We may be worse than Saddam

We may be worse than Saddam
June 21, 2006

By DOUG THOMPSON



Vice President Dick Cheney claims the resistance in Iraq is in "its last throes." President George W. Bush says Iraq is "turning the corner."

Is that is true, how did a dying resistance manage to capture, torture and kill three U.S. soldiers in a well-planned and executed ambush? Why do innocent Iraqis die every day on the streets along with more and more U.S. soldiers?


Soldiers just back from Iraq tell me the war is out of control and the situation worse than ever. They should know. They were on the ground, fighting an illegal war against impossible odds ordered by men who don't have the foggiest concept of real war.

As decorated Marine and combat veteran Congressman John Murtha says, Cheney is just a dumb ass bureaucrat sitting on his "big, fat backside" in an air-conditioned office treating war like it was a video game. If Iraq is so damned safe, why did Bush sneak into the country under the cloak of secrecy, hide out for five hours in the uber-guarded "Green Zone" and then hightail it out of town as fast as he could?

Why not walk the streets of Iraq like normal citizens? Why not go on patrol with American soldiers?

Can't do that Bush told reporters after he got back to the safety of the White House.

"I'm a high-value target for some," Bush told reporters in the Rose Garden. "And Iraq is a dangerous place."

Damn right it is and Bush, Cheney and their misguided invasion of Iraq made the country a dangerous place where civilians die daily, electricity doesn't' work most of the time and people live in fear.

And of course Bush is a "high-value target." He made himself one. Iraqis hate George W. Bush. They see him as an invading, murderous monster that turned their country into a living hell - one far worse than it was even under the harsh rule of a monster like Saddam Hussein.

The U.S. invasion destroyed Iraq, decimated its culture, ravaged its cities and generated a chaos that cannot be controlled by an occupying army or cured with an American-style "democracy." Thanks to George W. Bush, America cannot "export" democracy because we don't have a democracy to give away.

The Republic that America once was is long gone, replaced by a police state run by a power-mad despot who tramples on the Constitution, disregards the law at will and ignores individual rights.

Our government monitors our travel, our spending and our activity on a daily basis, determines who can and cannot get on an airplane and fly somewhere and holds Americans incommunicado on vague suspicions that they may be terrorists.

Troops patrol the streets of New Orleans, an American city damaged by natural disaster and ruined by government incompetence and fraud. Other troops patrol our southern border, ordered to stop - at all costs - a tide of immigrants who only real crime may be seeking a better life in what used to be the land of the free.

Polls show anger towards our government and our elected officials at an all-time high. And why not? Washington is a sewer, a breeding ground of corruption, greed and graft, ruled by a President and political party that answer only to fatcat contributors.

Iraqis look at what American-style democracy has done to the United States and they say "hey, we don't want any of that."

And they start to think that, when compared to the fanatics who control the government of this country, maybe Saddam Hussein wasn't all that bad.

Sadly, they may be right.

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