This is just one more piece of evidence that this administration is beyond anything we've witnessed in a hundred or so years in American politics.
It is a heartfelt letter from an ex-Nixon administration official who resigned in 1970 as a protest against the illegal invasion of Cambodia. He is asking his fellow colleagues in the federal government to resign en masse as a protest against the destructive policies of the Bush Administration.
One can only wonder how many career diplomats and public servants will choose patriotism and integrity over job security and silence, but make no mistake: in the larger scheme of American history, this is undeniably an important historical document.
I've included excerpts below, and I urge you to read, reprint, and distribute the entire letter.
NOTE: full letter at the SALON.com site, which unfortunately makes you jump through numerous commercial hoops before allowing you a "day pass". Find this article under "Opinions" section... if you don't gouge out your eyeballs or destroy your computer screen before you actually arrive at the darn thing.
By Roger Morris
May 20, 2004Dear Trustees:
I am respectfully addressing you by your proper if little-used title. The women and men of our diplomatic corps and intelligence community are genuine trustees. With intellect and sensibility, character and courage, you represent America to the world. Equally important, you show the world to America. You hold in trust our role and reputation among nations, and ultimately our fate. Yours is the gravest, noblest responsibility. Never has the conscience you personify been more important.
...I need not dwell on the obvious about foreign policy under President Bush — and on what you on the inside, whatever your politics, know to be even worse than imagined by outsiders. The senior among you have seen the disgrace firsthand. In the corridor murmur by which a bureaucracy tells its secrets to itself, all of you have heard the stories.
...You know how recklessly a cabal of political appointees and ideological zealots, led by the exceptionally powerful and furtively doctrinaire Vice President Cheney, corrupted intelligence and usurped policy on Iraq and other issues. You know the bitter departmental disputes in which a deeply politicized, parochial Pentagon overpowered or simply ignored any opposition in the State Department or the CIA, rushing us to unilateral aggressive war in Iraq and chaotic, fateful occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Article comments
1 - Marc
Please, surely you jest Shark.
This carries about as much historical importence as a turd floating its way from the bowl to the Hudson River.
First of all it will never reach higher than the lowest level secretary then prompty placed into its rightfull place, the circular shitcan.
Shark, you and many that hold your same opinions have lately jumped on the Hersh bandwagon in ref to the Abu Ghraib scandal. Given that I would also assume you would hold aome belief in what he says. In that light I offer you a quote from a Hersh piece the outlines just one example of the honesty on one Roger Morris.
QUOTE
It was not surprising, then, that Morris was asked by Eagleburger to sit in Kissinger's office and "cover" it one weekend day sometime in the late spring of 1969. Haig, who usually worked seven days a week, had rare time off, and Eagleburger had an appointment outside the White House and needed relief. Kissinger was spending the weekend in New York at his parents' home"a trip that, in those early days, he often made.
Morris literally moved into Kissinger's office that day. At one point during the quiet morning, a courier from the Federal Bureau of Investigation came in and left a sealed envelope for Kissinger. Morris brooded about the highly classified document. The courier had explained that the letter contained "very urgent" material. Should he call Henry? Morris could imagine Kissinger's angry impatience at his caution: "Idiot! Of course open it." And so he opened it.
The envelope was from J. Edgar Hoover"for Kissinger's, "Eyes Only." "It was this long, detailed account of Martin Luther King's sex life," Morris says. "There were transcripts""obviously from wiretaps""and indications that photographs were available." Some of the women with Dr. King had apparently been FBI informants. Morris was appalled.
UNQUOTE
Certainly what was contained in the envelope was important, but that is not the question at hand. The question is why did Morris choose to open it vice "call the boss."
He was placed in that office as nothing more than a "place holder," a secretary with a Brooks Brothers tie. But he decided to commit the same crime that this letter indicated the government commited. Illegal access to personal and classified material.
While his opposition to the illegal bombing of Cambodia was correct, it can also be said he and many others that became anti-war (need I mention Kerry ande Winter Soldier) adherents made it politicly impossible to continue the war to anythng close to a reasonable solution.
The premature withdrawal from Vietnam directly resulted in the killing of 2 million Cambodians at the hands of Pol Pot.
Thats is the historical importance, not Morris's letter where he purports to know what is on the minds of Bush Admin officials. i.e.
QUOTE
"I need not dwell on the obvious about foreign policy under President Bush -- and on what you on the inside, whatever your politics, know to be even worse than imagined by outsiders. The senior among you have seen the disgrace firsthand. In the corridor murmur by which a bureaucracy tells its secrets to itself, all of you have heard the stories."
UNQUOTE
Please Shark, will we next see this guy walking hand in hand with Michael Berg at the next anti-war rally?
ASSHAT