Never Again

Mr. Dettwiller, your conservative desires are understandable but what do they have to do with what actually happened over the last eight years? Where did they play in when Bush suspended habeas corpus (protection from unlawful detention) and used the Patriot Act to trample citizen's rights?

Did you know that under the Patriot Act, if you are asked to spy on your neighbor or a family member and you refuse to do so, you can be jailed for years without being charged? What part of being a conservative allows warrantless monitoring of millions of U.S. citizens a "political" litmus test for federal prosecutors, our country to invade another country or condones torture?

What's conservative about turning our military over to private "for profit" industrial military contractors? Did you know that during the Gulf War, one in 50 people were private contractors? It's now one in five!

Was it conservative to allow deplorable conditions to greet our returning wounded? Why did we allow our close military bases and natural resources to be sold for pennies on the dollar and our parks and federal lands turned over to private developers?

Remember when the Bushes wanted port security turned over to an Arab country and Social Security turned over to Wall Street speculators? Also, Cheney's statement that "their goal was to turn the United States into a one party government" and their attempts to do so by going to court to prevent "people," not just liberals, from registering to vote. For the first time in history, people are blocked from seeing the presidential papers plus they want to destroy all White House e-mails so we can't see what went on. Is this conservatism?

My point is, somehow many people didn't pay attention. Maybe they were blindsided by the Bush "fear them" propaganda machine or maybe people assumed that because this leadership claimed to be conservative, they would do the right thing. For whatever reason, many people failed to see what was actually happening to our country; our Bill of Rights and our Constitution. We should never again allow this to happen, be it liberal or a conservative leadership.

Roger McAllister
Lorida