Today the Senate committee investigating the veracity of the intelligence the president used to justify the invasion of a sovereign nation released its findings. The committee found that even Saddam Hussein considered the al-Qaida terrorist organization as a threat--not the ally the president and vice president has insisted it was to Iraq.

Additionally, the White House today said that its errors in the past are not important. What is important is to continue to prosecute a war, sacrificing more American lives and billions of taxpayers dollars.

Where is congressional oversight? This is an administration that does not believe in accountability, does not feel an obligation to the truth and believes it is above the law.

Secret CIA prisons? Is this the United States of America? It's sounds like a headline from a Cold War era newspaper decrying the human rights violations of the Evil Empire!! Not the admission of a US President speaking about the actions of the United States of America. What happened to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution? How do we claim the moral high ground? How do we allow ourselves to lower ourselves to the level of the enemy? Depriving human rights? Torture? Secret prisons? Indefinite detention? What happened to a defendant's right to confront the witnesses and evidence presented against them? Military tribunals designed to guarantee convictions, rather than a civilian court of law, with the protections our system of justice is supposed to guarantee. Sadly, it appears the terrorists are winning.

Privacy has been sacrificed in the name of patriotism and the war on terrorism. The ideals and beliefs of the United States, for which countless numbers have shed their blood and sacrificed their lives, have been relegated to memory and not the character of the United States.