7. The Bush administration went so far as to forbid photographs of returning, flag-draped American coffins, so that the press and people would not be able to readily see the evidence of our bloody foolishness.
8. The economy called "essentially sound" by our current President Bush, began a series of dives, wavering, and then near crash.
9. The world's economic systems, just this past week, in response to our own, began to decrease interest rates, and, as in the case of the United Kingdom, nationalize banks.
10. Returning veterans of the Iraq war found little or no support from the Veteran's Administration for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, as well as adequate medical and therapeutic care - along with job retraining and opportunities.
11. Afghanistan, home of the coveted poppy, shielded and funded terrorists and still apparently has Bin Lauden in safe keeping.
12. Body and vehicle armor proved inadequate in our war sites, causing the impromptu ingenuity in the outfitting of military vehicles and personal gear for our soldiers.
13. Israel grew to fear the threat of Iran's destruction of its people by nuclear means.
14. North Korea, like East Germany long before it, became a horrid "Checkpoint Charlie" - except that its Dictator, Kim Jong-Il had fast begun experiments in nuclear armiment.
15. Next to Israel, Palestine, still in search of its security as a nation, resorted to terrorist attacks upon innocents in buses throughout Israel's cities.
16. Georgia, next to Russia, became the first intervention by a still continuously Soviet minded government - in the person of Vladimir Putin - where, in fact ethic cleansing may actually be taking place.
17. Dar Fur, and the Congo, in Africa, have become ever more haunting images nightly for American television audiences.
18. Our citizens increasingly prefer the hiding of money in mattresses to the 'safety' of FDIC insured bank accounts.
19. Nightly PBS international television reports cite the American dollar as a red flag waved at the entire world's economy.
20. Calls to "Drill, baby, drill" ignore an American infrastructure incapable of refining whatever we find in our threatened sea waters and gulfs' natural habitats. In ecological and political terms, we have become of a mind to finally recognize "An Inconvenient Truth" and the politics of fear as Al Gore also detailed in "The Assault On Reason."
21. Yes, number twenty-one - let's make this a twenty-one gun salute! - nations encouraged by the election of an African American President, still wonder if we have any real credibility abroad because of the above ethically questionable ventures. And too many of our policies now, shamefully, verge upon fascism.
So much has happened, that, quite frankly, the American head is spinning.
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