'Cheney is vice president for torture'

Admiral Stansfield Turner was the former director of the CIA. He has just gone on record to say that the Bush White House has condoned and approved torture of prisoners.

You know, like a lot of people my age, i grew up in a decade captivated by war but without one of our own to fight. The 80s was the first decade since the 1930s which saw us participating in no major war. Having no wars to fight we turned war loving. we had the soviet threat, a real enemy, but we only had to fight him via Rambo or Braddock (Missing in Action). we began to feel guilty about the way we treated Vietnam vets in the years before, and helped shape our view of how we would treat our fighting men in the future.

I saw this in grade school. I grew up loving the military. I LOVED war movies. I loved playing war. I loved my GI Joe toys. I liked to get the encyclopedia out and read about the different branches of service. I knew all the words to a certain Lee Greenwood song of that era. One of the things that I learned...One of the things that made me patriotic and proud to be American was the fact that we didn't DO things that those crummy Commie Nations did.

We didn't jail people without charges.
We didn't deny people their right to an attorney.
We didn't deny people their right to a trial.
Finally, we didn't torture people.

That's what the villans did. That's what rambo fought against. Chuck Norris rescued POWs from those sorts of people. That sort of government. My GI Joes fought to keep people like that from controlling our lives. I remember VERY clearly being taught by TV, Movies, School, and my parents that THAT was what America is against and those are the SPECIFIC things I'd been told were wrong. evil. A couple of years ago I was told that THAT was the sort of thing Saddam Hussein did to his people.

Now that is what we do to people. My president is making us do the very things I had been taught were evil. Things that were worth fighting and killing and dying to stop. I always believed that. I'm not confused by any of this. I don't feel uneasy.

I am deeply, wholly, and utterly angry.