I just fired off a note to Chris Van Hollen regarding my thoughts on how Congress might best bring the fiasco in Iraq to a close. I was addressing this very issue in my note, sent it, then clicked on the link to this article and felt a certain hopelessness, especially after reading some of the reader responses.

It seems to me that we would all be far better off if every one of us, Congressman, Senator, John Doe, whoever, would publicly acknowlege, first, that we were, in fact, duped by a lying President and his herd of swine. Those who believed there was reasonable cause to give the President carte blanche to conduct this atrocity have a certain owning-up to do, and Mrs. Clinton is one of them. She is no different than anyone on either side of the aisle except that she now covets the position currently held by George W. Bush. She wants to be President, yet she's afraid to be honest. Bush didn't have any such fears going in, as he has never been honest. Inarticulate is as close as he comes to honesty and that's always unplanned and awkward.

The fact that Hillary Clinton will not own up to her error, to the fact that she was human and afraid and did what she felt was expedient, and now regrets having done it is not too much to ask of a national leader. We have already seen how refusal to acknowlege screwups on the part of a President can cause immeasurable human suffering and fantastic waste. Why would anyone want to vote for yet another person who cannot be wrong?

I, as an outspoken peckerwood living at the time in exile in SoCal, ranted against the start of this travesty we refer to as a "war." I continue to do so. Even so, I swear I will not yell "I told you so!" at anyone, because everyone has their reasons for thinking and doing as they will, and the road to hell is now very clearly paved with good intentions as well as the blood and bones of innocent people and young American patriots. This alone should be sufficient cause for Hillary Clinton and everyone else who signed the "blank check" and handed it to Bush ought to be able to acknowlege they were mistaken, misled, whatever works for each of them, and then move forward to abort this President's evil plan to use our troops as pawns in his scheme to blackmail congress into approving funds to protect those who are already part of the "surge", which is already underway.

There is no place to hide at this point. Honesty and truth are going to have to be wheeled out as a last resort. We have no reason to elect, or even nominate, another weasle. Ms. Clinton has an opportunity right now to rid herself of that label. If she doesn't then she is not worthy of candidacy.

And this is our problem as well as Israel's, because the idiot friend is our President of the moment. As for Israel's complaints at this point, all I can offer is, once again, "You lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas." One would think that after milennia of behaving the same way and expecting different results, the state of Israel would have begun to realize that when one makes a deal with the devil there's always going to be hell to pay. Then again, as a religious state resting upon a religion with no concept of hell (which I find quite odd, considering the hellish experiences of many still-living Israeli survivors of the Holocaust)perhaps it's forbidden to venture out onto such thin ice.

The fact is that Israel has been American's pet monkey, a gift from Great Britain, for almost 60 years now, and with each passing year its arrogance, hubris and petulance has grown, cultivated by the U.S. government and religious right, which together have convinced Israel it is almost as inerrant as the Pope himself.

Folks in that neighborhood are understandably irritable due to this incessant case of the attitudes, the taking of adjacent lands, and the treatment of Israel as a precious stepchild, while everyone surrounding Israel has been consistently regarded, if at all, as nothing more than gnats to be slapped at with impunity.

Before the hail of stones begins to fly this way, let is be clear this has nothing to do with religion, at least not on my part and not on our government's part. It has everything to do with pandering to certain religious elements for political purposes and declaring the subject the Third Rail of American international policy.

Meanwhile "man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn" and we pick up the tab. Having run out of spare change (and brain cells) the Bush administration is understandably the target of Israeli ire now. Hell, they thought he was serious! How gullible can a people be? I guess we know now. We elected him.