Dubya's Final Trick

The question on the minds of every thinking person in the country at the moment is just why the Bush Mob has displayed such jaw-dropping Constitutional arrogance since the day they seized power six years, two months, and one week ago. The impression one gets is that they feel immune from being prosecuted for the hundreds of felonies that have been committed by what is, no doubt, the most corrupt administration since the invention of dirt. The fact that Scooter Libby will never even see a day in prison as a result of his perjury conviction last month is now a foregone conclusion. The First Fool probably has the pardon already written out, sitting in the top drawer of his desk and ready to be issued at the most opportune time (My prediction is late in the evening on Christmas Eve 2008). That being the case, what's the point of even having laws on the books if those very laws may be cynically violated by those at the pinnacle of power through sheer, reckless disregard or via the nifty little technicality of something called, "a signing statement"?

Here's why these disgusting people have ridden roughshod over the laws they were sworn to uphold: It is my belief that George W. Bush is finally going to follow in his father's footsteps. He's going to ( or, at least, he thinks he's going to) issue a blanket pardon in the waning hours of his term of office, "in the spirit of this glorious season" (I tell you, it's going to be Christmas Eve!)

If you'll remember, Poppy Bush pardoned the entire Iran/Contra gang en masse as his reign of error was coming to a close in 1988/89. At the time, the justice department was in the process of finding out just who was responsible for funding the so-called "Contras" in direct violation of the Boland Amendment. These were an armed gang of murderers and rapists (left over from the Somoza regime) who were trying to overthrow the sovereign nation of Nicaragua. Indictments were being handed down by special prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, including even former Secretary of Defence, Casper Weinberger. Every day, the trail of evidence was leading straight to oval office of Ronald Reagan and the man who had served as his vice-president, George H. W. Bush. Forty-one's eleventh hour pardon of every person involved in this scandal hid from the American people - perhaps for generations - the truth about what really happened. He should have breathed a sigh of relief that Bill Clinton was able to clean his clock at the polls in November of 1992. Had he been re-elected, the facts would have come out and he might very well have been impeached.

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January 20, 2001, marked the twelfth anniversary of the end of the Reagan White House. On that day, his papers were scheduled to be made public for study by historians and scholars - but the fix was in. On that day, the fortunate son was sworn in as the forty-third president of the United States. For his first act as president, the hideous little bastard signed an executive order that sealed the Reagan and Bush I papers forever - curiously omitting the Clinton archives at the same time. We fully expect the next administration to correct this situation.

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How can we prevent Bush 43 from getting away with what dear old dad got away with almost two decades ago? It's really very simple, folks! It's obvious that the Bush Justice Department has no plans to bring charges against this corrupt and disgusting administration - but that's a good thing, don'cha see? A president cannot issue a pardon against someone if no charges have been filed against them to begin with. We've got to make sure that the only person charged with any crime between now and 20 January 2009 is George W. Bush, himself...That's the beautiful thing about all of this...A president of the United States can pardon anyone he sees fit - but he can't pardon himself! Isn't that wonderful??? As far as Dick Cheney is concerned, the question of when he will be called to account for his crimes against humanity are, at this stage in the game, purely academic. Given the state of his health, the old bastard will more than likely drop dead any day now.

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Please, let's not call for any special prosecutors this time 'round. Leave that for the next administration. I leave you with the closing paragraph with which I ended my first posting on The Rant way back on June 2nd of last year:

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"PREDICTION: George W. Bush will be remembered in history, primarily, as the first (pray last) former chief executive to go to federal prison. Sound crazy? Stay tuned."

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Pray for peace.

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Tom Degan

Goshen, NY

tomdegan@frontiernet.net

IT'S IMPLOSION TIME, KIDDIES!

Just when you thought the muderous, half-witted little frat boy the American people stupidly sent to the White House six years ago couldn't possibly sink any lower, the hideous little bastard cheerfully lowers the bar yet again! Gee, aren't these interesting times? That's the beautiful thing about George W. Bush; say what you want about the disgusting little thug, he sure as hell isn't boring!

The latest outrage is just another drop in Bush's ethical tsunami: The House and Senate, in trying to get to the bottom of the question as to just who was responsible for the firings of seven U.S. attorneys, all but one of whom were described as stellar performers in their jobs, have pinpointed Karl Rove and Harriet Miers as being behind the dismissals. The legislators want the both of them to appear before the Senate, raise their right hands and testify under oath. The First Fool will have none of it (SURPRISE!) In an appearance before the press earlier this week he said that having any of his advisers testify in such a setting would seriously jeopardize his ability to get candid advice in the future.

