There have been many controversial events during the Bush Administration, namely 9/11 and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. There are very few fence sitters in this argument. Either you believe that the official government version of events is accurate or you believe that we've not been told the whole story government complicity, in the case of 9/11, and questionable legality, in the case of the invasions).

Thanks to the power of the Internet and the proliferation of blogging, there are literally tens of thousands of opinions of what took place and who is telling the truth. Do partisan politics play a role here? Sure. As does the widely varied background of discussion participants.

I have my own views on each of the events, but they are not important here...at least not until I apply them.

Rather than continue to engage in divisive he said-she said-style arguments, I am making the suggestion here today that we look at what happened in terms of the tangible outcomes. For those of us who believe something more happened than is officially reported, this is more appropriate.

Besides, arguing over the past is futile. We cannot change what happened in the past any more than we can accurately claim that something will happen in the future.

Let us examine some of the tangible outcomes of 9/11:

• Patriot Acts 1&2. Curtailed the rights of ordinary Americans by making the assumption that everyone is guilty until proven innocent. Allowed for illegal wiretapping of phones and snooping of e-mail messages without a warrant. Ended 4th Amendment protection.
• Establishment of the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, but did not really secure our country. Our border with Mexico is still wide open, which means that anyone who means to do our country harm can walk across unabated.
• Population of U.S. kept in a perpetual state of fear. Fear, as psychologists agree, is useful for keeping people malleable and open to suggestion.

Let us examine some of the tangible outcomes of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq:

• World opinion turned against the United States. Any goodwill extended to us after 9/11 is evaporated.
• Several thousand American servicemen and women are dead, more than even Bush is willing to admit officially because mortally wounded and even dead soldiers are flown out-of-theater from Iraq to Germany and are not counted against the total killed in battle in Iraq.
• Tens of thousands of maimed and permanently disabled and disfigured servicemen and women who are not getting the VA care they deserve. In fact, some are even being billed by the military for return of enlistment bonuses because they are being discharged.
• Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. Despite President Bush's bold declaration while strutting around in costume aboard a carrier flight deck back in 2003 that we had "Mission Accomplished", people still continue to die.
• Despite protocols of international law that states that the FIRST PRIORITY of an invading power is to restore basic necessities to the conquered population, many thousands of Iraqis are still without clean water and electricity over 5 years after Mission Accomplished.
• Billions of dollars have been given in no-bid government contracts to friends and associates of Bush, Cheney, and members of the Executive Branch and Iraq is no closer to being fixed than before it was broken.
• Recruitment is down, so recruiters have taken to even more unscrupulous means of getting young people to enlist. These methods include telling them not to declare anti-depressant medications, which they won't take in boot camp and which has cause some recruits to commit suicide.
• High gas prices at the pump. Working families are finding that they cannot afford to send one parent to work to bring in enough money to even pay for the gas to send the parent to work.
• Many thousands of new terrorists have been created--terrorists who would not have existed were it not for the manner in which the United States has executed the war.
• International outrage against our government for condoning and participating in torture, itself against international law. Plus, Bush is forgetting that torture has LONG been discredited with producing useful information. Torture anyone long enough, they will tell you anything you want to know. Therefore, the only reason for torture is psychological warfare against a civilian population, itself illegal under international law.

I could go on because the Bush Administration has given us plenty of opportunity to see the tangible outcomes of their policies.

In conclusion, I have given but a few examples in contemporary American history why it is more constructive to examine the application of what happened instead of the events in dispute. This exercise can be applied to any historical event to help us understand what lessons need to be learned so that we don't repeat them again.