John Edwards' Deeper Purpose

Last week John Edwards published an article in The Huffington Post entitled A Deeper Purpose. It was a thoughtful essay about the deeper meaning behind our upcoming Memorial Day, essentially making sure we honor our living soldiers as well as our fallen, and as a tribute to them, bring them home from this disastrous debacle in Iraq.

What I want to call your attention to is one particular line in his message:

And on Memorial Day, we should honor and remember all those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.

The operative segment in this line is "... for our freedom", and to this I must disagree. I know this will not sit well with our men & women in uniform risking their lives day-in and day-out. However they must realize that they are NOT fighting FOR OUR FREEDOM. Even though they joined the armed forces with every intent on protecting our country and everything it stands for, it is a sad, pathetic, and disgusting reality that they're not fighting FOR OUR FREEDOM.

After all we know now about the fabricated intelligence which tricked us into attacking/conquering/occupying Iraq, the tens of billions of dollars mysteriously missing, and the production sharing agreements (PSA's) which rape the Iraqi people, please don't cheapen this Memorial Day moment by parroting the Republican talking points. Those men & women of our armed forces in Iraq are not fighting for our freedom. They are fighting for the greed and profitibility of the big oil companies and the military-industrial-complex. No one in the world with half a brain in their head could actually believe that our freedom is at stake over in Iraq.

I WISH they were fighting for our freedom!

Stuck Between Iraq and a Hard Place

I didn't bother watching the GOP debate last week. I had better things to do than to watch 10 middle-aged white guys blabber on about what a great president Ronald Reagan was, how they'll govern with their faith, how they'll crack down on illegal immigration, or how THEY'LL finally catch Osama bin Laden.

Of course there're those high-impact issues so crucial to the American people - denying homosexuals equal rights by outlawing same-sex marriages, prolonging debilitating diseases by preventing potential cures which could be discovered with stem-cell research, and - the most important - increasing the volume of illegal abortions by overturning the Supreme Court decision which protects our rights & paves the way for making abortions safe.

What I find truly despicable is that these spineless Republican shills, who shamelessly pander to the conservative base, continue to support Bush and his conquest of Iraq (and theft of their oil), insisting that we cannot re-deploy the troops. They continue to stand by their opinion that the war can be won and the consequences of defeat are worth the lives which have been lost and the future lives which will be lost. They continue to insist on our patience and that we should give Bush's "surge" (i.e. war escalation) time to be effective. They're too stupid to realize that the Bushies are just running out the clock and milking the American taxpayers for all they can get.

The GOP candidates are facing an impossible challenge. The HAVE to stick by Bush in order to garner the conservative support, even though the mood of the country is clearly on the other side of this issue. The American people have lost patience with this administration, and with the Republican lawmakers which enabled it. The election of 2006 was just the start of the avalanche of support shifting from the right to the left.


So, let the idiots have their say...

Let the jackass Republicans espouse patriotism, glory, victory, failure and fear. Let them trash each other. Let them justify their indiscretions. Let them explain their flip-flopping on issues, their dirty business dealings, and their faith against science. Let them pander to the conservative base which is increasingly distancing itself from the mainstream.

In the end, when it comes down to one Democrat against one Republican in November of 2008, the choice will be as clear as it can possibly be. If you want to continue the war in Iraq, continue to conquer Middle East countries, continue to alienate the international community, and continue to mortgage our children's future, then vote Republican. However, if you want to end this senseless arrogance and take our troops out of harm's way, saving hundreds of thousands of lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars, vote Democrat. It really is as simple as that.


By the way, has anyone noticed the price of gas skyrocketing to $3+/gal? And then ask yourself - when was gas at its lowest price in the past year? That's right - during the election season last November. You know they say: "Elections have consequences". I say: "Those months between elections have consequences too."