Over the last week or two, the commercial news media (an untrustworthy source) has been declaring for us that the economy will be the number one issue for voters in November. Really? While none of us are having fun paying for gas or groceries, I intend to highlight how dangerously selfish this mentality could be.

With the exception of just a handful of countries that have similar capitalist economies and semi-democratic governments like our own, we experience wealth and prosperity in this country with profound disproportionality to the majority of the rest of the world. No I don’t sit in front of the tube and watch the whole infomercial about the starving kids with the flies landing on their heads, but I also will not ignore that reality and pretend it does not exist. To list the areas of despair around the world would be a lengthy project, so let’s focus on just a few things and exactly how our government is representing OUR country to the rest of humanity.

Unemployment in Iraq is estimated by its’ own government to be close to 70 percent. Life for Iraqis since “democracy” was delivered at the end of a gun, is a day to day struggle for survival. Now every member of a family spends their entire day with one task delegated to them, one ingredient they must attain so the entire family might eat that night. While one member might be in search of something to cook, another will stand in line for cooking gas, for sometimes longer than 2 days straight. Things were not like this in Iraq before the American public was misled into thinking Iraq was a high level threat to our national security, based on the (inarguable) lies and fabrications of the administration. Having fooled a solid majority of our public into this misguided, and certainly misdirected blood lust, America waved the flag in support of “shock and awe”, also known as bombing the shit out of a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with the terrorism of 9/11 (so says any source that is not trying to insult your intelligence [again] including the sometimes less than candid 9/11 Commission Report).

Things in Iraq were also better before our government sanctions directly led to the deaths (starvation and disease) of some (estimated) half a million Iraqi children throughout most of the 1990’s. Also, things were better there before 1991, when in reaction to the Iraqi military invading Kuwait, our military was instructed to ruthlessly target the civilian infrastructure of Iraq, targeting and destroying 19 of 21 electric plants, and all water treatment facilities in the country. Furthermore, the administration of that time, elected by our public at large to represent all Americans, prohibited the import of materials and parts to rebuild this infrastructure for years, leading to rampant disease and deaths. When a mission is directed at actual ‘enemy combatants’ (a term designed to skirt the Geneva Convention) our appointed military leaders designate their squeaky clean term ‘collateral damage’ for any higher risk (to the surrounding population), or simply errantly executed mission. This term sounds better at a press conference than its’ meaning: piles of dead bloody civilians consisting of women, children, and non-combatants.

In the information (lapse) bubble of our American community, these representatives of our flag come on our TVs and instruct us on how they are doing the right thing, how we are fighting for freedom, how we are good and the enemy is evil, all while inflicting arrogant, idealistic and illegal atrocities across the globe. While endlessly suppressing the truth in a wildly successful effort to fool Americans into complacency, our representatives trot the globe, wiping their ass with the documents of international law, and plunging any semblance of morality back to ancient barbaric times.

Another thing to think about while we pump our gas, is how this government will turn its’ back on the fighting men and women of our military at the drop of a hat. In uncountable instances the rendering of necessary medical treatment for veterans returning from Afghanistan or Iraq has been deplorable. I met a brave Marine named Sam who has been home after 3 combat deployments (1 Afghanistan, 2 Iraq) for 8 months and can not get test results or a follow up appointment on chronic and likely threatening health problems incurred during his service to this country. It has become clear that the Walter Reed Hospital issues are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the negligence and betrayal that this government perpetrates against those who so courageously offer their sacrifice. We are at a point were our soldiers bleed on a battlefield that can not be justified (Iraq), that our even being there is known to be based on falsehood and deceit. On top of that, these men and women are just rolling the dice, should they take a bullet that their government may or may not help them stop the bleeding. The reports of huge numbers of US military veterans living under bridges and on park benches is hardly reassuring. While we walk the isles of our elaborate mega shopping centers and mutter under our breath at the rising costs of bread and milk, there are 200,000 homeless veterans eating our trash.

There is so much more. Let’s hit just one more major area, and cause for concern. The President has a private army of covert operatives and assassins that collude with the Chief Executive in an endless breech of the US Constitution and international law. This ‘unit’ was conceived in 1947 and is called the CIA. The CIA has had a brazen disregard for the law since its inception, as displayed in various parts of the world over several decades (Iran: 1953 version, Chile, Cuba, Afghanistan, and on and on) as it seems they have birthed many of our greatest dangers today in an inadvertent formula known to the agency as ‘blowback’. Funding Osama Bin Laden in the 1980’s would only be one example and one variety of error on a long list of traps set for America by itself. One might think after more thorough analysis that the quagmire of this agency could not get any worse, but in sad actuality this administration has reduced it to an all time low in intelligence viability, and an all time high in renegade, unconstitutional reckless abandon. The total intelligence gathering ability of the agency was undermined and discredited by the actions of the administration. In treating the CIA like a drive-through, the Vice President took numerous and historically unprecedented trips to the agency to order up the phony intelligence with which to lead the country into war with Iraq. Eventually this ‘evidence’ was proven false, but as usual the Administration took no responsibility and was not held accountable by the sheepish press. After muscling the CIA into playing ball, the administration blamed the agency for the faulty reports the VP had ordered. The result was the discrediting of our primary source of information dealing with external threats to our country, and the resulting doubling of the covert operations side of the agency, and we have already discussed what that faction is capable (or incapable) of.

In the middle 1990’s a high ranking officer in the clandestine factions of the CIA decided it would be cool to start illegally kidnapping and torturing people. All that would be needed next would be a good dose of arrogance, ideology, and disregard. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the administration he worked for would bring gallon upon gallon of fuel to the fire, secretly setting ablaze that which Americans had held dear for over two centuries: the pride of our goodness, and of our fairness.

In late 2001, Secretary Rumsfeld would direct his services, and subsidiary intelligence officers to “take the gloves off.” This mentality would quickly grow into a secret memorandum called the Special Access Program that denominated ‘extraordinary renditions’ upon individuals who, if they were lucky, would be labeled ‘enemy combatants’ (again a title hatched to evade the restraints of the Geneva Convention). Renditions consist of numerous internationally illegal torture techniques including water-boarding, as well as numerous perverse and sexually (and religiously) humiliating torture techniques. If you got the title ‘enemy combatant’ then you at least were documented (by name) in the system and at some point inventoried. That is better than those captured or kidnapped who have a ‘ghost’ prisoner status, as their ‘renditions’ are likely to be performed illegally by a cooperative host country much more likely to induce death.

The covert policies of torture were honed at Guantanamo Bay, then on to Abu Ghraib, and across an alarmingly wide array of cooperating host countries were ‘secret’ (now well documented) CIA rendition flights deliver untold numbers of prisoners for torture or execution.

The reason for the specifics here is to express how our government has so egregiously damaged and dismantled America’s reputation to the world. A majority of human beings on earth now find it accurate to label us “America the torturer”. We all need to understand how this makes us less safe, as it breads hate toward us across the globe, undermines the principals on which this country was founded, and disrespects any uniform worn in its’ defense.

They (terrorists) would love and will try again to take a swipe at the government itself, but they will settle for our sky scrapers filled with women, children, and non- combatants.

I’m glad you read this far. It’s patriotic that you did. Waving the flag in blindness behind whatever ‘the decider’ says is not. Blowing everything up is not. Patriotism means seeking the truth, and encouraging the greater powers before us to begin again to act with dignity.

Now I ask, is the price of gas your biggest problem?