>> Are we so apathetic that we cannot work up outrage at being lied to, repeatedly?
Many are, yes. Many are also still deluded by the administration's lies. Ask the guys in maintenance if they think Iraq ought to be nuked in retaliation for 9/11. Yes, I know, but just ask.
>> torture... Have we, indeed sunk so low as to consider that these things are allowable
Apparently so. The Pentagon supports it, the CIA supports it, and the White House supports it. They hide away the prisoners, hide away their shame that they not only condone it, but arrange it, by having prisoners technically held by other countries who do not prohibit it.
>> The crime isn't in the mistakes, though, it is in allowing, in continuing to allow, our elected officials, many if not most of them, to continue to act in this fashion.
The media has been cowed or lulled into relative silence for 5 years. They're finally starting to wake up, but it took a hurricane to do it.
>> Where is the moral outrage at the lies and manipulation?
Here. In the blogs that were created as a foil to the media that failed in their fourth estate duties. In other places where liberal voices, and voices that prefer the truth can find to refuse to be cowed by the crooks who've taken over Washington and thrown god and sparklies in the faces of the people they're supposed to be serving - and protecting.
It's in Cindy Sheehan's protest, and the anti-war protests in Washington and other cities around the country.
It's in the action of Democrats fleeing Texas rather than being forced to vote in a crooked redistricting plan. It's in Ronnie Earle's indictment of Tom DeLay, and in Fitzgerald's of the fully grown man with the name of a child - Scooter, the VP's chief of staff.
It's in the lawsuit by the library that's protesting provisions of the Patriot Act that prohibit it from even saying who they are, and that they object to what they're being ordered to do.
It's in people like Richard Clarke, the former head of counter-terrorism for 3 presidents, including Bush, who stood up and said, "That's a lie."
It's in those so-called "activist judges", who are in our Honor Thread, who have stood up to the Bush administration and said, "No, you can't do that. All citizens have the right to legal council, to be charged with a crime or released, to a fair trial, to not be held indefinitely."
It's in organizations like Moveon.org, the ACLU, the Electronic Freedom Foundation.
It's in the broken voice of Ray Nagin, desperately crying, "We need help here!" as he watched his city drown. It's in the voices of the media and the people who said, "No, Brownie is NOT doing a heck of a job. Fire his ass!" It's even in Michael Chertoff, who listened.
Oddly, it's in the voices of the conservative Republicans who said, "Harriet who? She's no Supreme Court justice. Not on our watch."
It's in the voice of former POW and current Senator John McCain who said quite clearly, "No, torture is never ok, and I'm going to codify that. We're better than that, even if I have to remind you of it."
Where it's not, is in a single united voice in the Democratic Party. A united voice that could "throw the bums out."
