  Just noticed an article on cryptome.org entitled urlLink Smallpox Vaccine Injury Compensation Program from the Dept. of Health and Human Services. This reminds me of what I was thinking at the time that the smallpox vaccine was being administered. How many people are going to get sick from this vaccine while in reality the main reason this is being administered is to fuel fears of Americans about terrorists.
Here were the primary things that stick out in my mind as methods of inciting fears in Americans in order to start a war in Iraq. 1. Apparently all bad terrorists happen to be Muslim, urlLink FBI's Top 22 Terrorists (all Muslim) 2. Iraqi's are Arabs and Islamic. Osama bin Laden is Arab and a muslim and comes from the country near Iraq, so something is probably going on with Iraq and him, guilty by association. 3. Some crazy person in the US decides to send Anthrax to people he wants to take out and pin it on Terrorists. 4. Iraq wanted to get Nuclear weapons. 5. Iraq might use Smallpox or Nerve Gas on US troops.
6. We suddenly started getting all sorts of vague threats on stuff like the Brooklyn bridge and we had this terror alert thing at orange all the time. Whoever thought up the idea for the terror alert got a raise I bet. 7. Suddenly there was this risk of a dirty bomb, which is basically the same thing as somebody stealing a bucket of nuclear waste and dumping it into a ventilation shaft at a subway.
8. Finally, I wouldn't doubt there happens to be a news story coming up about FOX News getting funneled money from the US Govt. for helping to sell the war. Good job O'Reilly--which I would like to note has about the worst style and logic of a talk show personality and is horribly rude to any guests he has. 9. People like the Dixie Chicks or the Bowling for Columbine guy were lambasted for not supporting the president. What this says to me is that people knew the case for war was weak, but we still wanted to go to war because if we didn't after all the threats we'd look dumb. Essentially, our govt. made a case for war using some carefully crafted propaganda. My main take on Saddam Hussein is that he is just an evil, greedy, power hungry guy.
Whatever he needed to do to maintain this lifestyle he would do. Yes, he wanted to conquer Iran and Kuwait, which is what made him cross that line of sane to insane, but I would rather have this stuff debated openly rather than something where the president takes us into a conflict like a dictator rather than a democratic country. Yes, it could be argued it was a war for oil and the potential outcome is amazing if we can control the oil supply, but we are just getting embroiled in so much stuff now its asking for trouble. Our only hope is to vote Bush out and make it look like we think he was a crazy person and we didn't realize what he was going to do to our country.
If we re-vote him back in, we'll be saying to the Muslim world, "see we as a whole support our president that was a war-monger. " This whole presidency has been full of behind-closed door politics. Whether its the energy meetings that everybody urlLink lost notes to or the African uranium, we are dealing with one thing that is quite possibly similar to what other countries live under. You have a dumb leader and he rules by fear rather than trust and respect. The thing that still gets me is really just how horrible the september 11th attacks were and what we should do about it? Most of us want to live in a country where we don't have to fear that kind of thing happening, but is the best way to tell other countries to watch out if they sponsor terrorists is to go conquer their country?
Tough call... More and more my sneaking suspicion is that the September 11th people were just a crazed group, supported in part my Osama Bin Laden, but mostly like a neo-nazi type group, with far less connections than we are led to believe. So the point of this post? A call for more transparency of operations in our goverment so we as a people can help make decisions when our government needs guidance, rather than our goverment telling us what is best for us. 
