May 26th, 2007

Dear Readers,

We celebrate another Memorial Day holiday weekend.  This time, for the first time, I can't call my dad, the veteran, as I used to on certain national holidays.  He fought through Europe during World War Two, became a professor at a university, and finally passed away last August (2006).

My mom, also a retired university professor, died last February (2007).

And my wife and I feel like we were both killed November 25th, 2005.  Killed by friendly fire from our Congressman.  We became non-entities that day.

We are now both 50 years old, and living on borrowed time.  Every day seems like a gift.  Every morning is a pleasure to see.  Then we turn on the news.

This Memorial Day holiday, again, we will have more soldiers whose sacrifice we will honor at the end of the holiday weekend than we had at the beginning.  Someone will die in service to our country this weekend.

And you ask why, and I ask why, and NO ONE WILL TELL US.  I do not trust the Democrats to tell us, even if they know.

What will happen when we leave Iraq?  Will peace reign there?  Or will death, torture, and endless retribution fill the void?  Surely, our best friends there now will be the ones most at risk after we leave.

George Bush lied to the American people about the most important thing on the planet (WMDs) to get us into the war.

But the Congress -- both the House and the Senate -- backed him.  They looked at the LACK OF EVIDENCE and somehow said: "That's good enough for me!  Colin Powell says he knows a guy who knows a guy who saw a guy carry what looked like a document that might have said something about 'yellow cake' and that's good enough for me."

Maybe it was pound cake.  It didn't matter to Congress.  George Bush had his war.

And now, the current Congress, many of whom are the same people, the ones who did nothing when great evil was being done in their name, expect me to believe they are ready to right the wrong we have done to Iraq by getting out and blaming the Bush Administration which isn't even a person, it's a series of resignations and replacements with an untouchable clown at the helm.

A clown in charge of the destruction, by any means possible, of our Constitution, our environment, our Democracy, and the most sacred law of all:  The separation of Church and State.

He actually likes "helluva job Albo" who doesn't even have to plead the fifth, since he believes he has utter immunity for any lawless behavior.  The law, apparently, does not apply to those who are duty-bound to uphold the law.

Alberto Gonzales wishes to change the Department of Justice into a political football where illegal searches, seizures, confinement, and even TORTURE can be committed by secret police with no legal recourse for the victim, no matter how innocent they are, or how vile the abuse.

The police's immunity from prosecution will occur not because any particular ACT is necessarily made legal (though many vile injustices HAVE been made legal under the Bush Administration), but because, after the cop has acted like a criminal, it will be called "regrettable," and changes will be promised.  But that will happen only AFTER THE CRIME HAS BEEN COMMITTED and will not really stop it from happening again in the future.  Indeed, it just sets up a POLICY of apologizing and moving on, and changing nothing.

Cunningham will get away with his attempted murder of my wife and I, and it appears that those who helped him will never be punished, either.  The injustices at Abu Ghraib will happen again.  Gitmo will never be closed -- at least, not by THIS administration.  Some parts of these horrors will be deplored (setting dogs on prisoners covered in feces, because it might infect the dog's mouth; don't throw the Koran in the toilet, it might stop up the drains) but other parts (waterboarding, for example) will become LEGAL.  Baking, starving, asphyxiating, and thirsting prisoners until half of them are dead in a cargo container will be LEGAL insofar as it will NEVER be punished and those who do it will get promotions if the surviving half talk sufficiently to please some pathetic toadie.

Spreading cancerous, poisonous, radioactive Uranium throughout the countryside is not an environmental disaster, because it's war, and in war, environmental laws are comfortably ignored.

Who do we think we are?  How come we deny so many truths which are self-evident?  Nuclear power is not the solution to global warming.

This Memorial Day, consider this:  Do we love war too much?   So many Americans think war excuses ALL incivility -- "in war, there are no rules" they say.  But there ARE rules, and we have to admit it, and we have to admit we have violated those rules.

And to those who would say, "But our enemy violates all those rules!" I say:  We're not them.  We will not emulate them.  We will not match them.

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