Torture Nation

President George W. Bush on Thursday urged his successor to carry on what he called his "freedom agenda" of promoting human rights, democracy, and free trade around the world.

I'm sorry, Mr. President, but no. When it comes to human rights, those doing the criticizing must have clean hands. You do not get to claim a respect for human rights, let alone "promoting" them, when you have led an administration that has become infamous for the use of secret prisons, detentions without trial, wiretapping people, monitoring the e-mails of all Americans and, most of all, for torturing and murdering people who have been detained by the Army and the CIA.

George Bush, with the help of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, David Addington, John Ashcroft, Ricardo Gonzales, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, Doug Feith, Condolezza Rice, among others, transformed the reputation of the United States of America from "the shining city on a hill" which Ronald Reagan spoke of, to that of a filthy slaughterhouse at the edge of a festering swamp. George Bush has trashed the honor and reputation of this country.

Thanks to George Bush, brutal dictators around the world feel morally free to murder and torture people.

Thanks to George Bush, the hands of Lady Liberty are stained with gallons of human blood. It will be decades before the stain fades.