Me: Frank Lynch

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The indignation which Bush-Cheney supporters are displaying over Kerry's mention last night — that Cheney's daughter, a lesbian, probably feels she was born that way — sheds further light on Cheney's coldness last week during the VP debate and at the Republican convention. Simply put, even though Mary Cheney is a member of his family, they haven't come to grips with the implications of her sexual orientation. If they had, you wouldn't have Mrs. Cheney imputing ill will to Kerry for his mentioning it; if they had, you wouldn't have Dick Cheney saying Kerry was "out of line." Here is the horrid point which Kerry made:

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, let's get back to economic issues. But let's shift to some other questions here.

Both of you are opposed to gay marriage. But to understand how you have come to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?

BUSH: You know, Bob, I don't know. I just don't know. I do know that we have a choice to make in America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that we do that.

(snip)

KERRY: We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.

I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice. I've met people who struggled with this for years, people who were in a marriage because they were living a sort of convention, and they struggled with it.

And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.

I think we have to respect that.

Mary Cheney's sexual orientation is well known; when she worked at Coors, she was in a marketing position which focused on the gay community. So not only is she out, she's leveraged her familiarity with the community in a professional capacity. So what did Kerry say which led Lynne Cheney, her mom, to say, "The only thing I could conclude is this is not a good man. This is not a good man." What had he done?

Here's what he did: he reminded them of something I guess they are dearly trying to forget, or keep from their supporters. As John Edwards' wife said,

"I think that it indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences," Mrs. Edwards said. "It makes me really sad that that's Lynne's response."

Uniters, not dividers, I guess... And as for Dick Cheney's complaint about "dragging his daughter into this," you should have seen his daughter Elizabeth on Sunday on Wolf Blitzer's show, defending her dad's contradictions and so on. Me think they doth protest too much.
Link 3:36 PM Home

Another glimpse of the bulge? Salon has a shot, but a more interesting mystery might be what Bush said to Kerry last night: was Kerry dismayed afterwards? Why? What's up?
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Factcheck.org has its list of distortions from last night's debate up now. Remember, they're not telling you what sticks, just the distortions.
Link 12:56 PM Home

Among many odd moments was when Bush called on the ghost of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, regarding the health of Social Security:

There is a problem for our youngsters, a real problem. And if we don't act today, the problem will be valued in the trillions. And so I think we need to think differently. We'll honor our commitment to our seniors. But for our children and our grandchildren, we need to have a different strategy.

And recognizing that, I called together a group of our fellow citizens to study the issue. It was a committee chaired by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, a Democrat. And they came up with a variety of ideas for people to look at.

It was interesting in a number of ways. One was that Bush was careful to mention that Moynihan was a Democrat. Bush didn't need to appoint Moynihan: it wasn't a congressional committee, Moynihan was no longer a senator, and Democrats were in the minority at that point (the committee was announced on May 2, 2001; Democrats wouldn't regain the majority in the Senate until later in the month, when Vermont's Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party to become an independent). The apparent purpose of mentioning Moynihan's affiliation was to make the committee's recommendations seem more robust, even if Bush didn't explicitly say what those recommendations were.

It never hurts to go back and read about the charter under which Bush's committee was initiated. When Bush announced the formation in the rose garden, it was clear that critical assumptions had already been made. Bush said,

Two months ago, in my address to Congress, I described the principles that must guide any reform of Social Security. First, Social Security reform must preserve the benefits of all current retirees and those nearing retirement.

Second, Social Security reform must return the Social Security system to sound financial footing. Third, Social Security reform must offer personal savings accounts to younger workers who want them. Today, young workers who pay into Social Security might as well be saving their money in their mattresses. That's how low the return is on their contributions. And the return will only decline further -- maybe even below zero -- if we do not proceed with reform.

Personal savings accounts will transform Social Security from a government IOU into personal property and real assets; property that workers will own in their own names and that they can pass along to their children. Ownership, independence, access to wealth should not be the privilege of a few. They're the hope of every American, and we must make them the foundation of Social Security.

