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Americans deserve nothing but perhaps more treachery if we lack integrity, in this case conveniently disremembering a major traitor to peace and of humanity.
Because Colin Powell now supports a candidate many of us favor, are we now to celebrate the backing of someone who betrayed America, humanity and us by lying to the U.N. in a scheme to justify attacking an innocent people, an attack which thus far has cost us the lives of 4500 Americans and a million-plus Iraqis?.
I was hopeful when first learning that Powell would address the U.N., finally perhaps an honest spokesman for my country, I thought, and then subsequently stunned to witness his lying treachery, complete with phony samples of murderous substance, photos of mobile biological weapons labs replete with cartoons of their interior drawn up in the basement of the Pentagon which proved subsequently to be water purification equipment.
I was stunned and horrified, and will never be able to forget Powell shaking that small vial of sugar or whatever innocent substance he presented as toxic from the Iraqi arsenal, with his wards George Slam-Dunk Tennant peering over his one shoulder and John Bushman Negroponte peering over the other. (He was lied to? He didn't know? C'mon, I and others who had less than one percent access to the intelligence he had at hand -- KNEW, yes, WE KNEW!)
We should also keep in mind the Messiah Obama has yet to specify when and how many of our troops will come out of Iraq (Why not now? Why not all?) and yet to convince us and our British and other European allies that adding troops to Afghanistan is a good idea, yet to advise when the 700 plus U.S. military bases around the world will (?) be reduced to a reasonable number, and yet to indicate when the unconstitutional powers assumed by Bush will be aborted, yet to tell us specifically which of our Bill of Rights will be restored and when, and why he will keep the insurance companies (who rip off 30 percent of our medical costs) as the administrators of his national health plan.
There now appears little doubt that Obama will beat out McCain. And yes that will be a relief, but progressive Americans should not delude themselves that this guarantees us the needed champion of peace, constitutionality and decent governance, but perhaps once again just the less-undesirable outcome. We shall see, hoping that the experience will not be too painful.
