Soapbox

A recent letter to the Dispatch asked why the paper doesn’t report more good news from Iraq.
Um…gee, maybe because there isn’t much?

Of course there are occasional bright spots, and there’s no reason the U.S. public shouldn’t hear about them. However, a new coat of paint on a school here and there doesn’t balance out the raw sewage in the streets, running gun battles and car bombings all over the country, which is the daily reality in much of Iraq.

I don’t say this to disparage U.S. troops there, who I respect and admire, and who would no doubt rather be playing soccer with Iraqi kids than firing mortars into crowded streets, as happened yesterday. Better yet, they’d probably rather be home, playing soccer with their own kids!

The truth of Iraq is that things are very bad, and unlikely to get much better, as a classified National Intelligence Estimate informed President Bush in July. I’m sure the president is really wishing the report wasn’t leaked, because now we know that Bush and Cheney are apparently the only ones who still believe there can be a good outcome in that failed war.
There are areas, even entire cities in Iraq now where the strongest army on earth cannot go, and the size of these areas is growing as the Iraqi resistance becomes better organized. Does this sound like a liberated country, on the verge of democracy? Even the best case scenario painted by the President’s staff does not come close to the beucolic vision of happy Arabs all over the middle east casting democratic, pro-western votes that the President continues to mouth in his stump speeches.

When the Bush administration tries to distract the American electorate with endless chatter about Swift Boat veterans and what defense spending bills john Kerry voted against, they are hoping voters will forget the core fact of this entire election:
George Bush chose to start a war in Iraq, though Iraq was not sponsoring international terrorism.

The only terrorists we are fighting in Iraq today are those of our own making. They don’t want us to remember this, but we must, because it shows the convoluted thnking of this administration. The 9/11 commission, the Secretary of State, the administration’s own terrorism chief and even the president have all admitted that Iraq did not sponsor nor harbor known terrorists prior to the war. George Bush, the man who is claiming to be the only one strong enough to keep us safe from terrorists, created the enemy he is so anxious to protect us from. As for the actual, original terrorists, al Qaeda, Bush said, “I don’t really care where Osama bin Laden is…he is not a priority”

Not a priority? Let me get this straight: the terrorists weren’t in Iraq…and the guy who IS a terrorist isn’t a priority? What kind of insanity is that? If there aren’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and we seem to be making the situation worse with every day we stay there…why are our sons dieing in Iraq?

Why should we be impressed by George Bush’s vow to see us through the disaster of his own making?
And how do you ask someone to be the last man to die for a lie?

The gloves are off now and the fight is about to get bloody.

John Kerry has tried to play it nice. He really has. Despite the nasty and factually incorrect attacks from the Republicans and their monions, the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, Kerry tried to stick to the current issues: the economy, health care, taxes, etc. You have to give him that: he really tried.

And then the Republican convention, and it was open season on Kerry. In the face of massive protests in New York, the convention was not about George Bush- it was a contest to see who could find a new way to call John Kerry a wimp.
They wore little bandaids with purple hearts on them, questioning the value of Kerrys, and therefore everyone’s Purple Hearts awarded for combat wounds. Rather than applaud their candidates’ record this past 4 years, they told us that John Kerry is a liar, a girlie man, a guy who would defend the country with spitballs. If Kerry is president, your family may be murdered in their beds, was the message. Night after night, speaker after speaker turned their guns on John Kerry. And, from the President and vice president: John Kerry is unfit for the office of president.

Oh man, they had to go there, didn’t they. they had to play the “unfit” card.
After a week of taking punches below the belt from the Republican war machine, John Kerry came out swinging. Last night, as Bush was accepting the party nomination, Kerry told a crowd in Springfield how he defines fitness for office. A man who never served, who mislead our country into war, is unfit to be President, he said.

While I hate to see the campaign go down that road, I understand why Kerry had to answer back. I’m not sure that he’s strong enough to do it well, but there’s only so many times a man can take a punch in the kidneys without hitting back.

So I’ve come up with this little addendum to John Kerry’s definition of the kind of man that is unfit to be President. these are just off the top of my head, mind you. Here we go:

~ a man who steals the Social Security surplus in order to hide the true horror of his deficit spending has demonstrated that he is not capable of leading this country.

~ a man who has managed, in less than 4 years, to turn the largest budget surplus in history into the largest budget deficit ever has failed in his duties and is not competent to serve as president.

~ a man who uses the office of president to assault and diminish the very Constitution upon which his office is founded is NOT a leader and does not deserve the support of the American people.

~ a man who repeatedly changes scientific data to fit his political agenda is unfit to lead this country.

~ indeed, a man who instructs the EPA to lie and thereby poison the lungs of the very firemen, police and other 9/11 workers who he calls heroes is unfit to be president.

~ deliberately creating a climate of fear, suspicion and misinformation, and hiding personal misdeeds behind an artificial cloak of national security is not leadership and is not worthy of the office of president.

~ a man who sent our soldiers to fight a war without enough water, body armour, bullets or even a real plan has failed the office of president.

~ an administration that has teenagers arrested for wearing the wrong T-shirt to public functions, that demands to know the race of a photographer at a convention speech and requires loyalty oaths to insulate the president from ordinary Americans has not shown leadership and has not served the people of this country.

~ a president who, in the middle of his own personally cultivated war has cut military pay, military housing, veterans health care, and even reduced combat training for Marines about to go into combat for the first time in their lives has failed this country in a fundamental way and is unfit for the office.

I hate to talk about “unfit” – I really do. It’s an awfully strong word, and while I really do believe that Bush is appallingly unfit for the office, I wish that the word had never been used. But Bush/Cheney opened the floodgates by repeatedly declaring Kerry unfit for office, and now it looks like we’re gonna all get wet.
Noah, how long can you tread water?