This column is the fourteenth of a series that Mike will be writing while driving cross-country for his new book tour.  Click here for all of Mike Palecek's books.

CLEVELAND, OHIO - KGB.

It's a novel.

Saturday I spoke to a group at The Planet bookstore in Ann Arbor.

Glenn came up to me, started touching all my books neatly arranged on the table, and asked me, where's KGB. I said I had written it a long time ago. It was my first book.

The letters stand for Killing George Bush.

I've got one copy in the car, but that's it.

Oh. I thought that was what this was all about, he said.

Glenn said that Rush Limbaugh had said there was this guy on a book tour around the country, saying we should kill George Bush.

"I thought, this must be the guy!" he said.

Oh. Well. In the first place, I kind of doubt that Limbaugh would even know who I am.

But, yeah, I guess that could be me.

I'm not looking to kill George Bush, but I did write a novel back around the turn of the century that does have that scenario as a premise.

KGB is set in the Woodbury County jail in Sioux City Iowa. The prisoners are the main characters. I wrote it about the time that Augusto Pinochet was being held somewhere for being a war criminal.

And I figured that we certainly have our own war criminals in the United States, and that if the truth were known about them, they would also be arrested and put on trial.

One of those is George Bush Sr.

In the novel, the inmates in the jail read about Pinochet in the one newspaper that is passed around to all the cell blocks, and they decide that Bush is also a war criminal. They figure out that they have been hurt, attacked by Bush, and if not them personally, then at least persons on their side of the class struggle, warfare.

We really don't know what George Bush Sr. has done to us during his lifetime.

Some say he was involved in the murder of John F. Kennedy.

He says he was in Tyler, Texas that day, but others say he was registered at the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas. He says he was not a member of the CIA during that time. Others point to evidence that says he was. There is also a photo that some say is Bush standing in front of the Texas School Book Depository after the assassination, on Nov. 22, 1963.

He says he was not involved in Iran-Contra. Others say he was intensely involved.

He was a part of the movement of this country toward the boom in prison construction and incarceration, which put multitudes of non-violent offenders in prison for long, long prison terms, destroying families, under the guise of security, but really to further the political careers of people like George Bush Sr.

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He ordered the invasion of Panama, which killed thousands, and what was the real reason for that? Will we ever know?

Do you remember the television shot of the Bush family before the Florida vote came in during the 2000 election? They were sitting around, smirking, scowling, knowing the fix was in, knowing, just knowing that they controlled this country, not the people.

And they were right.

And we can only speculate, imagine that George Bush Sr. was also involved in the planning and carrying out of 9-11.

Will we ever know? Not unless the Democratic Party decides it wants to do its job.

We need a Truth Commission in this country. We need investigations, questions, questions, questions, prosecutions - perhaps prison sentences handed down.

And then maybe some of these so-called conspiracy theories will be rebuked.

But first, we need to find out who we really are.

We need to have real history taught in our schools. Tell the truth to our children. Tell them the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin, Pearl Harbor, 9-11, the Kennedy assassinations, the King murder, the death of Paul Wellstone, CIA drug running in the United States, etc. etc.

Did we really walk on the moon? Yep, it sounds fantastic to doubt it. But the reason it sounds unbelievable to some folks is because they do not think the United States is capable of something like that. Once you start to understand that we are capable of anything, then those sorts of questions don't seem quite so far-out.

At least - at least ask the questions, give the options, let the children know, let the adults know, that things might not be as we think they are.

If we could only air some of these things out, we might find out. We need to find out. We need to not be afraid of the answers.

Why? Why? Why was the Bush administration so afraid of investigating 9-11?

Why did they have to be forced to investigate, and why was the investigation that did result so weak and orchestrated - designed to not get at the real truth. What are they afraid of?

Really.

Let us just have the truth.

We can't handle the lies any longer.

One of the first things George Bush Jr. did after 9-11 was to shut off access to presidential records of previous administrations, including his father's. Why was that necessary at that time? It was not. It was to cover-up, deceive.

And so I think it is plausible to explore in a novel why and how an assassination might be attempted, because the justice system is so lacking - an attempt to bring about justice, perhaps in the only way possible for certain individuals.

It's a novel, asking questions, questions that should have already been asked elsewhere, making statements that should have already been made elsewhere.

It's not about my wanting to kill George Bush Sr., or wishing he would be killed.

It is wrong to kill.

I wish to God that George Bush Sr. knew that.

My novel KGB is a creative endeavor that tries to ask the question - why is the killing of poor people taken so lightly and the idea that they might some day seek revenge considered so extraordinary?

- Mike

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Mike Palecek [send him email] is an activist for peace and social justice. He served time in federal prison for civil disobedience and has run for US Congress. He has authored a number of books [click here to view] on behalf of the cause.