Today, I am naming a Presidential Commission to turn these principles into concrete reforms. This task is not easy, but the mandate is clear: strengthen Social Security and make its promise more certain and valuable for generations to come. I have asked the Commission to deliver its report later this fall. (Emphasis mine.)

Clearly, the commission was formed not to evaluate Bush's ideas, but to make them happen. Not surprisingly, there were furious reactions, that the fix was in:

Democratic leaders accused the Bush administration of arranging the panel to ensure a decision that would favor the president's position.

"I don't know that there's anybody who would dispute the fact that this commission is already a predetermined group that will be organized for a clearly desired result to privatize Social Security," Democratic Senate Minority leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said after the news conference.

"After the last six months in the stock market I am shocked that the president would really be trying to move forward with this proposal," added House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Missouri.

So with that background, how do we take Bush's comment last night that his handpicked commission "came up with a variety of ideas"? We react with a big, fat, "so what."
Link 11:34 AM Home

If you're a Roman Catholic and still not satisfied with Kerry's position on abortion, remember that you're getting yourself into a question of "how many unforgiven mortal sins does it take to go to Hell?" The answer is one, and two doesn't put you into "double Hell." So remember, unless you think Bush is going to work to make condoms, diaphragms, the pill, and all other "unnatural" birth control methods — all of which are against the RC catechism — against the law, you don't get a significant religious advantage by voting for Bush. There's no such thing as "Partial Hell" for only one mortal sin. So if you're gong to hell anyway, make your presidential choice on other bases.
Link 10:41 AM Home

Both candidates were all over the map with their answers last night, rarely beginning their answers in direct response to the question at hand. Maybe they were stalling or had too much left unsaid from prior questions. But when Bush said the answer to the outsourcing of jobs and a too- low minimum wage could be found in his "No Child Left Behind" educational programs, I thought he was doing more than just shuffling convenient facts into place: I thought he was showing how little he understands between the short term and the long term.

BUSH: Actually, Mitch McConnell had a minimum-wage plan that I supported that would have increased the minimum wage.

But let me talk about what's really important for the worker you're referring to. And that's to make sure the education system works. It's to make sure we raise standards.

Listen, the No Child Left Behind Act is really a jobs act when you think about it. The No Child Left Behind Act says, "We'll raise standards. We'll increase federal spending. But in return for extra spending, we now want people to measure -- states and local jurisdictions to measure to show us whether or not a child can read or write or add and subtract."

You cannot solve a problem unless you diagnose the problem. And we weren't diagnosing problems. And therefore just kids were being shuffled through the school.

And guess who would get shuffled through? Children whose parents wouldn't speak English as a first language just move through.

Now, higher education standards are fine with me, but workers who are earning a too-low minimum wage (or who have lost their jobs to workers in another country) are past school.

This short term-long term confusion on the part of the President goes miles in explaining why he chose the tax cuts he chose: I think he truly believes that tax breaks for the rich will lead to investment and jobs, but it takes a while for that to happen (if true). In the short term, Americans need jobs, and a tax break for wealthier Americans doesn't help in the short term.
Link 10:11 AM Home

The debate transcript is up at the Commission on Presidential Debates (the official sponsor). Here's the passage I was looking for regarding Osama Bin Laden... Bush said, "Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden. We're on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We're using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden." Like I said last night, how could that possibly be true when forces are deployed in Iraq? What a whopper — anyone could figure that one out, except perhaps the sitting President.

Unfortunately of course, transcripts don't convey voice inflections: it was at this same point that Bush referred to Kerry's "exaggerations," pausing before he used the word and giving it a mocking tone when he did so. Here's the exchange:

KERRY: Yes. When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.

Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden? " He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."

We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror.

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?

BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden. We're on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We're using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden.

