Awake and Ashamed

Insomnia frequently keeps me company in the wee hours. Because of it, I watched Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki's live press conference from Jordan at 2 a.m. today.

And I am so ashamed to be represented in the world by this most cruel, blowhard of a hypocrite.

We have invaded and are now occupying the sovereign nation of Iraq. Thousands of U.S. citizens have died or been maimed there -- based on the lies of George W. Bush and his administration. If you doubt that we are occupying the nation, note the assumption of last week's memo leak -- that it was the domain of the White House to oust the Iraqi PM from his position 6 months after he was legally elected by the Iraqi people -- a fact the Bush administration trots out repeatedly as the sole example of how they brought "democracy" to Iraq.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed by our occupation -- many more than under Saddam Hussein's leadership. During this morning's press conference, Bush himself defined murder for us as the occasion of "killing someone" -- which by his own words makes him a murderer of hundreds of thousands of people.

And don't forget, he's gunning for a World War (see his baiting of Iran and Israel and his insulting, undimplomatic rhetoric towards practically every other country.) He is attempting to turn this country into a Fundamentailst Theocracy -- see abstinence only sex ed in the schools, or appointing an anti-contraception doctor to oversee birth control funding -- and there he is talking about democracy in front of the world as if he invented it instead of having made a career out of undermining it. He also interrupted PM Maliki mid-sentence at least 3 times and made it clear that he has no intention of ending the occupation of Iraq anytime soon -- actually acted offended that a reporter would deign to ask such a question of him.

Oh, my.

And one other troubling thing...They used a translator for PM Maliki -- and I know simultaneous translation is extremely difficult -- but it really seemed that for every paragraph Maliki would say, the interpreter would say a short sentence. Now, I don't understand Farsi -- but it seems like once again in the US, our access to information is extremely restricted. So much for a free press.

ITMFA! Say it. Own it. Demand it from our representatives.