Congress is set to close "unprofitable" US post offices and hike postage rates due to the "budget crunch" caused by the billions spent on this war for big oil in Iraq. The Post Office was never expected to turn a "profit," any more than the US Navy is. The Post Office was intended by the Founders to help bust any news monopoly by mailing the people's own correspondence, gazettes, bulletins, newspapers and brochures for free or at greatly reduced rates. The Post Office remains necessary, even in an Internet age. But ours is becoming too expensive to use.

Next in line for elimination thanks to the Iraq war agenda of Bush is our national passenger rail system, AMTRAK. Yes, I know it's flawed, but with the further reduction of bare-bones Amtrak funding, large portions of the American plains, with their vast distances, will be without passenger train service. Combine this with all the failing airlines today, and I see a bleak picture of our transportation system, a vital part of living.

Bush's legion of flag-waving, taxpaying true-believers are the among the most egregious suckers in American history. They wave their flags before Emperor Bush while their train system and mail system is decimated and their medical care is increasingly unaffordable. American workers who gave their whole lives to one company's factory are finding their pension and healthcare looted, and their jobs shipped overseas. They face the prospect of spending their last years in poverty.

Workers for large corporations, blue collar and white collar, are seeing their jobs farmed (or "outsourced") out to India and China.

Productive people with a 30- or 40-year record of hard work are dying in poverty because Bush's corporate raiders can no longer "afford" to maintain the pension and health benefits promised. But there is always money to maintain the Israeli welfare state, and the health and well-being of the immigrants from Latin America and East Asia lured into the cheap labor colony known as the United States.

The docility of Americans in the face of rank treason and tyranny guarantees more of the same. Frederick Douglass said, "The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

Wave your flag, America! We beat them damn Arabs, didn't we?

I was rather taken aback to read your article Doug.

It is a mirror image of what is happening in the UK, under Tony Blair.

It would be interesting to know which of the impositions was applied in which country first!

The apparent fact that both the US and UK are following a common policy in the matters you state makes one wonder if there is collusion, and if so, for what unstated objective.

On the face of it, it would appear that huge amounts of money are being taken out of our Western economies and transferred abroad.
Communism comes to mind!!!! Or, at least, a bit of a share-out, to pacify those who may act against the West?
Have you noticed that the best way to get financial aid from the West, is to terrorise. No end of money becomes available from the West, and I suspect that many Countries have cottoned on to this!

Best regards, Bill.