The news!

"A U.S. Senate committee report said Thursday that U.S. officials from President George W. Bush on down deliberately distorted facts to persuade American citizens to support an invasion of Iraq." Associated Press

How many times have you heard it: we live in a democracy with three branches of government equal in authority and everyone is accountable. Sounds great. Then, on some sunny day, a news item pops up that there is confirmation that our elected President and his administration played fast and loose with the facts. Yes, they fibbed to us, and it wasn't one of those little white lies, either. This dismissal of the truth cost lives.

Two of the Republican's on the committee issuing the report agreed with the Democratic majority, which meant they agree that George W. Bush laid an egg. Some Republicans didn't agree:

"Republican Sen. Kit Bond, vice chairman of the committee, called it "ironic that the Democrats would knowingly distort and misrepresent the committee's findings and the intelligence in an effort to prove that the administration distorted and mischaracterized the intelligence.""

This sort of politics has been around for a while, some Senators were going to vote against impeachment of Richard Nixon despite "smoking gun" evidence. And that is the mystery; doesn't that type of vote suggest a fundamental dishonesty?

There are the facts in writing, testimony and if you need, the fact that the resulting war continues. How can this be denied? Do we support our President, right or wrong? What about accountability to the people? What about truth? Doesn't this suggest that nothing in the federal government can be trusted?

Yes, I said it, can the federal government be trusted? In the face of overwhelming evidence, at least one Senator attempts to turn these deceptions by a Republican administration into a problem for the Democrats. Politics rule to the exclusion of everything else.

I don't know what it is but it isn't democracy.

Kootie J