I protest.

Being horrified.

Kos is horrified that it is now clear that our invasion of Iraq had little, if anything, to do with "weapons of mass destruction." He refers to this article from ABC: ABCNEWS.com : Officials: 9/11 Was Main Reason for War, in which "white house officials" admit that those "weapons" were an excuse and not the real, primary reason we went to war.

Kos is horrified. Well, yeah, I can understand that reaction. My reaction, though, is more along the lines of, "yeah, and?" Far from being shocked or horrified, I'm about as unsurprised as it is possible to be.

Why am I not shocked? Why am I not horrified that thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans were killed or injured so that Bush could "make a point?" Why? Because I've been saying this since 9/11/2001. On that day, as I watched the planes hit the towers, as I watched the towers come down and three thousand people die, I had one sick, horrifying, fleeting thought: Did they do this or allow it to happen? "They" being the people who had recently gained control of the Executive branch of our government.

Now, I don't seriously think for a moment that Bush or his "advisors," the neocons or anyone else in our government actually arranged the events of 9/11. The risk to them would have been simply too high. (On the other hand, they could easily have ignored or suppressed intelligence reports indicating that such a thing was about to happen, and indeed there is some evidence supporting this line of thought.) I really don't think "they" did it or even stood by and let it happen. Unfortunately, that doesn't matter.

I knew on that day that the events of 9/11 were the best thing that could possibly have happened for George W. Bush and his crowd of hyperconservative Republicans. Over the weeks that followed, I watched events unfolding and I waited for the other shoe to drop. At one point I confessed my fear to my therapist, who hurried to reassure me that bin Laden was no immediate threat, and I had to tell him that bin Laden was not who I was afraid of. I was afraid of the Bush administration. I knew that the fear engendered by 9/11 gave them virtual carte blanche to do anything they wanted with respect to limiting civil rights or engaging in war.

Within a few short weeks, the so-called "USA PATRIOT" Act was passed by Congress, pushed through as quickly as possible to take advantage of the climate of fear. A few weeks more and we're bombing Afghanistan. I hate the Taliban, they are vile, ignorant, vicious brutes, but I didn't really believe that they were behind 9/11. Bin Laden, maybe, but he was so well-hidden that we still have yet to locate him. So we invade Afghanistan, though. Fine. Death, destruction and finally we pretty much just walk away, just like I guessed that we would.

Worse, though, at least for individual Americans over the long term, was what was happening all around us. Invasive checks at airports (I mean, come on, disallowing toenail clippers?), profiling, lists of people who are harassed when trying to board a flight or who are even prevented from flying, "material witness" arrests and the rest. Worse, much worse, was (and is) the further gradual erosion of our civil rights.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address in 1933, that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Our "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror" began on 9/11/2001. It's nameless because none of us truly knows of what to be afraid, it is only a general dread of "terrorism," what ever that is. It's unjustified because the chances of being killed by a terrorist overseas is roughly one in 2.2 million (from this site; the chance of that happening in the United States are quite a bit less than that. Once has a much, much better chance of being struck by lightning, which is almost four times more likely. And let's not even talk about being killed in an automobile accident, which is better than one in a hundred. Is a fear of terrorism reasonable? Hell, no.

And what do you think will happen to the next group of idiots who try to highjack an American plane? On that day, 9/11/2001, I told my wife that the next person who tries will be torn to pieces by enraged passengers. I have said that ever since, but it is only recently that I've begun to hear the same thing from others. Highjacking changed completely on 9/11. When a person next tries to highjack a plane, the passengers will finally see a target for their terror and anger and they will know that they have nothing to lose, that they are probably going to die anyway. The result may be a few injured or dead passengers but it is guaranteed that there will be a dead highjacker or highjackers. Highjacking has been rare in the United States and it has now become a guaranteed death sentence.

Our fear of terrorism is unreasoning and unjustified. Yet the Bush administration still uses it to manipulate us into sitting still while they do what they like. They raise the "threat level," they warn us about "potential terrorism," yet has there been a single incident since the highjackings and the anthrax mailings? Not one. And I don't attribute that to FBI efficiency. If it were the case that the FBI had prevented an attack, wouldn't the government crow about it? Wouldn't the Bush administration show the evidence and those involved, to show that the measures they've taken are working? I would think so, but where are they? All the "trials" are happening in secret. So why is the administration hiding this?

The war in Iraq wasn't about "weapons of mass destruction," and anyone who thought it was is either a fool, ignorant, or not paying attention. It's not clear to me just what it really was about (and I trust what "White House officials" say about as far as I can comfortably spit out a rat [RIP, Douglas Adams]) but it has long been clear to me that it's not about what they're saying it's about.

I understand why Kos is horrified. Unfortunately, though, to me this is just more of what I've come to expect.