PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Our path to self destruction in utterly futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reminds me of a nightmare version of The Wizard of Oz.

The vaunted American military machine is just a cruel illusion as President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, Defense Secretary Gates and General Petreaus skip along a body-riddled, blood soaked road of dead foreigners and Americans to find a way out of a land they don't understand and will never master.

Sadly, there will be no courage, no heart, no brain and no return home for our foolish four, only endless war which will bankrupt us as surely as it will send untold thousands to an early grave, a life of crippling injury or madness.

We continue these lost and unnecessary causes in part on the ghost of Osama bin Laden, most likely the long dead boogeyman who we conveniently pretend is alive to keep our Military Industrial Complex humming along on all cylinders as the rest of the once great American manufacturing base disappears before our eyes and our infrastructure and social safety net disintegrate.

This is one version of The Wizard of Oz that won't garner any Oscars.

Originally published in the Glen Ellyn News, November 4, 2009

A LITTLE LATE...AND A LITTLE DEEP

The October 30th, page 8 Chicago Tribune story "Lawyer details Dugan's Is mention of Nicarico", was easy to miss but hard to forget if not overlooked. It describes LaSalle County Public Defender George Mueller's July 5, 1985, encounter with Brian Dugan concerning the Melissa Ackerman murder which Dugan pleaded guilty to that November, earning himself a life sentence. Dugan offered his first confession of his guilt in the 1983 murder of Jeanine Nicarico and added that the two street punks, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, who DuPage prosecutors had railroaded to a death sentence four months earlier, were, in fact, innocent.

The stunned rookie defendant advocate realized he needed to intervene on behalf of the two doomed men. DuPage county prosecutors were not impressed. They had two notches prepared for their prosecutorial guns and weren't about to let the truth get in their way. It took another ten years and four months of mental torture for the two men to be exonerated of the Nicarico murder and another ten years after that for Dugan to finally be indicted. Four years later, Dugan awaits the verdict of life or death as DuPage prosecutors continue their twenty-six year saga to kill someone for this horrible crime.

The article was great. Too bad it wasn't featured on page 1...twenty-four years and three months ago.