The End of America

Naomi Wolf has an excellent post at firedoglake -- a must read! Wolf, the author of The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot, spells out many things that have concerned me over the past few years. One of which is current:

I read the news in a state of something like walking shock: seven soldiers wrote an op-ed critical of the war — in the New York Times; two are dead, one shot in the head. A female soldier who was about to become a whistleblower, possibly about abuses involving taxpayers’ money; shot in the head. Pat Tillman, who was contemplating coming forward in a critique of the war; shot in the head. Donald Vance, a contractor himself, who blew the whistle on irregularities involving arms sales in Iraq — taken hostage FROM the US Embassy BY US soldiers and kept without recourse to a lawyer in a US held-prison, abused and terrified for weeks — and scared to talk once he got home. Another whistleblower in Iraq, as reported in Vanity Fair: held in a trailer all night by armed contractors before being ejected from the country.

Last month contractors, immune from the rule of law, butchered 17 Iraqi civilians in cold blood. Congress mildly objected — and contractors butchered two more innocent civilian Iraqi ladies on Tuesday — in cold blood.

Today the New York Times reports that the State Department is not cooperating with Iraqi or FBI investigators into the matter of the Blackwater massacre of seventeen Iraqi civilians.

She then asks the question we must ask ALL our elected officials: "Is it treason yet?'

Congress has the power to put and end to this, what they lack is the courage. The Democrats are not going to take action, they have made that very clear, so it's up to moderate Republicans and Independents to put pressure on REPUBLICANS to stand up to this administration. No one, including the President, is (or need I remind Congress, 'should be') immune from the rule of law.

It is well past time to send these thugs packing -- and Congress has the ability to do that.