For purposes of history, I have decided to write this essay on the war in Iraq, 2003 vs Afghanistan 2001-2002, and Clinton/Gore vs. Bush.
Preface One to the story is “Cigar-gate”, the Clinton/Lewinsky blow-job affair. President Bill Clinton had a sexual affair with a White House intern, and then lied about it to Congress and the rest of America. He was impeached, even though there was no action brought forward of “high treason” against the country. “It was just sex”, said the Democrats, and “It’s not the sex that we mind, it’s the lying”, said the Republicans. The Republicans never went on to claim any lying on the part of Clinton about any material cause that affected any other Americans other than himself, his family, and his mistress.
Preface Two to the story is “Butterfly-gate”, otherwise known as the year 2000 presidential election. Due to the number of items on the ballot in one Florida county (Palm Beach), a butterfly ballot was used – where instead of one page of names in a small font that might be hard to read, two facing pages of names are used, and the punch holes alternate between the left-side page and the right side page. The claim by Democrats is that many senior citizens in this county (which has a high population of Jewish New York retirees) mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. Al’s name was the second name on the left page but was the third hole down on the butterfly ballot; Pat Buchanan’s name was the second hole down. Most telling was a map showing the distribution of votes for Buchanan in the state – there was a large spike in Palm Beach county. The estimate was that approximately 3000 votes were inadvertently cast for Buchanan instead of Gore. There were ballot recounts of hanging chads, charges of disenfranchisement of minority voters and calls to do away with the electoral college, but to me, it came down to that one issue, the butterfly ballot. Because Bush was declared the winner with less than 1000 votes difference between him and Gore in the state of Florida.
So that was your background.
The main story began on September 11, 2001, when a total of four airplanes were hijacked by a total of 19 Muslim terrorists. Three of these planes were deliberately crashed, bringing down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and damaging the Pentagon near Washington, DC. It is likely that the fourth was destined for either the White House or the Capitol building. But that flight had been delayed on the ground, and so when some passengers called their loved ones when the hijackers took over, they found out about the other planes and realized they had nothing to lose by opposing the terrorists.
When it was determined that these terrorists were working at the direction of Osama bin Laden, and that he was working out of Afghanistan with the support of the repressive Taliban regime, both the left and the right were in agreement – bin Laden had to go, and the Taliban as well. I personally remember forwarding e-mails and signing petitions in about 1996, urging our government to do something about the plight of women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. The war commenced, and a quick victory was declared, despite not having any idea whether bin Laden was still alive.
It was around this time that our own Taliban began to take hold. Despite many years of accountability in government, the USA Patriot Act was passed. This act allows the government to subpoena records from libraries, bookstores, etc. without a grand jury indictment. See, a grand jury indictment would need to be against a specific person. And while I’m sure that some libraries and bookstores and the like may have provided the requested information without a subpoena, they are not required to do so. All the agents have to do is say the magic word – terrorism – and they could open many, many doors. What’s more, the people and organizations asked to provide this information were not legally permitted to inform the people being spied on that the information was requested. That’s right. Whereas before they could refuse to comply with the request, or they could choose to comply but also to notify the patrons that the information was requested, now they were required to not only comply with the request but to not tell anyone of the request. Secret Police, anyone? Hurray for librarians, though – many of them did the little that they could to subvert this, which was to essentially shred or destroy any records of book activity as soon as the book was returned. Can’t provide information that you don’t have, right?
Then, there was TIPS. This was the program that wanted to “strongly encourage” anyone that entered your house, for whatever reason, to report anything “suspicious” to authorities. Think meter readers, plumbers, computer technicians, etc. Heck, probably even your newspaper carrier. Tips would probably include a book on Islam sitting on your coffee table. Face it, any of these people could report you anyway, at any time, for any reason. The government would probably even listen to them at this point in time. So why do we need to actually encourage these people to do this? Maybe to instill more fear and patriotic fervor, as in 1930s Germany? By this time, liberals are getting very nervous.
And then came Iraq. Liberals said “What? What does that have to do with 9/11?” “They are terrorists”, we were told. Huh? But not a single one of the terrorists were Iraqi. “Hussein supports al-Qaeda”. No proof is given, Osama bin Laden himself despises Saddam Hussein, because of his secular (albeit dictatorial and repressive) government. What could this possibly have to do with al-Qaeda? And in the face of these questions, the Bush administration piped up with “ah, but they have weapons of mass destruction, too. In fact, that is the real reason we must go to war there.” But, inspections are taking place right now, and nothing has been found. Not to mention the fact that even if there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they could not reach us in the U.S. Also not to mention the fact that North Korea does have weapons of mass destruction, that can reach the U.S. No matter, though, because it’s too late – the war has already begun.
Now, six months later, still no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Whatever happened to those Iraqi scientist defectors, that supposedly gave our government concrete, incontrovertible proof of the WMDs in Iraq? Haven’t heard about them in several months. And still haven’t seen the proof. And all the administration’s speeches about Iraq go on and on about regime change and removing a cruel and vicious dictator. Every day we hear how this official and that cabinet member have “misspoken” about the proof of this and the cost of that.
The majority of Americans believe that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis. The Bush administration wants approval of Patriot Act II, which would no longer even require a judge’s signature for snooping activities where they write the word “terrorism” somewhere in the text of the file (which they would not have to show to anyone because they would not have to get any sort of approval from anyone). And yet there’s been no rumblings of “regime change” in North Korea where a similarly cruel and unstable dictator is known to and admits to having WMDs that can reach this country. And they say it’s not about the oil that lies under the sand in the Middle East.
How is it that this guy has not been impeached yet? And then removed from office? Yes, I consider myself a patriot, and yes, I hate dictators, and yes, I think that terrorists should be brought to justice. That's why I think we should impeach this so-called president.
7:03:00 PM 
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