Bush Is Busy Fear Mongering

But the partisan war against Clinton was so vicious, time-consuming and expensive, the administration couldn't accomplish much. What is clear is that none of the men involved in persecuting Clinton had the slightest concern for the good of the country, really, just a third grade level need to humiliate and discredit him. Bin Laden and terrorism were put on the back burner by the Republicans, even while Clinton and his administration were trying to push a clear agenda for counter-terrorism, arms control, nonproliferation, international anti-crime and counternarcotics initiatives.

In fact, there was a movie made about a president who started a war just to divert attention from his miserable failures at home. Everyone thought the movie was about Clinton, of course. But it turns out to be about President George W. Bush, who is busy, busy, busy trying to get support for a really stupid military action, a war, against a pathetic and dangerous little country filled with innocent civilians who have already suffered at the hands of the United Nations' economic sanctions. The sanctions have not worked. They have not brought down Suddam Hussein. They have simply starved the people of Iraq and made their lives more hopeless than ever.

We will never, ever hear any serious or detailed discussion from the Bush administration about health care, Medicare, Social Security, the economy, rising unemployment, anything except war because that is the only issue they have to keep Americans even partially supportive of the president. Even the Democrat leadership has been bullied into thinking that if they say the truth, which is that Bush is beating the drums for this war to distract Americans from the deeper issues, they will be unpatriotic.

Well, this is a typical situation of old men sitting around making decisions that will kill America's young men and women. That's patriotic? It's insane. Our intelligence is so poor we can't find bin Laden. Terrorists are in Germany, France, Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Philippines, the United States, all over the world, and we are being told that the answer is to bomb the hell out of Iraq, where most of its citizens are concentrated in the areas necessary to obliterate, the cities.

The international community knows that if we bomb Iraq, Hussein will do just what he did before - send missiles to Israel, and then the Middle East situation will truly be in shambles.

One does not have to be a professor of foreign policy to figure out the disaster of such a war. I'm going to write my Congressional representatives and ask them to quit cowering before this cowboy president and say it like it is. The Bush administration is playing with our grief, our fears and the lives of our young people just to keep everyone from talking about domestic issues until after the General Election November 5th and for the next two years.

I have an idea. Let President Bush send his twin daughters into the first wave of battle in Iraq. That might quiet the sabers and subdue the testosterone.

Caroline Porter is a freelance writer from Galesburg who can be reached at cporter@galesburg.net.