by James Glaser
January 22, 2003

Saddam Hussein gave the United Nations a 11,099 page document that he said explained what Iraq had for weapons of mass destruction and how his country had destroyed them. Our government tells us that document was full of errors and in it self could be called a breach of a UN Resolution on disarming Iraq. That breach, it is said, is reason enough to go to war.

I don't know if that is true because even though I am an American, I cannot look at that document. This document was written by, as George Bush would have us believe, our enemy, but American citizens are not allowed to see it. This is not one of our millions of American secrets, no, this is an Iraqi document. That doesn't matter, it is still secret.

Judge Damon Keith of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, "A government operating in the shadow of secrecy stands in complete opposition to the society envisioned by the Framers of our Constitution," The Judge was condemning the Bush administration's policy of closing all immigration hearings for post-Sept, 11 detainees.

This same Judge went on to write "When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people. Selective information is misinformation." Now President Bush isn't the first President to keep things secret from the American people, but he has ratcheted that process up to new heights.

From Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to tell which oil executives helped him write the Bush Administration energy policy to the President's own restrictions on the papers of former Presidents, the American citizen has been kept from information that would allow them to make informed judgments about the direction that their own government was going in.

Attorney General John Ashcroft, issued a directive to all government agencies asking them to deny any documents that the public had requested with the Freedom of Information Act. He even said that he would defend any challenges to this directive in court. This is a pattern that is pervasive throughout this administration and it does keep the American public from knowing what is being done in their name.

President Bush wants all Americans to trust him, however this same President Bush does not trust the very people that elected him. George Bush has told the world that they are either with us or they are with the terrorists. That can be said for the American people too. Either you trust George Bush to do what ever he wants or you are unpatriotic and probably on the side of the terrorists.

President Bush's actions at keeping the American citizen uninformed, makes me wonder what he is hiding. As Judge Keith has written, the information kept from us is information that "rightfully belongs to the people."