DEAR MR. OBAMA

Here's a letter for the U.S. President, for whom I quite happily and enthusiastically voted three years ago. I was betrayed, of course. Mr. Obama is a liar. He ran dishonestly. I am disgusted. If you think I am unfair to him, tell me how I am such.

Bert Hornback

Mr. Obama,

You have betrayed all the Americans who voted for you.

You promised to close the U. S. concentration camp at Guantanamo. Instead--in violation of everything that this country has ever stood for, and what you promised us--you say that some of the men illegally incarcerated there for ten years will be kept there for the rest of their lives. Why? Because though we can't charge them with any crime, we have tortured them for so long that they no doubt hate us.

You promised to end the George Bush torture regeime. Instead, you allow it to continue--and you add to it the outrageous World War II style torture of Bradley Manning at Quantico. That young man is a hero, a noble human being: and you are evil in trying to drive him crazy so you can keep him locked up for the rest of his life. You know that you can't try him in court: his defense will be that he obeyed both U. S. law and U. S. Military law in exposing your administration's felony offenses.

If I could, I would change places with Bradley Manning. And I would shout every day until I was hoarse about you and your agents' crimes. I would demand to be brought to trial--and you would have to murder me, Mr. Obama, to shut me up.

Do you ever think what your daughters will think of their father when they grow up? He was a liar, a coward, a criminal, a torturer, a murderer. Is that what you want them to think of their father? Are you the man Michelle Obama married? Are you the man so many millions of people voted for?

Unless you change. Mr. President--unless you recover what was once, I believe, your decency--when you die, your epitaph will read,

Here lies Barack Obama,
Who betrayed Millions of Decent People
All over the World
With Lies and Bombs and Torture
And brought Horrendous Disgrace upon his Nation.
The Civilised World
despises him.

Both Lyndon Johnson--who lied about the Gulf of Tonkin--and Richard Nixon--who was a criminal, who was responsible for Kent State and the bombing of Cambodia--will be remembered as better presidents and as better human beings than you.

How can yopu pretend to be decent? How can a man responsible for torture sit down to watch a basketball game with "friends? How can a man who kills as many people as you do, every day, spend a recreational evening?

I live in Germany at the present time. When you were elected president, Germans were elated. Everywhere. People I didn't know stopped me, shook my hand, hugged me.
Now, however, my friends say, "What happened?" "America is an awful place." "I am sorry for you--and sorry for all of us."

And when, these last few days, your bombers rumble overhead at night here, people who honored the United States for its role in ending World War II spit on the idea of the United States today.

The restoration of the trial chambers at Nuremberg has recently been completed. They are ready and available for war crimes trials. Soon George Bush, his cronies, and Barak Obama may well stand in the dock there together.

Is that what you planned for yourself?

Are you a coward, or simply a dishonest man? Or are you the aggressive criminal--violating our country's laws and traditions, violating our United Nations obligations, insulting humanity--that your actions make you out to be?

Sincerely yours,

Bert Hornback

P.S. I post this as "It Says Here" because the Obama Administration--in the best Fascist fashion--wants to "communicate" with us, but will not allow us to answer, to talk back.