To the editor:

How can one address the current public abuses in 250 words? Rumsfeld’s lies and Bush/Cheney complicity in the ordering of sexual torture (documented by the Associated Press and Seymour Hersh) have brought American discredit to a new low. May I remind my fellow Americans that 9-11 doesn’t warrant abandonment of civil behavior; if it does, then “they” have won, and let’s just admit that we no longer are a civil society.

There are an unfortunately large number of Americans who seem to get emotional release from this invasion of Iraq and now from this sexual torture that has been uncovered. Rather than heaping abuse on people we don’t know or seemingly understand, we should be looking at why torture, rape and murder are now acceptable behavior for representatives of our attempted republic.

Civility and a sense of common decency are no longer claimable as they once (dubiously) were in the United States that I grew up in. We have lost whatever moral high ground we ever may have had. Rush Limbaugh and his ilk hammer on about acceptable torture. And now comes James Inhofe of Oklahoma (no doubt a “good” Christian) to shill for the perpetrators. Meanwhile, Bush stutters on, saying nothing intelligible.

I wish I could say I was surprised — but it seems clear that these right-wingers who have hijacked our government know no bottom. Reprise the Jeffersonian Revolution!

Doug Harvey,

Lawrence