Memorial Day, 2004

[scottcsmith]

I hope everyone takes a moment to remember the men and women who died in Iraq this past year. Over 800 lives lost in a sham war. If right-wingers want to blame Bill Clinton for 9/11, then I'm going to blame George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld for each and every American that has died and the thousands who have been injured, plus the nearly 10,000 Iraqi civilians that have been killed in a war founded on lies.

Bush and Rumsfeld don't say much about weapons of mass destruction anymore. They've changed the war. Now it's a war on terror, not a hunt for stockpiles of weapons. Bush knew all along that there were no weapons and that Saddam Hussein was NOT a threat. Why else would Secretary of State Colin Powell say the following in Feb. 2001?

"We will always try to consult with our friends in the region so that they are not surprised and do everything we can to explain the purpose of our responses. We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue."

And we're to believe that, in the space of two years, Saddam quietly assembled the huge stockpiles of weapons that Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council about in Feb. 2003?

Not that it matters now. We're fighting terrorists! 800 dead? No big deal, the conservative says. More people die in big cities due to gun violence than that. Out of sight and out of mind. If flag-draped coffins are not being shown on television, why, there must not be any! No one is dead and no one is injured. Osama Bin Laden? Who? Sorry, I don't know who that is...the name sounds familiar, though.

Memorial Day, 2004. Will George W. Bush stop and think about the consequences of his decisions? Consequences? What are consequences? I haven't made any mistakes! Why did you have to ask such a difficult question? I'm George W. Bush, and my orders killed your sons and daughters. But at least Iraq is free of the tyrant Saddam Hussein.

[Toots]

1. I will be remembering friends I served with who's names are on

"the wall" I am still extremely upset at my country for their deaths. I feel they died in vain, just as our current batch of soldiers are doing. We can do so much better as a country.

[scottcsmith]

2. And those of us that don't want to see more dead soldiers

Are "traitors" because we don't follow the Bush party line like good fascists.