It's not easy writing about something that, at first (and second and even third) glance, appears to be an essay quagmire just waiting to happen, but I'm going to try anyway: I refer to the byzantine Electoral College. (Weird historical footnote: Anthropologists recently discovered that the Byzantines used the American Electoral College. What are the odds?) I actually did a little research before writing this piece because it seemed wiser than just making stuff up (although if I ever become a right-winger, I'll be able to save a lot of time by not having to gather facts). Here goes:

Most folks know that in presidential elections, each state has a certain number of electoral votes (equal to the total number of its senators and representatives) that all go to the winner of the state's popular vote. The president-elect, of course, is the one who garners a majority of all of the states' electoral votes combined--except in any year that ends in 2000, when the Supreme Court picks its favorite candidate to run the country (into the ground). If no one wins a clear majority (in other words, if there is a strong third party ticket that year that wins some states; in additional other words, FAT CHANCE), then the president (if the Supreme Court is out golfing or something) is chosen by a spirited round of paper, scissors, rock. (Not really; in such a scenario, the outcome is determined in the House of unRepresentatives, but I think my idea would be more fun.)

Who, exactly, comprises the Electoral College? Why, electors, of course! All right, then, where do these electors come from? Well, the planet Electra, naturally! Either that, or they are human beings either appointed as elector candidates by each state's political party leadership or determined at state party conventions, except in Maine and Nebraska. (It's not that their elector wannabes aren't humans--most of them, anyway, according to experts--it's that their systems for choosing them are different.) On Election Day, voters are actually casting ballots for a party's "slate" of its elector hopefuls rather than its actual presidential/vice presidential candidates. In December, the elected electors gather in their respective state capitals, have big old, drunken hootenannies, and vote for whomever they damn well please. (Actually, of course, they are all party loyalists who vote straight party tickets; I'm not sure about the drinking part.)

Simple, huh? OK then, smarty-pants, here's the tough part: trying to understand why the Electoral College was created in the first place. What's even harder is justifying its retention now, especially in light of the 2000 debacle, the year America's first king was enthroned. And the trickiest thing, of course, is explaining just why exactly it's called the Electoral "College" (because someone else--the early Byzantines, perhaps--had already taken "University"?).

Believe it or not, there are people who think the current system is still a good idea, no doubt because it's so incredibly easy to understand and makes so much sense. One such proponent is a fellow by the name of William C. Kimberling, whose title--Deputy Director of the Federal Election Commission Office of Election Administration--takes about as long to say as it took time to decide who won the last presidential election (or didn't win, but so the hell what, said five Supremes). Kimberling produced a well-written essay on the Electoral College from which I gleaned most of my information (<http://www.fec.gov/pdf/eleccoll.pdf>).

It is time now to hydrate yourself liberally (certainly not conservatively) and remember, NO SMOKING, because the following, to use an old literary term, is a little dry: The Electoral College was enacted by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution and tweaked slightly by the Twelfth Amendment in 1804. It was created, reports Kimberling, in an era "without political parties and without national campaigns," and the framers feared that in an America comprised of "only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication," the electorate would not be sufficiently informed to vote directly for president. Each state's voters, possessing little knowledge of other states' candidates, would instead be tempted to cast ballots for a "favorite son." This would likely result in either no candidate receiving a clear majority of votes nationally, or a president typically selected by the more populous states, leaving the smaller ones just a tad cranky. (It was not exactly a trusting time in those days: Kimberling points out that the just-birthed America "was composed of thirteen large and small states jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government.") To assuage the states, and also because the founding fathers believed the various states' legislators were more knowledgeable collectively of candidates than most voters, the Electoral College was born (as were countless future headaches trying to understand, and worse, explain the damn thing).

The power to choose electors and the method for choosing them has always rested with the state legislatures. At first, legislatures employed different methods, including statewide direct popular voting for at-large elector candidates or by Congressional district, simple appointment by the legislatures themselves, or hybrid systems. Again, because the electors were beholden to no political parties (since they didn’t exist), it was expected they would select the best person to lead the country based on merit, with the system still maintaining the highest regard for individual states’ rights. It didn't take long for parties to emerge, however, and as communication and transportation improved, party platforms quickly usurped previously sacrosanct home state considerations. Over time, with most voters voting straight party lines on Election Day anyway, all state legislatures (except, again, for Maine and Nebraska, the so-called "alien" states) decided to allow people to choose by direct popular vote the slates of electors we have now; thus, the current winner-take-all system. There's more, of course, but even my dog who is watching me write this is looking at me like, "That's enough already!"

