The link below is just the latest relatively small addition to the climate of fear this country has been embroiled in since 9/11. The government has increasingly fed that climate and capitalized upon it to push its agenda. That agenda has included virtuallly unlimited powers to military and clandestine action anywhere in the world; the near total evisceration of our incividual rights; hiding the supposedly representative government from the people it represents to an uprecedented degree; huge deficit spending; a tremendous increase in unchecked executive power; and an unwinnable needless war in Iraq. The entire war on terror was defined from the start as unwinnable despite how many times Bush claims we are "winning". Using "terrorism" as the magic word the American people and their representatives are rubber stamping great evil at home and abroad.

9/11 itself was only investigated and then not at all fully years after the event. There are so many questions that were not addressed and answered around this seminal event that supposedly justifies all that has happened since. These are well explored elsewhere. Very seldom explored are the reasons why the US government is sufficiently despised to fuel terrorism. We are led to not question that. We are told that we are "letting the terrorists" win or condoning their actions. Surely it is not condoning terrorism simply to ask whether we are doing despicable or at least highly questionable things in the world and seek to correct them if we are. To not only refuse to examine our own actions but to claim as Bush has that we are hated because we are so good is a level of utter denial and irresponsibility beyond belief. Not only do we not do such examination we claim that 9/11 justifies much deeper and more pervasive opporession, invasion, control of other people and nation's lives and resources than anything that has gone before. We take actions that stir up more quite legitimate dis-ease, anger and hatred. We take actions that even shake our allies' confidence in our sanity or at least rational self-interest. All in the name of "war on terror". All in the name of "making the American people safe".

I will stop here for now. I am so deeply disgusted and horrified by what this once free nation has become and is likely to become that I cannot continue this post. I urge all whose hearts and minds are good to look beyond the rhetoric and the official media sound-bites. Be good to one another. It is deeply odious and painful to look into the heart of this.

Yahoo! News - Ads urge parents to talk terrorism