Friends:

9/11 was not the beginning. The hatred and fury were swirling all about us long before then.

It started in November 2000, when tens of thousands of Americans were denied the right to vote; when a 5-4 divided Supreme Court appointed Bush President of the United States after he had been defeated in the election by 500,000 votes; when the only state to have major problems with the voting procedure and counting was Florida, where his brother is governor.

It started when Bush immediately began reversing many of the environmental policies the Clinton administration had put into place, including allowable levels of arsenic in drinking water, the Kyoto Treaty, which deals with global warming, an assault on the Alaskan wilderness, and countless other attacks on our national forests and protected parklands.

It started when the Bush administration resurrected Reagan’s Star Wars Missile Defense System, when he stated publicly that perhaps limited use of nuclear weapons would be necessary in the future, when he broke the Nuclear Ban Treaty in favor of testing and developing "small" nuclear weapons.

It started when he cut Veterans benefits, Head Start programs, shuttered schools, and gutted all the social welfare programs.

Long before 9/11 it had started. By our lack of attention and apathy, we had allowed the President of the United States to turn our prized democracy into an autocracy, where he and his rich friends possess unlimited power.

9/11 was the catalyst that he needed to drape his crusade in the American flag and use our patriotism for his personal gain. Preemptive war. The enemy: the Afghani and Iraqi peoples. And the dreaded religion, Islam. Now we must rid the world of these infidels. With absolutely no link established between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and with no proof, before or since, that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction," we proceeded to obliterate the country of Iraq in the name of freedom and democracy. Still there are many questions that have not been answered by the Bush administration concerning 9/11. Still we are not sure what Bush knew or didn’t know prior to 9/11. Now we have killed an estimated 13,000 Iraqis, none of whom were involved in 9/11, and over 1000 American soldiers have died, not by the hands of the Iraqi army, but by Iraqi citizens defending their country against a foreign invasion.

As if war is not enough, the other continues. They have decided to limit our freedoms in the name of fear; a seniors drug prescription program that is confusing, expensive, and more lucrative to large drug companies; a Clear Skies Initiative that increases mercury pollution; disenfranchisement of gays and other minorities; the centralization of the media; a Healthy Forests Initiative that threatens the last roadless places; the gutting of the Super Fund clean-up responsibilities; interfering with states right, i.e., medical marijuana, the right to die; letting the ban on assault weapons expire; opening up new avenues to allow corporations to pay no taxes; a No Child Left Behind initiative without substance or financial backing; the largest federal deficit in our history; shipping millions of jobs to third world countries in the name of globalization.

To you Bush supporters, I wonder how you’re making sense of all this? I wonder how you deal with the shameful charade of lies that keep coming out of the Oval Office? We have become the most callous, despised government on Earth. Those things we hold most sacred have been systematically dismantled, including the U.S. Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our educational system, the right and obligation to provide fair and safe jobs; the right and dignity of decent and affordable healthcare, our clean air and water, our wilderness, the financial security of our children, and our hope that we can better ourselves and leave a better place for our children.

I for the life of me cannot understand how you will be able to cast a vote for George W. Bush, the most power hungry, heartless, self-serving son-of-a-bitch to have ever been appointed President of the United States.

Sincerely,

Bruce Weik, a.k.a. The Peever