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Back to the open letter

Two weeks ago I posted an open letter to Bush and Kerry. At the urging of the Velveteen Rabbi, I actually sent it – electronically – to both candidates. I thought I should give an update. I got an almost immediate response from the Kerry campaign, a canned letter that thanked me for writing, but that I should understand while they try to read everything they get, it may take weeks before anyone actually gets to my submission, and they may never respond. The Bush campaign never responded. They didn’t even bother with the automated message. I think that’s kind…

Sadness

We are truly sad at the death of Nick Berg. He was a non-combatant, a secured prisoner, and was killed in the most horrendous way. Our sympathies to his family. Unfortuantely, I believe he would have been killed regardless of whether the details of Abu Ghuraib had come out or not; whether Abu Ghuraib happened or not. The viciousness evident in the video was looking for an excuse to be let loose. Once more, I have to say, these people are animals. The ideology of Islam as hatred has become so embedded in their psyche that they murmur platitudes to…

Prisoner Treatment, Morality, and #Torture

Juan Cole is brilliant in his analysis of how the US lost the moral high ground on prisoner treatment, in part because of our torture polices. But I fear that the argument that the public humiliation of prisoners is against international law won’t take the US very far after 8 years of Bush-Cheney. After the evidence surfaced that the US military took all those humiliating pictures of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to blackmail them by threatening to make them public, the US assertion of support for this principle of the Geneva Conventions will be met with, well, let us say…