Now comes the argument/rebuttal part. So, for the less hardy, if you're due to wash the cat or clean the rain gutters, this might be a good time. The rest of you? Put on your boredom repellent and follow me!

Kimberling presents four main reasons to keep the Electoral College. His first: It "contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be president" and without it, "presidents would be selected either through the domination of one populous region over the others or through the domination of large metropolitan areas over the rural ones." What "one populous region" would this be? The northeast? California? Neither of those areas alone could win an election—nor could both combined, even--so support would still have to come from elsewhere. And why, as Kimberling seemingly implies, would a president elected via a large bloc of rural support automatically be assumed to be a better president than one elected mainly by backing from more populous areas? Two simple(minded) words succinctly sum up this fallacious thinking: Dub ya.

Here's his second argument: The Electoral College "enhances the status of minority groups" because "even small minorities" can tip a state's electoral votes one way or another. Assuming that every state would do its utmost to protect the voting rights of its minorities (not that a state--even one governed by a candidate's close relative--would ever operate some sort of discriminatory disenfranchising policy, mind you), this argument still suffers. It's highly unlikely that "even small minorities" (who would this be: folks of Sumerian descent under 4’8”?) could pack enough punch to throw a state's electoral votes one way or the other, and Kimberling provides no examples of such occurrences. He also says "the same [enhanced minority status] principle applies to other special interest groups such as labor unions, farmers, environmentalists, and so forth." Using that logic, EVERYONE is a member of a special interest group: accountants, executives, construction workers, and clowns (even though they're kind of scary, they still vote--and run for office, too).

He asserts, also, that because a minority group may have "'leverage effect'" in an election, "the presidency, as an institution, tends to be more sensitive to ethnic minority and other special interest groups than does Congress..." Well, I definitely concur with anyone who wants to institutionalize this presidency, but that notwithstanding, let's, for example's sake, check all of Bush's speeches at the NAACP conventions he's attended as president to determine his "sensitivity" regarding African American interests. Whoops! Junior hasn't gone to a single one since his installation. Is Bush silently giving black folks the same message a sneering Dick Cheney (redundant?) verbally gave Senator Patrick Leahy, perhaps because they’re of little use in the electoral vote department? Seems likely. Additionally, if a candidate courts, say, the Latino/a vote in one particular state, but otherwise ignores their interests in non-swing states, how are these Americans' overall national concerns furthered? A national direct popular vote would mandate that the candidates broaden their appeal considerably, and (hopefully) their actual policies.

Kimberling's third claim is "that the Electoral College contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two-party system." If, instead of "stability," he'd written, "gridlock," then I'd say he was talking turkey(s). He goes on to say, with a straight face, apparently, that the two parties absorb other movements, acting like political melting pots that create constancy and prevent extremism. Well, no. In fact, I think most leading (political) scientists would agree the exact opposite has happened. Third party ideas rarely enter GOP or Democratic platforms because the newcomers are either: too powerless to make any difference and are thus ignored; bought off when they appear on the radar screen; or used as shills. And because the two existing parties couldn't be more polarized if their separate headquarters were located in Antarctica and at the Claus homestead, there just ain't a whole lot of fresh thinkin' going on. Our scientists (who've all been fired by the Bush administration, so we know they're bona fide) would further agree that the country has never been in more dire need of other viable parties and for that to happen, the Electoral College needs to go the way of the dinosaurs or, if you prefer, Colin Powell's dignity.

