So This Is Why People Will Still Vote Republican...

Did you know that the number of people who believe that Saddam was tied to 9/11 has actually increased since 2004? According to a June 2007 Newsweek poll, 41% of Americans believe this myth. And this is up 5% from September 2004! Additionally, a 2006 poll found that 50% of Americans believe that Iraq had or has WMD, up from 36% in 2005.

Can this be real? Are people seriously falling for this? Of course they are. And this is what the Republican Party is counting on. They perpetuate and exaggerate the threats (or make them up when they don’t exist), and then they claim that they are the only ones who can save us. This twisted logic is dangerous. It’s dangerous to America and it’s dangerous to the world.

There are the people that support the GOP because:
1) They have more money than 99.9999999999% of the world;
2) They don’t have a soul; or
3) Both
However, most of the people that fall into the Republican trap are just products of an “independent reality” (seriously, that’s a real term). The current reality is that America has spent almost $500 billion, lost 4,000 lives and displaced millions in Iraq. In order to justify this, the broken record of the GOP uses lies and half-truths to brainwash the American people into accepting their independent reality.

The independent reality is that Saddam was behind 9/11 and he had WMD poised and ready to use against American soldiers. Well, I guess he did have the chemical weapons that Reagan sold him in the 1980s, but that fact is conveniently omitted. Instead, the war-mongering Bush administration continues to spew lies. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a scholar of presidential rhetoric at the University of Pennsylvania said, "it doesn't surprise me when presidents reconstruct reality to make their policies defensible." This president may even have convinced himself it's true, she said.

My favorite justification for Iraq is this: We will be instilling democracy in the region, and from Iraq, it will spread to other nations. This is absurd and far from the truth, and here’s why. Remember back in the Vietnam Armed Conflict (no war was declared) that America used the Domino Theory in order to justify our presence. In case you’ve forgotten, the theory goes that when one nation falls to Communism, the neighboring nations will soon fall, and so on and so on until everyone is a commie. You’ll also remember that this theory failed to pan out after Vietnam fell to the communists. Sure, Communism still exists, but it is not the threat that it once was. Fast-forward to today and we are applying the Domino Theory to Democracy in Iraq. Yet, if we are to learn from history, we will see that Democracy is no more likely to spread in the Middle East than Communism in Asia.

But, back in our reality, these policies are anything but defensible. They are abhorrent. And they are ruining America. At this point, we cannot do much besides impeach our current leaders. And vote. Vote in such overwhelming numbers that our next president has a true mandate to lead our country the way we want to be lead. We want change. We need a change. So, make your voice heard. Vote in the primary. Vote in the election. Take advantage of our democracy so that our leaders can’t take advantage of us!