I may be confused, but how does our military fighting in Iraq enable me to speak and live freely here within the borders (or non-borders for that matter) of the United States?

Did I miss a military aspect of Saddam Hussein's fighting forces prior to the war starting in March 2003? I had no idea that the Iraqi military could just sail over here and invade us at any time. I also had no idea that they could launch their weapons of mass destruction at us from all the way over there. And even though bin Laden loathes Hussein's regime, I had no idea that al Qaeda could be infiltrating our borders under the command or sponsorship of Hussein.

Ah ha! Must be more bulls*** from the Bush Administration! I smelled it, didn't you? Well it's a strong odor, the same kind that taints the 9/11 Commission Report and the Patriot Act and the domestic surveillance campaign and the 2004 election. But seriously, how did we Americans fall for all of this nonsense that invading Iraq ensures our freedom? It doesn't. If anything, our freedoms have been marginalized because of the war.

How to Win the Peace: Suppress the American Insurgency

For one thing, OUR lords, the wealthy Neo-Conservatives controlling all three branches of OUR government as well as OUR media, detest Americans who talk against the War in Iraq, inquire about 9/11, or physically protest government actions. The President calls these Americans "defeatists" while Congressmen call them "unpatriotic cowards." You also hear the administration label any seemingly subversive talk as "helping the enemy" defeat America. And of course that leads to my favorite 'if-then' statement of all time: "if […], then the terrorists win."

These lords don't want us thinking freely because they don't want us to uncover their crimes. The President, himself, openly and proudly admitted a couple weeks ago that he ordered the surveillance of ANYONE whom he suspected to be a terrorist or a terrorist accessory here in America. Although he assured us last year that he would always seek warrants from FISA judges before taking such action, he is now declaring himself immune from such burdens and inconveniences due to this time of uncertainty and war. On top of admitting to this crime, Bush has also promised to conduct more surveillance against Americans, completely overstepping the FISA court! If this act goes unpunished, none of us from now on should be held responsible for any crimes that we admit to committing.
  
Buying & Embedding the "Free" Press

t-bag_pocketSpeaking of shady activities, did any of you Americans who blindly hold Bush's pocket [reference to "Prison Break"] realize that he arrogantly refuses to tell you ANYTHING about what he's up to? Top administration officials and close friends to the President are being investigated for misconduct under the President's name and Bush refuses to come clean about it or fire anyone. Do you care?

You probably don't care or you're thinking, "Well the Press is on the case, and they won't let us down." Oh yeah, the Press. I forgot they were still hanging around. There they are, over there, trying to hold onto Bush's other pocket. Remember, the Press was tasked with selling Bush's Iraq War to the American people with the promised reward that Bush would let them ride in the tanks during the invasion.

So instead of investigating the reason for going to war (WMD) with Iraq prior to the invasion, they chose instead to use that time to get fitted for their "Property of Bush" military-newsmen jumpsuits.

That's objective journalism for you: the Press hosting marketing campaigns for the President. What an effort of propaganda distribution that turned out to be. It reminds me of a quote by Justice Hugo Black, "The press was to serve the governed, not the governors." That's worth half a laugh.

Whose Security is Most Important? 

minutemanI'm not the kind of person who advocated treating Mexican immigrants like sub-humans and kicking them out of the U.S. just because they occasionally harass our citizens, overcrowd our cities, and require bilingual reformation. However, many Americans, such as the Minuteman Project volunteers, see this as a threat that can and should be halted and neutralized. Bush's problem is that he won an election based on a promise to keep Americans secure from spiteful enemies, some of which are thought to have been creeping into the U.S. by crossing our border with Mexico. Not surprisingly, he's reneged on that promise too.

I imagine that the American-Mexican border, not Iraq, might be the place to worry about if you were really serious about "securing" America. The funny thing is, though, that it may be too late for that. Any terrorists who wanted to get in may have already done so over the last five years. If we are attacked someday and we learn that the terrorists who carried out the attack entered America through our southern border, what will Bush say? "Democrats gave the terrorists the keys to the kingdom while I was napping."

"We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here"

Never before in the history of the world has such an arrogant line been so ignorantly delivered and so mindlessly repeated and believed. The line simply reeks of injustice to the people "over there" and should greatly offend and embarrass the people "over here." Imagine France successfully invading and occupying the United States and then we hear the French President righteously declare, "We're fighting them (the British) over there (in America) so we don't have to fight them over here (in France)." Imagine being considered a detour in a greater mission. According to Bush, Iraq was just one of many battlefields in the war to defeat terrorists, specifically al Qaeda, who pretty much fell off of his To-Do List in 2002.

iraqi_casualties Unfortunately, any dignity that the Iraqi people may have retained under Saddam Hussein has been diminished. We stuck them with a potentially fundamentalist government and a hornet's nest of zealous terrorists who love nothing more than killing Iraqis and Americans everyday. Bush's War in Iraq is a disgrace to humanity, costing more than 30,000 human lives to date.

american_casualtiesIt will undoubtedly surprise future generations of Americans that George W. Bush was not impeached for his perversion of ethics that led us to war, for his disregard for the soldiers and their families who sacrificed in the war, for his abuse of OUR Constitution and civil liberties, and for his simple incompetence in governing.

But we have many important decisions ahead of us regarding the balance of our security and liberties in this post-9/11 United States. The quality of our descendents' lives depends on our judgments today, that is whether we take the path of true democracy or totalitarianism.