Patricia L Johnson: When Enough is Enough

During his deposition in the Paula Jones case, President Clinton claimed he never had “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky. To provide precise guidelines Judge Susan Webber Wright approved a legal definition of sexual relations which listed specific body parts that would have to be touched during sexual relations.

Monica Lewinsky performed oral sex on the President; thereby touching his genitals with her hands, yet it appears the President did not touch the parts of Ms. Lewinsky’s body required to meet the legal definition; therefore …

Most Americans didn’t give a hoot about any legal mumble-jumble and a CNN/Time poll immediately prior to the deposition indicated 87% of Americans considered oral sex as “sexual relations” so President Clinton became guilty in the minds of the American public regardless of the definition.

Guilty as charged of doing what leaders of countries have done since the beginning of time. The difference between President Clinton’s indiscretions and anyone else in office is the fact that Republicans were holding the purse strings during his tenure and could spend millions upon millions of dollars on investigations and trumped up charges to stoke the ‘burn Clinton’ fire.

After impeachment proceedings, President Clinton was still President and the people still loved him even though the Republicans did their best to discredit him and his office by spending nearly $80 million dollars on independent counsel investigations.

Everyone in the world now knows the name Monica Lewinsky, but how many of you are familiar with the names Lucy Mercer, Mrs. Calhoun, Nan Britton, Kay Summersby and Alice Glass? For those of you that do not recognize the names, I will simply describe the ladies as friends of former U.S. Presidents.

Now we are in an era where our current President, George W. Bush, has promised to bring ethics and morals back to the White House. Hanky-panky in the oval office simply will not happen under his watch.

I cannot begin to express how much safer it makes me feel to know that there won’t be any surplus sperm flowing through the halls of the White House.

When John Adams moved into the White House in November of 1800 he wrote a letter to his wife Abigail that contained the following comment "Before I end my letter, I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof."

“None but honest and wise Men ever rule”. How very fortunate this country would be to have honest and wise Men rule, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. While we were promised an ethically responsible administration, we have received an administration that quite simply leads, by misleading.

Last year Iraq on the Record database of the Bush Administration’s Pre-War Statements on Iraq, was released by the Government Reform Minority Office. This database is a collection of 237 misleading statements made on Iraq by top Bush Administration officials, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, then-Secretary Powell, and then-National Security Advisor Rice.

Each statement made, was misleading at the time it was made.

237 misleading statements about Iraq seems almost ridiculous until you look at the consequences of these misleading statements.

The official count of U.S. casualties in Iraq, as of 10:00 a.m. on November 23, 2005, is 17,912. There are a total of 2,108 dead and 15,804 wounded. The figure does not take into consideration our troops killed and wounded in Afghanistan, nor does it include casualty counts from other coalition nations.

“Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample surveya survey conducted by researchers Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham. Roberts and Burnham are with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Lafta and Khudhairi are with the College of Medicine at Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and Garfield is with the Columbia University School of Nursing.

The survey, originally published in The Lancet on October 29, 2004, a British medical journal similar to our JAMA, Journal of American Medical Association, contained the following comment from Dr. Roberts of Johns Hopkins. “"Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100 000 excess deaths or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that the collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes."

The study was published a year ago and at the time it was thought 100,000 civilians had died at our hands. These were not civilians that died due to insurgent bombings, but due to bombings by the United States and coalition forces.

How many more have died since that time?

It is time for action. Earlier this week I received a bumper sticker in the mail saying “Enough is Enough” and there’s not too much more to say about the subject. Thousands upon thousands of people are dead, and tens of thousands are wounded, because of 237 misleading statements made by officials in the Bush administration.

Enough is Enough and it’s time for the people in this country to stand up for what’s right. If you have not already done so, please use the following links to write your Senators and Representative and tell them it’s time for a change. The lives of innocent people are in your hands.

© 2005 Patricia L Johnson

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