It's A Matter Of Character.

Bush and his administration lied 952 times to get us into the war in Iraq. It is disturbing to me that the Republican candidate Senator McCain stated that he would be willing to stay in Iraq 50 years or longer. I have a deep respect for anyone that is willing to risk his life in defense of his country, but, the Senator is wrong in this regard.

Because the surge is working he feels vindicated and almost giddy that you will be able to teach Obama a lesson on National Defense come November. I submit to you that the war was a strategic blunder based on a flawed foreign policy theory in the first place and predicated on a lie in the second place.

This is disturbing to me on many levels and it surprises me that McCain for all his talk about honor and character isn't the least bit disturbed by it too. When did it become honorable to lie to start an unjust war in which tens of thousands of people are killed.

Now that we know Bush lied, and there were no WMDs, they rationalizes and tell us Saddam was a very bad man who killed his own people, but we have to ask ourselves what are we doing? Has every Iraqi we've killed been deserving of death. If we were the ones being invaded would we sit on our hands and greet the invaders with flowers, like the neocons assumed we would be greeted?

They rationalizes and tell us that we must now kill all the terrorists, whom we invited to swarm into Iraq by the truckloads. They rationalizes and tell us we must leave with honor so that our dead will not have died in vain. But in truth we cannot add to or subtract from their sacrifice by one more or a thousand more deaths. Besides, if those were real reasons to go to war why weren't they the primary reasons given in the first place? That's because this nation would never have supported the invasion based on those reasons.

Or like in Orwell's "1984" have we've lied so much we no longer recognize the truth? Has this country buried the bar for truth so deep in the mud of political slime we no longer even have to stoop low enough to get by with lying, but, that we merely have to slither over it?

I know the jingoistic bombasts out there will rail in outrage, and will spew their inane venom, wrapped in the flag they have dishonored with their constant lying and preaching from their twisted pulpit of christian morality not understanding, much less caring that the truth will set us free.

We've forgotten the difference between a just war and a war just because we say so. There is no character or honor in that, other than a flawed one. And make no mistake, this is no game, as one malignant republican sociopath stated. Kids are dying out there. But I guess that's OK with him as long as its not his kid. He is right about one thing however, McCain will be beaten in November.

We just can't afford a continuation of Bush's failed foreign policies. They have bankrupted this country morally and financially. And most tragically they have gotten a lot of innocent people killed.