Oh, Bullshit. Just how stupid does he think the American people are anyway? Oh, wait a minute....they elected him, didn't they?....Never mind.

As John W. Dean observed in his book, Worse Than Watergate, any person who does not want his or her council to the president made known to the public, is more-than-likely giving that president bad, possibly criminal advice.

The fact is this: Karl Rove is probably the most corrupt civil self-servant (Oooh! I just coined a phrase!) in American history. Going all the way back to his days in the early seventies as the head of the College Republicans, the man's record is absolutely littered with corruption and political mischief. Donald Segretti, the young lawyer who was eventually disbarred because of the dirty tricks he carried out on behalf of Richard Nixon during the campaign of 1972, was one of his early heroes. It's now obvious that at least one of the Attorneys in question, David Iglesius, was canned because he wasn't persecuting the Democrats. If you doubt that Rove was one of the instruments in the recent sackings, please bear in mind that in the 1990s he was behind the bogus criminal prosecutions of several Democratic operatives in Texas. For more on that subject, please read the book, Boy Genius, by Lou Dubose, Jan Reid and Carl Cannon. You can also purchase the excellent documentary, Bush's Brain. Of this I am absolutely certain: Rove, like Bush, will die in federal prison.

And as far as Harriet Miers is concerned, it's mind-numbing to think that the president of the United States actually nominated this mediocre, imbecilic woman for the Supreme Court. Fortunately she was rejected by the right wing! It's almost refreshing to see that they at least have some standards - as embarrassingly low as those standards may be. As it turns out of the seven attorneys fired, one seems to have been genuinely incompetent. Kevin V. Ryan's office was described as "the most fractured in the country". Ryan, who has been described as "a loyal Bush company man" was removed at the last minute by the Bush Mob and only because a federal judge complained directly to the White House and threatened to get the Congress involved

Expect a constitutional crisis in a matter of days - if it's not upon us already. Anyone who has bothered to pay attention to this appalling administration all these years has surely seen this coming. The Bush presidency is coming apart at the seams and - forgive the calumny on my part - it really is a lovely thing to behold. Is that a terrible, un-American thing to say? Not at all; in fact it's the most patriotic thing one could say under the circumstances. This is a corrupt group of people. They're inept - you want them to fail! You don't want them to do any more damage! The damage that they've already done to your once-great country is incalculable. You want them to be pushed into a situation where they are, for all intents and purposes, impotent. Believe me, we'll all be a whole lot safer as a result.

The end of the Bush era is upon us. The American people are angry and will soon demand that justice be served. And you thought that Nixon's downfall was fun to watch? Oh, brother!

Pray for peace.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

Crappy Anniversary, Everyone!

My goodness! Can it be four years? Why, it can be and it is - four years! My, how time flies when you're having fun! Ah, the bittersweet memories, my friends! Now let me think....what was it they told us again??? Oh yes! I remember now!

"It's a slam-dunk"!

"We'll be greeted as liberators."

"We'll be in and out of there is six months."

"It will be a cake walk."
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"9/11 changed everything."

"Iraq is central to the war in terror."

"We'll be greeted with flowers and candies."

"We could do it with one-hundred and fifty thousand troops."

"Saddam Hussein had connections to Osama bin Laden."

"This war is about ridding Saddam of weapons of mass destruction."

"This war is about bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people."

"This war is about defeating al Queda."

"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"!

"BRING 'EM ON"!

"This is a major turning point."

"That is a major turning point."

"The insurgency is in its final throes."

"We've turned a corner."

"When they stand up, we'll stand down."

"Absolutely we're winning."

"Freedom in Iraq is on the march."

And let us not forget the First Fool's famous sixteen words:

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

I think I'm going to be sick.

Four years after the stupidest foreign policy blunder in American history, possibly over half a million Iraqi men, women and little children have been slaughtered for nothing - that's not to mention over thirty-two hundred American kids whose lives have been "wasted" - a term that Senators Obama and McCain have recently gotten chastised in the media for using but (let's be honest, people) if the shoe fits....

Once again (like his disastrous venture into the oil business in the 1980s) poor Dubya has tried and utterly failed to one-up his father. The first Gulf War of 1990 looked so easy! Poppy's people went in there and BAM! - before you knew it they were having a ticker tape parade down Broadway for the returning troops!

"If Daddy kin do it, Ah kin do it!"

