October 2, 2005

Howard Dean
Chairman
Democratic National Committee
430 S. Capitol St. SE
Washington, DC 20003

Gov. Dean,

Cindy Sheehan has asked you and Republicans and Democrats in Congress a simple question, "What noble cause did my son die for?"� and you did not answer in any meaningful way.

I supported you in the primaries in 2004, for chair of the DNC, and signed up for your democracy bonds because I believed you told the truth to us in the presidential campaign, and have been one of the few Democrats to consistently stand and tell the truth in the face of GOP lies and threats.

We need you to answer Cindy Sheehan's question and tell the truth about why we went to war in Iraq.

The reasons that I have pieced together from reading PNAC documents, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jay Garner's comments on his time running Iraq, and the State Department documents leaked to journalist Greg Palast:

• Gain secure access to Iraq's oil as the world's supply begins to decline
  
  
• Military bases to influence, intimidate, and invade other oil-producing countries in the region
  
  
• Privatization of Iraq's oil & contracts to pump it to Americans rather than French & Russian oil companies
  
  The BBC has already done a lot of work on the oil motive for you. You can see a timeline of the meetings and relevant documents at
  http://www.gregpalast.com/iraqmeetingstimeline.html
  
  
• Prevent Iraq & OPEC countries from trading oil in Euros instead of dollars
  
  
• Put money in the pockets of contractors as is also done through the Third World debt scam
  
  
• Eliminate a perceived threat to Israel
  
  

Some of these are at least arguably in our national interest, others amount to criminal corruption. Tell us which it was, or which swayed you, so we can decide if it was worth it, and be in on these decisions that affect all of our lives, and don't insult my intelligence by calling it "conspiracy theories" or by saying one god damn word about these things that are proven bullshit:

• Weapons of Mass Destruction
  Saddam didn't have the dreaded WMDs and even if he did, he would not be stupid enough to use them against us or give them to someone who did and risk the complete destruction of Iraq with a fraction of our thousands of nukes. Saddam was evil but not stupid. You are old enough to have lived through the Cold War, and should have known this without anyone telling you.
  
  The Downing Street Minutes indicate the Bush people knew that threat was a lie anyway.
  
  
• Terrorism
  Likewise, even President Bush was forced to admit on at least two occasions, including the 2004 presidential debates that Saddam had NOTHING to do with 9/11. As the Joint Congressional Inquiry found, the 9/11 terrorists were funded and given logistical support by our allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who far from being punished, seem to have profited from the attacks with closer ties to us.
  
  
• Spreading Democracy
  While the pro-democracy argument is an after-thought at best, opinions of the Iraqis themselves show that it too is a lie. The Bush appointed CPA polled Iraqi's in the Spring of 2004 and found that 86% wanted us to leave after the January 2004 elections at the latest.
  
  A third of the current Iraqis legislators have signed a letter asking us to withdraw, and one of our favorite whipping boys over there, Muqtada al Sadr, was able to collect a million signatures on a petition asking us to leave. That's democracy, and you and Bush are ignoring it.
  
  General Garner was fired for calling for early elections, and the resumes of the Bush foreign policy team and our other current relationships with brutal dictators in Central Asia and the Arab world, including shipping prisoners to them to be tortured, shows that they do not care about human rights or anything of the kind at all.
  
  If we truly wanted to spread democracy in the Middle East, we could do it far more cheaply in tax dollars and lives by ending our support of dictatorships in countries like Pakistan, Egypt, and especially Saudi Arabia.
  
  Additionally, the Bush administration has removed the democratically elected president of Haiti, and backed a coup and recall against the elected president of Venezuela, proving that business interests trump the pro-democracy rhetoric. The president's political ally Pat Robertson has even called for Chavez's assassination. Chavez's only sin is wanting to use his country's oil wealth to actually help the poor and middle class there, and his only threat to us is to provide discounted fuel to hospitals and the poor, or, god forbid, send doctors to help the uninsured, something our government and the public college I work for hasn't seen fit to do.
  

Howard, we didn't support you to become DNC chair just so you could lie to us and shine us on like the Bidens and Liebermans of the party.

I am ashamed and embarrassed that I find out more about what my government is doing by going to the BBC website or reading foreign newspapers than I can from the one I can buy at the corner--or from YOU.

I don't think most elected Democrats are stupid, gullible, or cowardly, so if they are supporting the war or remaining silent, I can only conclude they have a financial interest in it, and their loyalty lies exclusively with corporate America and not in any meaningful way with the American people.

You still have time to do the right thing. Whenever you open your mouth about Iraq, the first thing you should say is:

As the world's oil supply begins to decline, they wanted to make sure American companies control the spigot.

This would put the republicans on the defensive and shift the debate to our real problem of how business corrupts our foreign policy.

Frankly, if our elected officials refuse to talk publicly about the real issues driving our policy but instead have the real debate behind closed doors, we don't have a democracy, and the American people are starting to figure this out.

And so I was meeting with the chairman of the Democratic National Commitee last night. And this is a man who in previous times had a backbone. And, he, I told him, you know its truly sad, if you have a Republican runinng and some of you act like a Republican, you might as well vote for the Republican. And he said, 'You know, I've said that before, too.'

I don't know if they are just trying to be ironic or what.

And so I told him, you know, I'm not a political strategist at all. I'm just somebody who cares about my country and sees what went wrong. You know, I saw John Kerry totally go yellow on this war and he lost the election. And I know if he had come out and said, 'I'm against this war, George Bush lied, I made the most terrible mistake of my life when I voted to give him authority to go to war, and if you elect me I will do everything in my power to bring the troops home,' I believe he would have won in a landslide and they couldn't have cheated.

You know, the Republican's job are to keep them (elections) close enough so they can cheat and go over the hump. Our jobs are to be courageous and stand for something and we will like landslide to victory in 2006. And that's just me, a mom from California talking, that doesn't know anyting.

And so, that's what I told Dean. And he said, 'Oh, we're going to make this contract with America and we're going to have ten points and the first point is going to be about universal health care'--which is so important. But I looked at him and I said is the (Iraq) war going to be on your list? And he said, 'Well its going to be on there somewhere but we don't know what to do with it because it is so hard'. I then I said hire me because I don't think its that hard!

Why? Why, why, why, why, why, why?

Why aren't they stepping up and taking the leadership that's leading our country out of this mess? You know, George Bush made this mess. George Bush made the mess in Iraq. George Bush contributed to the devistation in the Gulf States of Katrina because of this mess in Iraq. Why aren't the Democrats and our elected officials making those connections and hammering those Republicans? If they did that we would landslide into victory in 2006. We only need 12 seats. Tweleve seats and then when we get those twelve seates, if George Bush is still there, we can start talking about Impeachment.