Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Once the shocking reality that the alleged threat of Saddam Hussein using his weapons of mass destruction that Bush had dramatically declared in his State of the Union Message was exposed as a cruel hoax, one question must be asked.  

How could any honest voter with a conscience vote for more killing of U.S. soldiers and Iraqis based on Bush's lies?

How did the gang surrounding Bush react to the shocking revelation in Scott McClellan's book?

A.L. Clynton of Laguna Beach, California, writing in the Seattle Times Letter to the Editors May 30, said:

"I don't know if Scott McClellan is right or wrong, about the run up to the war in Iraq (`Bush Backers Deluge Ex-Aide Scott McClellan with Scorn', News May 29).  What I do know is this.  Considering the reaction Bush administration insiders have had to McClellan's assertions, there must be truth to this story.

"If so, the public's response to `what happened inside the Bush White House and Washington's culture of deception' may turn into a tsunami of voter resentment against the Republican Party."

Could it be only reasonable to any voter who realized that the U.S. launched the Iraq War based on a non-existent threat, yet voted for Republicans the second time around, are logically complicit in the continuing Iraq War deaths?

This is a sobering question to contemplate, as the Bush administration rants on about launching a potential Iran War.

Earl Beal of Terra Haute, Indiana in the May 30 Letter to the Editors of the Seattle Times writes:

"In essence, and in plain terms, McClellan asserts that Bush used the necessary propaganda to lie to the American people to justify the invasion of Iraq.  He also rails on Bush for the Administration's complete stupidity and irresponsibility in its handling of Hurricane Katrina."

Did the U.S. learn anything at all from Vietnam, where over 59,000 brave U.S. soldiers gave their lives?  With estimates of at least over 2 ½ million Vietnamese and Cambodians dead and many more contaminated with "Agent Orange", a chemical used by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, what did we gain from that long and painful conflict?

The fear campaign revealed that the Communists would overwhelm and occupy not only Vietnam, but the entire Asian world, which would collapse under the Domino Effect with the final chapter being the attack and occupation of the United States.  

Now the U.S.'s major trading partner is China, the nation the badly misguided policy makers of the Vietnam War era were convinced would attack and swallow up America if the effort of the North Vietnamese to topple all French influence and institute a unified Vietnam succeeded.

China and Saudi Arabia bus U.S. bonds, which keep the U.S. going as the nation staggers under what will very soon be a $10 trillion debt, which Bush the bungler has run up.

Fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan along with supplying generous tax cuts to America's wealthiest citizens constitutes stupid, narrow-minded economics.  Trickle down economics proved an abysmal failure under Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.

Under Ronald Reagan's administration, U.S. soldiers fought and died courageously in Afghanistan to place the Taliban (the most repressive Islamic regime) in power.  The U.S. supplied the Taliban with the latest high tech war materials.  

Wasn't Ronald Reagan, before becoming U.S. president, playing straight man for a chimp in the movie "Bedtime for Bonzo."  He should have continued his acting career considering that he tripled the national debt during his two terms in office.  

Now the U.S. has our soldiers again courageously fighting and dying to take down the Taliban in Afghanistan only a few years after Reagan's Republican administration had U.S. soldiers fighting and dying to put the Taliban in power.  

What kind of foreign policy does the U.S. have today?  Soldiers bravely fighting in Afghanistan are being killed with some of those high tech weapons the U.S. supplied the Taliban with when the Reagan Republican administration supplied the Taliban with them.

Obviously the only people who profit from supplying war materials for these endless wars get richer every time the U.S. launches a war.  The taxpayers get poorer.  

Now with the U.S. national debt skyrocketing to around $10 trillion, larger than all previous debts combined since the U.S. was founded, future citizens will be forced to pay for what this year 8-year notorious Republican administration has done.

Unlike Vietnam, Iraq has "oil" under its ground - some estimates claim a third of the world's oil lies underneath Iraq.

The U.S. government has been trying for years to get the Iraqi government to sign over long term lease contracts granting rights to 63 of Iraq's 80 oil wells.  

Could the real reason for the Iraq War be a 3-letter word "oil"?