The War Nightmare

Our Iraq War nightmare cries out for a thorough overhaul of the political system in our country. We need to GET THE MONEY OUT and pass some meaningful reforms - with major penalties against the buying of our elected officials. The current "Culture of Corruption" will ruin us all otherwise and it appears sooner rather than later.

It is amazing HOW MANY otherwise intelligent Americans caved in to the insistent Neo-Con drum beat for war. I've lost faith in the wiseness of our system over this war. Many Americans are having second thoughts now, but where were our leaders when it counted - when our country could have had a truly democratic discussion BEFORE rushing off into a war which now seems a supremely tragic mistake? Maybe I’m just naive but it sure seems sort of late to hold that kind of discussion now with over 2500 American military lives lost and still counting with no end in sight . . .

Yes, there were all the claims - now shown to be baseless - which ‘proved’ Saddam Hussein possessed WMD’s. We were told if we didn’t invade a sovereign third-world nation, our next warning would only be a mushroom cloud over some US city. It was all pure, unadulterated fear mongering balderdash and horse poopy from day one. The folks in this administration responsible for this should hang their heads in shame. In fact, I can think of some of them who simply should be hanged.

Our elected political ‘leaders’ in both the Senate and House of Representative fell all over themselves to authorize Bush’s war. Only 23 senators had the courage to stand up and say “Hey! Wait a minute!”. Only one single Republican Senator (Lincoln Chafee of RI) voted against the resolution handing George W. Bush virtually unbridled power to launch a preemptive * war against a nation with zero ties to the WTC attacks. (H.J. Resolution 114, 10/10/02).

The House of Representatives was not much better with the vote being 266 ‘yeas” to 133 ‘nays’ with NO Republicans among the ‘nay’ votes. One would think that our elected leaders might have checked into this issue a bit more before handling over raw power to a President who acted more like a willful 5-year-old with a loaded gun instead of a wise and responsible leader.

* “SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES. (a) AUTHORIZATION- The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to

(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq;”