La Voz

Editor,

A year ago, when we very squarely asked Colin Powell why he lied to the American people, his answer was, "I did the best I could with the information I had". I had to agree with him - he pulled off the biggest snow job of the century.

His performance at Flint Center last year was every bit as clever: War? What war? I'm just a happy retired military PR guy, fingering my blackberry in my underwear, driving my Corvette, enjoying the rare luxury of full health care, and hiding from students. Yes, hiding! No one is sure how he exited Flint on November 11, 2005. He could not face the generation that will fund and die for his expanding portfolio of investments in an unsustainable economy based on war. What an act.

In retrospect, the really disturbing part of his monologue was the common quip about democracy being the thing that allows the dissent outside the walls of Flint Center. In his view, it does not require the government to take its orders from the population - only to let them have their point of view without killing them. In his view, those students who got beaten and pepper-sprayed and threatened with deportation were lucky to be alive.

When the drums beat again to "redeploy" troops to Iran to protect Powell's form of democracy, we will be there with the students and do all we can to protect them from the batons.

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