When this whole Iraq war thing was heating up I was in all places Austin Texas (yes the same Texas GW is “from” he is really an east coast elitist playing cowboy…but I digress). It was an interesting time to be in Texas, the Texas democrats were being hunted down by homeland security to force them to return to the state (they were hiding out in Oklahoma) so that the Texas republicans could ram an illegal redistricting plan down their gullets (thats Texas for neck). The very same Texas republicans also rammed the DOMA (the horribly named defense of marriage act), basically saying to all the gay people in Texas “go fuck yourself”. It was a strange and depressing time to live in a republican state if you were a liberal democrat (like myself).

I remember staying up till 4 in the morning to get my chance to speak at the DOMA hearings. ALL DAY bus load after bus load of right wing religious wack jobs from around the state poured in to tell anyone who would listen that the Gays were going to kill Jesus and rape God if they got the right to consummate their love for one another with state blessing (Texas already had laws that said if you are gay you can’t get married this was just another middle finger to the GLBT community). The pro-gay rights people had to wait till the VERY last hour to speak, and then at 3 in the am most of the people on the board (most of which were openly homophobic, and supporting the wack jobs all day) allowed one hour for the other side to voice its case. Suffice to say DOMA is still going strong in Texas.

I remember joining tens of thousands of my closest friends in massive Anti-war protest marches (several of them over the course of a couple weeks/months). I recall the media mostly ignoring them as people all over the country rose up and told anyone that would listen (and even those that didn’t want to hear it) that they DID NOT WANT WAR! I vividly recall the tear gas used on us when we spent just a little too much time on a bridge that the cops on horses had decided would now be returned to car traffic.

And that brings me to the point of this rambling story. The Cars got priority over the People. We got hosed with teargas from angry cops on horseback because cars needed to drive over the bridge. We were told that Saddam had “weapons of mass destruction” and that he would “have a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud” and and that he would eat our babies, and that he hates baseball, and anything else it took to get the American people to remain docile long enough to shoehorn us into an illegal invasion of another country.

Well it is now many years later and everyone knows that we were lied to, lied to in a big way. The only thing the American people have gotten out of the Iraq war has been dead sons and daughters, or (sometimes worse) sons and daughters who are coming back from war with nothing to show for it but missing limbs and mental wounds that might never heal. The true victors in the war in Iraq have been a tightly knit group of oil companies and military contractors (most of whom orbit very very closely to the Darth Cheney death star).

News flash people, this was a war FOR PROFIT. The profit of a very few very well connected companies. These companies knew a guy (Dick) who knew a guy (Bush) who could get things going. Don’t take my word for it, try reading the New York Times.

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India.

KBR, Haliburton, Blackwater, Exxon, BP, Shell, half of these companies have employed Dick Cheney, or he owns massive amounts of stock in them (or both). We are spending BILLIONS of dollars, getting our sons and daughters mutilated, killing tens of thousands of Iraqi’s civilians, destabilizing the region, bleeding the American economy dry, pumping oil prices to record highs, all so that a small group of very rich men can get even richer. Further BILLIONS have been lost to shady contracts with these same companies. Nice.

With Iowa under water, New Orleans still limping towards recovery, oceans rising, and the weather getting stranger and stranger every day, do we really think that the answer to our problems is to funnel Americans money and young people into a black hole of corruption like the Bush administration and it’s illegal war? Of course you don’t thats why in a country of almost 300 million the number of people who like Dick Cheney can be counted on your fingers and toes. But what are we going to do about it?

When you go to vote for president this year (you are going to vote right?) be sure to think long and hard about which choice you make. Do you want John (gas tax holiday off shore drilling, stay in Iraq for 100 years) McCain or do you want Barack (renewable energy, windfall profits tax, pull our troops out of Iraq) Obama. The choice is easy…