I’m not feeling too good tonight, but I have to make a short post for anyone who might have visited this site in the past couple of nights. Last night I wrote about President Obama’s support of the Bush warrantless wiretapping policy. I have been warning people of this for the previous almost three months, since I first heard “inklings” that led me to believe this was going to happen. I heard one person, I can’t remember who it was- but they were part of his “team,” saying that President Obama didn’t want to give up this “power.” WHAT “IRKS” ME THE MOST ABOUT THAT IS THAT HE DOESN’T HAVE THE POWER. And the worst part is that we are depending on a spineless Congress to “call” him on this. Maybe some of the people like Keith Olberman will stay on it, but if history is any guide, the “furor” will die down quickly and we, as Americans, will have effectively given up one of our basic rights (that is that the government MUST HAVE PROBABLE CAUSE AND A WARRANT to monitor our phone calls or to invade our privacy). It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to imagine where this kind of abuse of our constitution could eventually lead.

For anyone who has been reading my posts – TONIGHT I DID EMAIL THE WHITEHOUSE AND ASK FOR MY MONEY BACK. Now, I pointed out that I didn’t realistically expect them to do it, or even for Obama to read my letter – some flunkee will read the post and delete it – probably after about the first couple of hundred words (if I’m lucky – I wrote about 3,500 words!). This action on their part is just further confirmation that there will be no investigations and prosecutions of the Bush administration – even in the areas where my sixth grade students know they were violating the law. Which brings up a good point – as a teacher, I can’t tell you how difficult it makes it for me to teach students about the importance of honesty and integrity along with “following the rules” when the leaders of our country are arrogantly breaking the rules, lying pathologically, and getting away with it. Do the people in Congress and the White House, for example, think that parents all across this nation weren’t talking about the routine lying that was going on while Bush was President? If they think that, they need to come talk to my students. These kids are going to grow up thinking this kind of garbage is OK!

Well, I’m going to cut this one short, but I just finished a book by Thomas Ricks called “The Gamble.” He wrote the great book, “Fiasco,” which spelled out in detail the incompetence of the Bush administration in the first few years of the Iraq occupation. “The Gamble” is focused on the so-called “Surge,” from the perspective of the military officers who carried it out. I had read “The War Within” by Bob Woodward which looked at the planning of the “Surge” from inside the White House. There were some contradictions in the two books, but between the two of them, I believe I gained a lot of insight into the Iraq occupation as of today, and what is going to happen in the future. I’ve already mentioned on this site that President Obama has already begun the “doubletalk” that was and has been a part of the executive branch of our government for as long as I can remember. He’s saying “I never said I was going to remove ‘all the troops'” – well, I took him to say the the troops would be coming home within 16 months of him moving into the White House. That time frame has already been “tweeked” by about 3 months – plus he’s claiming he’s going to leave 50,000 “non-combat” troops in Iraq for an additional year and a half from when the troops were supposed to come home.

Let me tell you, first of all there are not non-combat troops in Iraq. How much combat pretty much depends on the Iraqi’s – but that is an absurd claim and I wish he wouldn’t stoop to those disengenuous levels. I will have a lot more to write about Iraq soon – I believe the economy has drowned Iraq out of the news, and I suppose from a politician’s point of view that will allow for some “cheating.” I have felt for a couple months now that Obama is not going to live up to his promises regarding Iraq and the evidence is beginning to become overwhelming – SO FAR I HAVE NOT HEARD OF ANY TROOPS COMING HOME! But Obama is ramping up troops to go to Afganistan, presumably to be bogged down there for the next few years so we can be mired in two illegal wars! ugghh – based on Ricks’ reporting and the imperical evidence – the US isn’t coming home from Iraq anytime soon! Ricks believes that we will still have a major force (at least 50,000 troops) there in 2015. I HOPE HE’S WRONG AND I HOPE I’M WRONG. As an Obama supporter, I believe this wiretapping policy and the potential of remaining in Iraq has the potential to make President Obama a one term President. And maybe, after seeing the daunting task in front of him once he assumed the job, that is just fine with him. All I can tell you is that if we can’t trust President Obama to keep his promises on Iraq and wiretapping this progressive “revolution” will be all for naught. I will have more later on Iraq and “The Gamble.”