This one's for Molly

Syndicated columnist Molly Ivins – a true red-hot mama and Texas liberal firebrand – died Wednesday. She was 62.

I didn’t agree with her half the time, but I couldn’t fault her style. But in her final column, published Jan. 11, Molly nailed it with her final words to her readers:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”

AIIGHT, MA'AM. This one’s for you, from The Mighty Favog. May God rest your soul.

* * *

The Hon. Lee Terry
Representative, Nebraska 2nd District
1524 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Representative Terry:


I will not take up much of your time – or, more accurately, your staffer’s – for what I have to say is simple:

Impeach President Bush. Impeach Vice-President Cheney.

These two men, it is plain, have lied and miscalculated us into a tragic, calamitous war in Iraq that (it is now clear to all) we had no business starting. There were no weapons of mass destruction; there was no nuclear-weapons program; there was no call to oust that country’s despotic president because that responsibility properly belonged with the Iraqi people, not with an American hegemon.

This unjust war is not about “freedom and democracy.” This unjust war IS about the stupidity and pride bedeviling the two fools who pilot our ship of state. Indeed, all we have done in Iraq is create the conditions for the rise of Shia mob-ocracy.

Tell me, sir, what kind of “freedom” is possible when you’re getting blown up daily by terrorist bombs or killed by sectarian death squads? We, at the instigation of President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, are the perpetuators of a grotesque and catastrophic farce, for which the consequences have been -- and will continue to be -- dire.

The blood of nearly 3,100 American troops (and God only knows how many Iraqis) is on the hands of these two miscreants. And, by extension, the blood also is on your hands and mine.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, I (like you) believed President Bush and the “intelligence” he presented us. I thought Saddam’s Iraq presented enough of a threat that a pre-emptive war might be justifiable; I thought there was an Iraq-al Qaida link.

In retrospect, I was a damned fool. And so were you.

I now am trying to make amends for that; are you now willing to do the same? Are you now willing to hold a dangerously incompetent and mendacious administration accountable for its misdeeds and incompetence?

We have an administration that is systematically degrading our military and eroding our geostrategic interests in a deeply stupid, highly costly war -– a war that was unjustly waged from the start.

We have an administration that cannot and will not secure our southern border or seriously enforce immigration law in the American workplace. This has contributed to the suppression of American blue-collar wages, as well as to the plight of our most vulnerable fellow citizens.

We have an administration that utterly bungled the response to the biggest natural disaster in more than a century – the destruction of a large swath of the Gulf Coast in Hurricane Katrina.

We have an administration that has shown utter contempt for the Bill of Rights, as well as for the legitimate rights and powers of Congress.

If this is not –- at a minimum -– official malfeasance, what is, pray tell?

Sir, I write as someone who is not politically conservative but who most certainly is socially conservative . . . and ardently pro-life. I used to be a reluctant Republican; the Bush Administration has turned me into a disaffected Democrat.

Even as a Democrat, I do not relish the thought of President Pelosi. In all likelihood, she would pursue a social agenda I would oppose vigorously.

But this is what we have come to: the point where the presidential calamity that might be is preferable to the utter presidential catastrophe that most certainly is.

The war must end. Bush and Cheney must go.

And may God have mercy on us all.