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DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- "Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps the faith. - Isaiah 26:2."

The righteous nation, the nation that keeps the faith - aren't we supposed to believe that describes America? Yet it's hard to recognize the America we hold in our hearts when the torture photos come out, or when we hear descriptions of the pictures that President Obama is afraid to let the world see.

What's in those photos? Can they be worse than the ones we've already seen? A pyramid of naked, green-hooded men with two grinning American soldiers - a man and a woman - crouching behind them? That poor man in a rag poncho standing on a carton with his arms outstretched, wires attached, expecting to be electrocuted at any moment? Those hooded naked Iraqi males forced to fake oral sex for the camera? Those helpless, cornered Iraqis being threatened by large snarling dogs?

Well, it seems like we ain't seen nothin' yet.

After Donald Rumsfeld testified to Congress about Abu Ghraib in June of 2004, he said about these unreleased photos, "If these are released to the public, obviously, it's going to make matters worse."

The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, who co-broke the Abu Ghraib story, said a 2004 speech to the ACLU: "Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, OK?...There were women there...The women were passing messages out saying, "Please come and kill me, because of what's happened,' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking..."

Makes waterboarding seems like a day in the park, don't it?

The name Dick Cheney will forever be entwined with the word "waterboarding." He's making sure of it now, going all over the country talking about how good it was, how much information America got from it, how many lives it saved. It's almost as if he wants us to believe that waterboarding was the worst of it.

It wasn't. America tortured people at Abu Ghraib. It tortured people in dank secret prisons strange foreign countries. It is still torturing people in Guantánamo. Who are these American torturers, anyway? Sadly, many of them are guards recruited from American prisons.

These people are torturing people in our name. They're also torturing people in the names, believe it or not, of God and Jesus Christ.

The magazine GQ recently put up a revealing slideshow on its Website (GQ.com): the cover sheets of Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon presidential briefings in the days surrounding the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

"These sheets juxtaposed war images with inspirational Bible quotes and were delivered by Rumsfeld himself to the White House, where they were read by the man who, just after Sept. 11, referred to America's war on terror as a 'crusade,'" GQ explains.

So the boy king saw pictures of American soldiers kneeling and praying, weapons in hand, along with this quote from Isaiah: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Here I am, LORD, send me." (Isaiah 6:8)

And over a scene on an aircraft carrier: "If I rise in the wings of the dawn/If I settle on the far side of the sun/Even there your hand will guide me/Your right hand will hold me fast, O Lord." (Psalms 139: 9-10)

And with this shot of a tank at sunset: "Therefore put on the full arm of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your guard, and after you have done everything to stand." (Ephesians 6:13)

And with a grinning American solider holding a machine gun: "Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and plans will succeed." (Proverbs 16:3)

And with a photo of Saddam Hussein, this quote from I Peter 2:15, "It is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men."

There will be a special section in hell for George W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the true "evildoers." Does President Obama really want to join them there?

Without an investigation into these crimes, without punishment, we are left with nothing but poisoned hangovers, contempt, whitewash, disgust and lies.

All the talk in the world about fuel-efficient vehicles and the crisis of health care won't save Obama from a wrathful God and a turn-the-other-cheek Jesus who don't want American crimes done in their names any more than Allah and Mohammed wanted to see 9/11 done in theirs.

So open those gates indeed. America has not been a righteous nation for a very long time.

Joyce Marcel is a freelance journalist. Reach her at joycemarcel@yahoo.com.