Republicans claim to love “freedom” unless it involves free speech and makes them look bad. When that happens, they decry “freedom” as leading to any ill that provides convenient cover from political fallout for their many failures, from terrorists “following Americans home” – illogical in the extreme, basically saying the 9/11 terrorists didn’t have a war in Iraq to bog them down – to “emboldening the terrorists” to “leading to defeat.”

Take your pick, freedom certainly isn’t free, and apparently is situational, depending on which Republican is up for re-election.

Republicans aren’t consistent either, though they try to portray themselves as the party of “values” and God. They attacked Democrats who called for hearings into exactly how – after the CIA debunked claims of Saddam Hussein trying to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger – the claim wound up in the State of the Union address.

That’s some doozy of a mistake, courtesy of “freedom loving” and “family values” Republicans, though the implications of deliberately misleading a nation into an unnecessary, ill-planned, ill-funded, and ill-advised war didn’t bother them in the least.

Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins stands shoulder-to-shoulder with George Bush on the war in Iraq, and she has little to say about an army that experts are saying is in dire peril, with troops and equipment at the breaking point. America’s military readiness is also at a dangerous ebb, and all for what?

For Republican politics and power.

Mark Tardif, Waterville