Tomorrow you can vote for or against the Bush administration. In reality that's what it boils down to.
You can vote for an incumbent who:
1. launched a war of aggression against a country that did not attack first and posed no real threat of ever doing so;
2. is responsible personally for the deaths of 600,000 Iraqis, 3,000 Americans (more than were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks) and the wounding of abut 15,000 more Americans and an uncounted number of Iraqis. The scale of human suffering caused by this one man and his corrupt administration is literally unimaginable.
3. lied and lied repeatedly and shamelessly in his justification for this war, in the "progress" that was supposedly being made in this war, and as to the motivations of any and all Americans who opposed this war.
4. brought the U.S.A. to its lowest point ever in public esteem in every corner of the globe, both as to its moral stature (it has become synonymous in the eyes of the world with torture and assassination, kidnappings, midnight knocks at the door, rape and murder) and even as to its military clout (North Korea, Iran and even Venezuela have openly mocked the U.S.A., basically telling the whole country to go fuck itself.)
5. abandoned the City of New Orleans to its fate, played golf and air guitar on vacation down on the ranch while American citizens, the elderly and the black, were literally drowning in shit.
I could go on about the record deficits, the attenuation of the armed forces, the failures to capture Osama bin Laden or to pacify Afghanistan, but to tell you the truth, those are minor failings - - the major failure of this administration is an abysmal moral failure - - they have lied, they have tortured, they have - - there is no better word for this - - they have murdered. Hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings have died at their hands. Atrociously. Bombed. Burned alive. Torn apart, mothers in front of their children, children in front of their mothers.
This is not the time to ask, "What would the Democrats have done differently?" The fact is, nobody knows what the Democrats would have done differently or IF they would have done differently. A point has been reached - - long ago - - when a moral imperative demands that any person with even a shred of human decency left in him or her will say, Enough! We cannot and will not be a party to this any longer. The stench of this moral decay is just too much for us to bear.
You can't hide any more behind the empty speculation of how bad the Democrats will be or would have been or might become. A stinking leprous rot has settled in on your institutions of government and it has to be cleaned out. Now. Sometime in the next 24 hours.