Once again, poor little George has come face to face with his own inadequacies in the psychological battle of wills with his father. But this time, he's dragged all of his once-great nation and a large part of the world down with him.

The following is the text of a message I sent this morning to George W. Bush at the White House in Washington DC (a photostat of the actual letter may be viewed at the top of this page):
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Tom Degan
18 Craigville Rd.
#14-7
Goshen, NY 10924

Dear President Bush,
Today on MSNBC, they re-broadcast the footage from May 1, 2003 of you on the deck of the aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln. I saw the Mission Accomplished banner. I saw you in that silly flight suit. I saw you with that disgusting smirk on your face as you declared, "Major combat operations in Iraq are over." Question: Sir, with the benefit of 20/20 historical hindsight, do you even have a clue as to how fucking stupid you look?

Just wondering.

Love and peace,

Tom Degan

PS - By the way, when you get a chance, have a look at my blog:
www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
It's a lot of fun!
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All we are saying is give peace a chance!
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Give the twins a squeeze for me - they rock!
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tomdegan@frontiernet.net

And now a word about Alberto Gonzalez...

Honestly, did you ever, in your wildest, freakiest dreams imagine that the day would come when you would actually feel a sense of weepy-eyed nostalgia for the likes of John Mitchell and Ed Meese? Watching the career of a sycophantic, brown-nosing, cowboy boot-licking little nerd like Alberto Gonzalez has almost been worth the price of the ticket. That's the wonderful thing about George W. Bush and the tidal wave of human shit that comprises the most disgusting administration in two-hundred and thirty-one years of American history: in terms of pure theater of the absurd, they are an absolute, gut-busting joy to watch, are they not? We're talkin' laugh riot here, folks! If you just ignore the nasty little fact that the damage they have done to our once-great nation will still be reverberating a century and a half from now, watching them in action can be loads of fun. Let's face some facts here, people: unintentional humor can be highly entertaining. (Do you remember Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James Watt? Do you remember Dan Quayle? I rest my case). No doubt about it: These knuckleheads are the Kings of Accidental Comedy! Bush is the Buster Keaton of political the faux pas!
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It doesn't get any better than this; it really doesn't!
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Which brings us back to the subject of poor, pathetic little Alberto Gonzalez, the most corrupt and inept Attorney General of all time. This is the same guy who referred to the provisions mandated in the Geneva Conventions which outlaw torture as "quaint." Isn't that sweet?
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The recent firings of seven U.S. Attorneys have raised the eyebrows of every thinking person across the land. Alberto would have us believe that these prosecutors were fired, not for political reasons (oh, perish the thought, my loves!), but due to "job performance". I must say that there might be more than a little bit of truth in that assertion. By all evidence, the "job performance" of all but one of seven in question was just a tad too competent for the Bush Mob. One of the people who got the ax was U.S. Attorney, Carol Lam of California, whose prosecution last year of Republican Congressman, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, sent that disgraced law maker to prison. According to Paul Krugman, in a column in the New York Times a few weeks ago, "The top F.B.I. official in San Diego told the San Diego Union-Tribune that Ms. Lam's dismissal would undermine multiple continuing investigations." At the time she was given the boot, Lam was in the process of building an influence peddling case against the very defence contractors who compromised Cunningham in the first place.
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This scandal is not even a week old and it's already produced its own "Scooter Libby". On Monday, D. Kyle Sampson, Gonzalez's chief aide, took the fall for the hideous little bastard and promptly resigned. The following day, our comical little Attorney General held a news conference outside of his office at the Justice Department. Acknowledging that "mistakes were made" - although by whom was never clarified - he then went on to say that he took full responsibility for those mistakes. In another, less dumbed-down era, a person who took "full responsibility" for the jaw-dropping ineptitude of an organization of which he was in charge, would immediately tender his resignation. Not Alberto Gonzalez - no sir! Expect him to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom any day now.
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In an article in today's New York Times, David Johnston and Eric Lipton reported that, "In rating the prosecutors, Mr. Sampson [who worked in collusion with former Bush Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers] factored in whether they 'exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general,' according to documents released by the Justice Department." When some of these very prosecutors refused to bring charges against certain Democratic politicians for lack of evidence, they wound up on the Bush Justice Department's "strikeout" list. One of the attorneys dismissed, David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, has been described as a "stellar" performer at his job.
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Paul Krugman ended his Times piece by noting that, "the next two years...are going to be a rolling constitutional crisis." That's putting it mildly, to be sure. The excuse that federal prosecutors "serve at the pleasure of the president", while technically true, is entirely missing the point. A chief executive will always begin his term in office by appointing men and women to uphold the laws of the land with whom he feels ideologically comfortable - no problem there - but to target six or seven people for removal without adequate justification in the middle of one's tenure is completely unprecedented. They probably won't report this on FOX News but it is as clear as can be: these people were removed from their positions because of job performance, alright - that's obvious and undeniable - but the sin they committed was doing their jobs honestly. Job security in the Bush administration means playing their sick and corrupt game; marching in lock step to the beat of a spastic drummer. They've politicized everything else, why should you be the least bit surprised that they have now done as much to the Department of Justice?
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What we have here is just one more in an endless litany of misdeeds, corruption and incompetence that has defined this appalling White House's performance from the day they seized power over six years ago. The only encouraging sign tempering an otherwise bleak horizon is the fact that the American people, asleep at the switch for the last quarter of a century, are finally beginning to awaken from the right wing coma they were snoozing under for all those years and are finally starting to realize what's really at stake - representative democracy as we know it. Now there's something to be truly thankful for.
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Did you have a nice nap, kiddies?
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Pray for peace.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

