"When The Fox Is In Charge Of The Chicken Coop!"
"Too Many Years - Too Many Dangerous Mistakes"
by Charles L. Riccillo
"Well," I was once told - as I watched my university teaching career dissolve into thin air - "That's what happens when the fox is left in charge of the chicken coop!"
That, dear readers, is pretty much just what we've witnessed over the last eight years and in some other Republican times before it!
In my case, as a young theater professor, my contract was being non-renewed, all of it without due process, over the unanimous objections of the Arts and Communications faculty, the Committee for Renewal and Tenure, the students, and my own Dean of Arts and Sciences.
But this fox is not my personal bane, but rather our curse witnessed in particular over the last eight years!
Just who was in charge when:
1. This nation went to war, embarrassingly, plunging into Iraq without sufficient proof of just cause?
2. These United States contracted, sans any bidding or due consideration, with the Halliburton Corporation, for multiple contracts which will now soon enrich outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney's purse?
3. Freedoms and rights, including even habeas corpus and right to counsel, were suspended under the Patriot Act?
4. Prisoners as "suspected enemy combatants" were summarily tortured in Abu Graeb and Guantanamo, and jailed for indeterminate periods of time - or flown surreptitiously to allied Arab nations for questioning with "no holds barred" for weeks upon end?
5. Colin Powell, at the United Nations, was made to - much to his later chagrin - present a "slam-dunk" case of evident "weapons of mass destruction" - later found nowhere in evidence within the state of Iraq.
6. Our out-going President Bush prematurely announced with great fanfare, "mission accomplished" in Iraq.
7. The Bush administration went so far as to forbid photographs of returning, flag-draped American coffins, so that the press and people would not be able to readily see the evidence of our bloody foolishness.
8. The economy called "essentially sound" by our current President Bush, began a series of dives, wavering, and then near crash.
