Whats happening to my country:?! A cri du couer

My God where are we going?

This POW revelation......my GOD...thats not what we are about, is it/?

Im shocked, shamed, by all this.......

That is what we're about.

Wake up.

It's not all that we're about, but it's a significant part of our history.

On edit: sorry, meant to respond to the original post!

Mai lai? Napalm? I wasn't that old, but war is a horror and it's not like they just invented this.

imagine what Lady Liberty must be thinking ...

This is what made America.

Is there a sane country out there?

I swear to god, sometimes I feel like I've been living in an alternate universe and once in a while someone knew shows up and says, what the hell is going on?

Well, welcome to the real world. This kind of crap has been going on in various forms for a long long time. YES this is what the US has become. And much worse than either one of us know. They've kept it secret because they KNEW that if the American people really understood what our foreign policy does--how it is that we manage to remain "the richest and strongest country in the world," the American people would be appalled.

I'm sorry that this has come as a shock to you. Some of us have known it for YEARS and have been SCREAMING about it--mostly to no avail! Please explain to me why photos of torture in prison can be so shocking and shaming but the photos of little girls with their feet blown off by cluster bombs isn't? Is the latter any less intentional--any more justifiable? How so.

edit: typo

Thanks. It is incredibly frustrating to live in a culture of institutionalized self boosterism and denial of the harsh realities of American foreign policy and not be believed. Anyone who is proud of America is either ignorant of the crimes committed in our names or an evil f*ck who's proud to ride the rest of the world like a mule.

I have to admit, it took me a while. Maybe I'm a slow learner, but the things that I'd heard and read about for decades just didn't connect. Not THIS country, no no no. Not the most awesome wonderful wealthy democratic fair equal-minded just bla bla bla country in the world.

But yes. YES. It took a while for the ugly facts to sink in. VietNam. Latin America. South America. Haiti. All over the world.

Now I believe it. Just like I believe what happened at the Abu Ghraib prison was done by the same country. It's a big letdown, to be sure.

I thought you were one of the apologists.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1504522


"Why is everybody so shocked?"

"About this prisoner "torture" thing (and it seems like little if any real torture went on)?
Sometimes I think we Americans have way inflated opinions of ourselves, of how good or noble we are.
Any cursory reading of US history should disabuse anyone of that notion.... we can be pretty damn nasty. I think the history of racial violence and lynching proves that, as does our treatment of the Indians, and, later, the kind of air war we waged on Japan (heck, McNamara himself, in a recent biographical film, said if we had lost WWII, Curtis LeMay and himself would be tried as war criminals).
Given past history what happened with these Iraqi prisoners seems pretty penny-ante.
So, no, I'm not "shocked". Not shocked at all.
Maybe a bit suprised at the weak command and control in that camp and lack of military discipline, but not shocked that Americans could do this."

nt

nt

and it aint pretty!
http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/soa.htm