Friday, January 23, 2009

remaking America...



























Illustration by: Matt Mahurin
, downloaded from The Washington Independent

NO MORE!

A little over 400 years ago, Shakespeare knew it. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia says: "
I fear you speak upon the rack, Where men enforced do speak anything."


Thursday, hitting the ground running, President Obama signed an executive order putting an end to "enhanced interrogation techniques", including waterboarding.

This i
s a very, very, very, very, very good thing.

And there are more good things to come. I'm sure of it.

5 comments:

Lisa :-] said...

Did you know waterboarding was used during the Inquisition? And we're still using it today (or were...) How very...progressive of us.

Ugh!

emmapeelDallas said...

Yes, when I first heard about it (and I can't remember when that was!) I read up on it. I kept expecting Bush to bring back The Iron Maiden and other tools of torture. Last fall someone I work with commented how waterboarding "wasn't torture". Uh-huh. If it took 35 seconds, as Kiarkura (sp?) says, to break a known terrorist using this technique, how long would Bush & Cheney last? Of course, this non-torture will never be used on them. I'm just happy to see these horrible things coming to an end.

Kathy said...

You've said it all. It's long past time to make THIS change.

Anna said...

This the end of the Bush era and long overdue. I have high hopes for the Obama administration. The sentiments he expressed in his inaugural speech are things we would never have heard from the Bush administration. It is good to see the immediate implementation of those sentiments. He is the first truly inspirational leader this country has had in my lifetime.

sunflowerkat said...

Obama knows how to communicate that HOPE is connected to making conscious decisions and sacrifice...not luck. That's leadership.

I'm so thankful that some of his first actions is to take steps to demonstrate to the rest of the world that we're not monsters. Through terrible acts like this, the Bush administration took away any reason to be proud to be American. This WAS inhumane! With Obama's leadership, hopefully we will become the nation of good people that we can be.