Sorry to have to tell the President, but Atrios has video of him saying exactly what Kerry quoted him as saying.
Link 9:55 AM Home

Nader off the ballot in Pennsylvania. This is big: PA is a battleground state worth 21 electoral votes; Kerry's lead over Bush in the polls is currently small, by 1%-point, and polls give Nader 2%. John Kerry wouldn't mind those Nader supporters coming back to the fold. A court called the extent of invalid signatures "an unparalleled case of election fraud." The Times adds, however, "The decision, if upheld..."
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The campaign doesn't end on election day. One of the problems with Bush's presidency is that he thought that once he was inaugurated he didn't have to persuade and he didn't have to accommodate. That's why "I'm a uniter, not a divider" was probably the emptiest of all his 2000 rhetoric. He was elected on the slimmest of margins, and acted afterwards as if he had a mandate. All the questions about his legitimacy increased when he worked to appease his base. In the process, he briefly lost the razor-thin Republican majority in the Senate by alienating Vermont's Jim Jeffords, and angered the country. Whoever wins this November — and I really do think it will be Kerry — will also have the responsibility of uniting the country, and hopefully won't have anything as disastrous as 9/11 as a springboard. He'll have to choose between the paths of pursuing a partisan agenda and alienating those who disagree, pursuing a partisan agenda and persuading those who disagree that it really is for the best of the country, and building an accommodation between those who do and don't support him. Personally, I hope he can accomplish the second one (persuasion). It's going to be a bumpy ride, buckle in.
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If you have nothing else to do tonight, debate fact checking is in full swing. You can find the AP's here.
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SOO many thoughts about the debate. I wanted to listen, and not blog during, so a lot of this is memory, without the benefit of a transcript...

• Bush said we have all of our assets (or every possible asset?) pursuing Osama Bin Laden. How could that possibly be true when we have assets anywhere else? Who was he kidding?
   
• Bush said he didn't know whether or not homosexuality was a choice. Why didn't he indicate any endeavors to learn whether or not that was true? He could have said something like "I haven't been able to spend enough time on that subject," or claim that science wasn't unified, or something. But to leave the answer at "I don't know" before moving on to his gut feeling reinforced perceptions that he's not a curious man.
   
• Can we get Bob Schieffer replaced? What a stupid set of questions, throughout. To focus on the flu vaccine, in the face of everything else (no questions on the environment, you may have noticed) was absurd. And to wind up three debates with that softball of "tell us what you've learned from your wives" was an, uh, please excuse the expression, an Oprah moment.
   
• How could Bush respond to his faith question about his willingness to limit faith in office (I have to check the transcript for his exact words) mere moments after his arguments against abortion? And how could he talk about a "culture of life" without Kerry pouncing on him for his record on capital punishment in Texas?
   
• On the uniter not a divider question, how did Kerry fail to note the closeness of the 2000 election and contrast that with the Bush agenda, and not note that 2004 is going to be a 51-49 vote? In my view he failed to come across as a uniter by not positioning himself who would be conscious of the divides as he pursued programs.

Trust me, I'll have more tomorrow, that's just all I have for now without the benefit of a transcript.
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No, you can't trust Bush. Howard Kurtz fact checks a new Bush ad on Kerry's health plan proposal, and finds it's not telling the truth (well, gollleee, says Gomer: "Surprise, surprise, surprise!"). Oh, but it's not Bush, you say, it's just his campaign; what about that part that says, "I'm George W. Bush and I approved this ad"?
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Bush and the earpiece. Someone I know who has always been discrete about his government work thought that Bush's wire was so obvious in Debate I that he assumed it was written into the rules, and rather than being surprised by its presence, has been more surprised by people's surprise. Salon has taken the wire story further, and has an expert who says that the bulk is probably due to scrambling capabilities. They also have pictures of Bush in his pick-up truck where the bulge appears, and in Debate II. Can Kerry pat him on the back during III?
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Have you heard about the voter registration group in Nevada which is said to have shredded Democratic registrations and processed Republican registrations? That's the rumor.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

Whatever it takes to win, I guess. If this is true, it's horrible; and whether or not it's true it should be investigated. If the GOP is behind it at any level, perhaps it should be decertified. (Right now Nevada leans slightly towards Kerry, so this matters... a lot.)

UPDATE: According to Max Blumenthal (at The American Prospect), "Voters Outreach of America" has done work for "the ultra-conservative former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, Nathan Sproul" in an effort this past spring to get Ralph Nader on the ballot in Arizona. Their head, Aaron James, wouldn't comment to the American Prospect.

