Have you noticed the usual election year demagoguery coming from the Republicans? They have nothing to tout as an achievement during the last six years so they are once again dividing America by using wedge issues. They attack democrats and any other anti-war person as unpatriotic cowards. The reality is that they are the cowards for hiding behind the skirts of dead soldier’s mothers and dishonest pre-emptive war. These rightwing chicken-hawks want to act like macho tough guys but in reality they are only willing to have other people’s kids die for their misguided war folly. We all know after the election Bush will bring most of the troop’s home because it is obvious that we are encouraging more terrorist and have created a Civil War in Iraq rather than discouraging it. To say that Iraq is becoming a democracy is pathetically dishonest. Civil War is not democracy and the violence has only increased. We have made life worse for the Iraqi’s, not better. Every time we kill or capture a Saddam or Al Qaeda member we are told that we have turned the corner but they keep multiplying. For every one we kill, ten more take up arms. We are not liberators. We are occupiers and they want us out of their country. Bush will not admit failure by leaving Iraq before the election this year but wait until next year. The back peddling will begin. He knows the war has bankrupted our country, demoralized the military and 70% of the public is against it. He and his fundamentalist republican Taliban will cut and run then declare mission accomplished again. Don’t be fooled by their swagger. They are playing the same old corrupt Rovian/McCarthyistic game of dividing the country and attacking anyone they disagree with as un-American and un-patriotic. It is a lie just like their policies and the reasons for this war. They have failed the public trust.

Have you noticed the inherent dishonesty emanating from the right? Whether it is about history, debt, or reasons for war, they can’t help themselves. They are simply dishonest. They even lie by omission. A prime example is the right-wing blond assassin, Ann Coulter. She tells only part of a story and leaves out critical facts that would invalidate her whole argument. In her warped right-wing world, that passes for valid debating tactics. Coulter has spent her career attacking the politics of people like Max Cleland, Christopher Reeves, Cindy Sheehan and now the 911 widows by claiming we should ignore their views because of their victim status. She stated that she had never seen anyone enjoying their husband’s death so much then called them witches. In essence she is saying, “How dare the left put up arguments that we can’t respond to.” Pat Robertson has stated that he can leg lift 2,000 pounds and if we acknowledge the separation of church and state then the fire department won’t respond to church fires. They don’t want to engage in a real debate on the issues. They just want to distort, lie, smear and attack, the way the Republican Party and swift boat liars do during campaigns. Coulter has said, “Do I have to become a paraplegic or kill my own Mother to play the victim card the way many Dems do.” She feels that these victims of tragedy don’t deserve to have political opinions because they are viewed as infallible but it doesn’t seem to keep her from attacking them. The deafening silence from Republicans is stunning. Mary Matalin basically defends what Coulter has said and when Rudolf Giuliani was asked about Coulter’s comments on the 911 widows he refused to comment. That pretty much says it all. Why doesn’t the right openly reject her? They continue to use straw man arguments with no basis in reality. Is there a political group in this country more pathetically dishonest and despicable? I don’t think so but hey, I could be wrong.

I remember my civics class in high school and how we learned that freedom was the basis of our Constitution and individual rights. It is why we honor those among us who help defend it. But to maintain our freedom we must demand the truth from our leaders. Without the truth we have no freedom. Freedom is not based on lies about reasons for war. To lose our national treasure, which is the lives of our young soldiers, under the pretense of fear and lies is the utmost betrayal of our freedom that a leader can perpetrate against its citizens.
To propagate the false impression that we as a country can do no wrong and that somehow American exceptionalism allows us justification for preemptive war and torture is a lie in the highest degree. If the present administration neocon coble believes we are a chosen country and that their view of God gives them the right to impose their will on the world then don’t whine about it when in the future another world power does the same and we are the recipient of their wrath. Political and religious freedom can only be based on truth, not lies, mythical superstitions and revisionist history. Nationalistic hegemony is nothing new and America is not the first or will it be the last nation to fall to the allure of self-righteous arrogance and theocratic illusions.

This morning I watched CNN's Soledad O'Brien conduct an incredible interview with Michael Berg, the father of Nick Berg, who was beheaded by al-Zarqawi, but the most interesting and upsetting part of the interview was cut from further broadcasts on CNN later on in the day. They had Berg on many times, but they didn't have the following provocative thoughts. (SEE BELOW)

CNN must have considered the words too inflammatory to put on the mainstream media. They balanced the coverage with predictable interviews with other relatives of Zarqawi victims

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BERG: Democracy? Come on. You can't really believe that that's a democracy there when the people who are running the elections are holding guns. That's not democracy.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: There is a theory that as they try to form some kind of government that, in fact, it's going to be brutal, it's going to be bloody, there's going to be loss and that's the history of many countries, that that's just a lot of people pay for what they believe will be better than what they had under Saddam Hussein.

BERG: Well, you know, I'm not saying Saddam Hussein was a good man, but he's no worse than George Bush. Saddam Hussein didn't pull the trigger, didn't commit the rapes. Neither did George Bush, but both men are responsible for them under their reigns of terror. I don't buy that.

Iraq did not have al Qaeda in it. Al Qaeda supposedly killed my son. Under Saddam Hussein, no al Qaeda. Under George Bush, al Qaeda. Under Saddam Hussein, relative stability. Under George Bush, instability. Under Saddam Hussein, about 30,000 deaths a year. Under George Bush, about 60,000 deaths a year.

I don't get it. Why is it better to have George Bush be the king of Iraq rather than Saddam Hussein?

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I want to apologize to all the children of today for the debt that we have allowed our government to pass on to them. The child-tax placed on every child born today totals about $30,000 each. What a gift for a new born child. Welcome to America. After they graduate college with about twice that debt, twenty years from now they will get to begin their careers with a debt of close to $100,000 each. And that is before their car payment, house payment and credit card payments. Can you imagine the burden this will place on these young people? And it is all because of the greedy short sighted political attitudes of today’s U.S. citizens. They are passing on all the problems they don’t want to deal with. If you could construct a better way of destroying the hopes and dreams of millions of future Americans I challenge you to show me. We don’t have to worry about foreign countries destroying us. They couldn’t do near the job that we are doing to ourselves. When are we going to wake from our self-induced ignorance to the debt burden concrete boots we are forcing on our kids? We need to get our house in order now. Our children and future government don’t deserve what is headed their way. Demand some accountability from your government leaders.

What is the right-wing vision for our country? I kid you not; the top two priorities that republicans have placed on the agenda for this year is to change the U. S. Constitution to ban gay marriage and flag burning. Of all the real problems and crises our country faces and this is what they consider the most important. How pathetic is that? They hope to divert attention away from the result of their six years of failure. Their only concern is to feed the fundamentalist right-wing republican base some red meat for the fall election because they have nothing else to run on. They have failed miserably in all other areas of governance so now they will revert to their tried and true method of fear mongering. This is what failed leadership has brought us; (Fear, Lies, Needless War and Debt). They have sowed the seeds of greed, hate, fear and incompetence for six years. If the Bible is prophetical, they will reap what they have sown.