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WATERBOARDING

(or what if he really doesn't know the answer?!)

...........................................................

"O say, do you see..." were the proud words composed

When America's great journey to freedom began.

O say, do you see the hooded head hosed

Now America feels free to ill-treat when it can?

 

O say, do you see when a president declares

It's OK to half-drown if that's what it takes?

That we've all lost the battle if nobody cares

And freedom's asleep until decency awakes.

 

O say, do you see or do you look away

From sadistic abuse that humanity abhors?

Gestapo techniques that were shamed in their day

Given the nod behind Uncle Sam's doors.

 

O say, do you see by the dawn's early light...

When the Land of the Free lost sight of what's right?

 

◄ LAST RESORT

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Comments

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M.C. Newberry

Mon 26th Mar 2012 16:09

I confess to something of a vested interest as my late eldest sister married a U.S. forces survivor of the post-D-Day operations and returned to his country and bore him ten children. His generation is rightly venerated for their deeds in defeating the vile barbarism of the Hitler regime (albeit that no one knew its equivalent lurked in Mother Russia!). It is the thought of men like him and what a U.S. government can publicly "spin" in our own age that brought about these lines.

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Martin Peacock

Mon 26th Mar 2012 13:24

There's something definitely 'of the night' [to quote the almighty Widdecombe] about the phrase 'Homeland Security' that makes me think of National Socialism, 1984 ['a boot stamping on a man's face forever'], Brave New World and black uniforms in general [even though it's my fave colour/noncolour/what the hell is black anyway?] The American way of life has become increasingly, insidiously fascist ever since 2001 don't you all think? Doesn't matter that their prez is a black Democrat; Bill Hicks once quipped that, upon election every incumbent president is shown previously unseen footage by a cabal of fat cats and moneyshakers and kingmakers, showing the Kennedy assassination from the vantage point of the grassy knoll itself and then asked, 'any questions?' to which they reply, 'only what you want my agenda to be for the next four years.' This poem is a great illustration of US hypocrisy, MC. Nicely nice.

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Harry O'Neill

Sun 25th Mar 2012 21:40


I once had an argument with a serious, intelligent advocate of the use of torture in a specific circumstance...and I don`t want to go there again.

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M.C. Newberry

Sun 25th Mar 2012 12:30

Thanks Nick...I believe that the Bush brigade
did their great country huge damage by their
enthusiasm for, and their mealy-mouthed definition of, interrogation that was clearly
torture by any accepted definition of the word.

<Deleted User> (10123)

Sun 25th Mar 2012 11:01

MC did you write this, or is it part of the rather brief American history? Tis worthy to be entombed within the archives of any nation. kept as a yardstick of what can be done in verse if thou triest - oh yeah a goodly one, ta muchly, NIck.

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