Lies or half-truths, incomplete or missing information are what people have gotten used to with their governments, and U.S. citizens are not exempt. Election after election, Republican after Democrat, mistakes happen and sometimes, lies follow. With almost every administration there has been a scandal: Bill Clinton provided the world a soap opera-style presidency, and with George W. Bush we have lived an action-packed nightmare.

During Bush’s administration there were the Sept. 11 attacks that led to the war with Iraq. We all know the reasons for the war: weapons of mass destruction, the horrible ties with al-Qaida which terrorized our country on Sept. 11, and of course to “free” the people of Iraq, thus making our nation a safer place.

However, not only did the Sept. 11 commission not find evidence of ties between al-Qaida and Iraq yet, it said that their links in the 1990s never led to a formal relationship. And although the commission has been “open for evidence,” we are all still waiting for the other government officials to provide such.

We now know that there were not any WMD; however,

CNN.com reported that members from the Senate Intelligence Committee said our president and Congress sent the country to war based on “flawed” information “provided by the intelligence community.”

The same article explains how during a Republican rally, Bush said “we removed a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing weapons of mass destruction, and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them.”

It seems like Bush ignored the report provided by the “intelligence community” that stated Iraq had not reconstructed its nuclear weapons program and that its military had been degrading since the 1990s.

And while our government “liberates” Iraq, Osama bin Laden plans another attack.

Wasn’t the purpose of the war to make our country a safer place after the al-Qaida attacks of Sept. 11? Maybe our intelligence community mixed up Iraq with Afghanistan, or Saddam with Osama. Well of course not! The intelligence community doesn’t confuse those, only some college students.

Senior intelligence officials say the possible attack planned by al-Qaida might be similar to the Madrid train bombings, which happened days before Spain’s elections in March. Officials say that al-Qaida’s abilities have been degraded by the anti-terrorist efforts; however, the organization is still strong. If this is true, the person who our country should’ve been after was bin Laden. And while the war in Iraq brought down Hussein, bin Laden was planning another attack.

Incomplete or missing information seems to be what governments are all about. We have to do our own research to find out what really is going on in our countries and our governments. When our leaders talk, we are expected to believe what they say. If we would listen to everything that our government officials say, we would discover contradiction after contradiction.

Unfortunately, when our leaders give speeches, some believe them blindly, and others do not pay attention to what they say.

With elections coming soon, the only thing we can do is practice our right to vote (we do live in a democracy), cross our fingers, hope that this time we do not need a recount of votes, and wish for a change. It seems like we will be voting for the lesser of two evils, George W. Bush or John Kerry.

Wait; is there any one else running for president? Well of course; there are more than 15 candidates for the presidency, we just never hear about them (except occasionally we might read something about Ralph Nader). It seems though that we are used to two choices: Republican or Democrat.

There are many who are pleased with Bush’s presidency; others just want him out, and if getting him out of office means voting for Kerry, that’s what they’ll do, and they will forget about everyone else in the presidential race.

As we already know what Bush is about, maybe it is time to change the channel and see what another candidate has for us. But if you are a fan of action-packed horror flicks, you’ll probably stick with the first option.