Bush betrayed U.S. out of self-interest

Tom Harper, Henderson

Wednesday, June 4, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.

I read with incredulity the Monday column by Dan K. Thomasson, headlined “Ultimate betrayal,” wherein he questions former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s loyalty and describes McClellan’s expose of the Bush administration as being “detestable” and showing a “lack of political judgment.”

What is more detestable and lacking in political judgment: McClellan’s lack of loyalty and blind partisanship or President Bush’s sending our soldiers to be killed or maimed because of rationalizations and ideological self-interests?

Did the Bush administration show loyalty to this nation by going to war and placing our soldiers in peril, not because it was a necessary war but to satisfy his ideological self-interests, including Bush’s admission to McClellan that all of the great presidents were war presidents? There is no more sacred duty of a president than to set aside self-interests and make decisions in the best interest of the nation.

Though Mr. McClellan betrayed a loyalty to Bush, the Bush administration betrayed this nation by starting and continuing a war based on propaganda and self-interests. President Kennedy, in his commencement address at American University on June 10, 1963, stated: “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war.”

Likewise President Carter, upon receiving the Nobel Prize on Dec. 10, 2002, stated: “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”

Democrats, independents and Republicans must come together to support the Democratic presidential nominee and prevent John McCain from serving a third term of the Bush administration — an administration that will certainly prolong a war that shouldn’t have been started and one that has tragically killed and maimed so many of our brave soldiers.