In four years, the Bush Administration has given up on finding Osama, waged an unnecessary war against Iraq, kept more than 500 detainees imprisoned without charges or access to the courts and lawyers, while charging fewer than 2% with crimes, and instituted anti-terrorist measures like the no-fly list which is just as likely to include a member of Congress or an American toddler as it is a terrorist.
In the criminal realm, the Ashcroft-Gonzales regime has scared bumbling holy warriors into pleading guilty to avoid being designated as enemy combatents and sent to the bottomless pit of Guantanamo, while no one who played a part in the 9/11 attacks has been brought to justice. (And yes, Moussaoui, who is about to face a death penalty trial next month, is just another bumbling holy warrior who had no part in 9/11.)
There's some ingenuity in Rove's plan. If Americans accept it for the Congressional races in 2006, those of us who could make a difference in the Presidential election of 2008 will all be in jail.
They will get us for our google searches; by designating routine drug crimes as narco-terrorist offenses with exhoribant mandatory minimum sentences; by imprisoning parents who dare to share a joint with a kid in the house; by jailing college kids who refuse to snitch out their dorm-mates; by preventing law-abiding ex-offenders from voting; even by ensuring that ex-sex offenders have no place to live or work or worse, die because they are denied access to hurricane shelters.
There will be an exeption of course--for those who embrace faith and get religion. They will get many second chances. Accept Karl Rove's vision of America and the only free people left in America will be the fundamentalists -- both those on the radical right and the terrorists.
That's the truth behind Karl Rove's dreams for Republicans. If it's not your dream, your best bet is to work your tail off in 2006 and make sure the whole lot of them get booted out of office.
[graphic created exclusively for TalkLeft by CL]