Finally, a little domestic concern thrown into the mix.  Very little, but we have the Bush Tax Cut checks of 2003.  Or did we?  We even, almost, have a prescription drug Medicare plan, but that’s another issue.  On the foreign scene, there are photos and videotapes of dead sons in Iraq – including theirs.   Was it because it was necessary for the Iraqi people or that the world does not have any confidence in the claims?

The White House is made of glass, and everybody’s got a rock.

This administration is said to be the most secretive in history.   Truth in fact, they aren’t effectively hiding anything.  The entire game plan is akin to jamming a stick into an ant mound.   It’s just not good business.  It certainly cannot be called compassionate. 

The Surplus has been depleted (according to the experts, there won’t be another one for a long time), and Madison Avenue tactics to keep up appearances have been all the rage, until that ten pounds of stuff in a five pound bag visibly started to leak just a few weeks ago.

Congress announced that they didn’t have time to consider a tax cut for over 6 million working poor and their children.  The first of the checks for others were issued last week.  A Bill to block grant the Head Start program to eight states was passed, which reportedly will weaken the program.  Poor children and families take another hit, while we fund and protest a war series and election agendas under intense scrutiny.  It is expected that churches and faith-based orgs will pick up the slack – and then supposedly request federal funding.  It offers the opportunity to establish credibility.

Abroad, Africa was offered $15.8B in aid, and the President was talking about going into Liberia.  Possibly one of those considerations for the nations signing on with the Joint Coalition against terrorism, including Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Because upon closer inspection, we have not found Osama (but we are still crawling all over the Pakistan-Afghani border), Sadam (although they have ‘stepped up’ the search for him), or the weapons of mass destruction (where did Tommy Franks go, anyway?), and Africa is put up on the screen?   The Administration is in the news begging for international help to clean up their foreign messes, while stripping the treasures and toils of home and continuing to threaten military actions.  What kind of policy (politics) is this?

The list of disappointments and burden heaped upon the American people just keeps adding up, and there isn’t much of an alternative being offered.  Long-term war on terrorism seems to be the jewel in the agenda crown.  Coordinating a domestic continuation of power has implemented plans to redistrict a state or two, recall a governor, while seizing nations.  This has become the politics of mass destruction.

This regime began as second best with a chip on their shoulder from 1992.  It has cost us most of what was built in the last decade of the twentieth century, and will cost us, and generations to come, well into the twenty-first.   It was recently announced that the deficit was much more than they reported to have estimated.  While beating on the war chest, the government added another $800 billion to the budget, and recently admitted that they have seriously underestimated the aftermath of the Iraqi situation.  Wonder what all of this will cost the babies born this month (provided they are educated enough to even count) in twenty years? 

From Reagan to the present, the Consumer Price Index has increased by 101 points.  Approximately two-thirds of that was under Republican rule.  The span was 100 points from 1913 through 1977.  We went through four wars in that time that are recorded, so they must have been doing something right before Bush.  As I recall, because I was born during one and watched several of my friends come home in those horrible metallic crates at Love Field in the other, times were fairly good for the middle class.  There were a lot more of us, as I recall.  And, everybody had a rock.

With the current economic situation, most Americans cannot afford medical treatment.  Teachers are losing their jobs and schools are closing. American factories and transportation industries are struggling to stay open or keep their books in the black.  American workers are losing their jobs every single day.  Small businesses are sitting on their hands, waiting for the other shoe to drop – bankruptcy.   Our State budgets are so tight that they are even cutting jobs.  The economy is continuing to sink and the Fed Chairman is warning about the impact of this deficit.  Does anyone see a pattern here?

All the political events since the fall of 2000 seem like a giant smoke screen with a truckload of hidden agenda.  It has created this runaway picture of foreign countries being devastated for no viable reason and left to ruin, followed by a domestic agenda to use tax relief for Americans and the cost of ‘The war on terrorism’ as the reason expenditure for rebuilding is not an option.   Recently, a few more picked up rocks.

