My letter to the editor on health care reform

The cartoon you published yesterday depicting a hospital emergency room was misleading and offensive on several counts. It shows a nurse addressing an obvious extra-terrestrial, saying "I'm going to assume, since I can't ask, that you are a U.S. citizen." The caption reads, "Under Obamacare" -- a derisive term adopted by the anti-reform crowd. The implication is that reform measures would somehow change the current system wherein ERs are already prohibited by law from requiring proof of citizenship. That isn't going to change with reform, nor should it. How inefficient would ERs become if they had to send people home to find their birth certificate or passport before treating them? Would this apply even to people who showed up with a massive head injury? Would you like to be that patient yourself? Who would pay to train them in forgery detection? Who would be penalized if a non-citizen slipped through? Etc. But another problem with the cartoon is that nothing in any reform measure would change the delivery of health care. All it would do is add another affordable insurance provider to the mix, that could cover those for whom premiums are currently out of reach. That's it. No death panels, no abortion funding, no illegal aliens on the plan -- just another, publicly-funded insurer, kind of like we have public schools that compete with private schools. What is so scary about that?

Gitmo detainees not persons, now??? Oh me oh my...

Imagine my consternation and moral outrage when I ran across an article this morning, reporting a DC Court of Appeals ruling that Guantanamo detainees are not "persons"! Since when does any court presume to arrogate to itself the right to decide which human beings are persons and which are not? Or to summarily strip that status from an entire group of human beings, simply because they happen to be in US detention? But wait, it gets worse, or so it seems -- the court handed down this ruling in response to a request from Obama's DOJ!



Suddenly I felt like I'd been transported to an alternate universe or something, one in which black was white, hot was cold, and left was right. Everything seemed backward, twisted, and incomprehensible. Had someone in the DOJ lost their mind? Had Holder forgotten who he was working for? Were heads gonna roll as soon as Obama heard about this? Because I was certain he could not have, or it never would have gone before the court. Declaring a whole group of people non-persons? How unlike everything Obama stands for!

I ranted, I sent out my virtual SOS hoping somebody somewhere would be able to come up with a sensible explanation, like they did for the "we won't prosecute" scandal. But when I got home today, all I had was commiseration from those who were equally as incensed and bewildered that we would even think to take such an action. It was time for more digging. There just HAD to be a rational explanation, I knew.

Well, sure enough, it appears there is, and once again I've gotten egg on my face, but I'll take egg on my face over criminal leaders any day! Bottom line is, it appears this ruling was in response to a suit brought by four British ex-inmates, who alleged, among other things, that their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act had been violated by being forced to shave their beards, no access to the Koran or prayer mats, things like that. Apparently -- and this is straight from the court's ruling -- the detainees "cannot bring a RFRA claim because they are not 'person[s]' within the meaning of that statute." This, I think I can live with. As someone who has worked with many detainees during my tour in Iraq, I can only imagine the chaos and confusion that would ensue if, for example, guards were not allowed to bother anybody who was praying. Or if detainees could grow their beards as long as they wanted (think of the lice infestations and general hygiene issues, if nothing else!). So this is what all the fuss was over.... Leave it to the media to feed us a sensational headline and not bother to dig any further!

In short, because of a poorly-worded law (some provision should have been made to exclude "persons" who happened to be in detention awaiting trial), a court decision was required to place Gitmo inmates outside the category of "persons" protected by it. But all we hear is, "Court declares Gitmo detainees non-humans!"

But wait, there's more. Along with this, our DOJ has asked for immunity for any previous violations! You heard that one, right? Well, this is a simple answer, too. The DOJ simply requested that, should the court find that inmates were indeed entitled to all the rights given "persons" under the RFRA, that previous instances where those rights had not been granted would be immune to prosecution. And that's only right. None of us in the field are damned lawyers -- we rely on top-down guidance to let us know what's fair game and what isn't. I personally gave a prisoner his own personal Koran one time, after leafing through it to make sure it wasn't hiding anything. Many of my colleagues wouldn't, and I couldn't blame them. Indeed, I felt like maybe I was the one who was too soft, who might put us all in danger one of these times. Out there, all you have is your gut to go by. I, for one, was never in any position to research the intricacies of the RFRA, had I even known it existed. To prosecute any soldier acting in good faith, for the best interests of his unit and his country, would be unconscionable.

So I hope that helps to deflate any simmering outrage over the DOJ's recent actions. It does for me, and let me tell you, I am easily outraged!

~~Cheryl

Doing the right thing is a "serious mistake"?

So Senator John McCain, the President's opponent in our last election, has come out saying that Obama's decision to release the Bush torture memos is a "serious mistake." He said, "The release of these memos helps no one, doesn't help America's image, does not help us address the issue."

It appears, my good senator, that your main concern is with America's image here. But now, as I have so often in the past, I beg to differ. America's image, worldwide, can only be enhanced with this release. Did you not say yourself, just today, that "the image of the United States of America throughout the world is a recruiting tool for Islamic extremists"? That would be the torturer image, we presume, since the interview topic was the news that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been waterboarded almost 200 times.

We know you didn't say it, but let's just get this little objection out of the way right now. These memos didn't reveal anything new to the bad guys. Does anybody imagine that any prisoner goes home and doesn't talk about his detention to his friends, family, and neighbors? Oh, they knew about it allright -- how else could it have been used as a recruiting tool? The only people who didn't know about it were Joe Sixpack, Joe the Plumber, average Americans who love their country and think that means having to love whomever happens to be leading it, regardless of his actions (unless, of course, that leader happens to be named Barack Obama).

As American citizens, we have a right to know what our leaders are doing behind closed doors. You do, after all, work for us -- not the other way around. We elected you, and you answer to US. Granted, certain operational methods must be classified in the interest of national security, but the commission of war crimes can never, and must never, be concealed for the sake of "public interest." Whose interest does that really serve, anyway? As I postulated in the preceding paragraph, the only way to keep these techniques completely secret is to never let anybody out of detention, or to kill them. If we're going to let even one go free, then who are we really hiding the dirt from, if not our own people? And that puts us all at risk. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to actions that could potentially inflame an entire people to want to wage war on us.

With the release of these memos, we have shown the world -- our enemies included -- that America really has changed. We are no longer the country of the "Decider." We are now America the beautiful, the generous, the tolerant, the freedom-and-justice-loving, the humble, and the proud. It takes a strong person to admit a mistake. The country giggled and tittered and hung its collective head when a recent president tried to cover up, not a massive torture operation, but a moment of stolen pleasure. How weak and dishonorable that made him look! By contrast, here is Obama, revealing at last what our enemies have long known, and what our friends and ourselves should have been allowed to know, warts and all. Not proud of it? Nobody should be. But what we can be proud of is that today's America is not the America of last year, or even the last eight years.

We are moving on and leaving the past behind, Sen. McCain. And to leave it behind, we must know what it is we are leaving. So yes, this release most definitely does help address the issue. We now know some of the things that have been done in our name, and how it got to be that way, and maybe now we can find ways to keep it from ever happening again. Because our own safety, security, comfort, etc. can never justify the torture of innocent or even potentially innocent human beings.

In the meantime, dear senator, you guys don't scare us anymore. We voted for hope over fear last November, or did you not get that memo?