The Impossible Burden (a.k.a. UN Security Resolution 1441): I once read that it is impossible to prove the negative. For example, you can’t prove you haven’t done a thing, say drive a car. Try to prove you’ve never driven. Is every instant of your life on tape? No, then how can you ever positively establish that you have never driven an automobile? Have you ever smoked pot/dope/maryjane? What, can't prove you haven't? Same problem, you have lived 24x7xYears and yet how much of that time have you spent alone? How much of that time is witnessed by another human being or a video camera? Do you know what you do when you're alsleep? Video tape your sleep some time and see how much of it you remember.

I bring this up because last night during his State of the Union address, President Bush never spoke on the State of the Union for which he is President, but on the state of his rant against Iraq. The US of A has placed an impossible burden on Iraq, proving they do NOT have nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. You cannot prove you don’t have something, you can only prove you have something.

This is very convenient for a President who has failed to rally a domestic economy that continues to teeter on the brink of further massive shrinkage, a President that has managed to gut every piece of environmental legislation of the previous eight years. A President that has so far managed to not pass a prescription drug plan that will make medication affordable to a large and ever increasingly senior population, a President that has proven ineffective in managing the dismantling of ‘affirmative action’.

Why is this contentiousness over a possible war convenient? This is convenient for the President in that as the country argues amongst itself about the morality of going to war against Iraq, we as a voting population are distracted from his failures in all other areas of his leadership. Why do we argue whether we have the right to interfere in the affairs of Iraq? Surely if the peoples of Iraq don’t want Saddam Hussein as their leader, it is their responsibility to overthrow him and ask our aid to assist them, heck it worked for Israel.

I must admit I only watched the last 32 minutes of the speech last night. During the time I watched the President, he spoke for a brief moment on North Korea and the lessons of the Korean Peninsula, he spoke briefly of our armed forces gathering in the gulf region and being prepared for the task ahead and for 29 minutes he spoke of the impossible burden the US had pushed through the United Nations (Security Council Resolution 1441) and how Iraq had failed to prove they had no nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. President Bush even created a wonderful doomsday scenario wherein terrorists released a chemical or biological weapon, the horror of which would leave 11-September-01 pale in comparison.

What is the state of our Union Mr. President? Have you distracted us sufficiently to ignore the state of the economy, the value of our investments in our retirement funds, the state of Social Security, the cost of prescription medication for people on fixed incomes, the growing number of unemployed and the lack of new job creation, a raped environment and a failing educational system?

What is the State of the Union Mr. President?

Where are your caretaker responsibilities?
Where are you economic leadership responsibilities?
Where is your representation of the young, the old and the infirm?
Where is your recognition that you represent the residents of Alaska and Vermont as well as Texas and Southern California?
Where is the AMERICAN PRESIDENT?