I find this 85% statistic absolutely mind-boggling. Is the military preventing troops from seeing liberal web sites? I'm sure they are or troop morale would drop like a brick but haven't many of the troops over there been rotated out and then back in again at least once, and some as many as two and three times? Surely they and the new soldiers on their first tour of duty should know perfectly well by now that Saddam had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks. So what conclusion can we possibly draw from this? Does 85% of our all-volunteer army have the intellectual curiosity of a door knob? Are they functionally illiterate? Are they so naive that it wouldn't even occur to them that their government would lie to them? Are their families and friends (and 15% of their fellow soldiers) so worried about keeping their spirits up that they're reinforcing this myth?

Now that the results of this poll have been made public, is there now going to be some high-principled grass roots movement to find some way to let these soldiers know that they've been sold a bill of goods? I'm guessing Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh would rot before they'd mention it and I'm not so sure that I'd blame them. And to what lengths, I wonder, will the military go to keep these poor sods from finding out that their being there has nothing to do with 9/11 and everything to do with George Bush wanting to build military bases in Iraq, the better to keep the flow of oil coming?

America has George Bush's "signing statement" that made it clear that he could authorize torture whenever and wherever he wanted and America has a Congress that passed legislation that denies Gitmo's prisoners any recourse if they're tortured. Is it any wonder that the free world looks at America with contempt?

This administration swept up God knows how many "prisoners of war" and I've read one report after another that speculates that most of these people aren't guilty of ANYTHING. Now Bush has put himself in a position where he can't very well release them without making himself look like the despot that he's become so he has been and will continue to do everything he can to make sure that none of these people will ever be able to tell their stories and prove their innocence. Unlike most prison hunger strikes, I don't even think the Gitmo hunger strikes are being carried out to improve conditions there ... horrifyingly, I think the 131 prisoners that initially participated had lost all hope of ever going home and they just wanted to die. And, what a surprise, they weren't even allowed to do that. (No sirree, this administration wasn't about to risk someone leaking the fact that hunger strikers were dying in Guantanamo. I mean, how many scandals can this man handle at one time?)

And what about that true champion of POW rights, Senator John McCain? Well, he voted for the legislation that gives these prisoners no recourse, he knows perfectly well that George Bush exempted himself from complying with the no-torture ban, he knows the Army field manuals were just modified to narrow the definition of torture and, interestingly, so far at least, his office has refused to respond to questions about the outrageous situation at Guantanamo. Anyone who thinks John McCain isn't more interested in being president than he is in human rights needs to think again. And anyone who thinks George Bush has even an ounce of compassion should also think again. As for the rest of America, please join me in feeling profoundly ashamed of our country and our elected representatives.

Don't tell me, let me guess ... anyone who criticizes the president for his poor response to the Katrina disaster will be accused of aiding and abetting hurricanes.