Now, Kimberling's final argument (do I hear cheering?): The Electoral College, he says, "maintains a federal system of government and representation." He writes that "the collective opinion of the individual state populations is more important than the opinion of the national population taken as a whole." This is a good point, actually, and his strongest claim. But then he undermines it with the old slippery slope fallacy: "Indeed, if we become obsessed with government by popular majority as the only consideration," he asks forebodingly, "should we not then abolish the Senate which represents states regardless of population?" Yes, and if marijuana is legalized, we'll all soon be immoral hopheads and saying "duude" a lot. As far as obsessing, Americans spend far more time fretting over American Idol contestants than they do about the alleged pitfalls of "government by popular majority," but I do think they'd like a voting system that can be explained in less than five days. Only one thing would be abolished by eliminating the Electoral College: The public's confusion about its arcane structure (and, devil forbid, a replay of the 2000 disaster), and no one would miss it except those receiving healthy recompense to actually miss such things.

I'm pretty pooped now, my head hurts, and it's time to bathe the cat. Before I get clawed, scratched, and soaked, I'd just like to point out that the primary reasons for creating a system few people understand have long since been remedied. What we have today instead are entire state populations (safely considered "red" or "blue") that regularly miss candidates' slop-slinging--er, debate. The Electoral College is a prime reason for voter apathy and millions of Election Day no-shows: If one's state is liable to go strongly one way or the other, what difference does one vote make? It also effectively disenfranchises millions of voters: In 2000, Al Gore won California, my home state, by over one million votes; four and a half million votes for Bush meant nothing. Although I'm at a total loss to explain why even one person would vote for our thief executive, that's not the point. Every vote should count in a democracy. This year, with the Golden State deemed to already be in Kerry's (wind)bag, a Californian could almost be forgiven for not knowing an election is upcoming, given the paucity of attention here from either side. (On second thought, maybe that's not such a bad thing.)

The Electoral College is an archaic set-up that has long outlived its intended use. A constitutional amendment is needed that authorizes the following: The winner of a national direct popular vote should be declared the president, and, to preclude wins by plurality rather than majority vote while at the same time encouraging much-needed genuine third party participation, instant run-off voting should be instituted (<http://www.fairvote.org/irv/whatis2.htm>).

It's simple, really: The person with the most votes wins. It is, or certainly should be, the American way.

But I doubt that we will be able to persuade the actual policy elites to eliminate this control feature of the republic. That would encourage democracy, the bane of the ruling class.
but I have a question, Why do you wash a cat? I never have as they seem to be able to groom themselves. With the resultant hairballs of course. Like our elections.

And, indeed, your feline-related question is a very good one, to which I offer this response: I had a cat that got fleas and I gave it a flea bath.

Once.

-------- The Supreme Court elected no one. The same people who were urging us to "get over it" and "move on" during the Clinton scandals have themselves still not gotten over the presidential election four years ago. They are still bitter that the U.S. Supreme Court would not allow the Florida Supreme Court to illegally interfere with the election process.

------- Why should Bush bother with the NAACP? To listen to a bunch of hucksters from a morally bankrupt organization insult him for not giving in to the latest racial grievance industry shakedown? I don’t feel sorry that Kweisi and Je$$e both have bastards to feed. Do you?

In 2000, Al Gore won California, my home state, by over one million votes; four and a half million votes for Bush meant nothing. Although I'm at a total loss to explain why even one person would vote for our thief executive, that's not the point.

---- The person with the most votes wins. It is, or certainly should be, the American way.

------Good to know, since Gore lost the popular vote as well as his home state.

-------Fear not, socialist. Every illegal is a democrat-in-a-box. Just keep flooding our once-worthwhile nation with Turd World trash. Sooner or later the sheer weight of welfare beggars will tip even an electoral college.

And to his always clear application of correct boot licking and inananity. As KPC would say, ' We aren't laughing at you; we're laughing WITH you.'
I always wait with great anticipation to his insight and beyond the realm of reality wisdom, for he is a fine example of logic for monkeys.
Chuckle.

error

You're cranky, I can tell. Can you hear me weeping at the awful pain when I see this miserable attempt at photo manipulation? Hurt, I tell you.

Gore won the popular vote. This is not disputed.

The electoral college has elected every single president, whether you like them or not, Bush Admirer.

...that the incumbent hasn't done anything embarrassing, and also is "prime presidential material."

