A start at a small portion of the work in which you will become engaged has been done for you. The results can sit neatly on Nanci Pelosi's mantlepiece ready for the Congressional Hearings after Christmas. They make ugly reading and as a European I am not happy about bringing the news to you. Truth tell, I am more than a bit ashamed.
Today the BBC reports the preliminary outcome of the European Parliament's investigation into rendition and secret CIA prisons. The headline says it all:
Many EU nations were aware that the CIA used their territory for the transfer or detention of terror suspects, a draft European Parliament report says.
Slowly the doors are opening a tiny bit wider. What you see on the other side starts to strip away the prevarications, obfuscations, half-truths and downright lies that all of us - Americans and Europeans - have been receiving from our governments for the last few years.
The report follows months of investigation by a special committee of MEPs led by an Italian, Claudio Fava.
"Many governments co-operated passively or actively (with the CIA)," said Mr Fava, quoted by AFP news agency.
He accused top EU officials including foreign policy chief Javier Solana of failing to give full details to MEPs.
The report echoed allegations made in June by the Council of Europe - Europe's leading human rights watchdog - that European states were complicit in illegal CIA operations as part of the US-led "war on terror".
US President George W Bush admitted in September that the CIA had used prisons abroad for the secret detention of terror suspects, but he did not specify where the prisons were.
He insisted the suspects had not been tortured.
EU 'informed'
The draft report says several EU governments were aware of the CIA's secret detention and transfer of terror suspects.
It further accuses governments and top EU officials of failing to co-operate fully with the European parliament's investigation.
Mr Solana's evidence to the inquiry contained "omissions and denials", the draft report says.
And EU anti-terror co-ordinator Gijs de Vries was also criticised over evidence he had given.
Why are all these European nations so acquiescent? I cannot think of one that, whatever their outward face, are not prepared to do deals with Bush. My own country being the biggest offender, if not in having CIA prisons, then certainly in offering CIA airport facilities and over-flights.
On another thread, I recommended books by an Australian writer working in the UK called John Pilger. His politics are to the left of mine but that does not mean I don't respect much of what he said long before the full import of all of the events of the last four years became apparent:
The war on democracy has been successfully exported. In Britain, and in other western countries, such as Australia, journalism and scholarship have been systematically appropriated as the new order's management class, and democratic ideas have been emptied and refilled, beyond all recognition. Unlike the 1930s, there is a silence of writers, with Harold Pinter almost the lone voice raised in Britain. The promoters of an extreme form of capitalism known as neo-liberalism, the supercult responsible for the greatest inequalities in history, are described as "reformers" and "revolutionaries". The noble words "freedom" and "liberty" now refer to the divine right of this extremism to "prevail", the jargon for dominate and control.
You will find it all on John Pilger's site here. And what does Harold Pinter, to whom he refers, say? I will give this quote:
We are in a terrible dip at the moment, a kind of abyss, because the assumption is that politics are all over. That's what the propaganda says. But I don't believe the propaganda. I believe that politics, our political consciousness and our political intelligence are not all over, because if they are, we are really doomed. I can't myself live like this. I've been told so often that I live in a free country, I'm damn well going to be free. By which I mean I'm going to retain my independence of mind and spirit, and I think that's what's obligatory upon all of us. Most political systems talk in such vague language, and it's our responsibility and our duty as citizens of our various countries to exercise acts of critical scrutiny upon that use of language. Of course, that means that one does tend to become rather unpopular. But to hell with that.
He wrote that some time ago, long before the first glimmer of democratic hope came from your mid-term elections.
Use this hope well, America. We Europeans need what you will be doing over the next two years every bit as much as you do. That is why our firm grip on each other's arm here and on Dkos is so important.