UPDATE 2: John McCrory has much more.
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King Leopold and the Abu Ghraib prison abuses. Sitting in the waiting room of my daughter's orthodontist yesterday, I was reading Mark Twain's King Leopold's Soliloquy (written in 1905), which imagined how Leopold would defend himself against charges of colonial abuse in the Belgian Congo. Without suggesting either moral equivalence ("Abu Ghraib is just as bad") or moral relativity ("At least Abu Ghraib wasn't as bad as the Belgian Congo") — an irrelevant consideration, since they were both horrible and neither should have happened — it's worth commenting on what Twain wrote, because at various points his Leopold draws on many of the same defenses we heard about Abu Ghraib (as well as our venture in Iraq at large).

For instance,

• Twain's Leopold sees information as the issue, not the crimes themselves. The piece opens up with Leopold throwing down an exposé, screaming, "In these twenty years I have spent millions to keep the press of the two hemispheres quiet, and still these leaks keep on occurring." Remember the U.S. military's sensitivity to the information getting out, and their requesting that CBS not show the pictures it had?
   
• Twain's Leopold complains about the existence of photographs of mutilated natives as evidence...

  "The kodak has been a sore calamity to us. The most powerful enemy that has confronted us, indeed. In the early years we had no trouble in getting the press to 'expose' the tales of mutilation as slanders, lies, inventions of busy-body American missionaries and exasperated foreigners..."

  Remember Donald Rumsfeld's complaint about the presence of the digital cameras? "We're functioning in a -- with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a war-time situation, in the information age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon." Telephones with digital cameras have supposedly been banned for U.S. soldiers.

• Twain's Leopold complains about the interventions of these "busy bodies" numerous times. During Senate testimony, Senator James Inhofe rose to the defense of the military by referring to humanitarian do-gooders: "I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting and dying..." (Incidentally, as another indication of Inhofe's misplaced anger, he also said he was "more outraged by the outrage than ... by the treatment.")
   
• One of Leopold's critics suggests that a monument should be erected to Leopold's inhumanity, consisting of a huge pyramid of the all the skulls of the millions of Africans who died under his reign, with five long avenues leading to it, each lined by two rows of 200,000 headless skeletons on its sides, running 35 miles. Leopold is of course repulsed, but more by the idea of having to pay for it than anything else. And Abu Ghraib? Remember how anxious the U.S. was to tear it down after word of the abuses got out, supposedly because of its horrid history under Saddam Hussein? (Like, why wasn't the repulsion sufficient motivation to tear it down before the U.S. abuses occurred?)
   
• An additional defense of Leopold is that the good works which he thinks he has done don't seem to get any attention. "I have spent other millions on religion and art, and what do I get for it? Nothing. Not a compliment. These generosities are studiously ignored, in print. In print I get nothing but slanders—and slanders again—and still slanders, and slanders on top of slanders! Grant them true, what of it? They are slanders all the same, when uttered against a king." This passage not only points out his perceptions of biased coverage, but that some targets (such as kings) should be spared criticism merely due to their position.

As someone who knew human nature well, Twain probably drew his "Leopold defense" not so much from Leopold himself but from what he'd seen in corrupt bureaucrats and criminals under scrutiny, as well as people he'd met in his own life who had every reason to feel defensive. And human nature hasn't changed so very much in a hundred years that we should hear completely different reactions surrounding the Abu Ghraib prison abuses. Still, it's noteworthy that the nature of the defenses are so similar.
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War crimes. A link seen through Atrios: Sy Hersh passes along a harrowing story he received in an email. Ugly. Really, really ugly.
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Using Factcheck.org to winnow down to the truth. Dick Cheney famously referred to "factcheck.com" during his debate with John Edwards last week, meaning to send viewers to factcheck.org. It is a valuable site for getting a perspective on the claims of both sides, but you have to remember this: their articles are about distortions, and in pointing out the distortions they never go the further step of pointing out the charges and claims which "stick." So ultimately, you're not really left with a set of facts so much as a set of untruths and distortions.

