An open government is one that does not hold secrets from its citizens and allows for criticism without retribution. If we as a society claim to value democracy, than it is of the utmost importance to enforce our right to having a transparent government. Of the many lessons that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars taught us, the fact that our government is not transparent is one of the most important ones. A large justification that the Bush administration gave for the invasion of Iraq was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that threatened their allies in the region. ("Bush) This was proven later to be entirely false, and came with an unsettling moral implication (Associated). The popular opinion for the justification of a war had been manipulated by the State in a less than honest way. In order for our society to remain free and democratic, things like that cannot continue to occur. Our democratic process isn't democratic at all whenever the public opinion is manipulated on bad evidence. The amount of disturbing actions that were leaked about some of the tactics used in combat in Afghanistan weaken the image of transparency of the U.S. government on this issue even more (Winett).