Time for the Re-education Camps

I recently heard a retired high-ranking Army officer, a Vietnam combat veteran, speak to a group of veterans on the subject of giving genuine, meaningful support to our troops.

He spoke passionately about the families of dead soldiers who need more than our tears, returning injured soldiers who need more than waving flags, soldiers on fourth and fifth deployments who need more than yellow-ribbon magnets on the backs of SUVs.

I listened to this career soldier, this combat veteran, this son of poverty who graduated from West Point, pour out his heart and I bit my tongue. I respect this man and what he has accomplished, although I deplore his Republican loyalty to this maladministration.

So I did not stand up and scream at him. I did not demand he answer these questions:

- Who sent our finest young men and women into battle without proper armor, without proper weapons, without enough support troops, without a plan for occupation or exit?

- Who put those troops into harm's way by ignoring the pleas of their commanders for more troops, more equipment, more help?

- Who cut the death benefit of soldiers killed in combat in half?

- Who slashed the Dept. of Veterans Affairs budget to ribbons, thus denying adequate benefits and health care to soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan?

- Who told the nation that the most patriotic thing we could do during a time of war was to go shopping?

Who, General? Go on, you know who it was. SAY IT!

I have bitten my tongue for more than two years now, as I watched loyal Republicans - particularly military veterans - slowly but surely come to the realization that Smirky and Darth Cheney are destroying their beloved military and even more beloved nation.

I have bitten my tongue and lowered my eyes as they raged against the horrors wrought by The Usurper without ever mentioning his name.

I have bitten my tongue and waited, hoping my refusal to sink to the tempting level of "I told you so" would inspire them to finally admit out loud who is really to blame.

It's not going to happen. They'll never admit their support of The Decider is the worst decision they ever made.

I'm done waiting.

Round them all up. All 54 million idiots and assholes who re-elected this drooling disaster. Every reporter, editor and pundit who disseminated The Usurper's lies. Every service-avoiding couch potato who cheered torture. Everybody who ever watched an episode of "24" and failed to vomit. Every Democratic elected official who ever - even just once - voted in favor of anything this American Stalin wanted.

March them all out to the secret concentration camps Halliburton is building out West and make them confess their sins and recant their anti-Democratic beliefs.

Make them walk, barefooted and without food or water, to the home of every family with a member who served or is serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, to crawl on hands and knees the last mile over broken glass and beg for forgiveness.

This isn't about "honest disagreement" anymore. It isn't about "respecting the other point of view."

It's about eliminating from the body politic a cancer, a vicious Democracy-eating bacteria that is destroying this country and everything America has stood for since 1776.

No quarter. No mercy.