Saturday, November 24, 2007
Catching Political Culprits
By
Molly the Robin
My name is Molly and I am a robin. I have been on a vacation visiting the Adirondack Mountains before flying south for the winter. I learned to think a short time ago by seeing myself in car door mirrors. I am a mother who has had several broods of hatchlings. At first I did not think at all, but seeing myself in mirrors sparked my brain and I have been reading everything about this wonderful country in local school libraries. A fellow wrote about me in Animal Park. He only got half the story right as most people do because you humans think you are not as bad as you really are or not as good as you think you are. The other half I’ll have to tell you myself. For starters my partner for life, Chester, has always been a bumbler or fumbler and without my guidance he would have never made it to the Carolinas in winter. Well that’s another story.
As I fly over your country, mine too, I see many things that need fixing. I know Americans don’t like criticism. They only want positive and constructive things said. Well, if you don’t criticize how will you or anybody else know things need fixing. So I would start at the top with criticism which is vital for anybody’s survival, even one’s country.
I read in a newspaper a story called: “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq.” The first person to come to my mind is the current occupant of the White House. He started the ball rolling with prefabricated intelligence to start a war with Iraq by invading and occupying the country with the Armed Forces of the United States under authorization from the Congress of the United States more heavily influenced by professional lobbyists for corporations and foreign policy lobbyists than the American people who are too divided to have much impact on their own government and the political parties that represent them.
Now, the property of individuals, including American citizens may be seized by our government if they have “committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of: (A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq (B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.” Since the invasion such essentials as water supply and electricity have not equaled the pre-invasion levels of service. It appears that the current occupant of the White House has violated his own edicts and orders. Also right in the McClatchy Washington Bureau it was reported by Nancy A. Youssef that “U.S. troops shot 429 Iraqi civilians at checkpoints” just during the past year. Also that number does not include civilians, including women and children killed in raids or street battles or bombing runs across Iraq.
The Lancet report out of Great Britain concluded that the number of Iraqis killed since the invasion and occupation of Iraq is over a half million people and continues to escalate, including women and children. I’ve read in newspapers that there have been over several million Iraqi refugees, many of them well-educated, mostly in Syria and Jordan. There is no security for their families in Iraq.
Taking all this into consideration it appears George W. Bush and his administration have violated their own orders. As a robin who has struggled to survive in an increasingly dirty world it is clear to me that the current Bush Administration has overstepped its political bounds, for no one can arrest the president for violating the law. The only thing the American people have is the impeachment and removal process in the Congress. Since the Congress is more a creature of special interests and their own interests which run counter to impeachment and removal from office for rogue elected leaders the American people will continue to be political serfs forever searching for constructive and positive words about themselves and their country.
Your defense and security budgets are more than $700 billion dollars a year yet your own intelligence reports say you are not much safer now than that infamous date, September 11, 2001 when nineteen hijackers, most of them from your ally Saudi Arabia hijacked four jet liners.
As I fly over your cities and towns I see the sprawl overlapping and spreading. Now, I hope the weather isn’t affected by all this or I will be facing snow in summer. It sure is hard to catch those culprits with all that justice you have and all those billions of dollars for justice when you don’t have any now it seems to me. I’ve read about ethics and since you can’t make money pedaling ethics it seems to me that honesty may be on its way to extinction.
