Why I am glad Howard Dean is not the Democratic Nominee
Sometimes it's really good not to get what one wants. Thank goodness Howard Dean isn't going to be elected President this time around!
Every day it becomes clearer that the next President is going to have a terrible mess to deal with. It's not just the war in Iraq, the lagging economy, the lack of universal medical care, the failure to set up a sustainable energy program or the mal-distribution of our national wealth.
No, the biggest problem is going to be the ecocide we are perpetrating in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East by dumping our nuclear wastes every time we expend another bullet, dispatch another bomb or destroy another tank. While it might have seemed a neat sollution to the problem of what to do with the depleted uranium left over from the nuclear fuel enrichment process, using it to "harden" munitions and shield our own tanks is going to turn out to be one of the stupidest things we ever did.
I say "we" because it was out representatives, including Senator John Kerry, who approved the recycling of a toxic metal into weapons that turn into mist when they explode and disperse their toxic particles into air, water and soil.
While some people might argue that George W. Bush, who created the mess in Iraq, should be responsible for cleaning it up, someone who repeats the same crime over and over again to "prove" he wasn't wrong in the first place, is not someone to trust.
Senator Kerry, on the other hand, knows when a mistake was made and, having been there, he knows who made it. So, it only seems fair that he should lead the effort to make it right. Or, at least, to start in the right direction.