Sunday, June 8th, 2003 Will Bush Tell the Truth? "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." --George W. Bush, March 17, 2003 That quote, and all the others like it, provided the foundation for the justification to invade and occupy a soveriegn nation. Even while these charges were being made there were reports, if you looked hard enough, that the intelligence community was not pleased with some of the statements that were being made, griping that intelligence was being politicized. Few paid attention. Now, after thousands of deaths, people are starting to wonder if Bush was telling them the truth about the threat posed by Iraq. Meanwhile al Qaeda seems to be up and running just fine. Remember when Bush said that invading Iraq would make the world a safer place? It hasn't even made Iraq a safer place, let alone the world. Of course, Bush could never have pushed this invasion forward if it hadn't been for 9/11. Now, though, the Bush Junta is supressing the report issued about 9/11, even going so far as classify as secret statements that are already a part of the public record. Now, call me crazy, but I think that the public has a right to know just what happened. That used to be an accepted belief in the USA: the public's right to know what the government did. We, the people, supposedly own the government, right? It is, supposedly, our government. It's easy to forget that when "our" government fights to keep secret even the names of people consulted when it crafted "our" energy policy. Or was it really an energy policy designed for business? Would the report from the 9/11 investigation prove to be embarrassing to some people in the White House? Is this a government for the people in the government and not for us? If we, the people, were lied to about Iraq's WMD, then don't we have a right to know? Or was this invasion more about handing out no-bid contracts to Bechtel and Haliburton? Some people want to dismiss Bush's tenuous relationship with reality as nothing but the sour grapes of liberals who don't like him. I think it goes much farther than that. Really, this is a question about who owns the government, about who the government serves. Is this our government, or is it a government of, by and for the rich friends of Bush?