ANOTHER CASUALTY OF WAR

We are no longer a country of laws. We have slipped the loop on what we are and what we supposedly believe in. Every day brings some new debasement. Yesterday, it was the news that the feds are moving to fire half the lawyers at the IRS who do auditing on the super-rich. That way Bush can get around the law, since he doesn't have the support in Congress to repeal the estate tax. Anything to serve the rich and spit on the rest of us.

Yes, we have quit the rule of law. The CEOs of Exxon, WalMart and Coca-Cola are our congressmen, now, and we operate by their rules--the law of the jungle. Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney have unleashed the queen and king bees of anarchy--Condoleeza Rice and John Bolton--to fan the flames in Israel and Lebanon, hoping, I suppose, to bring on a war with Iran and Syria. And it will probably come to pass. Then, when our military is stretched to the limit, I look for North Korea to take the opportune moment to launch an attack on the U.S. And voila! World War III.

But as far as I'm concerned, when our soldiers burst into that house in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, and raped a fourteen year old girl, then turned their AK-47s on her, her mother, father and five-year-old sister, that was the last straw, the death blow for us as a country. Abeer Hamza, this child that blundered into the path of our barbarous war, the mistake of so many children. . .she is our fatal wound, from which we will not recover. She is the culmination of all our wrongdoing clear back to the massacre of Native American civilians at Wounded Knee. I see no coming back from this. No cure. I lost my last hope at that moment. From here on, whatever happens happens. I don't say we deserve it, but we sure as hell have it coming.

And be assured--it is the collective WE. Because we brought this on ourselves. Years of collective sleepwalking through elections, collective compromising on our candidates and our values. We--collectively--laid down and let this happen. We collectively handed this country over to these feckless thugs. And now--the crowning glory--our Congress is completely bought and sold out on Israel. They voted like a gleeful mob for that war, made even more gleeful--if that's possible--by the grinning face of Hillary Clinton, our own Democratic harpee for the use of white phosphorous and cluster bombs on innocent civilians.

As the mindless minions give cheer and wave their flags, we can no more than watch the ship go down.

I close with a prayer, a fervent prayer, which contains not a seed of hope, but only an ocean of sorrow and pity for us all, and for our world:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.