Great flame Bowser and a kudo for starting this in the right forum.

I am generally the eternal optimist when it comes to people and I have to tell you that I really looked for the good in the Bushies and that his "home town appeal" would actually equate to real world street smarts. Al Gore's loss really wasn't a huge blow to me because I seriously had felt that I was once again voting for the lesser of two evils than selecting some real dynamic leader. GWB would just be more of his milk toast daddy and we'd survived that era without a lot of scars.

I read voraciously from any source that took the time to comment on Bush and his assembled team and it became apparent early on that there was something sinister beneath the surface. There were a few rah-rah tomes out there that were clearly partisan icing without any real meat to them. I tried hard to respect their words but they were simply amateurish. The respected authors though were all unsettled about the man and his family. I still wasn't sold that he was all that dangerous, no more so than any other paid political hack we'd been subjected to throughout my life.

Slowly though, the sheer volume of stories that started to emerge from the trenches and the amazing fact that the scary character traits described were incredibly consistent put up the hair on the back of my neck. By the time the facts of 9/11 and the buildup of the Iraq War started emerging from the patriotic fervor, those described flaws fit perfectly with the actions.

Not once since that epiphany has this administration or their accomplices in Congress made one decision to ease my worries about the potential danger we were facing.

Now this wasn't some overnight change in my behavior to delve into political intrigue. I've been a fan of politics, history, and power struggles since my first exposure in grade school. Had I suddenly decided in my late middle age to pay attention to the goings on in Washington I could've easily rationalized that my concerns were unfounded, based solely on a new information overload. No, this situation was unique within my lifetime and the years I'd been paying attention. Only the McCarthy era (which I was lucky enough to be too young to really understand at the time) compared to the element of fear and muckraking going on in our nation.

I firmly believe that what you read in Woodward's books is the unfettered truth. There's simply too much external evidence to dismiss his findings.

Art