Threads of Shame
By SEAN HANNON
May 4, 2004
Dear Editor,
Our brave flag is in tatters. Our beautiful and admired symbol of democracy has become soiled and stained with excrement and it reeks beyond all endurance. This proud banner, our declaration of decency and moral strength has been made grubby, lice infested and diseased. It is so not merely because of the detestable actions of six U.S. reservists in the torture chambers of Iraq. Nor is it just because these pathetic individuals were under the guidance of some rogue contingent of U.S. Military Intelligence and private contractors, mercenaries hired to interrogate prisoners in ways “we” never do.
It is not so simply because U.S. Maj. Gen. Taguba’s 53-page report of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib has been around since late February and General Richard B. Meyers, the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could not be bothered to read it before appearing on television on “This Week” to answer questions about it, even though he knew of its existence.
It is not so solely because the abuses at Abu Graib were reproduced in Guantanamo and right here at home, as we rounded up thousands of muslim immigrants living peacefully among us, erased their civil rights and claims to humane treatment, and, as some have alleged in lawsuits, severely tortured them in NYC holding cells for no cause.
It isn’t even because we incinerated 10,000 Iraqi civilians without a shred of any hard evidence that they posed a threat to us, or that our leadership manufactured false evidence to obfuscate that fact.
No, it is none of those things in isolation. They are all but single threads. Woven together, however, along with countless other sordid threads spun out by this administration, a cloth resembling nothing like our flag now flies ominously above the White House. I will not salute it.
