Accountability

By Amy Branham

Today I write as an American -- an American who is a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, aunt and friend. I am the daughter of a Vietnam Vet and the mother of a dead soldier. I am the mother-in-law of a soldier serving active duty in Iraq. I am a citizen of this country that was raised to believe that it is the greatest country in the world. This is, in part, a description of how I see myself and greatly influences how I view the world.

This morning I find myself feeling at odds over recent statements by President-Elect Barack Obama concerning this question posted by Bob Fertik at Change.gov:

"Will you appoint a special prosecutor -- ideally Patrick Fitzgerald -- to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?"

The response from Obama when George Stephanopoulos asked him the question directly on his show this weekend was this:

"We're still evaluating how we're going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions and so forth. And obviously we're going to be looking at past practices and I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."

He is right about one thing. No one is above the law. That means even the President of the United States and his Vice President.

I have become increasingly frustrated with the openly arrogant and flagrant comments of Bush and Cheney in the past weeks who have admitted publically (while not under oath) that they committed crimes that could be consider war crimes.

They must not be allowed to get away with this. Their actions have not made this country any safer than it was pre 9/11. Their actions have only served to erode the Constitution of the United States of America – a document that, by the way, President George W. Bush considers to be little more than a “goddamn piece of paper”.

No one is above the law. An investigation should be started immediately into the activities of the President and his buddies in Washington concerning what they knew and what they did that has undermined our Constitution, our freedom and the stability of this country.

What we need in this country is accountability – a concept that seems lost on those elected officials who are supposed to be serving We, The People.

The soldiers and their families need accountability for being lied to and sent into harm’s way. So far we have 4,226 military deaths in Iraq. That does not count the American civilians working their for private contractors such as Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater, etc. It does not count those who have returned home and taken their own lives because of PTSD.

I want accountability because my only son was taken from his life of school and family and work to train to fight in Iraq and ended up burying him five years ago.

I want accountability because I had my phones tapped, my emails read and I have been followed in the past because I dared to march in Crawford with Cindy Sheehan in August of 2005. I had the audacity to question the President. I did not break any laws but rather, exercised my freedom of speech to question very poor, misguided and even unlawful decisions to take our country to war and endanger so many people without just cause.

I want accountability and I deserve to have it. The people of this country want accountability and we deserve to have it.

If we do not hold those so-called “leaders” accountable for their actions NOW, if we do not look back to see what they did, what they knew, and how they did it, how are we going to learn? How are we going to be able to create the change that Barack Obama ran his campaign on?

If there is no accountability, then what will stop some unscrupulous President in the future from committing the same unlawful and possibly more egregious acts? Nixon once said that if the President does something, it must be legal. And he pretty much got away with what he did without ever being judged by a jury, without ever serving any time and without ever being held accountable.

If George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, et al, are not held accountable for their actions by this nation, and soon, what are we telling the rest of the world? I fear the message that we are sending will be “do as I say, not as I do”. That message is, itself, very hypocritical and most definitely not democratic. It does not promote the freedom and democracy we profess to believe in.

If we do not have accountability, I fear our soldiers abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as other countries will be in much greater danger in the future than they are now. If we do not draw a line in the sand, so to speak, and stand up for what we profess to believe in, our own soldiers will be tortured when they are caught.

When Bush took the oath of office, he swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. I don’t believe any President in the history of this country has any greater disdain for the Constitution that George W. Bush. He did not uphold his oath of office. He should be held accountable, far more so than any other person.

Our elected representatives have been complicit in that they have allowed Bush and his buddies to run rampant through this country, corrupting and destroying almost all that we hold dear. They have not stopped these actions, they have not questioned and they certainly have not done anything to bring those responsible to accountability. Bush and Cheney should have been impeached a long time ago. Nancy Pelosi took impeachment “off the table”. She is complicit and, therefore, as guilty as the Bush Administration for their crimes.

I could write page after page after page about George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice and the countless others who have wrought such chaos and turmoil in this country and abroad. But I will not. We all know very well what they have done.

In the end, when all is said and done by the Bush Administration, they can look back and say one thing that is truthful and stunning. They accomplished the act that the terrorists who struck on 9/11 wanted to do: bring America to its knees. As we close out the final week of Bush as Commander in Chief, we are looking down the road at a very long, dark time in our country with an economy that is collapsing, high unemployment, families losing their homes and everything that we have known in the past that we could depend on is gone. You've done a heckuva job, W.

Accountability. That is what We, the People of the United States of America want. It is what we deserve. It is what the law says must take place.

I am not a vengeful person. I do not seek revenge. I seek accountability.

Go to http://www.democrats.com/special-prosecutor-for-bush-war-crimes and sign the petition for a special prosecutor to be appointed for Bush war crimes.

Peace,
Amy