This year ...

It's even more disgraceful. In addition to playing 9/11 for all it's worth for another year, now the memory of those who died that day will be further defiled by General "Baghdad Bob" Petraeus' "Surge Report", telling Congress how absolutely swimmingly it's going in Iraq.

It's bad enough the cable and broadcast networks will spend another day with nothing but programming from Ground Zero, once more using the corpses of innocents to further their ratings race, to further the agenda of the White House, to get Americans pissed off enough at 'the ragheads', to get Congress distracted enough, so 'business as usual' remains in Iraq.

Most Americans believe nothing will change and anything Petraeus says will be scripted by the White House. It's time to stop looking to the past and look to our future and that, my friends, is very bleak. Things have to be fixed in a big way and repeating "everything changed after 9/11" ain't gonna do it.

The exploitation of 9/11, on every level, is only stagnating this nation. The deaths of 3000 of my friends and neighbors have been exploited for everything from an illegal war in Iraq, to the obfuscation of our civil rights. I'm tired of it. Mark the day, let the dead rest in peace, and stop using it to coerce the American people to do things they know are wrong.

It's time for the Dems in Congress to stand up, call bullshit on Petraeus, and say it's time to change course now, not in a year, not in five, not in ten. September 11th was a black day in our history, let us not allow it to be the milestone historians will point to and say "this was the beginning of the end of the United States of America".