I’m having trouble deciding: Was the letter by Jeff Spencer in the May 20 issue of The Gazette an attempt at sarcasm, or can Mr. Spencer truly be as ignorant and hateful as his letter makes him appear? Based on the desperate attempts of the extreme right to minimalize the horrendous revelations of the past few weeks, though, I must conclude, sadly, that he actually is serious.

If Mr. Spencer would bother to educate himself to the known and accepted facts, he would realize that the majority of the prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison – 70% to 90%, by some accounts – were innocent civilians who were wrongfully arrested. These same people who Mr. Spencer is so quick to label “cold blooded killers” are the husbands, brothers and children who celebrated with our soldiers at the toppling of the Baathists.

Secondly, prisoner abuse is not the “small matter” asserted by Mr. Spencer. Torture, humiliation and murder are pure evil, no matter who commits the atrocities. How dare Mr. Spencer claim his “right” to abuse others as acceptable to God. This “Christian” man blasphemes his creator with his viciousness and vitriol. Let me return the over-the-top verbal volleys served up by Mr. Spencer by offering the opinion that he and others like him are an embarrassment to Christianity, and are more responsible for turning many thinking people away from Christianity than any perceived  perversion against which he may rail. As my 14-year-old son observed so aptly one evening at dinner, pointing to a piece of blueberry pie, “These people are no more Christian than this pie is a piece of cake.” Profound.

Thirdly, had this abuse been carried out “behind closed doors,” as Mr. Spencer says he would have preferred, it would have lowered us even closer to the disgusting pits of the macabre and the lack of humanity practiced by the regime we have replaced. Like the worst of the demons in the dungeons of the most frightening fantasy or horror novels, we actually pushed innocent men to the point where they prayed for death. In one interview, a detainee said he was tortured so ruthlessly for 18 days that he begged for death. It was at that point that he began making up stories of his own guilt, in hopes that his captors would take pity on him. How much, Mr. Spencer, will your sense of security be enhanced by such events?

Fourth, damn Mr. Spencer’s labeling of anyone who disagrees with his lust for blood as “treasonous” and “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” It has been said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Mr. Spencer appears to be not only a scoundrel who literally would condemn dissenters, but an ignorant scoundrel, at that. I wonder if Mr. Spencer would have the gall to tell me to my face that I am treasonous, with all that the accusation implies. Should I be imprisoned, or worse, for treason because of my opposition to this war? What does that imply for the rights and liberties Mr. Spencer claims he holds so dearly that he is willing to compromise the demands of his Christian faith to protect?

Fifth, I defy Mr. Spencer to show that I and many “leftist liberals” like me are “manifest atheists,” as he asserts. His mindless generalizations and stereotypes are not really worthy of a response, but my anger will not allow his slander to go unanswered. I base my opposition to this war on my Christian faith. I look forward to the day when I can invite Mr. Spencer to join me in front of “the Judgement Seat of Christ,” as we say in my church, so we can both plead our cases and see whose arguments Jesus would prefer. I’m pretty confident that sodomizing captive men with chemical lights is not real high on the “Prince of Peace’s” list of “Do’s.”

Lastly, it is not by “God’s Grace” that we invaded a defenseless country, killed and mutilated tens of thousands of innocents, and desecrated the Holiness of humanity with our mal-treatment of the Iraqis in our custody, but by the influence of the antithesis of a good, loving God, and the manifestation of the “anti-Christ” which we quickly are becoming. It is by this dark will that our country might suffer the destruction Mr. Spencer so earnestly laments, not by the compassion and justice of God in which the rest of us believe.

Thomas Jefferson said, “I tremble for my country, when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.” I tremble for our children when I reflect that Jefferson’s fears are perhaps more founded now than at any time in our history.

Elliot M. Namay, Jr.

Unedited version of that published in the Charleston Gazette, May, 2004