{"id":479,"date":"2009-09-16T14:40:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-16T14:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/09\/a-letter-to-president-bush-abo.html"},"modified":"2009-09-16T14:40:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-16T14:40:00","slug":"a-letter-to-president-bush-abo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/09\/a-letter-to-president-bush-abo.html","title":{"rendered":"A letter to President Bush about torture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan has written a lengthy letter to President Bush<\/a> that calls upon him to acknowledge his role in authorizing torture. It’s a masterpiece and lays out the case against torture in President Bush’s own words, and makes a powerful indictment against him for his responsibility. It’s simply amazing and a must-read. Sullivan’s core appeal to Bush is,<\/p>\n

\n

I believe that if you review the facts of your two terms of office, you will be forced to realize that, whatever your intentions, you undermined this fundamental American principle. You may not have intended that to occur. But you were the commander in chief and president, and these were presidential-level decisions. The responsibility for all of this is yours-before the American people and before the court of history. And you need finally to own these decisions, to take full responsibility for them, to account for them, to explain them, and, yes, to apologize for their scope and brutality.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

but it’s how he goes on to document, exhaustively, those facts and decisions<\/a> – and contrasts them with Bush’s own rhetoric about opposing torture in “all its forms” – that really make this a tour-de-force. I generally try to avoid overhyping a link but in this case it deserves all the praise I can muster. You must read this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan has written a lengthy letter to President Bush that calls upon him to acknowledge his role in authorizing torture. It’s a masterpiece and lays out the case against torture in President Bush’s own words, and makes a powerful indictment against him for his responsibility. It’s simply amazing and a must-read. Sullivan’s core appeal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[309,25,26,281],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-read-this","tag-bush-administration","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-torture"],"yoast_head":"\nA letter to President Bush about torture - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A letter to President Bush about torture - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Andrew Sullivan has written a lengthy letter to President Bush that calls upon him to acknowledge his role in authorizing torture. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}