The Union-Tribune is on the right road with its Jan. 4 editorial ”A dangerous road.” By launching a criminal investigation to find out who revealed that the Bush administration was engaged in unconstitutional domestic spying, the president is entering the terminal stage of the political illness called tyranny. As Plato pointed out centuries ago and as history proves, the disease of tyranny necessarily progresses into paranoia, whereby truth itself becomes the enemy and those who speak the truth become criminals.
The truth that the president fears we will discover is that all along he has been lying to us about the “war on terror.” Secrecy and lies have led America into this unnecessary war, one that has endangered America more than any terrorist could ever dream. After squandering billions of dollars, killing tens of thousands of Iraqis civilians and thousands of our own troops, creating squadrons of new terrorists, and generally laying waste to the country, we are now discovering that the problem in Iraq is a political, not a military, problem and that it never posed a military or terrorist threat in the first instance.
Thomas Jefferson said that the whole art of government can be summed up in one word: honesty. Through his repeated use of secrecy and deception, Bush the tyrant is fighting against America itself.
DUNCAN McFETRIDGE
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