The Significance of the Downing Street Memo

The government has been run so poorly since Bush Jr. took office, he surpassed all 204 Presidents before him in adding to the national debt. Our country will raise our debt ceiling to 11 trillion dollars promising to spend money forced on the backs of our children's children who are expected somehow to repay it back. Because of the flow of money being used to fund the wars on terror, States are hard-pressed to reform budgets and justify spending. The loudest call being demanded by the White House is to cut Medicaid programs, which directly affect the poorest of the poor: the elderly, the disabled, the impoverished.

People in my situation are dependent on government assistance, penalized if we work, our benefits immediately cut should we attempt to increase income above the poverty norm people with disabilities have learned to survive within. Forced to live below the poverty line, many are barely holding on to life in the community, struggling just to manage. States are now being asked by Bush Jr. to impose cutting certain coverage in how the Medicaid program delivers assistance to those that need and deserve it the most. Cuts are being forced on programs already overburdened by populations waiting years on lists just trying to get access to services which will enable their freedom, dignity, and independence. The Veterans Administration is also strapped for funding having had a billion dollars shed from its budget just last year and at a time when tens of thousands of soldiers are returning from war with what will be serious lifelong disabilities. Unable to find help through an ailing VA system, this huge population of medically deserving soldiers will filter onto Medicaid and Medicare, creating more strain on an already incapable long term care delivery system.

Already cruel hardships are being imposed to address the incapacity of Medicaid, Medicare to handle the growing populations of elderly and people with disabilities in our country. Children born with disabilities such as Down's syndrome or Spina Bifida are routinely being disconnected from emergency care and life sustaining foods and hydration. I have already documented in my article, "The Dangers Of Being An Organ Donor" how the elderly and people with disabilities are quietly being euthanized as the cost of health care increases.

Governors of states like Illinois and Tennessee are openly denying access to emergency treatment, such as feeding tubes and ventilators, for people considered too expensive to continue coverage for by the State - items which directly support life for so many like ventilators and feeding tubes. The Governors refuse to even meet with those impacted by their callous policies. We were forced in Georgia to block off the exit and entrances leading to the Governor's office, trapping him and his staff inside until he agreed to meet with us. At the same time in Tennessee local disability activists took over the governor's office for a month just trying to get the governor to discuss alternatives to just expecting this population of individuals to disappear. Every night citizens of Memphis came out to support activists and pressure the Governor. He means for these people to simply disappear, die quietly somewhere one by one.

The cost of the wars on terror, are directly linked to the suffering being imposed on the domestic agenda here in our country that is why it is of utmost importance that people with disabilities and all Americans understand the significance of the Downing Street Memo, a leaked super secret memo of minutes from meetings between President Bush and Prime Minister Blair which in essence show that Bush had set his mind to invade Iraq, even before the Security Council met at the United Nations and Congress had given him the power to war. A careful study of the Iraq war timeline proves in fact that plans to invade Iraq had been constructed even before Bush Jr. took office in 2000. I wrote about the pre-9/11 Cheney Energy Task Force which targeted Iraq's oilfields as imperative to the National Security of the United States of America.

When asked in the Rose Garden about the Downing Street Memo soon after the leak, caught off guard Bush and Blair danced around the question until they managed to say in doublespeak "We only wanted war as a last resort," rather than deny the existence of the minutes. Reading the Downing Street Memos, we see that they had decided for war and knew that they would have to "fix the facts around the policy" since Britain was still bound by the International Criminal Court and could be charged for war crimes if the invasion was found unjustified. Deciphered, it means, "Lie as much as necessary to lay the groundwork for war using fear as a catalyst to deceive the American and British people to support an unjustifiable illegal war of conquest" - a clear and defined war crime according to the Nuremburg Trials and the Geneva Convention.

Congressman John Conyers convened a meeting about The Downing Street Memo aired on C-SPAN proves Bush and Blair acted in a unilateral unwarranted act of aggression against a sovereign nation. War was not the last resort, but rather decided and then supported by a pack of lies to be perpetuated by the likes of Judith Miller and other American media in bed with government to instill fear into the American people of the so called threat of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program, bioweapon program, connection to Al Qaeda, and connection to 9/11, which all turned out to be bald-faced lies.

Over 800 billion dollars has gone into forcing democracy and occupation on the Afghani and Iraqi people. During this time the American people who require the assistance of government programs just to be able to live in poverty, are asked to do without. The most expensive recipients such as ventilator quadriplegics are now being asked to simply disappear or make it the best way they can, often with no support at all. Those that do not have family support are being forced into nursing homes where they suffer literally unto the death.