...that Bush has lied us into an illegal, immoral, completely unnecessary war, which was desired and promoted by PNAC-related folks like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, etc. who were itching for an excuse to go after Hussein and establish a permanent U.S. Persian Gulf military presence; is directly responsible for the deaths of 900 American soldiers and thousands of Iraqis; has turned the country of Iraq into a huge terrorist training facility and provided al-Qaida and its ilk priceless recruting propaganda, thereby leaving the U.S. and the world decidely less safe; has turned Iraq into a toxic wasteland with depleted uranium shells all over the landscape; has given us a deficit of half a trillion dollars, largely in part by repeatedly cutting the taxes of the wealthiest Americans (and do I think they should pay a higher tax rate than those who earn less?; absolutely: it's called having a moral and patriotic responsibility to try to improve the free society in which one lives and has been given the opportunity to accrue such wealth)--while cheaping out on sufficient protection for those he's sent to war, and also at the same time grossly underfunding first responders and protection for our borders, ports, nuclear facilities, chemical plants, airports, airplanes, and other facilities; has deliberately antagonized long-time allies, whose aid we will need if we are TRULY going to fight terrorism intelligently; treats the Constitution with utter contempt; had full knowledge of, if did not outright authorize, attempts to circumvent legal definitions of torture so it could be applied to detainees, most of whom are guilty of absolutely nothing; kept information from Congress about the true cost of the Medicare prescription drug bill to secure a passing vote, which still took political chicanery by lapdog Speaker Hastert who kept the vote open for an unprecendented three hours; wants to constitutionalize unequal rights; has presided over the greatest job loss since Hoover; did nothing while California was getting raped by Kenny-boy Lay and the rest of the energy pirates; refuses to release documents regarding his proposed energy "policy" which, by all accounts, had input only from energy industry insiders, thus remarkably leaving the U.S three plus years into his term with no plan whatsover to get America off the debilitating oil nipple; shows no interest in finding (or turning over) those responsible for outing Valerie Plame; resisted and stalled the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Iraq intelligence investigation; has used 9/11 and fear every step of the way to try to consolidate and remain in power; heads a political party that makes no bones, per luminaries like Tom Delay (the promoter of a ruthless midterm redistricting power grab in Texas) and Grover Norquist (a main proponent of the thoroughly undemocratic starve-the-beast tax-slashing philosophy), about totally eliminating any viable opposing political opposition, thereby, in effect, actively pursuing a totalitarian state; I guess if you consider all that, and more, then, yes, he has done a great deal...to easily be the most incompetent, dishonest, dangerous, closed-minded, intolerant, dimwitted, oblivious, self-righteous, ignorant president in American history.

You'd better admire him while you've got the chance, B.A., because, despite most pundits' predictions of a close race, Kerry will wipe the floor with him come November 2. Which really goes to show how utterly putrid an individual is Bush, since Kerry is definitely no great shakes himself. But Bush and his self-important crew carry with them the unmistakable collective stench of a great spiritual sickness, an odor unavoidably detectable to all but a deluded few. Goodbye and good riddance.

Mark you have good points but I don't think you realize the total criminality in the mix.
' TRULY going to fight terrorism intelligently' would be to do what Cuba does and actually assist other countries with food and medical aid. Not profitable or even cost returning except from the account of international goodwill and the feeling of peace and safety with a world in which the CIA and all the other dealers in covert death and misery were chained to the iron of public scrutiny or prosecuted for murder extortion torture or perjury. Then they wouldn't give birth to entities such as Saddam, Ossama or John Dimitri Negroponte.

Yes, this was why I was aghast when Bush started beating the Iraq war drums (and which is when I first became active, too). I fully supported going into Afghanistan after Al-Qaida and the host Taliban. No more proof is needed about bin Laden's desire to kill every living American. And no one is responsible for 9/11 other than bin Laden and Al-Qaida (although Bushco has certainly caused me to listen to conspiracy theorists much more closely than I ever did before, and has also led me to become much more informed about things than I was previously, I don't believe anyone other than the bin Laden boys, as stated, caused 9/11).

