SIVACRACY.NET

Here is that link that Matt offers us that lends perspective to the discussion of brutality. I recommend it as well. I don't agree with its snide tone. But I deliver plenty of snideness right here. So, you know, glass houses.

I can't refuse Matt's call for perspective. He is right that nothing the United States has done comes close to the brutality of the Soviet Union or Saddam's Iraq. Let's just agree on that.

So I will try to revise my tone in the future. I trust Matt and others will call me on it when I get out of line.

Please understand that it's hard to render passionate commitments to justice in sober tones in a medium such as this. I do not write scholarly tomes up here. I rant and rave. You might have to discount my tone in accordance to that fact.

Avoid, erase, or ignore the tone and diction and the facts remain. The facts.

I can't take seriously he protestation of a draft-dodging hypocrite like Donald Rumsfeld. Nor should you. This man was Saddam's best friend when it served his interests. You never heard a peep about genocide and chemical weapons in Iraq back when the US supported such actions and weapons. Now we are being asked to believe Rumsfeld that people are being treated humanely and legally?

Perspective demands we call out hypocrites wherever they are.

This country is great because it has a template for justice. Only rarely has it lived up to its potential to be good and just. But in my lifetime it has come pretty damn close most of the time.

I don't want the country I love so dearly to devolve into just another kleptocratic and autocratic state run by and for the elite. I can't accept excuses and caveats that cynically justify brutality and torture.

I look at history, listen to the present, and I get scared. It's the facts, man.