October 3, 2004 - Just think — only one more month, and the most divisive election in living memory will be over!

I haven't seen Americans so angry and polarized since the days of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Why is that so, I wonder? (Hint: it's not all John Kerry's fault.)

I'm not going to tell you who to vote for. To quote former conservative icon Bill O'Reilly: "In America today, with both sides peddling lies and defamation and spin, it is alarmingly difficult just to get simple facts on which to base a responsible vote. "

But one thing I do know — this war in Iraq is a misguided fiasco that never should have happened.

If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe retired Col. David Hackworth, an Austin Peay grad and former Screaming Eagle. In an article for the current issue of Playboy — titled "Why the Military Never Learns" — Hackworth describes Iraq as "the biggest military miscalculation this country has ever made."

That means worse than Vietnam, history buffs.

He adds that Iraq is "the wrong battlefield. Invading Iraq was as wrongheaded as FDR ordering an attack on Brazil would have been on the night of Dec. 7, 1941, just after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor."

Hackworth, whose column appears in this newspaper every Sunday, points out that our real enemy is Osama bin Laden. Remember him? The architect of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? The guy the White House never mentions anymore?

Quite a few writers — Hackworth included — have argued that we botched the Afghanistan mission. We didn't send enough troops to stabilize the country, let alone seal the borders. We counted on the Pakistani army and the Northern Alliance to catch bin Laden. Turns out they had other priorities. Bin Laden got away.

As we know now, the White House didn't want to commit a lot of soldiers to Afghanistan. It held back troops for the real action — the invasion of Iraq. (See James Fallows' cover story in the current Atlantic Monthly, "Bush's Lost Year," for a detailed account of this folly.)

Former security adviser Richard Clarke writes in his book, "Against All Enemies," that on the morning of Sept. 12, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, were already talking about attacking Iraq. Rumsfeld complained that there were no good bombing targets in Afghanistan, while Iraq offered a bounty.

Bush personally accosted Clarke and asked him to provide evidence that Iraq was involved in 9/11. Clarke reported there was no such evidence, which wasn't what the administration wanted to hear.

The CIA and other agencies repeatedly told the White House there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but those reports were rejected. The CIA finally coughed up what was desired — false or outdated reports on Iraq's weapons.

An intelligence insider told reporter Seymour Hersch what it was like to deal with Wolfowitz and his cronies: "They didn't like the intelligence they were getting, so they brought in people to write the stuff. They were so crazed and far out and difficult to reason with — to the point of being bizarre. Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God. It it doesn't fit their theory, they don't want to accept it."

More than a year since the invasion began, Iraq is a chaotic quagmire. Because we didn't seal the borders, terrorists have poured in from other countries. Three dozen Iraqi cities or towns are controlled by insurgents, as is a huge slum in Baghdad.

Car bombings have reached epidemic proportions. More than a thousand American soldiers have died to gratify the egos of some neo-conservative philosophers in Washington. And we're still waiting to hear about an exit strategy.

Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said last month of the slow progress of rebuilding in Iraq: "It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing, it's now in the zone of dangerous."

Humorist Jon Stewart got in some good licks at interim prime minister Allawi's visit to the U.S. last week. Who better to give us the straight facts on the situation in Iraq than the guy we hand-picked, Stewart cracked.

As for Allawai's comment that greed and corruption were disappearing from Iraq, Stewart remarked: "Greed and corruption? Is Halliburton leaving?"

All over Clarksville, people are putting yellow-ribbon stickers on their cars. The stickers say: "Support our troops."

I also believe in supporting our troops. And the best way to support them is to get them out of Iraq.

Are you listening, politicians?

This is a column of personal opinion. Contact wire editor George Poagueat 245-0744 or by e-mail at georgepoague@theleafchroni cle.com.

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