by James Glaser
May 21, 2002

Sure I think that George Bush and Colin Powell, yes, even General Tommy Franks have committed premeditated murder in our war on terrorism. Not the troops nor those pilots dropping bombs, but I would add Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfled. Leaders have to take responsibility

As I have said in the past. Going into this war in Afghanistan we knew from our many past wars just how much collateral damage could be done with bombing from on high, about how many missiles would go astray. And even how many of those little cluster bombs would be left laying around for little kids to pick up.

We have people whose whole job is just to figure out these numbers and what possible devastation can be caused by their use. We do know just how close we can get to a populated area with bombing before a significant number of bombs will hit civilian targets. We know how many miles a errant missile is likely to fly. We could even (at a added expense) make those missals so that they would self-destruct if they go astray, but that would cost a bunch. Even with those cluster bombs, we know where we drop them, we know pretty close to how many unexploded ones there will be, and even in "safe" populated areas, areas that we know kids will get maimed in, we don't go and pick them up.

We get really mad when a stupid parent leaves a loaded gun around where a child can get his hands on it. Well we not only paint these cluster bombs festive colors, but make them the same color as the food packets that we drop for these starving people. Then when a group of these kids that are starving get really horribly hurt or killed by a cluster bomb we say "Oh, what a shame" I guess if you are a pilot and you have dropped these cluster bombs in other wars, then really, you are a premeditated murderer too.

Like I said, it is all how you look at it. I see it like this. Going in to this war, using the weapons that we chose to use, with our past experience we could predict about how many innocent people would get killed. We knew that none of these innocent people had anything to do with the September attacks on America. We knew that we would be killing the old, women children, and infants.

Even with all this knowledge we decided that America has the right to end all of these peoples lives, all of these people who had just as much of a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as we do. All of these kids that had their whole life ahead of them, full of potential, and kids that only wanted to get something to eat. All of these people that America killed in our pursuit of terrorists had a life given to them by God and our leaders decided that it was their right to kill them.

I am sure that George, Colin, And Donald have the words to tell us how truly noble our war is and just how much the sacrifice of these innocent people's lives means to the safety of our world, but I have been to war and know just how much bullshit those words are. What the truth is, our leaders believe in how really precious American life is, how great American kids are, and how they even believe that the life of a American unborn child is sacred, as is that unborn child's right to life.

These same men will treat the children and truly innocent people in the rest of this world like shit.