(R)ampant Amnesia - Democratic Underground

NanceGreggs

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Thu Apr-19-07 09:33 PM
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(R)ampant Amnesia

(R)ampant Amnesia
By Nancy Greggs

Well, my GOP friends, it’s been quite a day. By some accounts, your esteemed Mr. Gonzales spoke the words “I can’t recall” over a hundred times this afternoon – and if you listened real close, you could hear the sound of another nail being hammered into the Republican Party’s coffin with each utterance of the phrase.

It’s not just a matter of your AG’s conveniently faulty memory; it’s a matter of what all of you have managed to forget over the course of this Administration.

You didn’t recall that once elected, you swore to uphold the Constitution and the laws of your country. You instead put party politics above all else.

You didn’t recall that your responsibilities included oversight, and simply rubber-stamped every whim of your petulant, incompetent president, regardless of the consequences to our democracy.

You didn’t recall that we do not wage war without sufficient reason, and that we do not victimize innocent civilians under the guise of liberation.

You didn’t recall that your first duty was to the constituents who elected you to represent them, and not to your colleagues who pressured you to vote along party lines regardless of what was right, what was just, what was fair.

You didn’t recall the very freedoms our country was founded upon, as you sanctioned the use of wiretaps, the circumventing of FISA, the intervention of government into the privacy of your fellow citizens.

You didn’t recall your duty to protect the sick and the elderly from being bankrupted by medical bills, as you struck sweetheart deals with the pharmaceutical industry.

You didn’t recall that our economy would be ill-served by tax-cuts to the wealthiest individuals and corporations, as you busied yourselves spending money, without regard to how that money was spent – or even where it went.

You didn’t recall that hard-working, middle-class Americans would be impacted by the outsourcing of jobs, or the unprecedented debt you allowed to accrue at their ultimate expense.

You didn’t recall that soldiers sent into combat require the proper equipment, no less a viable strategy to accomplish anything of value.

You didn’t recall that returning wounded soldiers, who had sacrificed everything for their country, deserved the best of care when their duty had been fulfilled.

You didn’t recall that the presidency of the United States is not a dictatorship, and the limited powers of that office are not to be circumvented by signing statements, nor expanded by questionable over-reaching means.

You didn’t recall your own self-professed moral values, as you agreed that torture and unlawful imprisonment were now to be not only accepted, but embraced.

You didn’t recall that your country came before your party, that patriotism is measured by service to the nation rather than service to one’s own career, that the truth is not a matter of political persuasion but a matter of fact, that honesty and integrity inevitably outweigh misleading rhetoric.

Most glaringly, you didn’t recall the fact that everything you were so quick to forget, the voters will be just as quick to remember.

So don’t be too hard on your poor, forgetful little AG. He’s just another victim of the self-inflicted amnesia you’ve all been suffering from for years.

As always, good luck in 2008 – that’s when the American people will be happy to remind you, in no uncertain terms, just what the consequences of a deliberately faulty memory inevitably are.