Swinging the terror stick

Let me first say I do NOT hate Republicans. John McCain and Bob Dole are honest and intelligent men. I worked in the Indiana offices of Senator Richard Lugar, and he is one of the most upstanding men I've ever met.\nGranted, the first sentence of this article has already turned some people off and they will now start writing letters asking for my resignation. For those of you still reading, allow me to foster a discussion about patriotism.\nThe Republican convention was almost upstaged by the biggest protests in New York history. Hundreds of thousands of people on bikes and in pink anti-Bush panties made their displeasure with the W. administration known. Every U.S. president has left some people unsatisfied, but most rational people would sense something was wrong when more than 200,000 people are standing outside your meeting trying to tell you how bad you are. But to the Secret Service and the FBI, protestors engage in subversive activities detrimental to national security.\nFor me, the Bush administration's use of the Sept. 11 tragedies as a re-election crutch is unpatriotic. \nWhen will it end? When will Bush face his own hyperbole? There aren't, and never will be, Iraqi connections to al-Qaeda. In Afghanistan, where we actually have enemies, the Taliban and its opium are making a comeback. More and more people are speaking out in person and in print detailing the Bush administration's desire to invade Iraq at the first possible chance. And the world, contrary to popular administration belief, is not safer from terrorism. Since the invasion of Iraq, both Spain and Russia have endured some of the worst bombing and sieges in their histories. The recent school siege in Beslan, Russia left over 300 people dead, half of whom were children. To top all that off, the Bush administration had the nerve to tell Russia to negotiate with the Chechen separatists after the school blew up. \nYet W. and his crew rolled on, at the convention and on the campaign trail. They used former NYC governor Rudolph Giuliani like a hand puppet, putting him front and center to extol the virtues of a president keeping the world safe. Yet the New York has had to fight tooth-and-nail to get anti-terrorism funding for the New York Police Department. Schools in New York are suffering, due in part to the drop in education funding, the slow economy and the No Child Left Behind act.\nEarlier this week, Dick Cheney delivered his best propaganda yet -- on the campaign trail in Missouri, Cheney said the country would risk another terror attack if people made "the wrong choice" in November.\nWednesday afternoon, CBS News reported that Cheney's former company, Halliburton, has lost most of its contract to feed and house soldiers in Iraq because soldiers were staying in tents and eating freeze-dried food, Halliburton Employees were getting their dry-cleaning pressed at expensive hotels in Kuwait. In addition to that, Halliburton was overcharging the U.S. government for the services. How patriotic is that? Leave it to Halliburton to screw-up a no-bid contract. But that's fodder for another column.\nCheney and Bush say they "mourn every loss of life." This I won't dispute, but they must not respect the living too much if they can't even find a way to give the soldiers a Coke and a smile instead of two-day old biscuits and gravy.\nMaybe they can send all the leftover purple heart band-aids over to Iraq. I bet the soldiers sweating it out over there would love those.