What you need to do is figure out what claims matter to you and check to see if they are still true. I haven't seen anyone who's pared down a debate transcript and said "here's what's left," but it would be a valuable effort.
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More November Surprises on the way. October Surprises are meant to suddenly make a candidate more attractive for a November election; "November Surprises" are the decisions that were delayed — the bad news — in order to make the incumbent look positive as long as possible for the election. Here are three (two you may have already heard of, and a new third):

• The US is delaying its full out, major offensives in Iraq until after the election, " say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives could affect the U.S. presidential race."

  "When this election's over, you'll see us move very vigorously," said one senior administration official involved in strategic planning, speaking on condition of anonymity.

  "Once you're past the election, it changes the political ramifications" of a large-scale offensive, the official said. "We're not on hold right now. We're just not as aggressive."

  That's right, US Presidential politics are deciding when and where we put US soldiers at risk — and the delays could of course have an impact on the ability to hold robust elections in January.

• As I mentioned in late September here, numerous regulations which effect your health, covering food and the environment, are being delayed in order to make Bush more appealing to business interests.
   
• Kerry has been pressing Bush on Iran's development of nuclear capabilities, and to deal with it, the Bush administration will silently "allow" European nations to make overtures to Iran with economic incentives after the election but before an IAEA deadline looms in late November. Regarding the political sensitivity, "European diplomats said that the administration was very squeamish about even discussing incentives, in part because it would represent a policy reversal that would provoke a vigorous internal debate, and in part because of the presidential campaign." So again, here we have this "axis of evil" threat, being played with over Presidential politics.

Presidential politics simply should not get in the way of serving the interests of the American people, Mr. President: this is not a complex idea.
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Vote for Kerry, and you go to hell. That's basically the message that Colorado Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has for Catholics: Kerry supports abortion rights, abortion is non-negotiable, knowing that and voting for Kerry would therefore be a mortal sin, and we all know that if you die in a state of mortal sin you go to hell. And of course issues like Bush's support for the war and capital punishment don't enter into the equation. So go to confession after you vote!
Link 7:10 AM Home

Bush continues to oversimplify issues, and he has to be trapped on it. Last night's "You're either for partial birth abortion or you're not" was one more case, and he did it right after Kerry said you have to consider whether or not the mother's life is at risk. Right after, as if Kerry hadn't said anything at all. And on that $87 billion bill to support the troops, Kerry's line about "I made a mistake when I talked about the war" doesn't go far enough: Kerry needs to brand Bush as deceptive by pointing out that Bush threatened to veto support for the troops, the same $87 billion, just packaged differently. And then turn to Bush and say, "I thought you said 'There's nothing complicated about supporting our troops'?"

UPDATE: I guess it also wouldn't hurt Kerry if, when he talks about his reluctance to give the money for reconstruction in Iraq (vs. lending it) he also mentioned that when the war started, someone from the State Department (Andrew Natsios) put the total cost of reconstruction at $1.7 billion.
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Time for the "Lysistrata Strategy." Kerry's momentum from last Thursday's debate (or should we say Bush's collision?) has led to strength in the polls, as you know. And for what it's worth, this morning the Electoral Vote Predictor again showed Kerry with sufficient electoral votes to take the presidency. That, of course, isn't the most stable of estimates, as is any poll these days. But Time has a new poll showing Kerry again even with Bush. And moreso, he's established a strong lead among women, favoring Kerry over Bush by 12 points. I can hear Todd singing it now...
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All those brand new business cards, wasted. The head of the Organization of American States has resigned, only two weeks into his tenure. Bribery accusations, apparently.
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If this is so, then someone needs to be fired for further incompetence. We all know that Bush performed miserably — uh, come to think of it, that was a funny spontaneous verb I chose — during last Thursday's debate. But this page wonders whether or not Bush wasn't being fed his lines, based on the pauses and false starts in his speech, as well as pictures which make it look as if he's got something electronic strapped on his back.

But if you were going to go to those lengths, how could you do it so badly? The results were awful.
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Bush discusses vetoing support for troops. In a photo op discussion on October 27, 2003:

Q Mr. President, much of the aid offered for Iraq at the Madrid conference was in the form of loans, rather than grants. What impact might this have on your threat to veto the U.S.-Iraqi aid bill if part of the reconstruction aid is in loans?

