What Is Happening to Our Country?

I just finished reading an article by Bob Herbert of the New York Times entitled, "Madness and Shame" and it is reflections on a new book, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War On American Ideals" by Jane Mayer. She talks about a man I had never heard of, a man named David Addington. After doing some research and finding out more about him, I could feel a cold shiver down my spine. He is apparently Dick Cheney's right hand man since Scooter is no longer avaiable and he's the lead architect of the Bush administration's legal strategy for the so-called war on terror. From what I can see, the terror is Addington himself. The horror of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the CIA's secret prisons, known as "black sites" are products of the mind-set of this man whom most people have never heard of. Again I was reminded of a post I made a week or so ago about the death of a French general I had met in Germany many years ago and how the memory of using torture had haunted him until he died a few years ago. Those memories were mentioned in the obit piece written about him. Maybe we could learn something from them.

What is going to happen to this country with people like this who read into the Constitution things that were never meant to be? How can we be a beacon of hope and freedom to the rest of the world when we are governed, however secretly -- maybe even more so, by men like these? Our image is so damaged even now by the likes of the Cheneys and Addingtons and Bushes that it will take decades to regain, to re-polish it. When will we say, enough is enough?