Richard B. Cheney 1941-2007

Back in the late summer of 1973, the Democrats in congress faced what can only be described as "an awkward dilemma". By that stage in the game it had become poignantly obvious that Richard M. Nixon was up to his ears in impeachable offences in connection to what Walter Cronkite was referring to as, "the Watergate Caper". The only problem was Spiro T. Agnew - "Ted", to his friends; the very man who put the "vice" in the vice-presidency. Agnew was such a contemptible political hack, no one wanted to even think of him sitting in the oval office - his inept and mediocre hands grasping the fragile reins of power. That very thought was enough to give even the hardiest of men the dry heaves. No, they would just have to learn to live with Tricky Dick until his term expired on January 20, 1977.

And then in the early autumn, something miraculous occurred: Agnew was busted, dead to rights, for having taken bribes and kickbacks while he was governor of Maryland in the late sixties - a practice that continued when he became VEEP. By the second week of October the pathetic bastard was forced to plead no contest to the charges and immediately resigned his office. From that moment on, Nixon's presidency was doomed. The following summer, having lost political support from his own party and facing certain impeachment in the House, Nixon resigned and was replaced by his successor, the far-more easy going (and sane) Gerald R. Ford.

The parallels between then and now, with respect to Dick Cheney, are impossible to avoid. To quote Joan Rivers: "Can we talk"???

First of all, the dread specter of a "President Cheney" shouldn't be as frightening a prospect as it might seem to the more timid of souls. For the last six years, the joke going around the Washington cocktail party circuit has been, "Bush is just a heartbeat away from the presidency." As far as foreign policy is concerned, it is obvious that the Dickster has been calling the shots from day one. Were Bush to be impeached tomorrow and Cheney installed as president of the United States, nothing would change. Nothing. But that argument is merely academic and should be relegated to history's might have beens. The reality is the simple and sad fact that Dick Cheney's days are numbered.

The Vice-President of the United States is a sick and dying man. Now just hear me out, people! If Bill Frist can diagnose Terri Schiavo's condition in Florida from his senate seat in Washington DC, then Tom Degan can diagnose Dick Cheney's condition in Washington DC from his apartment in Goshen, NY - Cut me some slack, Jack! And besides, I'm totally qualified to make such a diagnosis: my two brothers-in-law are Doctors and I once dated a nurse, thank you very much!

It is my expert opinion that Cheney will be the first vice-president since Garrett Hobart (William McKinley's VP) to die in office. Believe me, it gives me neither joy nor smug satisfaction to tell you this. The man is, after all, a human being....I think....But we have to look at the situation realistically and rationally: Cheney suffered several heart attacks in the 1970s when he was only in his thirties. It is widely believed that he suffered another one in November of 2000 while the election results were being fought out in Florida between Al Gore and the First Fool. The man is in his late sixties. Just think of the constant stress he must be under given the recent conviction of his former chief aide and confidant, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby! Everyone with half an ounce of common sense knows that Libby is the fall guy for the vice-president's misdeeds. Even a few of the viewers of FOX and Friends (just about the dumbest people on the planet) are starting to catch on! Will the madness never end?

