A personality disorder is a deeply ingrained, maladaptive, and inflexible pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that significantly impairs an individual's social or occupational functioning.

Personality disorders are pronounced accentuations of personality traits. Personality disorders are associated with failures to reach potential.

Collectively, the USA suffers from pathological Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

The Diagnostic Scholastic Manual IV Ed. is the psychiatric bible. To be certified NPD, one must meet 5 of the criteria. The USA scores nine out of nine.

1. A grandiose sense of self-importance. To be specific, the grandiosity is that of hubris. Hubris is that unique form of inflated ego that believes itself to be one with the Gods. To exemplify, the USA refers to its’ historical westward expansion and usurping of lands as ‘Manifest Destiny”.

2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance... SUPER-POWER.

3. Believes that USA is "special" and unique ...

4. Requires excessive admiration

So there were WMDs in Iraq after all. They're called digital cameras. Partly because of them the United States faces one of the most humiliating defeats in imperial history. But there's also a clear paper trail. Not just the long and copiously documented record of U.S. torture, with many of its refinements acquired by the CIA from the Nazis after World War II, but the more recent lineage of encouragement.

            By early November 2001, public opinion here in the United States was being softened up for the use of torture. At the start of November, the Washington Post published a piece by Walter Pincus citing FBI and Justice Department investigators as saying that "traditional civil liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information about the Sept. 11 attacks and terrorist plans." Pincus reported that "alternative strategies under discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those used occasionally by Israeli interrogators."

The torture at Al Ghraib is a direct reflection of George W. Bush's moral character, his political beliefs and his military abilities.

Those images streaming out of Iraq reflect the true face of George W. Bush. Until he resigns or is removed from office, there is no way to begin removing the stain on the American character.

This is not about Donald Rumsfeld or a few "bad" soldiers in the field. Nor is it merely about "softening up" detainees to extract information about terrorism.

At their core, these outrages are gratuitous and psychotic. They stem directly from the morals and character of the man now occupying the Oval Office. The beheading of a young American represents the inevitable beginning of a horrific blowback. The spin that somehow Bush operatives are above such behavior, and had nothing to do with provoking it, is tragic nonsense.

The ultimate statement was made by Bush himself when he was governor of Texas. The Texas prison system has a tragic history of sadism and brutality. But Bush dragged it to new depths.

I fought for my country during Operation Iraqi Freedom in order to free the Iraqi people and to allow them to have democracy, including free and fair elections. Isn't it ironic that what I fought to give the Iraqi people is not available to Ohioans?

   In 2003, the Libertarian Party of Ohio collected 57,150 signatures on a petition to receive party status. Party status means that when Libertarian candidates are on the ballot, the party's name, "Libertarian", appears next to the candidate's name, rather than the generic term "Independent", or "other party candidate". During our collection effort, the law concerning the penalties for falsifying a petition signature changed. We were not notified of this change. When we turned in the petitions, Ohio's Secretary of State Ken Blackwell invalidated all of the signatures because of a change of wording on the petition which our petition did not have. In other words, the state changed the rules in the middle of the game. They didn't inform us of the change, and then held us accountable for the change - something I think everyone would agree is completely unfair.

U.S. soldiers and CIA contract professionals, with the knowledge and encouragement of their superiors, committed war crimes against Iraqi prisoners that are all too clear in the graphic images that Dan Rather and CBS executives chose to suppress for two weeks at the request of the Pentagon.  There was no justification for this delay or for the argument, as made by the reactionary columnist William Safire in the May 10th New York Times, that the delay was needed to save the lives of American soldiers.  If it weren't for Seymour Hersh and The New Yorker's plans to publish the story, Rather might still be sitting on this news, denying the public the knowledge we need to participate in our democracy, and doing so simply because the Chairman of Bush's Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, asked him to.