I am reading the graphic adaption of the 9/11 Report. Some things have really stuck out to me. First of all, in the wake of 9/11, there is no way that the United States could have continued the same policy it had in regards to terrorism. The policy was passive and the events of 9/11 dictated that the U.S. had to take a more aggressive stand against terrorism. This would include preemptive strikes against anyone thought to be harboring terrorists or aiding terrorism. However, in the wake of 9/11, what has struck me so hard is that somewhere this policy went very wrong. As a matter of fact, it did not even take two years before we began to see just how wrong this policy can be in the hands of the wrong people. It is apparent to myself now, in the year 2006, that the "fact" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was wrong. At the very least, our intelligence was very wrong (and someone's head should roll for it); at the very worst, our President deliberatatly lied to us (and his head should roll for it). In my humble opinion, and I do stress that this is my own humble opinion, our President and his cabinet deliberatatly set into motion a series of propaganda and lies in order to bolster its case for a war in Iraq.

I realize that to some of you, this is shocking to hear coming from me. I questioned the war in the beginning and then came out in favor of it. But time has proven me wrong and I can only step back and say that something has seriously gone wrong. After much reflection and a bit of research, I believe that I may have part of the answer. President Truman, in his farewell address to the nation, used a term that he coined: the military industrial complex. He envisioned a time in this nation's near future when our foreign policy would be dictated by the military. His prophecy has come true. In the years following World War II, the Department of Defense is, by far, the largest section of our national budget. As a matter of fact, it is larger than the all the other departments combined. This is not because we are at war. This was an intentional build-up propagated by Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan to destroy the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Indeed, this build-up, particularly during the Reagan Administration, is one of the primary reasons for the fall of the Soviet Empire. Reagan literally outspent the Russians and the result was the fall of the Iron Curtain.

However, in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union, we faced a new enemy. Terrorism became a growing national threat. It was prodded by Saudi America's decision to let the United States use their land as a headquarters for the first Persian Gulf War. In retrospect, we should have never been involved in that war. The United States and its supporters like to use terms like "protecting our way of life" and "spreading democracy." These are really nothing more than code words for American Imperialism. In a nutshell, we have decided that our "way of life" is better than anyone else's in the world, and now we are on a military campaign to ensure than "democracy" is brought to it. Democracy is a wonderful thing. Capitalism is even a wonderful thing, but America has taken it to an extreme and capitalism is now blatant materialism. We are an arrogant people who think that sharing our materialism with the rest of the world will somehow make them a better place to live. This is wrong. And it has to be stopped. I will write more later...