Having said that, I believed that, in the aftermath of 9/11, with unprecedented worldwide cooperation with, and sympathy for, the U.S., that a window existed unlike any other: It was a time in which, if used wisely, America could take a hard look at its foreign policy and start to do things differently. Yes, destroy Al-Qaida, but then fully rebuild Afghanistan, instead of leaving it in the lurch like a decade earlier, which, of course, led to the hospitable conditions in which the Taliban and terrorists had flourished. DO something about the Palestinian/Israeli mess, exerting the unique pressure only the U.S. can exert. Is America's lopsided financial and biased support of Israel a viable excuse for 9/11? Hell no, but for goodness sake, do everything the U.S. can to REMOVE that as being used as an excuse to hate America and endlessly recruit new terrorists. Not only that, but--and I know this is so old-fashioned--it's the right thing to do, to try to foment peace in that incredibly tortured part of the world, to help provide a homeland and decent living conditions for Palestinians and also help Israel's citizens live without fear of being attacked as they go about their daily lives.

Also, it was a prime time to clean up our sleazy interventionist policies, to get our noses out of other countries' affairs, to stop financing and/or supporting brutal regimes, and at long last, to use the unique wealth and power of this country for the betterment of the world as a whole, to not just talk about our great American ideals of liberty, equality, opportunity, but to more often actually demonstrate them in other parts of the world.

But, we all know what happened: Bushco, so eager to oust Hussein to build military bases in Iraq in a stepped-up effort to secure even bigger profits for American corporate interests, went the totally opposite direction. Instead of an honest review and healthy change of our policies, we do the same friggin' thing we've always done: Once the monster we've groomed and befriended is no longer of use to us, but now an impediment (as ALWAYS happens when this game is played; we may never learn), well, then it's time for our errant demon-child to go, and what do we do? We use as support the very things that, just a few short years ago, were A-OK with us as long as our bidding was being done. We sure weren't too upset about the gassing of Kurds of Halabja at the time, as Bush I loaned Hussein $1 billion six months afterward. We weren't too worried about Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran, either; in fact, Reagan had no problem sending Rumsfled over to meet with Saddam--twice--to make sure the point was made. The U.S., at the time, also had no problem with American companies selling pesticides and the like to Iraq that could be turned into those weapons. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

So, instead of breaking this unwinnable cycle, Bush amps it up. And now thousands more are senselessly dead and America is hated more than ever. What a stupid, pitiful waste of a golden opportunity that may never occur again.

That was the first layer as we certainly have provided enough provocation just about everywhere in the world American profits have come before other people's lives who were sitting on some recourse we coveted.
But that was only a layer I believe contrived, to provide a suitable back drop for state terror upon its own citizens. You may have overlooked the fact that all the 'cutouts' playing the role of savage arab hijackers trained at very secure military ( U.S.) bases. If you continue to ignore certain facts, it produces a damage control function or false flag to salted evidence. Just thought I'd toss in another 2 cents.

Sheepdog: For me, facts are corroborated information from credible sources; I have seen nothing of the kind re the "cutouts" scenario to which you allude. If you have legitimate info along this line, please, cough it up! I will peruse it and come to my own conclusion.

B.A.: Trying to compare Iraq/Hussein to WWII, the Cold War, or other such scenarios is plain specious. The facts are, and have been, abudantly clear from before the war: Iraq was a used-up, third-rate nation that posed a danger to no one, least of the all the U.S., and as substantiated over and over and over again, the PNAC-associated crew of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al couldn't wait to use 9/11 as an excuse to get Hussein. If this doesn't jibe with your world view, that's too bad, because that's just how it is, and unfortunately, because millions of Americans bought the Bushco package hook, line, and sinker, a golden opportunity that existed after 9/11 to actually severely cripple America's real enemies was botched, and we are all much less safe for it.

The Pentagon has turned over military records on five men to the FBI

By George Wehrfritz, Catharine Skipp and John Barry

NEWSWEEK

Sept. 15 - U.S. military sources have given the FBI information
that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used
in Tuesday's terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military
installations in the 1990s.

THREE OF THE alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers
licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola,
Fla.-known as the "Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation," according to a
high-ranking U.S. Navy source.
Another of the alleged hijackers may have been trained in
strategy and tactics at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said
another high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth man may have received
language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex.
Both were former Saudi Air Force pilots who had come to the United
States, according to the Pentagon source.
But there are slight discrepancies between the military training
records and the official FBI list of suspected hijackers-either in the
spellings of their names or with their birthdates. One military source
said it is possible that the hijackers may have stolen the identities of
the foreign nationals who studied at the U.S. installations.

