Good Points

All upright, thinking people agree. Via firedoglake.

Which of the punk Bush supporting smear artists, virtually none of whom has ever served in uniform, who parade to the talkies to accuse almost anyone of being traitors, even cares about this: What kind of leaders send our troops to battle, unconscionably, so lacking in armor protection and equipment that the Marine Corps pathologist concludes, in the third year of the war, that 70% of the casualties were preventable? And then allow some of our wounded troops to return home and be charged for their sacrifice, and then pursued by debt collectors because they cannot afford to pay, and then be victimized by a Veterans Administration led by a former Republican Chairman that falls dramatically short of serving our heroes while creating the mammoth violation of privacy of veterans in the history of computers?

Think about this: America is engaged in a great battle of ideas against an enemy that murders children in houses of worship and cuts off the heads of the innocent, and our leaders have failed to win this battle even against an enemy so hideously evil.

And what is the response of Bush and Rove? When they are not demonizing the gays, they are waving the flag, preparing to challenge the patriotism of political opponents who prefer supporting those who wear that flag on their shoulder to using the flag as a partisan weapon in the endless political wars that will be the sad legacy of those who never learned that we are, indeed, in this together.

The reason America stands on the brink of an epic election is that this President, his party, and his apologist have let loose dark forces of division and dishonor that have divided our country, alienated much of decent opinion around the world, hurt our military, abused our freedoms in the name of a politics of fear and let loose in the land a kind of politics that violates the cardinal rules of two hundred years of the American family.

In this dark and demeaning vision of political war, anything goes, to win. A heroic Senator who will spend his life in a wheelchair as the price of his heroism is slandered by a guy who never served. A recipient of the bronze and silver stars is smeared because he is in the wrong political party. A Marine Corps hero who is one of strongest supporters of the troops who ever served in Congress is called a coward on the Floor of Congress. A Chief of Staff of the Army is demeaned by ideologues and partisans who were hell bent for a war they knew nothing about.

Six courageous retired Generals speak out with conscience and the editorial page of the Washington Times prints the statute on sedition. The cable talkies run segments with titles such as Hollywood Hates America. When the topic shifts to the atrocity of Haditha one of America's leading right wing mouthpieces says these things always happen in way and cites, shame, shame, shame, shame and infamy to him, the Marines who took Iwo Jima and the Army heroes who took Normandy with the slander that they too committed acts that were comparable to Haditha. Who in the hell do these bums think they are?

The infamy of Abu Ghraib, the wrongs of Guantanamo, secret government abusing secret prisons with secret injustice, and the Attorney General of the United States says the Geneva Convention is some quaint and outmoded relic which in my humble opinion were the most dishonorable, despicable and ignorant words ever uttered by anyone entrusted to preserve, protect and defend justice in America.

The man who sits where Washington sat, where Jefferson sat, where Lincoln sat, claims he has the unilateral, inherent power to abrogate even the Bill of Rights The man who put his hand on the Bible with the trust that the laws are faithfully executed claims he has the unilateral, inherent power to violate the laws of the land at his personal whim, and at this writing, there are more than 700 laws that he asserts the right to violate today. The man entrusted with the legacy of Founding Fathers who were among the greatest and most timeless visionaries who ever walked the earth, claims he can operate beyond the reach of courts, beyond the reach of Congress, without the knowledge of the American people.

Emphasis sadly added.