There is a direct correlation between the lack of government support in our country for those that need it the most and the flood of money leaving our country supporting what now is undeniably illegal wars of conquest benefiting corporations awarded multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts at the expense of both the Iraqi and American people.

We saw, in the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, how people were left, in the streets, thirsty, hungry, dying of the heat, after following the directions of authorities. We now know that FEMA deliberately sabotaged all efforts from outside individuals to assist the victims struggling to make it a single moment more. Bush and Cheney did not even end their vacations to address the dire situation unfolding in New Orleans. Condoleeza Rice was booed in New York while shopping, amusing herself, buying shoes. She was booed out of an evening of entertainment taking in a play. The disaster illustrated so effectively why all Americans and especially people with disabilities must support the Anti-war movement. We cannot support people at home and at the same time fight a nameless faceless war on terror that Cheney claims will not end in our lifetimes especially when research into the war on terror points to Al-Qaeda being an asset of Western intelligence agencies namely the CIA, MI6, and Mossad ever since the muhjadeen where financed to fight the Soviets.

There are high level people in all three governments who have come forward linking government sponsored terror to the war on terror. This knowledge is being brought forth more and more everyday and has everything to do with the still ongoing Chicago grand jury Patrick Fitzgerald investigation into the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame was ousted by high level government officials and may lead to the indictments of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby the counsels for the President and Vice-President. We must end this war and support the domestic agenda, supporting the American people, which suffer indignation daily. We must then without question rid the government of those people who lied, deceived, and coerced the American people and Congress into supporting those illegal wars.

The American people are less safe now than we were on the days before 9/11/2001. The borders are still wide open, most of the goods coming into our country are not checked, all of the baggage from airplane travel is not checked. What is wrong with the picture here? Why is America supposed to expand freedom and democracy to the rest of the world, when America can't even take care of its own in a time of crisis? Disaster preparedness is what the taxpayers' money should have supported, but instead, time and time again, money was diverted away from fixing and strengthening the levies in New Orleans, a known disaster waiting to happen. Instead time and time again money was diverted from the levees to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This administration has involved our country in wars of conquest and occupation of other peoples' lands. They have destroyed our reputation by not working with allies to peaceably deal with Saddam Hussein and by involving our troops in torture said to not be the policy until Bush threatened to veto the Senate's Anti-Torture Bill because he says we must be able to torture 'insurgents' to get the answers we need, when everyone knows people will say anything they can to just not be tortured.

The same handful of sweetheart companies hired for huge no-bid contracts in Iraq have now reaped multimillion dollar no-bid contracts to rebuild New Orleans as a casino city devoid of the soul that made New Orleans internationally known - the people mostly poor which have been displaced and now are being left out of city planning. Local communities, contractors all heard Bush promise that the money would reach the people on the ground wondering what next to do, having just lost everything they knew before. The next day Haliburton was awarded a 30 million dollar no bid contract.

Unless we end the wars, and stop the flood of money out of our country, the long-term care situation in American will continue worsening as more and more people are labeled too expensive to support. Families will be forced into making the worst kinds of decisions like do we okay the hospital providing emergency treatment for a loved one or simply allow them to die so the family will not be forced to incur the debt from such procedures.

Programs domestically are breaking down and people are being denied their right to simply be. We have been asked to do without and now we are being asked to die, as State governments okay Medicaid cuts which slash vital services which keep many people alive. The acceptable norm is now to allow people, elderly and those with disabilities, to pass often horrifically from starvation/dehydration in hospitals, hospices and nursing homes.

Here we live in the richest country in the world and yet our for-profit health care system, fails to provide coverage for over half of our residents. People are being forced into bankruptcy just trying to pay for health care. Our government does not even provide universal healthcare for all people. If it fails in that one single service, then it has failed as a system and must be changed. It is we the people who will continue to suffer egregiously, purposely deleted, and targeted as a population ripe for organ harvest. Hospitals now profit more from a patient's death than in aiding a person to life. We are living in a nightmare, and to think it is unfolding in America! This nightmare is far from over, and it is becoming public knowledge that bodies and fetuses from abortion clinics are harvested for their parts and sold for high dollar.

What kind of world are we living in? Wake up, people! If we are to take care of ourselves, and address the needs of this country, then all the wars we are involved in outside of our country must end so that we can do the work that must be done here. We must first rid Congress, the White House, and the Judicial Branches of the corrupt forces which do not have the good of the people in mind. We are at war people with forces inside our own government. We are living in a fascist state and the sooner you people realize this the quicker we can resolve the issues facing us as a country. Know your enemy.