Today is the first day of the rest of your retarded war

Warning! This is a rant.

So today is Day #1 of the 4th year in Iraq. What have we accomplished in those 4 years? Well, we got Sadaam Hussein out a while ago. They have a new government that doesn't do much. Oh, and there is the 2, 317 American soldiers that have died too. How many Iraqi deaths? I've heard 100,000, but there is not much to justify that. However, more credible numbers seem to point at over 30,000. But at least they're better off without Saddam. However, now Iraq seems to be the home of anti-American insurgency - which was not there under Saddam. So are the people of Iraq being used as bait for terrorists? Who knows, but I see no end to this fiasco and no end to the now $250 billion of our tax dollars that have been sent there. Check out this interesting website that shows what we could have done with that money instead.

One thing we still don't have, however, is an honest answer to why we started in Iraq. WMD? not there. Terrorism? Wasn't there until we showed up. This cannot be considered part of the war on terror. The fact of the matter is that our president thought a war would gain him some popularity and wanted to show that he could do something about 9/11. Afghanistan was OK, that was anti-terrorist. Iraq? There is no connection there and anybody who says that there is a connection is simply lying to you and to themselves. I wish people could just be honest and admit that the war in Iraq was a war to get Bush to look tough and some other asinine reason that I don't get. Bush and his cronies know that they have to look tough, but don't want to admit that our country is a target for terrorism because we always stick our damn nose in everything. Well, everything that could get more profits for oil people. Genocide in Sudan? No worries there. 500,000 American cancer deaths? Let's toss them $2 billion, but not anything close to the cost of the war. Let's criticize our nation's schools, but not actually give them money. Let's make people afraid of foreigners, but not actually protect our borders because big business needs cheap labor. Let's talk about making a better world, but not for the poor in our own country. Let's bring democracy to Iraq, but make sure that we don't give people a choice other than rich white Democrat or rich white Republican.

I'm getting continually frustrated with every member of our government from federal to state to local and their continued quest to make sure they have a job instead of making sure that they solve the problems that our country faces. We need something to change.