During a graduation address at West Point, our unelected president, Mr. Bush, declared that the U.S. "must uncover terror cells in 60 or more countries.....We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge.....The war on terror will not be won on the defensive."

As there are about 180 countries on planet Earth, we may assume that Mr Bush plans to involve the U.S. in the internal affairs of, at least, one-third of them. It’s a lot to ask that Americans meddle in the affairs of 60 other countries; that we punish people for what they are thinking and not for what they have actually done.

This is a radical departure from civilized beliefs and behavior. It’s more consistent with the behavior of dictators or monarchs, not of a people professing to love and respect freedom of the individual.

Our unelected president isn’t quite the same man who campaigned for president two years ago, when he criticised President Clinton for trying to be "the world’s policeman," claiming it was not the the United States’ reponsibility to protect the world. Yet, Mr Bush’s new foreign policy is attempting to: make the U.S. the world’s policeman.

The three objectives of this foreign policy, according to Mr. Bush, are "to expand the peace, preserve the peace, and extend the peace." Mr. Bush obviously plans to accomplish these peace-producing objectives by taking us all to war. For what else is his "War on Terrorism" but a declaration of planetary war?

Expand the peace? What peace? There are more wars now raging across the planet than at any time prior to World War II. Preserve the peace? There’s little peace to preserve on planet Earth. Extend the peace? How? By sending American troops into foreign countries to defeat the poor natives every time they try to put together a "popular" government—as has been the U.S. foreign policy for the past two hundred years?

Ask the people of any Latin American or Caribbean country how the U.S. has "encouraged free and open" societies in their nations. Ask the people of Laos and Cambodia. Their replies would be "by supporting dictatorships and oligarchies using any means available including financing the opponents of political movements to establish a popular government, training foreign forces to beat, torture, and assassinate leaders and supporters of popular government. Encouraging and assisting in the murder of millions of peace loving people whose only crime was to ask for a fairer shake from their oppressive ruling elites."

Why should we believe that the kind of men who have established policy for the U.S. State Department for more than 200 years are about to do an about face with their policies? Especially now that the private interests they truly represent—the giant corporations of the republic—are close to succeding in their drive to replace political rule of planet Earth with their economic rule?

In these perilous times, what this country needs are statesmen. But, Mr. Bush is definitely not a statesman. He’s a political puppet of the worst sort. A demogogue. A warmonger. A man willing to use fear to remove the freeedoms of ordinary citizens and entrench the existing Establishment more firmly in power. It’s lucky for Americans that many foreign government’s oppose Bush’s war, even though they give it reluctant support. This should give more reasonable Americans time to muster their political forces to defeat Bush in the next election.

The Bush Administration's secrecy about what it did or didn't know previous to the September, 2001 bombing of the World Trade Center towers—is suspicious. Reports that foreign intelligence agencies had warned U.S. agencies about a possible al Qaeda attack using airliners as weapons in August of 2001, were shrugged off by Administration officials. As were reports from U.S. intelligence agencies which learned that al Qaeda members were being trained in the U.S. as pilots for possible suicide attacks.

As early as 1996 intelligence agencies knew that there had been a plot to crash a hijacked airliner into the CIA headquarters. In 1999 federal authorities had been warned that hijackers might crash airliners into the Pentagon or the World Trade Center. In May of 2002, the Washingrton Post reported that in July of 2001, Richard C. Clark, White House counterterrorism coordinator assembled a meeting of the Secret Service, FBI, Federal Aviation Administration, and the Coast Guard reporting that "something really spectacular is going to happen soon."

Also in July 2001, in a message to vice-president Dick Cheney, Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Intelligence Committee’s Technology and Terrorism Subcommittee asked that the vice-president "restructure our counter-terrorism and homeland defense programs to ensure better accountability and prevent important intelligence information from slipping thrugh the cracks." When she recieved no response, she followed up in September 2001—before the attacks—and was told that it might be another six months before Cheney could review the material.

Why such indifference by members of the Administration to information crucial to the safety and defense of the republic? Why the stalling of such criminal dimensions by the Administration? Why Bush’s denial of this knowledge? Was he really kept in the dark by his advisors? And why did he ask Senate Majority Leader Tom Dashle to limit congress’s investigation into the matter?

It’s once again time to remind you of Plato’s words spoken more than 2,000 years ago.

“When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader”

Bush’s denial of knowledge about terrorist threats, Cheney’s stalling, and the Administration’s insistance upon secrecy all suspiciously fill in missing pieces of a puzzle. For if any employee, of any agency, of the American government played a part in the September 11th bombings, of the U.S. in any way whatsoever, they—and whoever gave them orders—would have done everything possible to assure success, including the elimination of preventative measures.

This would also explain the Republican party’s doing all the dirty things they did to steal the 2000 presidential election. If some in the party knew beforehand of the September 11th attack, it would have been crucial to the plan that the Republicans be in power on September 11th. If they weren’t, it's hardly likely a democratic president would be asking for "A War On Terrorism." and sending American boys off to die in an unnecessary foreign war. Especially as the Republican Administration—but not the Democatic Administraton—is full of people related to the oil industry, and the ruling Taliban of Afghanistan has refused permission to the oil industry to build a pipeline from the Caspian Sea area through Afghanistan.

Are all of these bits of information that meld so nicely together merely coincidental, or could there have been a conspiracy to place the Republicans in power during the 2000 presidential elections?

The question to be asked: isn’t it time congress authorized a full-scale, independent, investigation into the matter? If such an independent body is possible.