Of World Conquest Proportions

As George Bush gleefully signed a bill requiring automobiles in the United States to have emission standards of at least 35 MPG by 2020, the other bills practically spoken of as after thoughts went right by everyone once again, just as expected, because they pass them when everyone is out rushing around doing last minute Christmas shopping. Other nation's news organizations blare warnings of the newly passed U.S. defense budget, asking just why in the world our country would need to be spending over 700 BILLION dollars for fiscal 2008 on the Defense department.

The way they keep getting away with slipping these things past the public, is by passing these budgets piece by piece, never slapping us with the entire bill all at once. Compare it to being in a restaurant. The wait person brings your drink, hands you a bill for 2 or 3 dollars, you pay it, and your salad then appears, for which you are handed another small bill for oh, say, 3-4 dollars, and so on and so on. This is exactly what our government does to us. They hand us an 'appropriations bill for around 216 billion dollars for the Defense Dept., and everyone says "Well that's not too bad." But just around he corner comes a bill for the salad, and it's a bit pricey at 500 or so billion.

But for dessert, you now get the gutless wonders that stink up the halls of our nations' institutions handing Bush another 70 billion dollars to keep his illegal wars going, until after the Holidays at least. Can't interrupt the next vacation for the lawmakers, now can we? And so, to take yet another 2-3 weeks off, (wish we could all do that, huh?), they cave in to this madman in chief, and give him his money like weak willed school children who hand over their milk money to the bully in the yard.

But this same Congress also backed down to the bully's demands for cuts in social programs for the poor, and so as they go off to their nice warm homes, many in America will be cold and hungry while they dine heartily on traditional feasts. How does anyone who works in Washington sleep at night?

And why, at this time of record budget deficits, falling home prices, stock scandals, soaring domestic pricing for everything, does our Defense Dept. need ever more money from our Treasury, unless they intend to use this for the domination and conquest of an entire globe?

We have 705 military bases in 130 countries around the world, with another 6,000 military bases in the U.S. and it's territories. And this doesn't even account for the 300 or so 'secret' military installations that we have around the world, some disguised as part of a friendly nations' own military apparatus, and some are so huge, such as Anaconda Base north of Baghdad, that they have 9 separate bus routes to shuttle service members around the base.

Ever wonder why California Senator Feinstein, a supposed left wing liberal, is always siding with Bush when it comes to the war in Iraq?

It's because she is on something called the Senate's Military Construction Subcommittee, which uses as their catch phrase, "America's footprint on the world." This subcommittee has identified what they call 'the arc of instability' that stretches from the Andes to North Africa, and reaches across to the the Asian continent and includes the Phillipines.

Our new family of bases include the impoverished nations of Europe: Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria; in Asia -- Pakistan (where we already have four bases), India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and even, unbelievably, Vietnam; in North Africa -- Morocco, Tunisia, and especially Algeria (scene of the slaughter of some 100,00 civilians since 1992, when, to quash an election, the military took over, backed by our country and France); and in West Africa -- Senegal, Ghana, Mali, and Sierra Leone (even though it has been torn by civil war since 1991). The models for all these new installations, according to the Pentagon, are the string of bases we have built around the Persian Gulf in the last two decades in such anti-democratic autocracies as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.

This small window looking directly into the heart of why we need a Defense budget that is more than half of our nations' annual Gross National Product, should give everyone pause as to what the intentions of our government truly are. The Congress is complicit in the attempted hegemony that this administration has forcefully endorsed, but has been in the works for at least two decades. And we haven't even mentioned the bases we now have in former Soviet countries such as Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

Ask yourself one question this Christmas. Is it worth it to terrify and subjugate the entire world, as we allow our own citizens to go hungry and cold in order to feed the never ending war machine?

If you can't honestly answer in the affirmative, then it is your responsibility to demand change from your lawmakers. Demand they stop their attempted takeover of the globe on the backs of dead American children, and the discarding of what they perceive to be expendable American citizens. Demand that they rebuild our infrastructure before spending another dime on this foolish war of choice, and give our children health care and educations. Anything less makes you as complicit in this disgusting policy as they are. Batmanchester