My friend, Carl was a ghost member unattached to any office. Personally, I preferred not to allow him near them, nor in the vicinity of the Montana headquarters. Not because he was a Muslim. I’m not prejudiced. He just had too big a mouth. I told him,

“Government snooping under Homeland Security targets any Arab-American. Being seen with you could focus attention on the Muskets. It could bring all hell down on us.”

“You’re such a coward, Eric,” he retorted.

“Look, Carl, I’m not in the mood to listen to you enumerate all of the horrible things the U.S. has done in the Middle East. Hussein was an animal and regardless of the pretext we used for taking him out, the world is a better place for it. I know it was about oil, but oil aside, the Iraqi people are still better off, at least they will be in the long run. Saddam murdered a quarter of a million Shiites after the Gulf War for their uprising against him.”

“Yeah, and Bush promised to support them in return, but did he? No, he let Hussein butcher them. Then U.S. sanctions following the Gulf war killed a hundred thousand children, Eric. They even banned a dehydration pill that cost a penny and could have saved tens of thousands of children!”

“I don’t defend that. I’ll give you the point. It was unforgivable, but at least Iraq is free of a madman now.”

“Right, and while Israel has more than a hundred nuclear weapons, and the U.S. stood by while they bombed Iraq’s nuclear facilities, an act of outright aggression. Don’t talk to me about liberation for Iraqis. America has killed more Iraqis than Saddam ever did.”