I was at one time someone who had some respect and admiration for Sen. John McCain because if his POW history and his understanding of what torture was and what it means for those who allow it to be practiced. Now that he is leaning away from his own long-held principles I have lost that respect.

[In] 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

“Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. “We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II,” he said.

To allow torture is to drag our country down in the same mud with the worst empires on our planet. It makes us equals with the terrorists, not better. It strips us of the right to complain when some other nation decides to torture an American for whatever reason.

The rhetoric and voting patterns on Capitol Hill expose individual congress members for who they really are...worse, for what they think America really is.

More and more, Americans are hated in other parts of the world. Perhaps we deserve it because we have not being good citizens in recent years. America does not start wars....right? Afghanistan? Iraq? Who's next? ( Check the list of who has oil. )

We don't invade to protect oppressed peoples. We have not "liberated" Cuba. They have nothing we need. We have not "liberated" N. Korea..same reason. We did not "liberate" Lybia. We stand by while African nations are destroyed by civil war, famine, disease and military generals. They don't own anything we want. How many cruel dictators can you name who are still in power, but who don't control any wealth or oil?

We are economic terrorists who are willing to invade countries for their resources.

Which fear most weighs on your mind?  In my mind to be a nation attached by a terrorist is not as bad as a nation attacked by everyone! We had sympathy after 911. We no longer deserve that sympathy. We have become the invaders, the ones with the bombs, the (not so) secret prisons and torture chambers.

When our citizens finally reach the realization that we have sacrificed the very things that once set us apart in the world in order to feel "secure", it may be too late to return to our former glory. When fear of a "terrorist" is replaced by fear of your own government, was the trade worth it?

Perhaps Osama Bin Laden had his plan right from the beginning. If he hated us enough to destroy America as the land of the free, all he needed to do was enlist the eager aid of a president, bent on personal power. 911 did that. Bin Laden can sit back now and laugh at us as we allow our President and Congress do for him what mere bombs could not do...destroy what was America the Free.

It is an oxymoron to ask American's to sacrifice their freedoms in order to protect their freedoms.

It's time to kick out everyone currently in office and replace them. Then replace them again until they listen to a higher calling, The Constitution of the United States and to the People it is intended to protect.

//