'Support Our Troops'. The bumper stickers are everywhere. The sentiment is seemingly ubiquitous. It's a nice, warm and cozy expression. But what has the word 'support' actually come to mean? It seems the word has been hijacked by a group of men intent on doing the exact opposite of supporting the troops. And it seems the same group has duped the rest of us into an Orwellian trance where we believe in their new definition of the word 'support'.

On the radio today, a member of the leading party was discussing the need for Americans to put aside their political differences and rally behind the troops. He argued that even if individual Americans did not support the war, even if they believed the war was undertaken under dubious circumstances, the war was now a reality - like it or not. And we all needed to drop our opposition to the war, and 'Support Our Troops'.

Of all the asinine things written and repeated in the media over the course of the war in Iraq, this notion of 'support' for the troops is perhaps the most egregious. Let us be clear about what this politician was saying: even though a select group of men in suits in and around the White House with zero combat experience, almost zero military experience, and zero family members serving in the military fabricated well-documented lies and pretenses for invading Iraq to secure long-term domination over the regions' natural resources to funnel vast sums of money directly into the private defense and oil industries with which they have such intimate ties - even though this is all true, we are supposed to drop our opposition to this conspiracy and collectively insist that the troops remain in Iraq, where they are being shot at every day by real bullets we will never see, and where they will have to shoot back real bullets at people they've never met who never actually engaged in the evi l behavior we were told justified our invasion.

Have we completely and utterly lost the capacity to think logically? How will our silence and compliance in any way 'support' those troops? What the troops need is for us to straighten our backs, stand up and demand that our leaders take responsibility for their lies and deceptions, so that the troops - individual American men and women - can come back home immediately. To return to their families, their friends, their loved ones and lives.

The troops do deserve our support. But we have to recapture the meaning of that word 'support' from the people who have kidnapped and skewered it with their absurd agenda and sleight of hand.