Daddy must be proud of you. With a straight face you convinced the people of the United States that Saddam must go because he is a “very very bad man,” and the American public largely believed you. Unabashedly you asked Congress to “use all means necessary” in US military action against Iraq, and they backed you.

Now you are planning to oversee a massive war on Iraq using over 200,000 American troops and an estimated $50-100 billion in taxpayer money. Lucky for you, there’s a lot of extra money for weapons and troops planned in the $396.1 billion military budget, a whopping 53 percent of total discretionary spending. (That’s right, $12,560 per second for the entire year goes directly to the military!)

In addition, new programs such as the Total Information Awareness and the weakening of national civil liberties laws have made it much easier to subvert anti-war efforts. Your guns are loaded and you are finally ready to duel your father’s nemesis with the suffering people of Iraq as your spectators.

Daddy would be proud that you’re the man in charge of this war effort. You’ve been able to transform “Don’t mess with Texas,” to the widely accepted and hated “Don’t mess with the US.”

With limited political experience you have successfully put almost all politics into black-and-white terms making the “with us or against us” rhetoric almost believable. Even Osama is probably taking notes on your uses of fundamentalism for political gain.

And you’re part of a long line of rich white men who have used tools of hate and violence to dominate the world. You fit in nicely with other US presidents who have used violence preemptively, though I give you get the credit for explaining the philosophy and rationalizing it for international political figures.

You have also convinced the US population that the United Nations is only effective when it backs US interests. Even France and Germany can’t stop the US military from trying out its big toys now. In foresight, you didn’t rule out the use of nuclear weapons by US troops, fully revealing that although it is wrong for other countries to even develop nuclear weapons, the US is committed to using them in the “right” circumstances.

Finally, securing oil resources for US control fits your oil-thirsty administration. Although you weren’t a very successful oilman yourself, Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil field services company. Condoleezza Rice, your National Security Adviser, served on the board of Chevron. Most of your handpicked Cabinet is filthy rich, which means you all know how to exploit and squeeze profits out the world’s capital.

As US Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright said, responding to the atrocity of 500,000 children who died as a direct result of sanctions against Iraq, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.” You must think the price of Iraqi lives is worth it to secure oil and US dominance in the region. You must think that $100 billion worth of violence will create more peace than $100 billion in humanitarian aid to the suffering Iraqi people. As you have implied in speeches, you believe the Iraqi people are a distant second to the security of US economic interests.

Thanks for being willing to put the Iraqi people, US troops, the US population and the entire Middle East at risk for your own political and economic gain. You’ve truly exploited the September 11th crisis to the max. If you keep going at this rate, terrorist attacks in the US will occur on a more frequent basis, thus enabling you to increase military spending until it consumes the entire budget.

P.S. Good luck with re-election after you lose this war.

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