September 26th, 2006
Dear Mr. President,
Being fifty years of age, I remember Watergate. That was peanuts, compared to what YOU are embroiled in!
But let's try to forget as many of your troubles as we can, for a moment, so we can concentrate on one thing.
So let's forget America's security failures which led up to, and allowed, 9-11. It happened, after all, fully EIGHT MONTHS into your watch. But forget it for a moment.
Forget your late friend Ken Lay. Forget your buddy Abramoff, and all of HIS friends. Forget all the corrupt politicians -- mostly Republicans -- we've learned about -- and all those we're undoubtedly still overlooking.
Forget Diebold's computerized voting machines, easily hacked, and all the other possible causes that Al Gore might have lost the election, other than honest, if misguided, voting by your religious fanatic fan base.
Forget for the moment (even though I would impeach your entire administration on this alone) Dick Cheney's secretly-created pro-nuclear energy policy, which resulted in pouring even more tens of billions of dollars down that rat-hole, instead of building security through encouraging renewable energy development, so that America does not have to rely on foreign oil OR uranium.
Forget when the US walked out of the World Conference Against Racism, rather than stay and discuss universal attempts to condemn Israel for its treatment of prisoners and for their suppression of democracy in Palestine, in the weeks before 9-11. We were despised globally at that time, and then, suddenly, we got the "sympathy vote" after 9-11 -- but paid for it dearly. But THEN you squandered that and 100 times that, too.
Now, nobody likes us -- again. But forget that, for the moment.
Forget, also, the horrors of your use of Depleted Uranium weapons in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Forget the aerosolized fumes DU weapons create, and the patina of hazardous waste they leave on the ground. Forget the damage these radioactive heavy-metal weapons do to our own returning soldiers, who ingested and inhaled their nanofragments and particulate dust on the battlefield. Forget what it does to their wives who get the burning semen in THEIR bodies, and what the radiation does to our soldier's progeny, through genetic damage.
Surely you can forget this: After all, you already deny it is happening!
Try to forget, as you must surely already have done, the innocent Afghan and Iraqi children who have been hurt by misguided "precision" weapons and cluster bombs as we "smoke out" the terrorists. What is "smoke out" a euphemism for, anyway? And why must we speak in euphemisms?
Forget that these suffering children (unlike, generally, the American soldier who is forced to "accidentally" wound them) generally do not have access to morphine to ease the pain immediately after being wounded and before going into shock. Or at any time -- medicines, doctors and operating rooms in Iraq and Afghanistan are in desperately short supply. But forget this horror, too.
You can even forget the unsound reasons you attacked Iraq -- you told us that it was filled with Al Qaeda terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, neither of which was true.
Forget all those lies.
Forget everything you did wrong when that blip on the radar that became Katrina hit New Orleans. They've rebuilt the showcase for the disaster, the Superdome, but what about all the homes, the schools, the fire and police stations, the busses that needed to be replaced because drivers didn't move them (local failures happened too)? Most of those are still in ruins. And the levees haven't been raised and strengthened to withstand Category 5 storms, as they should have been, long ago -- it would have been SO MUCH CHEAPER! And saved lives.
But forget all that.
I abhor torture. I'm sick of hearing that you are allowing torture. I couldn't stand to hear it the first time. I tried everything I could to believe it was a local event -- like the busses -- but it wasn't, was it? It was ADMINISTRATION POLICY. I hate repatriation to countries which allow torture. I hate secret trials. I hate cover-ups. I hate propaganda. I hate being lied to.
I cannot stand to let torture continue in my name. Not one day further. There is no reason for torture. Ignoring for just one moment the humanitarian issues involved, scientifically and statistically speaking, torture does NOT yield reliable information, and it INVARIABLY makes beasts of BOTH the torturer and -- if they survive -- the tortured.
Our country's most basic principles -- which YOU swore to uphold -- utterly forbid it, Geneva Convention or not.
Much of the Constitution has been misread, of late. The rest is being trampled upon.
I ask you, Sir, in the name of God, in the name of Justice, in the name of honor, in the name of humanity, in the name of freedom, in the name of all that is good, for the country, for the planet, for Democracy, to stop advocating or allowing the use of torture in my name.
Sincerely,
Russell "Ace" Hoffman
American Citizen
Carlsbad, CA
USA