If You Think This War Was Not Fought for Politics--Check Out the Saddam Verdict 2 DAYS before the election. 2,825 Dead AND FOR WHAT?

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, "They must think I'm stupid." Because they surely do.

They think they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team's real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry's mangled gibe at the president.

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to the U.S. military than to send it into combat in Iraq without enough men--to launch an invasion of a foreign country not by the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, but by the Rumsfeld Doctrine of just enough troops to lose? What could be a bigger insult than that?

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so that some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs in Iraq would only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could be more injurious and insulting than Don Rumsfeld's response to criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the army you've got--get over it.
--"Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence," Thomas Friedman, New York Times, November 2, 2006


"The next night, an armor-piercing bomb hit the same squad, Gator 1-2. A sergeant with whom I had ridden the previous evening," (said Patrick J. McDonnell of the L.A. Times), "lost a leg; the gunner and driver suffered severe shrapnel wounds."

And for what?
--"Togetherness in Baghdad," George F. Will, conservative columnist for Newsweek, November 6, 2006.


"…Verdict for Saddam Hussein expected this weekend…"
--news crawl on ABC



Watch for it. TWO DAYS before this critical election, through some wondrous serendipity of coincidence, after months and months of a dragged-out show-off trial in which lawyers and judges and their families were routinely assassinated, and Saddam had many grandstanding moments…all of a sudden, VOILA!

Ladies and gentleman, it has been predicted--not suddenly announced--that WE WILL HAVE A VERDICT.

Notice that the verdict will come JUST IN TIME FOR SUNDAY NEWS TALK-SHOWS, WHICH ARE THEN QUOTED FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK'S EVENING NEWS CYCLES.

Dick Cheney is already scheduled to appear on George Stephanopoulis's "This Week," on ABC.

Look for him--and all his other talk-show minions, including the radio broadcasters and network commentators who are sent White House talking points every morning-- to sadly mourn about what a miserable unpatriot John Kerry is, and how the Democrats are all JUST LIKE HIM, and then, lean closer to your sets so that you can see him crow loud and long about the horrible dictator who has been brought down by our brave men and women who liberated his people and set them on the road to democracy!!!

And how all those cut-and-run Democrats are going to empty out the country of Iraq before we've achieved victory, and bring home all our brave protectors overnight like a bunch of losers, and leave those good people and their lovely country to melt down. And then the terrorists will take over and all book flights for the U.S. !!!

We'll be fighting them, to quote Bill O'Reilly, "on every street in America."

(Really, Bill? ON EVERY SINGLE STREET??? My, my.)

Boys and girls, this whole thing is a massive media manipulation in order to put the Republicans on the offensive on election day, being touted as great victors fighting a great and victorious war, in other words: "winners."

Basically, it will be another "Mission Accomplished" moment.

Watch how the so-called "liberal media" will all follow the talking-points put out by the White House, moving on to the next question without even challenging the answers put to them. Watch for all kinds of "B-roll" of the spider-hole and Saddam with long hair and beard, and the Saddam statue coming down, and all our glorious triumphs.

So that as we go into our voting booths, we'll be thinking all kinds of warm and fuzzy thoughts about the Republicans and their handling of this war. We may even be lulled into thinking it was the right thing for the right reasons at the right time, and that if we just hang in there long enough, the whole country of Iraq will eventually join hands and sing Kumbaya and tell al-Jazeera how much they love their saviors, the U.S.A.

And all the terrorists will stay right there in the al Anbar province, killing Marines, and we won't have to fight them on our streets here at home because the Republicans are protecting us.

My question is this: How is it that we suddenly have a verdict at just this propitious moment? Why is it that we know the verdict will be here on a certain day, just days before the election? Of course it will be guilty and there will be a death sentence, most likely.

It's not that I'm saying Saddam should not be convicted. Not at all. But from the beginning, I thought he should be tried at the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague where such luminaries as Slobodan Milosevic was held accountable for genocide in the Balkans.

A real trial, in other words, that the world community--and Arab neighbors--could respect. Not a media-driven kangaroo court that can't even keep judges on the bench without a phalanx of body guards to keep him alive.


I can't sleep, these days.

Yesterday, five more died in the killing fields of Iraq.

I lie awake, thinking, How many more must die and be mutilated to keep the GOP in power?

It's in our hands, ladies and gentlemen. And if we get fooled--YET AGAIN--by Rovian manipulation of news cycles, and the GOP retains its control, the Bush administration will consider it another mandate to continue their steam-roller, heedless recklessness of policy at home and at war, and American blood will hemorrhage for two more long dreadful years. War without end. War without purpose.

A political war.

Thomas Friedman put it best:

Let Karl Rove know that you think this is a critical election, because you know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq--and then get away with it by holding on to the House and the Senate--it means our country has become a banana republic. It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party to account.

It means we're as stupid as Karl thinks we are.

I, for one, don't think we're that stupid. Next Tuesday we'll see.