Ed. Note: I’m not exactly sure when this was written, but it’s several years ago now. In rereading it, I see that it was written sometime in late 2003/early 2004. It still pisses me off.
I watch the flap being made over the ‘news’ that the CIA fucked up the reports from Iraq, and it amuses me. No, wait, let me change that to it bemuses me. Everyone is running around like chickens with their heads chopped off, declaring that the sky is falling. Pundits in ill-fitting suits are solemnly dissecting every conceivable aspect of this horrifying discovery. The suits are acting as if this is the most shocking thing to occur in the millennium. Personally, the fact that the earth didn’t end at the stroke of minute, 2000, (which was not the beginning of the new millennium, but I digress) was more of a shock to me, and I say that tongue-in-cheek. I didn’t do a damn thing to prepare for the pseudo-new millennium and wasn’t surprised that very little changed. Since I am someone who has been decrying the war from the start as being pursued on trumped-up charges, I am not surprised by the latest news, either.
One of the suits said something about how we citizens of America expected there to be WMDs in Iraq and that the CIA did little more than we did-assumed they’d be there. First of all, who is we, white man? I didn’t see a single shred of evidence that there were WMDs in Iraq, and I was not ballyhooing the troops to attack on the flimsy premise that there might be some hidden in some foxhole that didn’t contain Saddam. If my memory serves correctly, the weapons inspectors did not find them, either, and pleaded for more time. Dubya declined, declaring himself satisfied that they were there and attacked. I read the reports, watched the news and still couldn’t find any evidence of WMDs, but that didn’t seem to discourage Dubya one whit. Now, we are supposed to be shocked and horrified that supposedly the CIA fudged its report for whatever reason-probably because of immense pressure by Dubya?
Kiki said something interesting to me that I thought I’d pass along. We were talking politics as we usually do. We both are incredulous that nearly half of this country still think Dubya is doing a good job despite his slip-ups and foibles lately, and we were at a lost to say why. She told me how with each new revelation-no WMDs in Iraq; the high death toll in what was supposed to be an easy war; no connection between Hussein and bin Laden; the prisoner abuse-she thought, ‘Surely, this will be the thing that topples him,’ only to have her hopes smashed in dismay when greater America seemed to blithely ignore all the lies that Dubya has perpetuated.
I should be ecstatic. In just one day, Barack Hussein Obama is going to be sworn in as President of the United States. A multiracial son of an immigrant and a single mother (not the same person, of course), is going to be the leader of our country. He is literate and eloquent, intelligent and sensitive (for the most part), thoughtful and exacting. He is gentle and strong at the same time. Oh yeah, he’s got a nice bod, too, but that’s really secondary to his mental brilliance. He also has a strong, beautiful wife who is as intelligent if not more so than he, and two beautiful, joyful, seemingly well-adjusted kids as well. 
I got to see snippets of W.’s final farewell press conference on Keith Olbermann’s show and on Rachel’s show. For the past eight years, I have done my level best not to listen to a word that man has uttered because it only causes my blood to boil and my temper to rise. I am a pacifist, but an angry one, and I have a sneaking suspicion that if I ever met W., I would punch him in the gut. 
An open letter to still-president George Bush.