For all of us - and dad - disavow torture

[RobertDevereaux]

A Soapbox from the Fort Collins Coloradoan:

I don't normally change the radio station, but last week, while driving down Interstate 25 after the first snow had blanketed the high peaks of Northern Colorado, the term I heard on the radio made me do exactly that. It's not like me to avoid confronting issues, and I felt irresponsible for changing the station.

The term I heard wasn't one I was familiar with. But it did make me scared, because it made me fear for my father. Which was weird - he's been dead for more than 25 years, the colorful Native American Marine Corp aviator, the prisoner-of-war, the man who raised me. It was he who guided me and my four siblings to collectively serve for more than 50 years in our nation's Army and Marine Corps.

"Waterboarding" was the word the radio announcer had said, and the problem with hearing is the memory it conjured: The day when I, always mischievous like my father, thought it would be good idea to tickle his bare feet while he snoozed that Sunday afternoon in front of the Viking-Packer football game. I am sure that was the only time I had actually seen fear in my father's eyes. When my father jumped up, screaming, and ready to fight, he was not the gentle giant of a man that would patiently repair the yet one more broken wing on my radio-controlled airplane that had been inflicted by a son that would never fly.

The words of my mother: "Don't ever, ever do that to your father" were not what I expected, nor the "I'm sorry" that my Dad repeated more than necessary. That day still haunts me. My father never shared the stories of the darkest days of his solitary confinement, the brutal interrogation or how cold and hungry the North Korean peninsula was. He didn't have to; I had seen it that day in the piercing blue eyes of my father, the Sioux warrior....

More here:

http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071109/OPINION04/711090316/1014/CUSTOMERSERVICE02

[1monster]

1. Eloquent piece. I wish it had been longer.

K&R

[RobertDevereaux]

2. Kick n/t