Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 10/09/02

Artist's Statement

As of this writing, the Bush administration is clearly determined to invade Iraq, over the protests of half the American people and everyone else in the world. Some people say it's about the oil reserves, some say it's all about approval ratings and re-election, or revenge, or just making an example of one defiant dictator to establish unchallenged American global hegemony for the twenty-first century. I have no fucking idea why they want to invade Iraq; the only thing I know for certain is that it is not for the reasons they're giving us, because 1.) they don't make sense 2.) they keep changing and 3.) whenever they fall through the administration just comes up with new ones or, lately, doesn't even bother and goes ahead with the invasion plans anyway.
And this, in truth, is one of the main reasons I'm opposing them: because I just don't trust them. It's obvious that they must have ulterior motives too opportunistic and scummy to be publicly owned up to, or they'd just explain them instead of trying to frighten and bully us all into it.

What I can't believe, in spite of my thirty-five years of consistently disappointing experience with my fellow human beings, is that it's working. It just amazes me that anyone is taking the administration's claims at face value, or pays attention to the President's speeches and considers and debates them as though they contained information, as though they were actually intended to communicate. I'm like: have these people never heard of being lied to? Have they never seen an advertisement, or bought a used car, or been to a singles' bar?

And it was this last idea that stuck, and turned into this cartoon. It seemed like a universal situation to use to point out that the reasons people give for their actions (especially people in power) are hardly ever the real reasons. The South clamored about "States' Rights" because they wanted to keep the blacks in their place. Pro-lifers weep with love for microscopic zygotes because they hate human beings and want fornicators to be punished. The wealthy don't support tax cuts because it'll stimulate the economy -- they just want More Money for Them. And this administration insults our intelligence by claiming to care that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator--shit, our government supported him while he was comitting all his infamous atrocities.  So let's cut the bullshit: there is no point in refuting the administration's "reasons" for attacking Iraq because they don't believe their reasons any more than  we do.

In other words, they do not love us. They just want to fuck us.