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With a one trillion dollar surplus, a balanced budget, and a skyrocketing economy this man could have accomplished anything if he’d had a little more intelligence and little less inhumanity. He could have solved the Mideast crisis and ended terrorism forever. He could have put a man on Mars, stopped the spread of AIDS and tuberculosis, 
In the year 2000, a prophetic year that seemed to offer the world a fresh start and long-hoped for peace in a new millennium where the old ideas of a morally bankrupt age of war mongers and imperialists could be left behind, a president took office (we dare not say elected) who was unquestionably the least qualified and least competent candidate ever to hold that exalted office. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth and no natural talents, a C student (what we call a “slider” here at Penn State) who was unable to run a successful business, a man who only made his personal fortune through questionable business dealings and only through the direct backing of his father's wealthy friends, a man elected on name recognition alone, a man unable to balance a budget, and sometimes barely able to speak proper English, this mediocre pretender to an office held by so many of our nation's past illustrious leaders, entered office after being declared winner in his brother’s state of Florida by 500 votes +/- 100,000 votes, which was a result that no mathematician nor statistician on earth would sanction as anything but invalid. This pathetic excuse for a democratically elected president, this corporate front man in the guise of a populist candidate, taking the reins of a prosperous nation with a phenomenal budget surplus and a well-oiled military machine, immediately launched his single track agenda - to redeem the disgrace his father’s administration incurred at having been duped by Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War 
(as if this was the deal he made with the men who financed his rise to power) and to thereby guarantee himself, or so he imagines, a place in history alongside Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and the other truly deserving presidents.
or any one of a number of worthwhile and magnanimous ventures. Instead, this shallow and uncreative corporate marionette, no doubt in great hock to the men who bought him the office, ignores the worst disasters to have befallen our people and our economy in decades; he ignores a continuing terrorist threat to our interests from Al Qaeda after the September 11th bombings, he ignores massive unemployment and a steadily collapsing economy, he ignores widespread corporate corruption and an energy mismanagement crisis, he ignores the direct threat of Korea to launch nuclear weapons, and a host of other serious problems, to embark upon his pet project - the invasion of Iraq, a country which is no threat to us and is neither a current threat to its neighbors. With a barrage of propaganda and half-truths aimed at convincing the American public to undermine the United Nations, still our best hope for world peace, the Bush cabinet forges ahead, planning for war in spite of the obvious reluctance of the people and the nations of the world to sanction such gratuitous bloodletting.
Who could characterize the arrogance of a man who sits behind a desk and 
orders the death of so many innocent people in a foreign land? How can anyone morally justify the raining of bombs down upon the heads of young conscriptees and the inevitable civilian bystanders who are no more willing participants in Hussein’s reign of terror than any American sitting home watching this spectacle of death and destruction on live TV. How many innocent people must be maimed or die to kill one guilty man? The young men of Iraq have no more say in their government’s behavior than we, at the moment, seem to have in ours. The soldiers drafted in Iraq’s army will be assigned to trenches and bunkers where they will have no choice but to await the hail of powerful missiles and bombs unleashed by our deadly efficient military machine, well-honed in seemingly endless recent conflicts. Blown to bits in their trenches without even seeing their enemy, tens of thousands will die in fear. Countless others, including old men, women, children, and infants, will become collateral civilian casualties. Those Iraqi soldiers who chance to survive the bombing will search the horizons desperately for any sign of Americans, to whom they will fall upon their knees and beg for mercy, as they did in the previous war. These are the people we will be killing, not Al Qaeda, not suicidal terrorists, but young men who would much prefer to be our friends and allies and live, than to be murdered by advanced technology for the sake of a leader they don’t believe in. 
If our politicians and ambassadors were even half as good at negotiating as our military is at fighting war, we would have no wars to fight at all. But they're not -- they’re mostly just as mediocre as Bush is at everything he does. We've already put an idiot in the White House, let's not make a worse mistake and allow him to pursue a war born of lies, ineptitude, and sinister intentions.
The sanctions have killed too many people already. If the war kills even one innocent person, that is too high an additional cost to pay. And so here is our vain and futile message for what it may be worth, our voice in the wilderness, our words of light in the midst of a world of darkness and ignorance - Give Peace a Chance.
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