by James Glaser
October 13, 2003

My Government is becoming a real disappointment for me. I still remember how sick I felt when I found out that President Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. I went to Vietnam along with several million other young Americans and over fifty eight thousand lost their lives, all for a lie.

Now today I watch as another President lies to another group of young Americans. Just like President Johnson, President Bush is lying to the American people. Bush lies, his staff lies and those lies are making me sick.

Just a week ago there was a government report about not being able to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and a few days later Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's National Security Advisor and the new person in charge of the War in Iraq, told the America people that we had to go to war because of Saddam Hussein's weapons. Two days before she said that the report comes out that Iraq didn't have any and she starts the lie all over again.

Vice President Dick Cheney did the same thing in the same week, but he adds the lie about Saddam and al Quada, which just two weeks before the President told the American people wasn't true. Our government lies at will. Anything that they think will sound good, they say and screw the truth.

President Bush has been telling the American people that we have no idea of how good things are going over in Iraq, because the news media only dwells on the violence and all the good things go unreported.

It seems that new propaganda is being given to us in another series of lies, The Gannett News Service has found, "That identical letters from different soldiers with the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, also known as 'The Rock,' have appeared in at least, 11 different American newspapers."

Six soldiers reached by Gannett directly of through their families said they agreed with the letter's thrust, but none of the soldiers said they had written the letter and one said he didn't even sign it. Somebody is writing "Feel Good" letters for our troops to sign and if they won't, they just sign their names to them.

The letters talk about how "The quality of life and security for the citizens has been largely restored." It describes people waving at passing troops and children running up to shake their hands and say thank you.

Somebody wrote this letter, but no one from the Army or our government will say who or how it was distributed to the troop's home town newspapers. One father wrote to his son to congratulate him on such a fine letter. "When I told him he wrote such a good letter, he said, What letter?" Timothy Deaconson said Friday, recalling the phone conversation he had with his son, Nick, "this is just not his (writing) style." He spoke to his son, PFC Nick Deaconson, at a hospital where he was recovering from a grenade explosion that left shrapnel in both legs.

Some would say it is just a coincidence that President Bush started talking about how the American people were not hearing the truth about what is going on in Iraq and fake letters going out to newspapers around the country.

I might have believed that, if our government had always been honest in the past, but they haven't. The American people can handle anything as long as it is true, but Washington doesn't trust that and thinks it can get our approval by lying to us.

It is sad and a real disappoint that President Bush and his administration have fallen this far.