Short Stories, Long Odds

The rhetoric for putting the same face on bin Laden and Saddam Hussein is so highly charged, Rumsfeld got them confused twice in a speech yesterday. See, people like to claim that talking in circles and brazenly implying that bin Laden and Hussein are the same or that Iraq was funding and harboring al-Qaeda doesn’t work and isn’t subliminal advertising. Apparently it works well enough for those that know better to get caught up in it too.

Again, I’m not saying that either side was or is full of nice young men. Al-Qaeda and Saddam and his Republican Guard are murderous fuckwads all. I’m just saying that when the talking points re: WHY WE WENT TO WAR shifted from WMD’s to Iraq having weekend retreats for al-Qaeda, it was full of lies right down to the ground. Now the GOP does everything it possibly can to make you believe that the War In Iraq is part of the War On Terror, or perhaps even the War On Radical Militant Islamists, but it isn’t. The War In Iraq had nothing to do with the War On Terror to begin with. It was just a War In Iraq, against Saddam. That’s it.

If in Iraq we are now battling terrorists from al-Qaeda (which we are) or from Iran (which seems highly probable if you believe first-hand accounts) its because they’ve been given an opportunity to kill Americans by virtue of Americans being in Iraq. You have no one but Bush to blame for that. Anyone who acts surprised that tactical advantage belongs to and is being taken advantage of by insurgents and the general enemies of democracy and freedom is either a retard or willfully ignorant. I’m not saying this to be petty, I’m saying it because it is true - if the enemy had no tactical advantage, our soldiers would be home and safe by now.

So yeah, I’m finally saying it - this situation is a massive clusterfuck, and each and every death can be laid at the feet of the Bush White House. I feel like I’ve been able to restrain myself from such statements thus far, but today of all days I think its time the gloves came off and the truth be told. I’ve moved beyond giving a shit about a botched election or any other weird non-issues. I’ve become increasingly angry in the past three months over the unabashed usage of people that died horribly in my country for political gain. I wanted to initially say something like “Don’t these people have any shame?” but that seems too light. Now all I can think of to say is that monsters wear masks and look human but aren’t. They can’t be. There can’t actually be a heart that beats underneath all of that shameless propulsion using the dead as fuel.

Dick Cheney earlier this week said in a prepared and practiced statement that “if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again.” After he let that ride for a few days, he came back and said that he didn’t say that if Kerry gets elected we’ll get attacked again, he said that no matter who gets elected will “have to anticipate more attacks”. Do you see what he’s doing? I don’t want to have to explain it to you. If I do you’re already lost to reason and judgement.

I didn’t plan on doing this when I sat down here. I was just going to give another short update on all the bullshit but then I opened a news site and I remembered what today is, and I got really pissed off. This whole fucking thing has gone sideways in the extreme and I have no idea what to do about it. The challenge of overcoming vast perceptual machinations and a political malaise which seemingly spans every living generation seems impossible. All I can do is ask you to look around and testify.