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Bush's America - You don't have to be Einstein to figure it out

I was stunned in November of 2000 when the Bush camp demanded that votes not be counted. I had always believed that if anything in this country was sacred, it was the sanctity of the vote. The bedrock of Democracy was being dismantled before my eyes and it quickly became clear that the America I knew was history; I hoped it would be a short chapter.
The vicious attack on The World Trade Center on a gorgeous Tuesday morning in New York City brought unimaginable grief to our country. It also provided a means for the administration to weave their agenda into the fabric of American Society. I watched Bush in the ruins of the Twin Towers, bullhorn in one hand, a fireman he used as a prop in the other. Bush held him tightly; lest he drift and spoil the photo op. Nothing seemed genuine, nothing seemed real. It was September 14, 2001, and Bush, knowing where he wanted to go with this event, pledged, "the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from us real soon." The crowd of rescue workers, many who had lost dear friends in the attack, roared as the still smoldering Trade Center dust gradually turned into the fog of war.
The Afghan campaign followed and I was against it. I felt justice would be better served by treating the 9/11 attack as a criminal act rather than an act of war. But such an approach would not have allowed Bush to don the all powerful cloak of War President - so war it was. Thousands of lives and close to a trillion dollars later we still haven't caught bin Laden.
The Taliban was soon on the run and it became apparent to our agenda obsessed administration that war in Afghanistan wasn't enough in terms of magnitude and dollars to accomplish their goals. There wasn't any oil in Afghanistan either. So, just 4 months after the Trade Center attack, Bush delivered his "axis of evil" State of the Union Speech. He thus laid the groundwork for the greatest non sequitur in American Military history - attacking Iraq because of the criminal act of 15 Saudi's and 4 others, none of whom were Iraqi.
In November 2002, after 8 weeks of negotiating, manipulating and arm twisting, Bush got his hell bent foot into Iraq with UN Security Council Resolution 1441. It was not an authorization to use military force but it was all Bush and his team felt they needed to proceed with their war plans. It is most important to note here that the war was not an end unto itself (this explains why it has been so bungled) but predominantly a means to institute a radical right wing domestic agenda. As horrible as this war has been, it has also served as both a smoke screen and facilitator for much that has been going on here at home.

In addition to demanding that votes not be counted, there is another critical position taken by the administration which evidences its true intent. Bush was vehement about maintaining complete control over the awarding of Iraq rebuilding contracts - so much so that it diminished our coalition and put more Americans in harms way. It came as no surprise that Halliburton, VP Cheney's former employer was among the earliest contract winners. Many other big Republican donors won huge contracts so it is certainly not a stretch to view the rebuilding of Iraq as the cash register of The Republican Party. We would be naive to think it merely unfolded this way. It is how they planned to build their permanent Republican majority - it is how the Swift Boater's got funded; it is how truth as well as the vote has gotten trampled in Bush's America.