July 30, 2004 - Mr. President, you stood on the ruins if the World Trade Center, you stood before the United Nation, you stood before the World and told us that you were going to bring Bin Laden to justice and we believed you. Then you told us that he was not important and you didn’t care where he was.

Mr. President, you told us that your tax cuts were going to create good jobs and we believed you. Then those jobs ended up in India and Bangladesh and Mexico and China.

Mr. President, you told us that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction; that he had mobile biological weapons labs; that he was rebuilding his nuclear weapons programs and had tried to buy Yellowcake from Niger. We believed you but nobody has seen any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the Niger story was a clumsy forgery..

Mr. President, you told us that the Iraq’s mighty army was a serious and imminent threat to his neighbors and to the United States and we believed you. We believed you right up to the time that the Republican Guard melted away before the brave kids you sent there.

Mr. President, you told us that the GIs you sent to Iraq would be greeted with cheers and flowers by a grateful Iraqi people. We believed you – and so did the mothers of the sons and daughters who lost their lives there – most of them since May 1, 2003.

Mr. President, you stood on the Abraham Lincoln’s flight deck while it steamed in a lazy circle off San Diego and told us that the mission had been accomplished and combat was over in Iraq. We believed you – until the death toll kept mounting and the bombings and ambushes became a daily occurrence right up to today.

You told us that we were fighting for freedom; to preserve our liberty; to extend the America ideal across the Middle East and we believed you – until we saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib and read the accounts from Guantanamo bay.

We believed you when you said we were winning the war on terrorism, that the number of attacks were falling and that we had dismantled Al Qaeda. We believed you right up until the victims in Istanbul, in Morocco, in Bali and Madrid were buried and the State Department corrected their mistake.

You told us that our troops would be coming home last December. We believed you. But the orders were cancelled and the tours were extended once and then again

We believed you when you said those things. We did what you asked of us. We believed you through these four long years.

Now you say that the world has changed, that business can no longer afford to provide health care and pensions for its workers, that the workers are going to have to take responsibility for their own health care systems and for their own retirement systems and that because you have cut them loose life will be better.