My main beef with Bush

I am of the firm belief that most people are one-issue voters. That means, to most people, there is one main issue that they care about above everything else, and that is what determines their vote. I have been thinking about this a lot, and I think my one issue is the Iraq war, specifically its relation (or lack of it) with 9-11.

Like most Americans, 9-11 totally changed my life. Watching the towers come down on television, I felt a terrific disconnect with reality, like this CAN'T be real. It was real, and much much worse for people in NYC. One friend of a friend, a wall street guy originally from India, was in a tower directly across from the WTC. He could see people jumping from his window. After that day, he stopped talking. Within a week, he packed up and moved back to India.

Maybe the only comforting thing that happened on 9-11 was Bush's speech to the people. He spoke to our hearts and, in that moment, there were no sides to the issue.

Where everything changed was in the build-up to Iraq and the Iraq war. President Bush and his administration USED our shared national trauma of 9-11 to justify the Iraq war. They claimed time and time again that if the US didn't invade, another event like 9-11 would happen again, this time at the hands of Saddam. It was a disgusting and illicit use of our fear to justify their ends. Lying to the consituency is not good leadership, and Bush has been lying to us from the start about the Iraq war and he continues to lie about it almost every day. Where are the WMD's? Where is Osama? Was Saddam even a threat to the US? Are we really safer now because 1000 or more Americans died in the Iraq war? No one in our administration seems to care about giving honest answers to the tough questions that plague many of us (or maybe just me).

I feel emotionally used by President Bush and his Administration. The President is supposed to be someone I can trust to tell the truth and make good decisions about the lives of our boys in the military. After the Iraq war, I cannot trust him again.

That's my one main issue.