The hearings in Congress the last two days regarding Iraq have been a bit surreal and showed just how dysfunctional our federal government can be. I mean, here they are all posturing and coming up with long, convoluted excuses about how we can keep going in a war that was based on lies and has been the worst disaster in our nation’s history. What I can’t figure out is why, once it became obvious that the reasons for going to war weren’t true, we didn’t apologize to the world, give reparations to those harmed, and get the heck out. We should have prosecuted those responsible too, but we don’t have the guts as a nation.

The problem is that we as a society do not want to understand what war really is. War is the most unholy, unsacred action that a nation can take unless it is only for self defense and for no other reason. We have killed many many thousands, in fact, tens of thousands, and in fact, as some have reported, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and so-called “soldiers” have died at the hands of our weaponry. It’s been brutal.

So this whole song and dance of Perseus and Congress is so absurd. It’s like a Salvador Dali painting. The image has a lot of components that we can recognize as normal, but when you put them all together in a convoluted scene, they no longer make any sense. Neither Bush, Cheney, Perseus, or any of the congressional members are out there patrolling the streets of Iraq, facing the real danger. Seem to me that it is easy for them to talk about keeping troops there. After all, the only way they have been able to do what they have done is through the unfortunate use of “stop loss” orders. That has been torture to those soldiers that have had that happen to them. I mean, telling people that they are going to be able to go home to their families on a certain date and then as that date approaches telling them, oops, sorry, wrong, you have to stay and keep doing war...how much worse can it get? But then again, this administration believes in torture, so why should we be surprised. As long as it doesn’t happen to them. That seems to be the main qualifying factor.

War is about the worst thing this world has to offer. We, as a nation, should be a benevolent, peaceful, kind nation. We should utilize our ability to kill only when absolutely necessary to defend the integrity of the nation. To misuse war for a false purpose is one of the worst crimes that a political leader can perpetrate on the world. Bush and Cheney did exactly that. Cheney’s recent exclamation of “so” in response to a comment by a reporter that most of the U.S. public was against the war so perfectly indicates that he isn’t interested in leading the nation - he is interested in some other agenda. That might be fine if he was still CEO of corporate misbehavior Halliburton, but as one of the top people representing all of us, he must consider the comments of his citizens. That arrogant comment is just one more reason why Cheney should be impeached. He and Bush need to be shown that no one is above the law. Alak and Alas, Congress doesn’t have the initiative to do it. Too many members bought off by the same big corporations that have bought off Bush/Cheney.

And I think that these war mongering folks, who send kids out to war but you won’t see them on the front line, and except for a very few instances, their kids, are misleading the U.S. public about the situation in Iraq in regard to Iran. At first, the media told us that the real problem in Iraq was the Sunni/Shiite muslim political and religious split. You don’t hear a lot about that anymore - it’s Shiite/Shiite that is making the news. But what seems to really be going on is that some of the Shiites have aligned themselves with the U.S. occupiers and the rest, for example, the so-called “Mahdi Army” are aligned with Iran. This group of Shiites is very powerful and well equipped. They are part of a larger coalition with Hezb Allah and Iran. This coalition proved itself to be capable of withstanding significant military encounters and surviving after the most recent Lebanon/Israeli conflict. If our allies in the government push too hard against Mahdi, you will see them start having better and better arms. Well, we are seeing it now with the rockets into the Green Zone. Yet Bush and his cronies don’t even want to talk to Iran, instead threatening them with attack - the move that probably would be stupider than invading Iraq in the first place. And, if we don’t prop up the current puppet government, it will fall to the Iran supported Shiite faction. So either way, we lose, and that’s exactly what is happening.

Gen. Petraeus, let’s bring our troops home now. Let the Iraqis duke it out. That is inevitably what is going to happen, isn’t it? Yes, we need to help Iraq get back on its feet post Saddam, but that cost billions of dollars a week? Is it worth it?