Who Can the Democrats Blame Now?

The 2008 election is over, and the Democrats won the White House, Senate (56-40 with four races undecided), and House (258-177). Who will they blame when they do nothing to stop the police state at home and endless war abroad?

My guess is they go to the Republican playbook and blame Bush the way the Republicans blamed Bill Clinton for everything. Or maybe they can blame the Supreme Court.

Saluting Torturers

Last week I attended the Cleveland Cavaliers game against the New Jersey Nets. During a timeout they showed on the scoreboard a soldier who was attending the game. Normally in a situation like this, the soldier is someone who has returned to town after serving a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan. On the scoreboard they said the soldier had been serving at Guantanamo Bay. I was wondering why they were saluting this guy. He wasn't in harm's way at Guantanamo and he very well could have been torturing people there. But a lot of people are stationed at Guantanamo. There was no way to know whether or not he was one of the torturers. Until today.

I open up my copy of today's Plain Dealer, and I see an op-ed piece that has a picture of the guy I saw on the scoreboard at the basketball game. It turns out the guy's name is Bruce Vargo, and he is the commander of the detention center at Guantanamo. He's running the place where they're torturing detainees, the head torturer. Why are the Cleveland Cavaliers saluting the commander of America's torture chamber? It's bad enough to live in a country that tortures people, and most people don't care. It's even worse to live in a country where they honor and salute the torturers.

Five Years

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Here's the scorecard for the past five years in Iraq.

• Over one million dead Iraqis.
• Millions of Iraqis have fled the country.
• Most Iraqis have only a few hours of electricity a day, which must be especially nice in the summer.
• Most Iraqis don't have clean water to drink, which causes sickness.
• Thousands of dead American soldiers.
• Thousands more soldiers have suffered severe physical and psychological injuries.

Heck of a job, George.

What is especially infuriating about the past five years is Iraq never did anything to America or posed a threat to American security. The Iraqi people had their country destroyed and their lives ruined for no reason. And not many Americans care, even opponents of the war. Most Americans won't say the invasion was morally wrong, instead providing the following arguments against the invasion:

• It costs too much money.
• It diverted America's attention from Afghanistan, as if killing Afghan civilians is OK.
• It makes America look bad in the international community.
  
• It stretched the military so it won't be able to respond to threats from other countries.

The sad part about these past five years is chances are very high the occupation of Iraq will continue for another five years. Bush will not leave, and Congress has shown it will not cut off funding for the occupation. John McCain is campaigning to continue the occupation. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama will commit to leaving Iraq by 2013. It looks like five more years of death and suffering for the Iraqi people. Imagine how bad it would have been if George Bush had a problem with the Iraqi people.