not reap any rewards, not even the knowledge of praise and adulation, a picture in the paper.

When I dwell on these things I find myself thinking that really, there is no way to find our path back to decency. (were we ever, except as individuals here and there?)Can we repair the damage human beings have done to each other?

It is all humanity throughout history doing this though one is tempted to scream about America. And yes, of course, it is true, we should. America... which is us... set ourselves up to be morally superior (and therefore entitled to more?)to be a light, a refuge from oppression for the world and so it seems all the more shocking, this new policy, this sanction of barbarism.

We are born from genocide, yes, we bear the guilt of genocide, slavery, clandestine and systemic inequalities and violence but somehow we always righted ourselves (though never perfectly I know and often it took/takes far too long) we rooted it out as best we could and tried to be better, to ensure we wouldn't repeat that mistake.

This is a new guilt, a new shame we have to bear and somehow I do not see us rooting it out, showing the world we do not tolerate these things. No. Are Democrats afraid? Cynical? Complicit? In the name of not making trouble? Why are we not holding them accountable?

I cannot fathom this, I really cannot.

How far from that more perfect union we have traveled in these years.