Damned: The Bloody Lies That Condemn Us All

The Center for Public Integrity has compiled an infinitely searchable catalog of the 935 lies told by the president and seven other top administration officials in order to instigate war between the United States and Iraq.

These deliberate (and in most cases, scripted) lies were told over a two-year period and were built on two basic fictional building blocks: [1] that Iraq threatened us with weapons of mass destruction, and [2] that Iraq supported al Qaeda and therefore bore responsibility for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

In the intelligence community, and in the well-informed segment of the general populace, both claims were widely known to be false, yet they were used and re-used and denied and debunked and embroidered and pasted together and used and re-used again, until the Mission was Accomplished and the United States was involved in a foreign war it couldn't get out of.

The eight administration officials indicted by this compilation are: the twice unelected President George W. Bush, the twice unelected Vice President Dick Cheney, current Secretary of State and former National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, and former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

The deliberately deceitful actions of these eight people (and the many others who followed their lead) have resulted directly and immediately in the unwarranted deaths of at least a million people, and the unnecessary destruction of the lives of millions more. And it will kill and ruin many more, no matter how or when it ends.

By any civilized standard, all eight officials listed above are obviously guilty of mass murder, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

By any civilized standard, all eight should be arrested immediately and given speedy trials, which if fair would surely result in their convictions and public executions.

People of goodwill everywhere could only hope for the executions to be as slow and as painful as possible -- and seen and understood by billions.

But we all know that will never happen. We all know nothing even remotely like that will ever happen. And by failing to make that happen -- by failing to stop everything for as long as necessary in order to force that to happen -- We The People of the United States hereby forfeit any claim to being a civilized nation.

The lies in the database condemn the eight individuals listed above, and all their sycophants. But the failure to oppose them in any meaningful way condemns the rest of us.

We could stand shoulder-to-shoulder by the millions and shut down every big city. We could sit bumper-to-bumper in far smaller numbers and shut down the whole country.

We could. But we won't. And why not? Because we don't know enough? Or because we don't care enough?

It seems to me we know more than we ever did, so we must care less than ever. And the current political races seem to bear me out.

In the Democratic party there is one presidential candidate who would stop the war in Iraq immediately and whose platform is based on letting the people make the laws of the land. And he can't get into a debate and he can't get on TV and he can't raise any money and he can't get his poll numbers above 1%.

And that's in the so-called opposition party! Damn!