We believed.

I stumbled across this site tonight (click on my title up there) and I encourage everyone to visit and remember 9-11. I will say that the site was constructed pretty soon after that day, as one can tell by the political statements in it.

The pictures and sound clips from that day will bring you to those moments where we all sat and stared at our televisions and asked "Why".

As we stood transfixed in our living rooms watching Katie Couric and Matt Lauer relay to us moment by moment while the second plane hit, we wondered if it was an accident.

But, no, two planes? Who was attacking us?

We watched the people on the street wander dazed, looking at the buildings on fire.

We watched and listened as fire fighters went into burning buildings and carry people out.

We saw regular people hugging strangers, we saw in their faces that life was never going to be the same again.

We watched in horror as we realized that people were jumping to their deaths rather than face the fire. They were holding hands and jumping. Together.

We saw the streets fill with smoke and dust and debris as working people ran for their lives and hid under cars.

We saw two buildings literally disappear.

And we knew that thousands had just died.

We saw New York City become something of a third world country.

We saw war.

Moms and dads, sisters and brothers walked the streets with pictures of loved ones lost. Candles were lit all over our country. For weeks we watched New York City try to pull itself back together.

We saw countless news reports with lists of names and faces. We learned those famous two words, "Let's roll". And we learned that even in the face of death, we had friends we never knew we had. That they did what they could... they forced their own plane down rather than let the terrorists win. If only they knew how many people loved them for that.

And the President made his speeches. How we believed. We believed we were attacked. We believed our country would find the bad guys and we believed we would have justice. We believed Colin Powell, George Bush and Condi Rice. They swore to the people of this nation that revenge would certainly be had. We put stickers on our cars, we flew the American flag high and proud. We put yellow ribbons on our trees again.

Americans loved America again. At any cost, we wanted to get back at the guy who masterminded this horrible attack.

And then we were lied to. We were convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction... you remember. And we believed. And we went to war. And we freed Iraq. Or at least that's what we were told to believe. And the President was re-elected.

Do you still believe America? Did we get revenge? Did we find the bad guy who tried to bring America to its knees?

We were used. We were taken advantage of, we were lied to.

And here we are in this quandry. We love our military. We support them. Lord knows we support them. (If I see one more stupid magnet that says Support the Troops I'll puke. The $1.99 for every one of those has made some guy super rich, but the military... not so much. Take your 2 bucks and write some letters to the men and women stationed over there. That's support. Any asshole can put a sticker on a car.)

But we hate the war we're in. Because we're in the wrong war. When you watch the video I've linked to, note the signs that say "Declare war on Afghanistan". No mention of Iraq. Because Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9-11.

Saddam Hussein supposedly had lots of weapons. After we were in Iraq for oh, 10 minutes and nothing happened right away... couldn't we sort of figure out that maybe there were no weapons of mass destruction? Why on God's green earth did we continue to scratch our heads and wonder where they were? How come we weren't in Afghanistan?

Oh yeah. They don't have oil.

Now watch the video again and tell me.... as sad as it will make you, it'll piss you off even more.