Top High School students oppose torture

President Bush invited the 2007 Presidential scholars class to the White House on Monday to supposedly congratulate them, and to have them participate in a promotional event for reauthorizing his "No Child Left Behind" program.

First of all, this is just a funny situation. The Presidential Scholars are a group of the smartest high school students in the country. This is like Forrest Gump addressing a gathering of astrophysicists. One can't expect Bush to understand what a bad idea this was, but you would think his handlers would.

At the conclusion of the event, one of the students handed Bush a hand-written letter, signed by 50 of the participants, urging the President to "do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants", and that "We have been told that we represent the best and brightest of our nation. Therefore, we believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions. We do not want American to represent torture.” Bush, feigning surprise, said that the US has never been engaged in any of those practices. Why on Earth would they think such a thing... other than its common knowledge to everyone in the world, except, apparently, George Bush. This is increasingly pathetic. The letter sent Whitehouse staff into full damage-control mode, issuing absurd statements rebuking the assertions made in the students' letter. Truly heart-warming, indeed.

The event was particularly poignant in the context of the White house press conference, earlier that same day, with Dana Perino, wherein Ms. Perino flatly denied that the US was involved in torture in any way. This assertion was met with amazed indignation by the press corps. When confronted with the argument that US agents routinely engage in methodologies that have been defined as torture since 1901, Perino said that she would not comment on specific practices used by US agents "to obtain information from terrorists".

But what about those methods used on people who aren't terrorists and have never been accused of any crime, Ms. Perino?

Anyway, I thought this was a beautiful story, and it gives me a minuscule morsel of faith in the next generation of leaders.

here is a video of 3 of the students talking about the letter on CNN.