Business, industry, and government benefit from war.  It makes money.  One scenario is to build fenced cities for captive, starving audiences, and advance agendas off of the war weary and their natural resources.  Of course, it has been reported that the businesses will have to be named Halliburton, Bechtel or WorldCom in order to get a nod with this group, but it’s the same construction plan.  In the past, there have been tax incentive awards for the companies that invest.   It doesn’t appear that they are interested in investing very much, because most of Iraq is reported to be without utility services. 

A piece in this part of the puzzle is still missing.  According to a White House press release, the ‘coalition’ has forty countries, population approximately 1.7 billion, and a combined GDP of approximately $21.8 trillion.   There’s no evidence that anyone but America and Great Britain are funding this effort, and that speaks volumes.

There is another interesting portion of the picture, though the pieces are not obvious.  The richest oil region in the world sits right in the middle of all of this.  It is the last bastion of superior natural resources.  It isn’t Iraq, Afghanistan, or Africa.  It’s the Caspian.  Though the negotiations and the scramble to claim it have been feverishly pursued, it has faded from view and been surrounded by military action since nine eleven.  Russia to the north, and the U.S. on all other sides as close as we can get.  The Caspian coastline is included in that coalition list.

The exposed global agenda since the move to invade Iraq has turned the stomachs of more than a few other nations, as well.  Though they are being romanced to get involved in this agenda, most have been and are still refusing.  The ones that are involved are taking some serious heat at home.  One bright spot here at home is that some Republicans are starting to publicly question this administration’s tactics and agenda.  It may not be genuine concern for the wrongs, but what the impact it is going to have on their own political futures.

It was never a consideration that anyone would get a grip on a thread in the fabric of this plan.  That little tiny lie that came from overzealous ambition was the little tug that started everything unraveling.  They were so desperate for support; Tony Blair had to come all the way from England to tell the American Congress that history will forgive them if the weapons aren’t there. History is the deeds and events of the past and riddled with the glaring mistakes of man.  Forgiveness is divine.  It is phenomenally arrogant and unwise to take that for granted.

It all seems very strange.  An American President, usually distinguished as the most powerful man in the world, had a British Prime Minister coming to speak to his Congress.  The next day, a British weapons expert is found dead.  The very one associated with the origination of the exposure of that little exaggeration.  The NY Times reported that David Kelly had e-mailed a reporter with a line that concluded "many dark actors playing games.”   The more it is played, the darker it becomes.

It is being said that the Bush Administration blames the British.  Blair comes to tell Congress he is steadfast in his beliefs.  Kelly dies.  The British blame the French (Who vehemently opposed the Iraq invasion, by the way.), and now Chiroc is crying foul.   Everything in American politics seems to end up in a schoolyard bully-bout ever since Ken Starr took ‘independent prosecution’ to a new high in the Clinton fiasco. 

The motto is clear.   ‘Do unto others before they do unto you.’  Former President Clinton is urging opponents of the Bush Administration to ease the chokehold, but the voice of experience is rarely heeded when passion outweighs reason.  This kind of feeding frenzy is nothing new to America or her people.  Everybody’s got a rock.

This isn’t the first time we have been misled, either.  The campaign slogan in the latest sales effort to the public included the label of compassionate conservative, but it has all gone beyond obsession, on all sides.  Since 2000, it appears to be an addiction, and it’s contagious.

FDR said ‘War is a contagion.’   This is a war, this politics of mass destruction.

It is spreading through the land like the plague, and we are all sick to death.

Copyright 2003 by DS Gands, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

D.S. Gands is a freelance writer living in North Texas.  The opinions of this article do not reflect the perspectives of this publication.  If you would like to see this or other articles by D.S. Gands appear in your favorite publication, ask the editor to contact editor@ntxe-news.com  regarding available reprint or syndication rights.