Since the Libby conviction last week, our man Dick has become so radio-active that even Bush, who (let's face some serious facts here, campers) has always had a fairly high threshold for embarrassment, won't be seen in the same room with the guy! When you've gotten to the point in your life where you're perceived as being a humiliation to the likes of George W. Bush, you're really setting some new and exciting standards within the realms of failure and incompetence. Taking all of this criterion into consideration, given his precarious physical condition, and the unbearable stress he must be dealing with on a day to day basis - it's not just a mere possibility, it's almost assured:

Dick Cheney is going to drop dead any day now.

By this simple reasoning, the Democrats should have their plans for impeaching Bush in their top drawer, ready to be implemented at a moment's notice. And don't come back with the line that they don't have the votes to pull it off. By the end of the summer, the overwhelming majority of the American public will be demanding this disgusting president's removal from office.
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In case you've forgotten, during the 2000 primary season, George W. Bush (at his father's recommendation) put Poppy's former Secretary of Defence, Richard B. Cheney, at the head of a committee to find the most suitable running mate for the campaign ahead. For the sake of historical accuracy, I have concocted here the dialogue that must have taken place:
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Cheney: GEORGE! I have found your ideal running mate!

Bush: Great! Who is it, Dick??

Cheney: You're not gonna believe it - IT's ME!!!

Bush: Whooa! What're the odds??
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Umm....my curiosity has gotten the best of me... but has it occurred to you yet what a fucking idiot our commander-in-chief is? Just wondering.

And what were the so-called "pundits" saying about Dick Cheney when he placed himself on the ticket in the summer of 2000? Oh, yeah! Now I remember! "The man has gravitas".

I need a drink

Pray for peace.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

Our Long National Nightmare

It's official. As of this week, George W. Bush's poll numbers are below thirty percent - twenty-nine percent to be exact. Even Richard Milhaus Nixon, during the height of Watergate, never saw numbers that low! In another, more informed era, Bush's ratings would be in the low teens or maybe even the single digits. But this is the age of FOX News, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. It is still relatively easy to "catapult the propaganda." The amazing thing is the fact that twenty-nine percent of the American people are so jaw-droppingly stupid, they actually believe - seriously believe - that the First Fool is doing a good job. As Art Linkletter once said, "People are funny"!

And as I always predicted they would, the people are beginning to awaken from the right-wing coma that they've been snoring under since the day, twenty-six years ago, when they foolishly sent a feeble-minded, failed B movie actor by the name of Ronald Reagan to the White House. The top three Republican contenders for the nomination next year (Giuliani, Romney and McCain), although traditional conservatives in the strictest sense of the word, are seen by the idiots who now control the so-called "Grand Old Party" as maverick, hard-core lefties. That party has moved so far to the extreme right in the last quarter of a century, it's in serious danger of falling off the face of the earth. Toward the end of his life, Barry Goldwater, the father of modern conservatism, had totally distanced himself from the movement that he, more than anyone, was so instrumental in bringing about. At the time of his death, he was working on a book with John Dean which was to be a condemnation of the direction the "party of Lincoln" had taken in recent years. Dean finally completed the book last year. It's called "Conservatives Without Conscience", and is a must read any way you slice it.

2007 will see the utter destruction of the Bush White House - count on it. The reign of these disgusting bastards is in its "final throes." And make no mistake about it: the impeachment and prosecution of George W. Bush does not necessarily mean images of President Dick Cheney in the East Room proclaiming that, "Our long national nightmare is over." (A bad acid hallucination if there ever was one). Trust me on this one, campers: there is more than enough evidence to send the both of them to the hoose gow for the rest of their lives. Cheney, given the fragile state of his health, will probably be able to avoid his just desserts. But of this you can be absolutely certain: George W. Bush will die in federal prison. I'm as sure of that as I am my own name.

Tom Degan - nice to meet 'cha!

Whenever one reviews the dreadful history of this disgusting administration, comparisons to the Nixon White House are plentiful and unavoidable. However, for all of their bad deeds, the Nixon gang were, at the very least, competent. While they undeniably got a lot wrong, they did manage to get more than a few things right. The best that could be said of them is that they were smart guys who did a lot of mean and stupid things. The Bush Mob, on the other hand, is the gang that couldn't shoot straight! Nixon, even his detractors acknowledge, had one of the best minds of any president (save Wilson and Jefferson) in history. Bush, om the other hand, has the IQ of a deflated rubber life raft. For all of Dick Nixon's transgressions, a reasonable argument can be made that there were at least some positive accomplishments to come out of his reign of power. Even Warren G. Harding, previously judged by scholars to be the worst president in American history was able to boast a few achievements. It should not be forgotten by posterity that Harding was the first president to commit America to curtailing the arms race. Even bad presidents can claim justifiable pride in deeds well done - as rare as those deeds may be.
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George Walker Bush will be remembered as the exception to the rule. Nothing good will come of the wasted years he sat as chief executive in the Oval Office. Nothing. A century from now, historians will look back in amazement and disbelief at how he was able to bring his once-great country down into the gutter of international disgrace and and economic calamity while so many foolish Americans cheered him on in the process.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's generation had "a rendezvous with destiny." This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with ruin. You can take that to the bank.

