- Republicans have become so accustomed to using
the phrase "cut and run" that they probably mumble it while sleeping
and their childlike leader, George W. Bush, babbled it again yesterday,
saying at yet another GOP fundraiser that "the party of FDR and the
party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run."
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- That takes a ton of nerve coming from a Chickenhawk like
Bush, who used Daddy's connections to avoid Vietnam and then went AWOL
from his cushy stateside post. But we've heard that empty phrase from the
cretins in the right-wing of the Republican party so many times that it
barely even registers any longer.
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- They like to question the courage and patriotism of Democrats
for being unwilling to shed more American blood and waste billions more
on a pointless war, that the country was lied into and that's made us far
less safe and more despised throughout the world. Aside from the fact that
the majority of Americans no longer support the Iraq war -- and, thus,
they must all be cut-and-run defeatists as well -- it is the Republicans
who have shown themselves to be the lily-livered cowards among us.
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- Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their whole craven
cabal are scared stiff -- and they want us to all be very afraid as well.
How frightened are they? They're so afraid that they are willing to go
against everything this country stands for, in a blind panic that they
think will somehow protect their sorry asses from the big, bad terrorist
bullies.
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- They are so damn scared that they're willing to take
a country that was founded on individual liberty and turn it into a police
state -- all out of fear.
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- So they respond to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda attacking
our country -- and, according to Bush, "our way of life" -- by
putting their collective tails between their legs and abandoning the very
core principles crafted by the founding fathers to embody "our way
of life."
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- I didn't realize it at the time, but the hideous losses
we suffered on 9/11 would truly test our national character more than any
event of my lifetime. Do we stick with the values and hard-learned lessons
of our past in the face of these new challenges or do we let Osama bin
Laden truly ruin our country by becoming a shadow of the nation we have
always been?
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- Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), arguing against the Bush
torture bill that passed both the House and the Senate this week, said
it quite well yesterday:
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- "What has changed in the last five years that our
Government is so inept and our people so terrified that we must do what
no bomb or attack could ever do by taking away the very freedoms that define
America? Why would we allow the terrorists to win by doing to ourselves
what they could never do, and abandon the principles for which so many
Americans today and through our history have fought and sacrificed?"
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- Whether he's in a cave, a nice hotel in Karachi or a
CIA safe house, bin Laden must be laughing himself silly over the crisis
of heart, soul and character he has so easily inflicted on the Bush Administration
and, thus, our country.
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- It's trivial for a nation to stand by its creed when
times are easy. But it's times like these, when circumstances and conditions
are tough, that give us the real test of our national strength, courage
and resolve.
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- Under Republican leadership, we are failing that test
in the most miserable and pathetic way.
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- A great nation uses a horrendous event like September
11 to reinforce the things that have always made us the envy of the world
and that, at least until our recent history, made us, in our best moments,
the standard to which other countries aspired. A people of character suck
it up and strive to remain a beacon of hope, equity and civil rights, while
fighting those who attack us as strongly as we can.
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- The only thing Bush and his team of sissies have been
right about is saying that we're not a nation that cuts and runs -- which
is why all Americans should hate how our chicken-hearted, reactionary government
has consistently done exactly that ever since we were attacked.
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- What we've seen happen in the last five years is not
something that should invoke pride or flag-waving jingoism in Americans.
We've watched a president and vice president whose lies have become so
commonplace that they seldom even make the news. We've watched as our military
men and women are killed or maimed in a war that has nothing to do with
terror and everything to do with Bush and his mindless supporters selling
fear to suit their ideological and financial agenda.
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- We've seen a world go from loving us on September 12,
2001 many governments declared "we are all Americans today"
to us becoming a global pariah, with nary a friend who believes in
our word or the promise of our deeds. We saw astounding pictures come back
from Abu Ghraib, in which prisoners under our watch were tortured and,
in some cases, killed.
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- And just this week, we have watched the Republican-led
Congress affirm that all of that -- and more -- is just fine with them.
At the same time, we have become willing to let the president mortgage
our present and our children's financial future to spend money on a war
that did not need to be fought, while ruining a reputation that previous
generations worked so hard to build.
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- So tell every Republican you know that they can take
their 'cut and run' garbage and shove it.
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- In the face of challenge and terror, George W. Bush and
the Republican party have continued to debase our nation's spirit and trash
the values that have made us great. In other words, the Republicans are
allowing a few terrorists to change the very essence of our country and
make us so afraid that we no longer even know who we are -- or what we
stand for.
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- When the going has gotten tough, and our nation's heart
and soul are on the line, it's the cowardly Republicans who have truly
cut and run.
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- About author You can read more from Bob at www.BobGeiger.com
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