America Held HostageBy Dick Kazan (Posted With Permission)
http://saneramblings.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=137&sid=eab5702404b9e8d4d97c3c44339fa141"The President is holding us hostage," exclaimed a close friend of mine, with anger and frustration in his voice. "There is no-one to control him. He could invade Iran or some other country. He could use nuclear weapons. He could trigger a larger war in the Middle East or even throughout the world."
I listened intensely and I shared in his grave concerns. This is a President who has told us in no uncertain terms, "I'm the decider."
And despite the desire of the American people to end the Iraq war, he has expanded it. Under his leadership, America now runs secret prisons holding indefinitely, people never charged with a crime and torturing them at will. He views the Geneva Convention which defines the rights of enemy combatants as largely not applicable in his "war on terror."
Our President speaks of our soldiers as "heroes" yet when they are killed in Iraq, instead of celebrating their lives, he sneaks their bodies home, away from the glare of the media.
And for the seriously injured soldiers, as we saw during the recent Walter Reed medical center scandal, instead of giving them the best of care, he offers them sub-standard care and their families are largely abandoned, left to fend for themselves.
Meanwhile in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since he invaded the country in 2003. Mothers, fathers and children continue to die with no end in sight. Two million Iraqis have fled this Hell and thousands more are fleeing as I write this article.
Much of Iraq is in ruins and its people live as best they can in an unending nightmare, as our President is determined "to finish the job," that job being largely defined in his own mind.
In the U.S. in the name of "National Security," the President ignores the Bill of Rights and conducts warrantless spying on American citizens. And now the F.B.I. director has acknowledged the Bureau has wrongfully used the Patriot Act to get information about people and about businesses.
And in the Justice Department, eight U.S. attorneys were fired because they weren't sufficiently loyal to the Administration, as part of a plan to force the resignations of potentially any of the 93 U.S. attorneys not honoring the President's wishes. For as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said, he (and they), "serve at the pleasure of the President," as if the President is a king.
In terms of national disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, the President has shown a remarkable indifference to the suffering of its victims. At best, he has posed for photo-ops in disaster areas and at worst, during Katrina he continued his vacation rather than call for help and get directly involved. As he took little action, people died and massive numbers of others suffered.
Financially, this President has irresponsibly spent vast sums of money our government doesn't have and has provided tax breaks to those who least need them. As a result, our deficit spending has exploded and may in the future endanger such vital programs as Social Security and Medicare.
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