In the dangerous 1950's, Senator Joseph McCarthy incited a reign of terror that sent dozens of good American citizens to prison as a result of his rampant and arbitrary unmasking of "Communists" he thought were everywhere, including at the helm of the Army. The tide was turned when Army Counsel Joseph Welch, responding to McCarthy's reckless attack on one of the young attorneys in Welch's firm, asked McCarthy, in soft, saddened tones: "Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

     That eloquent phrase resonated and helped to end McCarthy's reign of terror.

     Another tyrant, George W. Bush, reigns unchecked. He lied the country into an unlawful war that has resulted in the deaths of two thousand American soldiers, enduring tragedy for their families, the slaughter of thousands of Iraqis, the maiming of even more thousands. While such devastation mounts each day, amid explosions and ambushes and bombings, the man responsible awards himself numerous vacations in his guarded ranch in Texas.

     When reporters asked him how he found time for biking, fishing and napping when he had no time meet with Cindy Sheehan, the protesting mother of a soldier slain in Iraq, Bush answered: "I've got a life to live, and will do so." He sleeps, he says, soundly.

     Words similar to Joseph Welch's would ring out today if someone of equal honor and bravery and position would finally speak them out about George W. Bush:

     "Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

     Then it is possible that one more courageous word would follow that would end George W. Bush's immoral and illegal incumbency:

     "Impeach!"

John Rechy
August 2005
Los Angeles, California

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Original material by John Rechy appears frequently on these pages.