BRANDON MAYFIELD -- GRACIOUS IN ANGER, STEADFAST IN FAITH

For a single moment, all eyes were on the finger, left index, pale and slender as a flower stem. Brandon Mayfield held it up for all his family to see, and even he gazed at it with amazement.
...
For two weeks, that finger, and the man who owned it, was implicated in a terrorist attack 8,000 miles away, in Madrid, Spain, a series of train bombings that killed nearly 200 people.
The FBI was convinced that a print from Mayfield's finger was found on a plastic bag of detonators left near the scene.
Mayfield, who hadn't traveled outside the country in more than a decade, was arrested May 6 and held as a material witness for two weeks until Spanish police announced that the print belonged to an Algerian.
In his first in-depth interview, Mayfield talked with restrained anger about his ordeal. He was held in solitary confinement for the first week, was handcuffed, forced to wear leg irons and subjected to regular strip searches. In the second week, he was put in with the general prison population. Mayfield, who was told by a guard to "watch your back," feared for his life.
The FBI, greatly embarrassed, apologized to Mayfield and his family. It was all a big mistake. Investigators blamed it on a bad copy of the print.
...
"I'm so happy. To be home. To be with my family," he said. "Two weeks ago, I was on a track to a death sentence."
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As for the FBI apology, Mayfield said he accepted and commended it, but that it didn't fix his life or the lives of others whose civil liberties have been violated. When asked why he doesn't show more anger, he said, "I feel anger. But I'm trying to be gracious. As much fear as they put into me, I have more faith in God."

How many more Brandon Mayfields are out there, I wonder? How can we know, with secret proceedings in secret courts, secret interrogations in secret detention facilities? This isn't the America we were brought up to believe in. It's not even America at all. It's George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Robert Mueller, George Tenet, Don Rumsfeld, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, et al. They elicit the worst in us, in our people, in our institutions.

At this point, all we can do is VOTE KERRY and "Let America be America again." Or if you will, let freedom ring. Or "take back America." Whatever. Just throw the bums out.