Northwestern Notes: Public needs better information concerning Iraq

Not to sound like too much of a conspiracy theorist or anything, but with all this talk about heading for war it makes me wonder how much do we really know about our "enemies"? As average citizens, we depend on the media and our politicians for information, but how tainted is this coverage? What is being hidden from us and how will this affect our lives?

During wartime our government becomes even more secretive than usual. There are many reasons for this, but when you combine enforced ignorance with limited media, some major problems can arise. We have a history of stifling our presses for the good of our troops. People seem to trust our powers that be enough to place blind faith in them.

This scares me greatly.

Mr. Bush is not known for his patience or tact and this is the man we have heading our military. Our Commander-in-Chief, who in his earlier carnation as the governor of Texas chose to cut fifteen minutes out of his allotted time bracket for death penalty cases because he felt that a half an hour was too long to spend on such a tedious task.

Is this the kind of guy that should be allowed to take charge of our lives? We are not fighting with bayonets anymore. We live in a global society now. We should not be forced to bow to terrorism, but we should not go picking fights either. This situation is complex and many people are not thinking it through.

This conflict could mutate into nuclear war. If they were to reinstate the draft it would be our generation that would be called to take up this duty. Personally I would not be ready to die over a cause when we haven't been fully informed.

Money is a key component of this conflict, and anyone who tries to deny this is pretty much full of it. Haven't we learned anything from our last clash with the Middle East?

This whole axis of evil throw-back to Bush Sr.'s war is a bit too convenient if you ask me. You would think that Georgie boy would have learned something from Vietnam. Oh, but that is right, he also managed to find a way to elude a whole year of his service time in his horrible stint as a member of the Air National Guard.

Can we expect someone who has lived a privileged existence to ever be able to really conceive how his actions are going to affect the average blue-collar kid? I mean he is so out of it that he actually decided to have Wayne Newton lead the troop's entertainment for goodness sake. That alone gives me cause for worry.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a major patriot, but we should think before we act when it comes to playing tag with nuclear warheads.

As citizens we should demand accurate information before allowing our people to become involved. We should take care of our national terrorism issues and leave monetary aspects out of it, but of course that is just an unrealistic dream when we have a failed oil tycoon running things.