Courage to speak up to religious authority, re: Condi Rice at Boston U.

This is what its going to take to change the direction of our country.

Young men and women who are willing to risk their livelihood to make a stand for honor and integrity ~ values that are sorely missing among the top leaders of the Cheney/Bush administration.

In that regard, the Center for American Progress reports that 20 percent of Boston College’s faculty signed a letter opposing the school’s plan to award Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice an honorary degree when she addresses this year’s graduates, saying it is morally wrong to praise a leader whose efforts promote an “unjust war.”

Read this open letter carefully, from a member of that faculty, and reflect on what we, as a country, have settled for ~ in the name of Democracy and liberty.

Allen L Roland


OPEN LETTER TO WILLIAM P. LEAHY SJ, PRESIDENT OF BOSTON COLLEGE

Steve Almond
http://tinyurl.com/or82t

DEAR Father Leahy, I am writing to resign my post as an adjunct professor of English at Boston College. I am doing so -- after five years at BC, and with tremendous regret -- as a direct result of your decision to invite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be the commencement speaker at this year's graduation.

Many members of the faculty and student body already have voiced their objection to the invitation, arguing that Rice's actions as secretary of state are inconsistent with the broader humanistic values of the university and the Catholic and Jesuit traditions from which those values derive.

But I am not writing this letter simply because of an objection to the war against Iraq. My concern is more fundamental.

Simply put, Rice is a liar.

She has lied to the American people knowingly, repeatedly, often extravagantly over the past five years, in an effort to justify a pathologically misguided foreign policy.

The public record of her deceits is extensive. During the ramp-up to the Iraq war, she made 29 false or misleading public statements concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, according to a congressional investigation by the House Committee on Government Reform.

To cite one example: In an effort to build the case for war, then-National Security Adviser Rice repeatedly asserted that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapon, and specifically seeking uranium in Africa.

In July of 2003, after these claims were disproved, Rice said: ''Now if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence . . . those doubts were not communicated to the president, the vice president, or to me."

Rice's own deputy, Stephen Hadley, later admitted that the CIA had sent her a memo eight months earlier warning against the use of this claim.

In the three years since the war began, Rice has continued to misrepresent or simply ignore the truth about our deadly adventure in Iraq.

Like the president whom she serves so faithfully, she refuses to recognize her errors or the tragic consequences of those errors to the young soldiers and civilians dying in Iraq.

She is a diplomat whose central allegiance is not to the democratic cause of this nation, but absolute power.

This is the woman to whom you will be bestowing an honorary degree, along with the privilege of addressing the graduating class of 2006.

It is this last notion I find most reprehensible: that Boston College would entrust to Rice the role of moral exemplar. . .



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Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net

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