You could pretty well sum up his feelings in that very evocative phrase: “I want my white hat back.” For him, that’s what the United States was and had been - the guys in the white hats.

Now, he was a life-long Republican (Rockefeller variety) and I’m a leftist, so I refrained from disquisitions on the dirty little wars we’ve engaged in over the years, but the bigger point was his absolute disgust that this Administration had dared to trash the good name of the U.S. and to put servicemen & women in greater jeopardy should they fall into enemy hands.

He’d had no illusions about he would have been treated if he’d been shot down over Vietnam, but it was important to him to believe that *we weren’t doing the same thing*.

As more and more details about Gitmo and Abu Ghraib came out, he got more and more disgusted, even more than I was. I think it was because he’d put his life literally on the line in defense of the ideals, and here they were being casually discarded by the likes of John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld, et al.

It did not escape his attention that none of the men so casually dismissing the importance or relevance of the Geneva Convention had ever served in harm’s way, when it might have had more than abstract significance to them.

He would have been somewhat cheered if not surprised to find military men like you speaking with clarity and a unique moral authority against this criminal behavior. I think for literally the first time in his life, he had actually been somewhat ashamed of the U.S. in the years before he died, but he harbored hope that decent people would eventually right the ship. Thank you for proving him right.

Well, Mr Bennett, that isn’t the attitude we’ve become used to over the last 7 years. There seem to be all sorts of reasons/excuses/justifications the Bush/Cheney Administration can find for not telling us anything. It’s a relief to hear someone speak normally again, as if what shouldn’t be secret shouldn’t be kept secret. I appreciate it, and thank you. It was fascinating.