The five men were on a list of 19 people identified as hijackers
by the FBI on Friday. The three foreign nationals training in Pensacola
appear to be Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmad Alnami, who were among the four
men who allegedly commandeered United Airlines Flight 93. That flight
crashed into rural Pennsylvania. The third man who may have trained in
Pensacola, Ahmed Alghamdi, allegedly helped highjack United Airlines
Flight 75, which hit the south tower of the World Trade Center.

Military records show that the three used as their address 10
Radford Boulevard, a base roadway on which residences for
foreign-military flight trainees are located. In March 1997, Saeed
Alghamdi listed the address to register a 1998 Oldsmobile; five months
later he used it again to register a second vehicle, a late model Buick.
Drivers licenses thought to have been issued to the other two suspects
in 1996 and 1998 list the barracks as their residences.
NEWSWEEK visited the base early Saturday morning, where military
police confirmed that the address housed foreign military flight
trainees but denied access past front barricades. Officials at the base
confirmed that the FBI is investigating the three students.

It is not unusual for foreign nationals to train at U.S.
military facilities. A former Navy pilot told NEWSWEEK that during his
years on the base, "we always, always, always trained other countries'
pilots. When I was there two decades ago, it was Iranians. The shah was
in power. Whoever the country du jour is, that's whose pilots we train."
Candidates begin with "an officer's equivalent of boot camp," he
said. "Then they would put them through flight training." The U.S. has a
long-standing agreement with Saudi Arabia-a key ally in the 1990-91 gulf
war-to train pilots for its National Guard. Candidates are trained in
air combat on several Army and Navy bases. Training is paid for by Saudi
Arabia.

C 2001 Newsweek, Inc.

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the
author

A US Air Force officer in California recently accused President Bush of deliberately allowing the September 11 terror attacks to take place. The officer has been relieved of his command and faces further discipline. The controversy surrounding Lt. Col. Steve Butler’s letter to the editor, in which he affirmed that Bush did nothing to warn the American people because he “needed this war on terrorism,” received scant coverage in the media.
Universally ignored by the press, however, was that the officer was not merely expressing a personal opinion. He
was in a position to have direct knowledge of contacts
between the US military and some of the hijackers in the
period before the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.

Lieutenant Colonel Butler, who wrote in a letter to the editor of the Monterey County Herald charging that “Bush knew about the impending attacks,” was vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language Institute in
Monterey, California—a US military facility that one or more of the hijackers reportedly attended during the 1990s.

In his May 26 letter to the newspaper, Butler responded to Bush supporters, who had written the paper opposing the congressional investigation into the September 11 events. He
wrote:

“Of course President Bush knew about the impending
attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American
people because he needed this war on terrorism. His daddy
had Saddam and he needed Osama. His presidency was going nowhere. He wasn’t elected by the American people,but placed in the Oval Office by a conservative supreme court. The economy was sliding into the usual Republican pits and he needed something on which to hang his presidency.... This guy is a joke. What is sleazy and contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows for political gain.”

You do have a search engine, yes?
Type in:

Hijackers+military bases+ Lt. Col. Steve Butler

Any search engine sheesh.

Thanks for the info. I will check it out when I get a little time and get back to you soon to let you know what I think.

"A US Air Force officer in California recently accused President Bush of deliberately allowing the September 11 terror attacks to take place."


Curious. And to think that sheep is touting a conspiracy theory that directly refutes his long held contention that the attcks were accomplished BY Bush with the use of REMOTE CONTROLLED aircraft.

I guess he'll back any fantasy that absolves his islamic heroes of any responsibility.

you didn't compose that even if it is lying drivel. Isn't it against the law to take credit for someone else?

I really think, B.A., Mr. Michael Barone would appreciate credit for his article.