THE PRESIDENT: My attitude is the United States ought to provide reconstruction money in the form of grant.

Q So no change in the veto threat, then?

THE PRESIDENT: My attitude has been, and still is, that the money we provide Iraq ought to be in the form of a grant. And the reason why is we want to make sure that the constraints on the Iraqi people are limited so that they can flourish and become a free and prosperous society.

That's for your reference...
Link 4:01 PM Home

As an easy reference, I'm building a list of links to major speeches and remarks on Iraq given by either Bush or Kerry, in the margin on the left on the blog home page. It's very much a work in progress; if you have any specific suggestions, feel free to add them here in the comments. (Comments will be edited down or deleted once incorporated.)

While reviewing the White House documents, I ran into this simple statement of objectives from Bush:

We will stay on task until we've achieved our objective, which is to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, and free the Iraqi people so they can live in a society that is hopeful and democratic and at peace in its neighborhood.

It's pretty much final now that WMDs weren't an issue. As for the humanitarian points, both the Catholic Church and Human Rights Watch said humanitarian points didn't justify the war.
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It's a good thing Bush wasn't getting sexually serviced in the Oval Office, or you might actually hear some genuine outrage from the entire nation over the latest report which shows that Saddam Hussein was not a grave threat, not a gathering threat, that there was never going to be a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud; that time was not running out on Saddam Hussein... As it is, it seems that only Kerry's supporters are awake enough to connect the dots and see that we were not only "misled" by faulty intelligence, but that we were manipulated by the administration. When Condoleezza Rice went on CNN in the fall of 2002, trumpeting the certainty that anodized aluminum tubes which Iraq had ordered could only "really" be used for enriching uranium, she was lying.

Clearly, much of the Administration had been taken in by Ahmad Chalabi, who showed no remorse over having done so. In February of 2003, Chalabi said,

"As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."

But it's not enough to blame Chalabi. There is of course the willful hiding of dissenting views, both by Rice (referenced above) and by the CIA when it prepared non-classified summaries for broad distribution throughout the Senate (see this discussion, drawing in a report from John Judis and Spencer Ackerman on how little the Senate Intelligence committee chairs were allowed to share). And there was dissenting information: for instance, in 1995 General Hussein Kamel claimed that Iraq had disarmed, in a statement to the IAEA. And when we had inspectors on the ground in 2002-03, rather than listen to them, the Bush administration continued its push to war.

I've pointed before to conversations in the building of the case for war: how it seemed enough for Cheney's second in command that Zarqawi was in Iraq even though he was in a territory Hussein had no command over. I've pointed before to accounts that the U.S. held back from taking Zarqawi out so that a stronger argument for war could be made. Too many people in the Bush administration never wanted peace, and were apparently willing to do anything they could to bring war to Iraq. That's the only conclusion you can draw from the chain of events.

It's not as if we weren't warned off this: France, Germany, Russia, and China were all against the war, and the world might have heard their arguments better if we'd taken it to a final decision in the U.N. But Bush was so set on war that he decided he didn't want to have that vote. And the U.S. also ignored the best advice of the Pope, whose office, while not having time to develop an encyclical during the mad rush, issued an opinion that it would not be a just war. But would Bush listen to the Catholic Church? Not on this; he had other plans to listen later when it came to campaigning against Kerry, but not on this.

And now we're left with billions and billions of dollars set aside for the reconstruction and security... The deaths of over a thousand U.S. citizens, and at least as many Iraqis. And for what? Why? Bush's latest defense is that Saddam Hussein would have moved on to acquire weapons the moment the world's back was turned, but who said the world was about to turn its back on a dictator like Saddam Hussein? Isn't that the stupidest idea you've ever heard, that the world is that naive?

People I really love were taken in by the argument for war, and were ready to move on into Syria. It caused dissent in our family, and it's caused dissension in our nation. This is just absolutely horrible. And if there is any justice in the priorities of Americans, the outrage displayed over Clinton's peccadilloes will be no more than a ball bearing on a six-lane highway compared to the outrage over Bush and his administration.
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