Capitulating on Torture (proofed and updated at 9:45 am)

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here" may as well be etched above the doors of the Senate. McCain, Warner and Graham have capitulated. Bush got everything he wanted.

They betrayed America. They betrayed all current and future generations of American troops. They caved. They folded like a bunch of cheap suits. They had a chance to do the right thing, and they blew it. God help us all. The American soul just perished.

Within minutes, Stephen Hadley was crowing to the reich-tards at "The Corner" that aWol got everything he wanted, and that "the program could now go forward."

I am not a lawyer, nor am I an expert on foreign policy. So I tracked down the language of the agreement, and you can read it for yourselves: As I said, I am not a legal authority. But I didn't see where waterboarding, hypothermia, sleep deprivation or stress positions are explicitely forbidden, and that is what I was looking for.

I hope that Hadley and I are wrong. And I hope that the dems filibuster if we are right.

My husband resigned his commission in the USAF right before aWol was inaugurated in January 2001 because he refused to serve under this president. Being a man of honor, he refused to serve a disreutable and dishonorable Commander in Chief.

The military had some very difficult problems to overcome in the 1970's. The lies of the Viet Nam era were apparent and seasoned officers were resigning in droves. Around this time virtually an entire West Point class was caught cheating.

My husband and men and women like him stepped up back then to restore the remnants of the Honor Code when it lay in tatters in the wake of the lies that perpetrated the fiasco in Viet Nam. They restored honor and dignity to the uniforms that they wore with pride. They understood explicitly the urgency of restoring the Honor Code; they understood that the Honor Code is all that stands between an army and tyranny over the populace. They also understood that the officer corp is responsible for the health of the Honor Code. They realized this, and acted with honor. They led by example. and restored the Honor Code by earning the respect of their Airmen and NCO's.

My husband and his fellow officers and Airmen in SAC won the cold war, and the world is most definitely better for it. I have a militaristic understanding that I will not appologize for, even though sometimes it makes me sound rather hawkish. But I have earned that right. Looking back at the way the cold war played out, we were right. MAD worked, and we bankrupted the Soviet Union before we bankrupted ourselves. I know what it cost in dollars. I also know what we didn't pay in lives.

At no point in history has any group of people held so much power, nor at any point have the posessors of such power shown such restraint. The men and women of SAC, and the officers who led them, were a unique group of highly intelligent and dedicated individuals. Every time I drove on base in the first years, the emblem and motto that epitomized the Airmen and officers of SAC greeted me. The emblem was an iron fist, holding an olive branch and a lightning bolt. The motto read "Peace is our Profession." The men and women of SAC took that motto, and their mission, seriously.

They saw the mission through, and SAC was disolved and the Strategic Command was born. After the SAC mission, my husband was an intelligence officer. I can't tell you much because (a) I do not know much, since he does not spill secrets; and (2) telling what I might think I know would not be worth the trouble it could potentially land me in.

But I can tell you that he was in electronic intelligence during the Balkan crisis. And I can also tell you that the Geneva Conventions gave us comfort and peace of mind should the unthinkable have occured and he found himself in a prisoner of war position.

The Geneva Conventions and the Constitution of the United States were two of the civilizing doccuments of western civilization that my husband felt compelled to don a uniform to uphold. My father joined the Navy on December 8, 1941. He stayed in for the very same reasons my husband joined the military thirty-five years later, in April of 1976.

Tom served two Democratic Comanders-in-Chief and two Republican. And he honestly thought that one man could not screw things up this badly all by himself.

Well, he shouldn't have been able to. But he has enjoyed a craven, corrupt and complicit congress, where both chambers want to change the meaning of "civilized" and embrace barbarism in the quest to eradicate barbarism. The depth to which they are willing to sink is unconsionable to the very spirit of America.

Americans must speak out at the ballot box in five short weeks. (Vote absentee if your precinct votes on electronic voting machines.) What is being done in our name is criminal - literally - and if we allow this outrage to go forward with the blessing of a majority of Americans, we are lost.

I know what the Geneva Conventions mean to me, as the wife of an officer who did the fucking job. While my husband was restoring the Honor Code, George Bush was doing blow in a Houston strip club and vice was pursuing "other priorities."

Meanwhile, I know what it is like to sleep alone for a year and cling to phone calls that never come frequently enough or last long enough in duration. I know what it is like to have a spouse incommunicado and learn that something terrible has happened in the neighborhood where he is gathering intelligence, and it has been 16 days since you heard from him and four more days will pass - I have felt that terror of the unknown that makes your spine turn to ice.

I have sucked it up and been both Mom and Dad. I have coached little league and soccer. I replaced the windows in his parents house and did the trim carpentry on the inside. I changed out the water heater that died, and ditto the garbage disposal. When the Bronco blew a head gasket I tore it down and took the heads in for resurfacing then rebuilt the top end of a 351 Cleaveland with our 13-year-old son and a Chiltons Motor Manual. (I know that I have 110 ft. lbs. of torque in my right arm because that is what you tighten the headbolts on a 351 C to.) When his deployment was drawing to an end, I packed up a four-bedroom house by myself and then drove three kids and two big dogs across the country in that Bronco I rebuilt to get a home ready for him to return to, 2000 miles away from the last one.

I did not do what I did, and more importantly, my husband did not do what he did, so this president could start illegal wars, detain prisoners indefinitely without charge and force confession via "harsh questioning methods." In other words, they are advocating a stance that puts the men and women now doing the job my husband did in danger of abuse, torture and due process violations. It puts them at risk of death. I understand this accutely, and I can not give my blessing to this "compromise." You shouldn't either.