Iraq:
guilty without association to Sept. 11
Thomas
Hartnett
A
recent poll in the Washington Post stated
that nearly 7 out of 10 Americans believe
that Iraq played a direct role in the attacks
of Sept. 11. For the record, there has been
absolutely no proven link of Iraq being
involved in any aspect of those attacks.
But still, an overwhelming majority of Americans
believe that Saddam Hussein played a direct
role.
I
wonder how this could be? It probably has
to do with the innuendo that President George
W. Bush uses every time he speaks about
terrorists by including "Iraq"
and "Sept. 11 in the same sentence.
Then there is Vice President Dick Cheney
who just flat out lied on Sunday's Meet
the Press asserting that Iraq may have been
involved, and that he just does not know
if they were or not. An avalanche of dishonesty
followed this as he proceeded to rattle
off numerous intelligence reports, all of
which have been proven to be false.
The
Bush administration and his neo-conservative
cronies rely exclusively on deliberate misinformation
to justify their ultra-conservative agenda.
The fact is that Iraq and Sept. 11 have
absolutely nothing to do with one another
and the Republicans should stop pretending
that they do.
President
Bush continues to claim that Iraq was a
just war because we brought freedom to the
Iraqi people. Bush speaks as though he even
knows or respects the meaning of the word
freedom. This all coming from a man who
treats the U.S. Constitution the same way
he treats the congressional inquiry into
Sept. 11; crossing out all of the important
stuff with a black marker. He has since
advocated making the Patriot Act permanent,
and even wants to take away more rights
by asking Congress to allow him to authorize
wire taps without going through the courts.
Frankly,
I am sick and tired of the Bush administration
and the Republican Party openly prostituting
the memory of Sept. 11 in order to scare
everyone else to go along with the rape
of our Constitution. Maybe they think that
since the terrorists attacked us based solely
on their "hatred of our freedom"
that by taking away these freedoms, the
terrorists will have less of an incentive
to attack us in the future. If Bush and
the Republican Party really care about freedom,
then they should defend it at home as well
as abroad.
Benjamin
Franklin once wrote "those who sacrifice
essential liberty for a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty or safety."
I would draw a similar lesson from the days
since Sept. 11.
If
we sacrifice our own freedom and refuse
to confront the truth and instead choose
to base our foreign and domestic policy
on romantic, well choreographed misrepresentations
and lies, then this war on terror is already
a lost cause. No amount of fighting, anywhere
in the world, will win freedom for anyone.
Thomas
Hartnett is a political science major and
a student at Cal State Long Beach.
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