Pray for peace.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
Photograph of yours truly
taken 4 March 2007

Meltdown at Walter Reed

When Donald Rumsfeld gave his now infamous oration regarding "things we know we know...things we know we don't know...things we don't know we don't know" (YIKES!) he might very well have been speaking of the nightmare that they should have seen coming (but apparently didn't) in the form of wounded, disabled and horribly disfigured Iraqi war veterans. You would think that George W. Bush, with his habit of defunding vital programs meant to assist the most vulnerable among us, would at the very least cut these kids a break, wouldn't you? After thoughtlessly shoveling them into this untenable quagmire, you would think that the guy might show a little compassion, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you?? Forget it. Since he took the oath of office on 20 January 2001, his one and only priority has been to cut the tax rate on the obscenely wealthy. As a result, our social and economic infrastructure is now in the process of disintegrating. That disintegration can be seen in full view this week at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. At a time where the system has been taxed to the limit with the return of thousands of seriously injured servicemen and women, the First Fool has cut veterans benefits by twenty-eight billion dollars while closing over fifty VA hospitals.
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Are you by any chance aware of what a dreadful, historical blunder was committed when this country foolishly sent a disgusting, half-witted little piece of shit like George W. Bush to the White House? Just thought I'd ask.
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As bad as things are at the moment, to quote the late, Al Jolson, "You ain't seen nothin' yet." In the wake of the revelations of the conditions of "Building 18", according to the Army Times (a hotbed of liberal muckraking if there ever was one) the wounded soldiers were told not to talk to journalists and to "shut the fuck up". As of this week, reporters are not allowed to tour the facilities without an escort. According to the Washington Post, the Army has known about the rat-infested conditions for over three years. On MSNBC yesterday, Don Imus played a clip of an interview with Secretary of the Veterans Administration, Jim Nicholson, who said (with a straight face, I swear) that the soldiers (some of them amputees) were themselves to blame because they left food laying around in their rooms. He then went on to say that the number of kids who have lost limbs in this useless war is "only" six-hundred.
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Did you just gag on your bacon? I thought as much.
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What we have yet to come to terms with is the fact that this stupid war is far from over. Society will have to care for these vets for decades and decades - and the money for their care has been squandered. We're you aware of the fact that the last civil war vet died in 1959? That was a year after I was born! By that very reckoning, we'll be caring for the veterans of Operation Iraqi "Freedom" (Doesn't that very name make you want to puke?) until the year 2101. And what the Army and the Pentagon haven't even taken into consideration are the sky-high cancer rates that are inevitable due to the existence of the depleted uranium coating American made tanks and missiles. This situation is believed to be responsible for the so-called Gulf War Syndrome which has been a health nightmare for the men and women who fought in Desert Storm a decade and a half ago. That war lasted months; this one has gone on for almost four years. All of this on top of the serious psychological toll it has taken on at least one-hundred thousand returning soldiers. Expect a crisis very soon.
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How will the men and woman we send out to fight our wars ever be able to trust their government again? The answer is quite simple: they won't nor should they. After seeing how their leaders are treating some of the wounded, walking dead, to continue to trust these people would be sheer insanity. We so-called "grown ups" should do everything humanly possible to make sure that our youth have nothing to do with this disgusting killing machine. If we really wanted to, we could obliterate the Military Industrial Complex. The worst mistake we could make would be to give it up as a fait accompli - dismiss it as just another headache that must be lived with - "a necessary evil." Evil may be many things, necessary it is not. The fact is this: WE THE PEOPLE have the power. WE THE PEOPLE are in control. WE THE PEOPLE have the means to turn our once-great nation into the beacon of freedom and hope that the Founding Fathers had in mind when they composed the Constitution over two centuries ago...We can shut this country down if we need to - at the very least we can set it on the right course...It's up to us.
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Pray for peace.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net