My fellow Americans, as much as any of us had hoped politics as usual would change following 911, it seems to be more of the same. The Republican slander campaign has surfaced again! It is infuriating that a Vietnam veteran such as John Kerry is being tarred and feathered by an administration that is headed by two men (Bush/Cheney) who actively avoided combat. So much has been made of Kerry's protests after the war. Doesn't it make sense that someone who had actually been deployed would be best able to determine what was going on? The situation in Iraq is insanity. When trying to justify invading initially, Bush insisted Iraq was a direct threat to our national security because of the presence of WMD and a supposed link to Osama Bin Ladin. More than a year later, the only weapons found have been empty and unusable missils with a range of about 300 km. No real terrorist links have ever been determined.