Toward the end of the Vietnam War, Americans began to become weary and tired of lower and middle class Americans dying. They began to take to the streets to force the government to end the war.

On many occasions, policemen and National Guardsmen were asked to stop the protestors and obeyed.

Some confrontations were violent. On May 4, 1970, four middle class students were killed by Guardsmen on the campus of Kent State University.

Policemen and Guardsmen are not members of the American elite. Yet, they stopped other middle class people from protesting a war that took the lives of over 50,000 American soldiers, many from poor homes, but many from middle class homes as well.

It's happening again today. As Derrick Jackson points out in his article "Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper" which is posted on the Common Dreams News Center, American soldiers, many of whom earn as little as $25,000 a year, are dying while CEOs of large defense industry corporations are raking in close to $1 billion dollars a year thanks to the occupation of Iraq and the death of the soldiers.

Yet, the soldiers go and stay in Iraq because they've been told that they're fighting for their country, for freedom and for democracy in Iraq, all noble causes, none of them true. 30% of the people back home still support their sacrifices and the "good fortune" of the defense industry CEOs, although they don't see it that way. 30% is a minority, but it's still far too many people.

One must wonder how soldiers don't see that their wages, when sent home, don't pay the bills while those that put them in that position have no idea what those kinds of bills are.

U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse duty in Iraq, says, "The idea is this: that to stop an illegal and unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fighting it."

Soldiers have a free will. The horribly unbalanced recompense from the Iraq occupation should be enough to inspire the soldiers to lay down their arms and stop fighting.

Again, these troops are told that their mission is something it's not. They volunteered and feel obligated to see the phantom mission through. If the awareness of the troops could be raised without interference from The Regime, many just might "quit". No soldiers, no war.

Why do middle class people support wars like Vietnam and Iraq when those wars take their loved ones away from them, sometimes permanently? Why do they not see who fights and dies and who benefits? Why are they so influenced by the deceitful words of The Regime and its propagandists? Don't they watch press conferences during which, when asked what Iraq had to do with 9/11, The Front Man said "nothing"? When he then connects the occupation of Iraq with 9/11 by placing the two events in the same sentence, why do they not remember the word "nothing"?

One can't help thinking that those who support The Regime's using the lower and middle classes as sacrificial lambs would not be so supportive if they took the time to "follow the money" as Deep Throat instructed Bob Woodward to do back in the 1970s. It would become very clear if they took that time.

The Regime is slick and uses words like left, right, liberal, conservative, coward and patriot to muddy the waters and compel the middle class, the class that's taking the beating, to support them. The middle class must be made aware that The Regime is made up of people with whom they'd never have anything in common and with whom they'd not even be allowed to socialize or to share a relationship.

The stage must be cleared of The Regime's debris so that we all can see the actors more clearly.