Of course we're at war. Just look at those horrible lines at the airport.
Just look at that man having his scruffy topsiders screened four times, that
woman's lovely underwire bra setting off the metal detector, that huge pile
of confiscated nail files. Don't we all feel safer now.

Of course we're at war. Just look at all those flags stuck in all those
manicured lawns, the ominous United We Stand billboards, the all-new 2003
Ford Excursion now with room for 13 and a full 10mpg Highway/7mpg City, all
the cheap plastic stars-and-stripes kitsch at the Hallmark store, Made in Malaysia.

And look at all the billions being unquestioningly appropriated for more military action
and more "homeland security" and more mysterious attacks and more clandestine
operations, random budget-busting expenditures you will never fully know about.

Simply because this is one of the most secretive and blatantly unreported wars in
American history and if you think all the cover-up is merely in the name of security,
I've got a fabulous time-share on a Saudi oil field to sell you, cheap.

And look, just look how the Bush administration has no intention of telling anyone
anything about anything except ooh that evil evil Saddam we're gonna get him and
oooh that evil evil bin Laden we're gonna get him too, maybe, doubtful but maybe,
someday, but probably not, and never you mind all those eerie Bush/bin Laden
family connections. Hush now.

Of course we're at war. Witness all the angry puffed-up deflections, every reproach
of the president and every suspicious glance in the direction of his corporatized
administration instantly retorted with a nice "how dare you don't you know we're at war"
or maybe "the president has a great deal on his very compact little mind right now
and he can't be bothered with the details of, you know, rampant favoritism and hypocrisy."

And meanwhile isn't that Bush appointee and former conniving, pro-accounting
industry, anti-SEC lawyer, current SEC chairman Harvey Pitt investigating
malfeasance at WorldCom? Cherish the irony.

You just know we're at war because clearly there is just no room for
accusations of Bush's former corporate wrongdoings or economic bilking, or
of Cheney's simply astonishing connection to the oleaginous Halliburton
corporation, which signed a cool $73 mil worth of oil deals with Iraq while
Dickie was still CEO just a handful of years ago. Whoops, shhh. War.

And who knew everyone's favorite inviolate meta-doyenne Martha Stewart would
have so much in common with Geedubya? Cashing in on a cool $230K worth of
ImClone stock just before the company tanks, Martha?

Not bad, but try nearly a cool $1 mil for Bush back in '90, cashing in on
Harken Energy stock just prior to the company reporting a huge loss, and
then accidentally whoops gosh "forgetting" to disclose the sale to the SEC
for oh, eight months, give or take. Aw, shucks. "Clerical error," they say.

And it's becoming increasingly difficult to find anyone but the truest
I-believe-everything-Ari-Fleischer-says jingoists who actually believes this
"war" has become anything but a grand excuse, a marvelously leveragable
plaything which the Bush cadre can point to as their very own personal holy
shroud, some sort of sacrosanct shield to protect them from criticism and
claims of blatant impropriety and selling the nation's soul for pennies on the barrel.

The more pleasant idea is that the war excuse is becoming thinner and thinner,
the populace increasingly fatigued and wary of false terrorist warnings, fearmongering,
lopsided Us-versus-Them posturing, the sucking dry of the budget in the name of
accidentally bombing Afghan weddings.

Wary, in addition, of the idea that simply sending in troops and bombing
caves and infuriating Middle Eastern countries even further will somehow
solve the problem, stem the tide of terrorism, eradicate the numinous,
germinating terrorist cells, make everyone look away as Bush Sr.'s sinister
investment company the Carlyle Group rakes in millions from War on Terror
defense contracts. Shhh.

Maybe it won't last much longer. Maybe the day will come very soon when the
scales will tip in the other direction, the fearmongering and the falsely
hyped patriotism will no longer outweigh the increasing piles of proof that
we are being misled, that all is not what it seems.

Maybe we will realize that what was, very briefly, a necessary and urgent
need to defend our pride and our national identity in the wake of brutish
hatred and an unspeakably barbaric attack, has become a cheap political
pawn, a bureaucratic commodity, the national soul bought and sold like so
many artillery shells for the Carlyle Group's $11 billion Crusader tank.

Of course that day will come. Of course you hope the populace cannot and
will not be lied to for very long, the karmic tide cannot help but begin to
change, and maybe we will finally realize the need for a different,
long-term tack to defend our nation, change our oil-desperate foreign
policy, commit fewer corporate atrocities and political puppeteering in
foreign lands that tend to spawn all that hate in the first place.

Yes, that will be the day. Unless that's the day Bush declares war on Iraq.
Whoops, shhh.