No matter how the revisionism is couched, twisted, framed, distorted, phrased, or stretched, the fact remains: Tens of millions of us worldwide took to the streets—repeatedly—before the war started, shouting to the high heavens that exactly what has happened regarding Iraq, would happen. Had anyone bothered to listen to us, they would have heard what we knew: Iraq was no threat and the war was trumped up from day one. But no, we were just a “focus group,” a bunch of naïve, misled, unpatriotic, flower-children wannabes, even though I marched alongside WWII veterans, housewives, college kids, accountants—in other words, everyone from every walk of life. We all knew George Bush and crew were about to make the biggest, most immoral mistake of this country’s existence. We all knew then, and did what we could to tell others, too. So tell me, B.A., how wrong WE were. Tell me that it’s all about bad intelligence or semantics or misinformation or good intentions or honest mistakes or some other flavor-of-the-day garbage. Go ahead and try telling me that. And then, after you haven't convinced me because, remember, I was in those streets, tell me how the war has been a good thing, tell me how the war has made us or the world safer, tell me how American corporations like Cheney’s Halliburton are not enriching themselves on the backs of almost a thousand dead U.S. soldiers and thousands of dead Iraqis, tell me how what was left of America’s good name and credibility have not been grievously shredded, tell me how proud you are of a president who OKs torture, tell me how leaving Afghanistan in the lurch (again) and allowing Al-Qaida to catch its breath by diverting precious resources for a completely insane foray into Iraq is somehow a good thing, tell me how spitting in the face of long-time international allies and friends is in any way going to lead to a more secure future for our children and grandchildren, tell me that, instead of cribbing some ex post facto hit piece that tries to justify the whole stinking neocon long-desired mess by trying to smear 30-year diplomat and patriot Joe Wilson, or by laughably saying that because his wife—outed by someone in your precious president’s employ, by the way—may have recommended him for the mission to Niger. Wow, yeah that’s what’s really important, all right. Never mind the fact that we’ve slaughtered thousands of innocent people for no reason other than power and profits.

One last thing: Personally, I wouldn’t have cared if Saddam Hussein had had a stadium’s worth of WMDs in full open-air display in some stadium, replete with huge signs emblazoned with red arrows pointing straight to them, saying: “Here they are!” because here, my friend, are the FACTS: Iraq had no delivery system even if it had had such weapons; Iraq had been bombed on a regular basis for twelve solid years in both No-Fly zones, leaving it with essentially no air defense system and open to easy pickin’s, as amply demonstrated by its two-week roll-over once it was invaded; years of sanctions had left it a crippled, broken nation; and Israel would have nuked it in second had it made a serious false step, and then an international pile-on, led by an eager-for-bear U.S., would have followed immediately thereafter. Hussein, though undoubtedly incredibly evil, was not stupid: He knew he would be crushed if even just America alone went after him, and the very last thing he would do would be to step out of his box and give the trigger-happy Bush boys an excuse to eviscerate him. So, there, be amazed by or take total umbrage at that, if you wish.

This whole misadventure must be Osama bin Laden’s dream. Bushco has played right into his hands and fugged everything up so bad one almost has to wonder if Bush is on Al-Qaida’s payroll (that is a facetious remark, so don’t get all torqued; or, get all torqued, I don’t care).

There’s more, of course, but I’m sure it’s entirely pointless. If you honestly think Bush is a good guy and the Iraq fiasco is in any way, shape, or form justified—which you most obviously do—then it is just a waste of time for both of us to even continue this. So unless you can come up with some original thoughts of your own, I’m done; I don’t have the time to keep pointing out the obvious to people who either can’t, don’t, or won’t listen, and haven’t listened from the beginning, because they live in some propaganda-fed, closed-minded fantasy world about our president and how he truly operates.

I remain unconvinced after performing some research, and here are two main reasons why:

1) Opinions in a letter are just opinions in a letter, regardless of the author’s title or job description.

2) The Newsweek article, though interesting, is three years old. There appears to be little or no follow-up since. Even in this age of pseudo journalism, that is an awfully long time for something of this magnitude (if true, of course) not to be investigated and reported upon further.

For me to seriously consider that the U.S. government was somehow behind 9/11 (if that is what you are suggesting), I would need to see MUCH more information from credible sources, backed up by a very convincing paper trail, or some other hard evidence. When I say “credible source,” I’m talking about someone like Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker or some other journalist whose credentials are established based on past work, or else a well-researched, bylined AP article, for instance--which would still need to be backed up by other independent sources with a story like this.

It's like I said, if you continue to ignore the facts which have never been disputed,you perform a false flag function.
Either intentionally or not.

Till next time, Sheepdog. Take care!