Cherie Willoughby

Tortured conscience.

What a sad day. Our federally elected officials, bound by the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution, betrayed their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and signed into law, in record time, an unconstitutional and despicable bill striking at the heart of the very freedoms we have held precious in this country for hundreds of years.

Terrorizing the terrorists, I ask? Military death tribunals, coercion, hearsay as credible evidence, no habeas corpus, no legal representation, indefinite imprisonment without trial or charge? Is this what we have stooped to as a people, as the supposed civilized society, as the free democracy that we flaunt and enforce, terrorizing people with torture?

What is happening to our elected federal officials? Has fear gripped their souls to such a degree that they have forgotten what being a human being is all about? This largely Christian nation, whose primary dictate from God is to "love one another" and "love thy enemy" has fallen to justifying torture?

We hold a proud principle we uphold in this country that it is better to let a ten criminals free then to punish one innocent person. This is a value I and all the people I know believe to be a critical cornerstone of our culture, part of what makes us proud to be Americans. None of the people that they are torturing have been proven to be "terrorists so we are then in fact torturing innocent people. Has the CIA become the judge, jury and executioner? I have heard numerous accounts of Gitmo Bay prisoners that landed there because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, foreigners in Pakistan who were turned into our government for a cash bounty, innocents played as terrorists for a profit, paid by the US taxpayer! I ask, how can anyone sleep at night justifying the torture of people who in large part might be completely innocent!

We also have another principle we hold dear, and that is to treat others as we wish to be treated. I would never want to experience any of these torture "tactics" and therefore would never condone applying these tactics to any other living being. Seems a simple ethical guideline, no?

In the grip of a propagated, proselytized fear, we have become the terrorists. Our politicians have lost sight of our values and turned to evil to fight evil instead of doing good to fight evil. Let us remember the values we stand for and remind our politicians their obligation to uphold our values as presented in the U.S. Constitution. We owe it to our forefathers and future generations to hold fast to the freedoms our forefathers died to guarantee us and no elected government has the power to take that away from us as the Constitution is and I pray will always be the supreme law of this land.

Let us stop being represented as terrorists and start being compassionate, liberty loving free people again. I myself would risk the threat of death to protect my living each day feeling free and just in this world. And I guarantee you, if we rise to the higher moral ethic that we claim to have, then the terrorists that we fear so much will stop and the people of the world will once again look to us as a guide and model of what human beings are capable of. For while it is easy for evil to attack evil, it is downright impossible for evil to attack good. And I would rather die a good woman then live to a ripe old age as an evil one.

Cherie Willoughby

Belmont