Originally published on the Inland Anti-Empire blog. Full disclosure: I am the online campaign manager for Dr. Mike Byron, Democrat running to unseat Issa.

While perusing recent news articles, I came across this June 1 story from The Californian:

Elsewhere in Oceanside, as the sun dipped toward the Pacific Ocean, World War II veteran Raymond Gastelum, of Oceanside, and his wife, Maria, quietly chatted in camp chairs beside the grave of their daughter, Leticia.

Around them, the crowd gathered for the 18th annual candlelight ceremony at Eternal Hills Memorial Park. Children played and people sang patriotic songs as the pianist played.

Gastelum, who saw two years of service in the South Pacific, said he thinks all wars are the same.

"They shouldn't start, but they do get started," he said. "And they cost a lot of lives."

A bell tolled during the reading of the names of 74 Marines from Camp Pendleton, Miramar and Twentynine Palms Marine bases who have died this year in Iraq. Before the reading, Congressman Darrell Issa, R-Vista, delivered a message.

"They died in the first step of what could be a very long war," said the former Army captain, born of Lebanese immigrants. "They are the heroes of a war to liberate more than a billion people."

Read that last sentence carefully and note the number.

There are not one billion people in Iraq. There's about 25 million or so.

There are not one billion people in Arab countries.

There are not one billion people in the entire Middle East.

There are however approximately one billion people who follow Islam. (Well, slightly higher.)

Conservative Christian Darrell Issa in describing a "very long war" to liberate "more than a billion people" is speaking of a Crusade Against Islam.

There's not really anything else he could be talking about. He surely doesn't mean, say, that we're going to invade China next. There's no war plan that goes Afghanistan → Iraq → China. Nor is he talking about freeing people who live under brutal regimes -- there's not a group of those that adds up to "more than a billion" that would include the invasion of Iraq.

No, he's talking about Afghanistan → Iraq → the rest of the Muslim world.

Despite the public lip service of the Bush administration and Bush Republicans like Issa that The War Against Terror is not a crusade, behind closed doors and to "safe" audiences -- like military audiences on Memorial Day -- the true agenda comes out.

The Bush war is an American crusade against Islam, pure and simple. The American people have been tricked (by our dear leader and his allies) into a religious Christian jihad targetting a belief system that the religious right opposes.

And even Darrell Issa admits it.