Unite against rubber-stamp GOP

To the editor:

In 1997 right-wingers from the oil industry and media formed the Project for the New American Century (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz etc.). They immediately proposed military action to depose Saddam Hussein, occupy Iraq and assert U.S. domination over the Middle East. In the Bush presidency they took over the country and sought an event they could use to elicit American support for their Iraq invasion.

The pack of lies that these PNAC folks used to justify the sacrifice of American and Iraqi lives in their oil war (WMDs, nuclear threats, Iraq links to 9-11) has been discredited in congressional report after report. The 2002 Downing Street memo shows that the Bush administration "fixed" the intelligence to justify invasion. Wolfowitz confirmed this when stating that war was necessary because Iraq is "swimming in oil." Even Colin Powell described his performance at the U.N. to justify the Iraq invasion as a "blot" on his career. Bush supporters still promote the lies even as Bush himself claims repeated reports of his deceit offer "nothing new."

"The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing" (Edmund Burke). The Republican Congress remains silent as people die in Iraq, terrorism is promoted, science is abused, deficits spiral, the environment is pillaged, human health is undermined and social programs are gutted to subsidize corporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy. Good men and women should stand together: a vote for rubber-stamp Republicans is a vote to continue the insanity.

ALAN JOURNET, Cape Girardeau