by James Glaser
June 21, 2005

Growing up I had that child's faith in what the American government was doing for me. Today I have an adults distrust for what Washington is doing to me. It could be that the Federal government was always corrupt, but years ago they kept a better secret.

I have had the privilege of going to schools to teach the students about the Pledge of Allegiance and flag etiquette. You can see the trust those children have for our government. They just know that George Bush would never lie, because he is the President of the United States and in their minds, America only does good. I remember feeling that same way and I also remember how bad I felt when I saw my country destroy the villages of innocent people. I remember those first dead children I saw and I couldn't understand why were killing them. Up until then I still thought like those children, that America only did good things in this world.

Today there is another set of Marines, who joined up to defend America, a country they knew only did good things, and some of today's Marines are seeing some of the same things that I saw and I am sure they can't understand why we kill children either... but we do. Today's President is telling American children that we are bringing freedom and Democracy to Iraq, just like the President I had, told the children back then that we were bringing freedom and democracy to Vietnam. The countries are different, but the killing and the lies are the same.

Today we have new things for Washington to lie to us about. I really don't know for sure if the planet is getting warmer because of what man is doing or if we can stop that warming by changing what we do, but Washington and the Bush administration have me thinking it is true and we all better start worrying.

Henry Porter writes for the Observer in the UK and says this about the debate on Global Climate Change, "It is not scientists who are distorting the evidence, but the US oil lobby and a co-operative White House. Last week, Phillip Cooney, a White House staffer, was exposed by the New York Times for revising reports on global warming so that they cast doubt on the link between greenhouse gases and rising temperatures. Mr. Cooney, who has no scientific training whatsoever, resigned and took a job with Exxon Mobil."

Here is a man in our government that is changing official scientific reports and nothing happens to him, he gets a higher paying job as a reward for creating lies for the Bush administration. If Cooney did this on his own, he would have probably been punished, but letting him go to this new job, tells me he was following instructions from higher up and the White House just wants him out of sight. Some older children who are interested in the environment are going to read about Mr. Cooney and they are going to start distrusting our government

We all know about the phony news reports the White House has been producing to make their programs sound better and we know about the news people who were hired by Washington for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to write about these programs in a good light, but we thought that had been exposed and we were back on a more honest track now. We were wrong.

The Chicago Tribune has a story by Andrew Martin and Jeff Zeleny about how the US Department of Agriculture "has churned out three dozen radio and television news segments since the first of the year that promote a controversial agreement with Central America opposed by labor unions, the sugar industry, and many members of Congress, including some Republicans."

Trust, once it is lost it is hard to get back. I know I will always question those in Washington, because power corrupts. It isn't just the White House, but Congress too. Senator Bill Frist, the powerful majority leader stopped being a Senator last month and told America his opinion as a doctor, of Terri Schaivo's medical condition. Now Dr. Frist is a heart transplant doctor and he never saw Ms. Schaivo in person, but that power Washington can give you, gave him, what he thought was the right to step into a State issue and have the Federal Government decide what was best for this woman, based on a video he saw. Power does corrupt. No Doctor would make a diagnosis based on a video, but that is what it sounded like Frist was doing, although now after it is positive that he was wrong, he says he was doing nothing of the kind. Many in Congress voted because of what First was saying though.

People in our government and those appointed by them think they are way smarter that we are and therefore it is OK for them to lie to us, because they know what is best. They can spend our money making phony news programs and pay respected writers to lie to us, because they are only trying to help us and we are too dumb to accept the truth if they gave it to us, so they take a short cut and tell us what they want to be true, even if it isn't.

As an adult, I can look at everything Washington says and does and question it. Children believe everything and it is hard on them when they learn the truth. Maybe that is why we have so many drugs, so much youth crime, and so many children dropping out of school. They don't believe any more in what adults tell them. When you can't trust the President of the United States or those in Congress, who can you trust? When Priests and Ministers are molesting children and both parents have to work just to pay the rent, where do children turn?

Trust Washington? No Way! But we better get back to an honest government. Right now we are killing of innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know we are doing this, the world knows we are doing this and still we kill them. We are torturing people from all around the world. We know we are doing this and the world knows we are doing this. The world has seen the news footage of the dead and the photos of those we torture. Trust Washington? I don't think so and I believe it will be generations before anyone does.