War-Hawk Republicans and Anti-War Democrats: What's the Difference? (the Repubs will stab you in the stomach, and the Dems will stab you in the back)

The past week in DC found me in many offices of our elected officials: Senators, Congresspersons, pro-war, "anti-war," Democrat, Republican. With a few notable exceptions, all of our employees toed party lines.

Thanks to those who met with me, because, except for Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), I was not their constituent. And I believe the Republicans who met with me, whether they knew it or not, were breaking with their leader on this, since he was too cowardly to meet with me.

The War Hawks I met with made my skin crawl. They so obviously are supporting a war that is not in our nation's best interest, nor is it making us more secure. I heard from Senators Dole (R-NC) and McCain (R-Ariz.) and Representative Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) about 9/11 and "fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here." That made me sick. George Bush and his lying band of imperialist greed-mongers exploited 9/11 and our national terror of other terrorist attacks to invade a country that had nothing to do with the attacks on our country. Now, in the aftermath of those lies, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians are dead, and almost 2000 of our brave young men and women. What makes the Iraqi babies and families less precious than ours? The crime that these people committed was being born at the wrong place at the wrong time. George took his war OF terror to their doorsteps. I even asked Senator Dole when she thought the occupation would be able to end, and she was incredulous that I would even think of Iraq as an occupation: she sees it as a liberation. I really wanted to know how many of them we have to kill before she considered that they were liberated.

The War Hawks (or war-niks, as I like to call them) also use the rationale that Saddam used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. I asked Senator Dole three times where Saddam got those weapons, and she wouldn't answer me. Because the smiling, kind, patronizing War-Hawkette knew where Saddam got the weapons. He got them from the USA. Saddam was a bad guy, but he was our bad guy (see the famous picture of the grinning Rummy shaking Hussein's hand) until he decided to sell his oil to Russia and France for Euros ... then, "Oh my gosh, Saddam kills his own people!!"

We didn't care about Saddam killing his own people after the first Gulf War, when George the First encouraged the people of Iraq to rise up against Saddam. We didn't care about the Iraqi children dying from the bombings and the sanctions during the Clinton years. All of a sudden in March 2003 those things became so important that it was urgent that our troops invade Iraq. Besides, the memo to Congress in which George asked for the authority to invade Iraq specifically mentions WMDs and terrorism - it says nothing about Saddam being a "bad guy" or about spreading "freedom and democracy" to Iraq. The reasons for our continued occupation change as fast as the old ones are proven lies.