Wars and rumors of wars

When I think of the travesty this country has brought upon Iraq my blood boils. True, it was ruled by a despot, but that fact alone does not warrant the US invasion and Hussein's removal.

No, it wasn't for humanitarian reasons that we invaded his country. It was not for the feared WMD either. That was just a ruse used by Bush and his henchmen to muster the testosterone of congress to authorize the invasion. It was not al Quaida, either. Hussein feared having them in his country and ruthlessly kept them out. Why, then, did we attack them?

OIL. Plain and simple. My own theory is that the Oil gods saw the demand coming and wanted to insure their access and what better way than capturing Iraq's extensive oil fields. They could justify it by ramping up Hussein's own cruelness, turning him into a Hitlerian ogre. The American public would buy it. They buy anything if it is sold to them with advertising. Look how they've deified Princess Dianna and the Kennedys.

The Nazis taught a lie, too, by repeating it widely and using credible talking heads to do it. The lie got bigger and bigger and soon to go against the lie became treason. Sounds like what has happened in this country. You held anti-American values, bordering on treason, if you didn't go along with the rabid Bush handlers in the White House with their jingoistic speeches. George Bush, with his own dark tunnel vision, was a Bible believer who accepted, as faith, that he was God's own warrior on earth. He led the bloody crusade. Charles Manson thought that, too.

That's too bad for the thousands of young men and women that have died and have been maimed in Iraq because of that misguided faith. If there is honor in war it is for them. Misguided as they were by a terrible leader, they did what was asked of them. They truly deserve respect and every benefit we can bestow upon them including the GI bill now going through congress. That the President threatens to veto it is so symbolic of his treachery. Die forAmerica, right or wrong, but don't cost America any money. The phrase, compassionate Republican, has become a joke. The blood on George Bush's hands and the hands of the political party that let him use them is indelible.

We've spent so much money in Iraq now that we could have made every Iraqi citizen a millionaire probably. Often I take the figures bandied about by people who total up the war's burgeoning costs and try to figure how many modest houses we could build for the poor in this country, or how many new doctors and clinics we could build in poverty stricken ghettos, or how many people we could send to college, but then I realize that it doesn't matter because this administration would never do that anyway. If they didn't spend it in war then they'd spend it some other way in order to line the pockets of their corporate supporters. You see, it takes money to get money with this Republican administration.

Is war ever justified? Of course. Was this war justified? Absolutely not. If Bush wanted a war I wish it would have been against the likes of Myamar or Zimbabwe or Somalia or North Korea. Liberating the people of those countries would indeed have been a humanitarian effort, one justified and worthy of dying for. But it would never happen. No oil, perhaps?

Eventually this country will get over the presidency of George Bush, but it will take a long time to heal the open wounds and it will take a leader of courage because the carnage must go on a while until we can set straight his bloody errors. This country has not always been moral, and no country can really be 100% moral, but at least, in past times, morality was our high standard, we always knew what was moral even if we didn't always attain it. Under George Bush and the Republican congress that standard was lowered considerably. What do we stand for now? The foxes had the run of the chicken house. The title of the Cole Porter song comes to mind: Anything Goes.