Just a thought

Instead of standing for any principles, most of the still loyal Republicans have chosen blind allegiance to a flawed leader. The bigger picture is evident to anyone who takes a step back and looks.

The administration has managed to go from having the support of the whole world in the "war on terrorism" when we attacked Afghanistan to its present position in an incredibly short time. Instead of an international war on terrorism, we have a United States war on Iraq. Terrorism is flourishing around the world, Bin Laden is still at large, Iraq is heading into civil war and we have become more and more dependent on countries such as China and Saudi Arabia for our economy to survive.

On the domestic front, fewer and fewer of us can afford decent health care, we have the largest deficits in history, government has grown at a faster pace than anytime in recent memory, wages in terms of real dollars have steadily declined, we no longer manufacture much of anything in this country, funding for basic scientific research has been cut, as has funding for most higher education.

From the perspective of whether we are better protected against terrorism, our most vulnerable areas are inadequately protected against even the feeblest of attacks. Sure it has become more difficult to hijack an airliner, but our ports, nuclear facilities, and population centers are as vulnerable as they were on September 11th.

People can argue all they want about trivial semantics, but the bigger picture is clear to anyone with an ounce of common sense. Ignore the spin and look at the facts.