Bleh

I, for one, think that last night's rather nasty little debate between the Vice President and Senator Edwards was less satisfying than last week's ass-whupping by John Kerry. Personally, I wish Edwards had talked about Halliburton more.

With a good deal of taxpayer's money going to Halliburton, a corporation that is under investigation for both overcharging the American government for the 'reconstruction' of Iraq and for bribing its way into Nigerian oil contracts, Edwards should have been saying "Halliburton" as often as the President said "Mixed Messages" last week. Halliburton. Halliburton, Halliburton.

This enrages me more than almost anything regarding the mess the White House has made of Iraq. The reconstruction could have been like Iraq's New Deal, a jobs=generating effort to unite the nation, give industries something to do, and allow the Iraqi economy to start moving again after a war and years of crippling sanctions. Sheesh, we even helped the fascist Axis powers reconstruct after WWII, and now Germany, Italy, and Japan are thriving, modern, democratic countries.

With Iraq's economy being engulfed by Halliburton and Bechtel, and Iraqi workers living with a freakishly high unemployment rate, no wonder they are humiliated by the occupation. If Canadians invaded the US, gave the job running a factory that's been yours for years to a Canadian, and either just laid you off entirely or gave you some menial job, how would you feel about Canada?

If I had been John Edwards last night, I would have pounded this mental image into the heads of everyone watching: The Vice President is hopelessly entwined with a corrupt corporation that lies and bribes, and is using taxpayer's money to keep the Iraqi people angry at us. It's the truth.

Speaking of the truth, didn't you just love Cheney's plug for 'factcheck.com,' presumably a website that backs up his statements? Well, beyond the fact that the last time I tried to use the Internet as a source on a term paper I got docked a big fat one, and beyond the fact that he couldn't even get the name of the website right (when you do a lot of making shit up, keeping facts straight seems less important) but the website doesn't even agree with him.

Hopefully, the next debate will be more satisfying. I think either Dick Cheney isn't as dumb as Bush, or Edwards isn't as good an orator as Kerry, or both.