Some random thoughts about rhetoric (during the Democratic National Convention):

There are some of us in this country who don’t think putting troops on the ground in Iraq was such a mistake. Hard as it may be to believe. We never left Iraq after the Gulf War and were flying sorties over the country on an almost daily basis. Throughout 8 years of a Democratic administration, we lobbed missle after missile into the country and did little to achieve our foreign policy goals.

While I am perfectly willing to acknowledge intelligence on the existence of WMD was overstated, up to that point nobody could contradict it since UN weapons inspectors hadn't been in the country in over two years.

I’m not going to put myself in the position of being a GWB apologist but, if we’re going to make an issue about his military service, what about the military record of that media darling BC our last prez? What’s with the double standard?

Also, it’s a rather disingenuous argument to have about the safety of the American people. I don’t think we were particularly unsafe before September 11th, although it is obvious there was a failure in the common sense quotient of the people responsible for our safety (I still can’t believe a bunch of middle eastern men buy one way tickets with cash in a small Maine airport doesn’t arouse any kind of suspicions). I don’t want to live in a police state and if being safe means I have to forego my civil liberties, I’ll take my chances. It’s a lot harder to get those civil liberties back once you’ve given them up.

If you think I’m overreacting, try this little exercise: next time you‘re out and about, make a note of how many security/surveillance cameras you come across in your daily travels. Include all those innocuous lobby cameras, elevator cameras, highway cameras, atm cameras - once you start looking it becomes alarming to see just how often one is “on-camera” nowadays in our so-called unsafe, free society.