'I'll be honest I have no earthly idea whether an influx of 20,000
troops will be sufficient to cure what ails Iraq and its capital
city. ...

Tell you what I do know, however.

I know that we've been misled to an awful intersection of history
where there are no good options, only options in varying shades of
bad.

I know how tempting it is to say we ought to wash our hands of this
mess and bring our men and women home.

I know that it still strikes me as wrong, for reasons both moral and
pragmatic, to come in, blow up these people's country, then walk
away and leave them in the rubble.

Most of all, though I know this I do not trust my leaders.

... the architects of this war have shown a frightening willingness
to treat fact as optional. Where reality has collided with political
expedience, political expedience has invariably won. Where it has
been inconvenient, it has simply been ignored.

It happened when the administration linked Iraq to Sept. 11
terrorist attacks even though one had noithing to do with the other.

It happened when the White House used discredited intelligence to
make the case for war.

It happened when the president airily dismissed gloomy intelligence
reports that did not jibe with his preferred view.

It happened when he kept insisting we "stay the course" even after
it became apparent to everyone with eyes that the course led
straight off a cliff.


(ABOVE)WRITTEN BY L. Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald.


How do you ask ANY man to die for a mistake(Kerry) indeed. We never
had that one victory to the war on terrorism. That mission was never
completed as claimed otherwise by a banner. Last but not least,
ladies and gentlemen, we never had the higher ground. That much
feared seven headed hydra may very well be that of our own making.
James Madison(4th President) once said "If tyranny and oppression
come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign
enemy."

Self-interests have made an enemy of ourselves. A self-interest of
securing the strategic resource called cheap oil(and its' revenues)
which capitalism has invariably created our growing need for and
inextricably made our economies gravely dependent on it. We're
fighting an "illegal war," a war that needn't be fought. It isn't
easy to ask any man, woman or child to die for a mistake, it is a
moral sin on our conscience, a blemish on our greatness and a threat
to peace. It doesn't take an unpatriotic but a clear one to question
if we did the right thing but it'll take the hands of a few perfectly
built souls and many more betterly built ones in spirit to lift the
aluminium caskets of that few good man and move them across the
tarmac from the bellies of our transporters.

The search for truth, it is the very least we could do for their
ultimate sacrifice that was called upon between the lines of their
legalese when they signed. Politics and politicians are not
blameless, they're instrument and guilty as facilitators to this
moral crime. It was politics that made the World's Greatest Chess
Player a mere shadow of his former and true self and who could have
blamed him. He couldn't have appreciated its' nuances nor its'
callous deftness at that age of being a prodigy. What was paramount,
he would have seen as inconsequential. It's the same adeptness in
politics that has driven us here to this point in history and a surge
back to April 1975. What could be striking similar to is now... Some
may see it more a flaw in character when politics is totally out of
the picture. But the fact remains...

It maybe too little too late. You can't unwind instability nor can
you effectively change the minds of a nation with a small number of
guns and steel. They are not men with sticks, spears and arrows. It
is the very beautiful picture that capitalism, advanced and great
nations (its' politcians) & capitalists have spun us that we have to
get past and ask ourselves this question, that silver lining "When
are we going to adopt better policies(if not for ourselves, for
future generations; may it be on our foreign or energy policies) and
when are we going to change our habits?"

And as always may all your endeavors lead you to prosperity(eternal
peace and well-being).

P. Mavin