Excerpt from Shayne Corey's commentary column in The Washington Dispatch. For the whole column, click here.

Political Ronin in George Bush's America   

Commentary by Shane Cory
January 7, 2005

"Regardless of his words, the animus of a leader will eventually bleed onto the canvas of history through his own actions."

Since the lead up to the war in Iraq, I have admittedly been suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. Actually, it is more of a branding issue more than an identity crisis.

In 2000, I was a reluctant supporter of George W. Bush. Although I believed that there had to be someone in America who was better qualified than the privileged son of a former president, I had no confidence in the competition.

My support of the president grew after 9/11. Not many can argue that in those trying days, Bush provided comfort and leadership in the face of fear and deep anguish. Little did we know that those attacks may have been prevented had the administration acted upon a single memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within U.S." Hindsight is always 20/20 when lives are at stake.

The invasion of Afghanistan and routing of the Taliban was just and served as a signal to the world that we would seek out those responsible for terrorism at any cost. However, when Bush and his troubled team set their sights upon Iraq, while admitting no connection with 9/11, I was left scratching my head.

While it seems that a majority of Americans bought the WMD fantasy without question, I remained skeptical. Even if Saddam had possessed nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, he had no delivery methods capable of striking far beyond the borders of Iraq. This was widely known and accepted. Essentially the only way that Saddam's Iraq posed a threat to the U.S. is if he Fed-Ex'd over a dirty bomb or two. Any nation or group in the world had those same capabilities. Why would we invade a nation based on a false threat?

I expressed my concern in March of 2003 on these pages and, as a result, I was called ignorant, unpatriotic, un-American and even a traitor for even expressing such thoughts. However, as it turns out, I was right. There was no threat. Instead of owning up to their horrid mistake, the Bush administration attempted to re-write history by changing the reasoning for war. Instead of WMD, it was now the desire to "liberate" the people of Iraq from a brutal dictator. Today, those same people we supposedly went into liberate are killing Americans. So why are we there again?

Over the past two years, George W. Bush and much of his staff have painted their true colors on that canvas of history and their masterpiece is a grim picture of ignorance, arrogance, fraud, pain and death.

As it is obvious that I am no fan of Bush or his apologists, it is automatically assumed by many who do not know me that I am a liberal. However my belief system is ruled by a handful of undeniable absolutes (as a close friend refers to them) that defy a liberal label: the right to life; the right to bear arms; the right to free thought and expression; and a desire for integrity as the cornerstone to life and government.