An Open Letter To Congress

This week will go down in history, for a number of reasons. Mainly, it will be seen, in retorspect, as the week that determined whether or not our political system will work or if, we, the people, must step in and make it work.

This week will mark the first time that any Congress has said or done anything official about the debacle in Iraq since October, 2002, when another Congress voted to give this president authority to wage war, as a last resort, which he then misused and abused. The only official action of Congress, since then, has been to keep authorizing one war supplemental after another with no real oversight, resulting in a depleted treasury, huge debt, as far as the eye can see, war-profiteering, eye-popping mismanagement and fraud, run amok.

Since that fateful vote in 2002, much has happened and much has changed. Just to recap a little:

• Let us recall, while Bush was making public statements that war would be a last resort, the decision to go to war had long since been made. (Ref.; the Downing Street Minutes, Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke, The Price of Loyalty, Paul O'Neil with Ron Suskind, just to name a few sources) Intelligence was being fixed around the intention to invade Iraq. U.N. Arms inspectors were allowed into Iraq (though Bush has stated on three different occasions that they were not) and were getting some cooperation, before they had to leave or get their butts blown off by "shock and awe." Furthermore, we have it on good authority (Paul O'Neil) that regime change in Iraq was on the table in the first NSC meeting in February, 2001, long before 9/11/01.
• A plan for re-drawing of the middle-east and surrounding areas, to favor U.S. corporate interests were included in a document put out by PNAC and shopped to President Bill Clinton. He turned it down.
• The whole world now knows that the case for war was built on deception of a particularly egregious sort. The lies that members of this administration told the American people were specifically designed to do two things: 1) T0 cause fear in an already vulnerable population 2) To stir the hateful desire for vengeance in those so prone and, what's worse, against a people who had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.. Visions of mushroom clouds, rising over American cities, were painted, along with fairy tales told about Iraqi drones spraying the eastern seaboard with one plague or the other. Dick Cheney convinced an astonishingly huge number of Americans that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were in cahoots; about as likely as Pat Robertson and Madonna teaming up for a music video.
• This administration has brought out so many whistle blowers, they have had to form their own support group. We should get to hear from some of these people before Mr. Bush gets one more life or dime for his war, other than the monies necessary to keep the troops, already there, from being the last man or woman to die for a lie. (Don't make the error in thinking that the debacle in Iraq was a mistake. A mistake is something I make regularly while balancing my checkbook. What has transpired under this administration is far more serious than a mistake and everyone with a grain of sense knows it.)
• There are documented cases of wide-spread war-profiteering, fraud and abuse in Iraq, not to mention billions in tax-payers' money simply lost.
• This administration, it is clear, has deceived this nation into the mother of all war crimes, a war of aggression, which has led to crimes against humanity; torture, extraordinary renditions, rape, religious and sexual humiliation, just to name a few horrors, committed in our name and with our blood and treasure.
• This administration has cost this country in ways that cannot be assessed in dollars and cents; the blood of our young people in uniform as well as civil service employees and contract workers. Many thousands have suffered life-altering physical injuries and thousands will never be the same in a psycho-emotional sense. Its actions have alienated friends and cost us our credibility the world over, making Americans less safe at home and abroad.
• What moral authority we enjoyed before the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq is now gone. It may take generations to regain it, if ever.
• A very unique American City was left to literally drown by this administration and very little has been done to restore it. What has been done, once again, involves total incompetence or out-right callousness and disaster profiteering.
• Our regular military and National Guard are stretched to the breaking point, families are disintegrating as a result of long and repeated deployments, and no one has ever been given a reasonable explanation, though we have been given a litany of false excuses.

These are but a few of the revelations and happenings since this insane war began.

So, we, the people, ask you, our elected officials of a new Congress and a new majority, what are you going to do about it?

Last November, we voted for change. Need we remind you that you work for us?

We have waited patiently through the holidays, the swearing in of the newly elected Congress and, now, the SOTUS. We have waited long enough.

Now is the time. There will be no other.

You are being tested by the bullies in the administration, with this perfectly useless surge, escalation, augmentation, whatever the buzzword of the day is. If you allow this foolishness to go forward, you are signalling the White House that you will do nothing of any consequence if the escalation becomes an expansion, which could easily lead to WWIII, the nuclear edition.

Are you paying attention to the Libby trial? You should be. We are.

There are criminals in the White House.

Do you understand that we are facing a national, constitutional crisis unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes, including Watergate? Are you going to accept your responsibility, as members of the Legislative Branch, and carry out your duty of holding the Executive accountable for their actions? We ask because we know that this nation, this union, cannot surive more forgiveness without accountability. Not this time. Too much harm has been done.

That is what we elected you to do. We acted, in historic numbers, in a Democratic, legal way to stop the insanity. It appears that we are going to have to demand, now, that the people we voted for, to have the courage of our convictions, as the administration has not heard us.

Now, you must act, or we will, for the good of our country and our progeny. We will have no choice, if we want our children and grandchildren to grow up in a country, even vaguely resembling the country of our youth.

We pray you, our public servants and fellow citizens, do our bidding with all due haste and wisdom. Our nation is in peril. We will come to its aid if we must.

Time has run out.