Op-Ed

I've never been the kind of donor who gives matching grants. In fact I've never been a major donor at all, just someone who gives $25 here and $50 there to a bunch of causes I believe in, because that's what I can afford.. So I loved the Democratic National Committee email that invited me and other ordinary citizens to make modest online pledges, to be redeemed when new donors contributed. For a moment, I got to play Ford Foundation. And a woman in Knife River, Minnesota matched the $50 that I pledged on the DNC site. "I'm newly retired and uncertain about what I can actually afford to give," she emailed, "But the matching offer prompted me to respond despite that uncertainty. I agree with you that this regime must be stopped."

Stunning coincidence. The verdict in the long-running trial of Saddam Hussein in Iraq is now due two days before our congressional elections in November. Astounding. How ineffable.

            Sometimes you know the Republicans have just lost the rag completely. This week, Dick Cheney said to Rush Limbaugh regarding the Iraqi government, "If you look at the general, overall situation, they're doing remarkably well." The vice president also acknowledged there's some concern because the war wasn't over "instantaneously." We have now been in Iraq just one month shy of the entire time it took us to fight World War II. Seventy Americans dead so far in October. Electricity in Iraq this year hit its lowest levels since the war started.

            What infuriates me about this is the lying. WHY can't they level with us? Just on the general, overall situation.

Peace activists were arrested on the 26th on the west grounds of the United States Capitol. The event was organized by the Declaration of Peace, and the plan was to march around the Capitol and then proceed to protest in Senators' offices (plans are to go to House Members' offices tomorrow). A group of hundreds was stopped by Capitol Police when trying to cross Constitution Avenue from the Upper Senate Park. When the police finally relented and allowed the group to cross, only a few dozen made it across. The group was divided and some reportedly proceeded east to the Senate office buildings. The few dozen who made it initially to the west grounds of the Capitol attempted to walk up a number of paths toward the Capitol steps, and were blocked each time by a wall of police. A group of activists carrying a coffin and led by Max Obuszewski attempted to walk through a police line and were arrested and taken away in vans.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/sites/afterdowningstreet.org/images/d… 

AUSTIN, Texas -- One reason despair is not an option is because things can always get worse, and then what'll we do? I was actually trying to figure that out when I came across a remarkable article written for the The Nation magazine (known for its liberalism for 141 years) by Richard J. Whalen -- a conservative in good standing, a former Nixon staffer. Whalen has undertaken the singularly valuable task of talking to dissenting generals about the war in Iraq.

            I suppose one could argue, and I am sure someone will, that these are mostly retired generals. Some, like Lt. Gen. William Odom, are calling Iraq "the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States." And they are retired precisely because of their opposition to Iraq.

            "The only question is whether a war serves the national interest," one retired three-star told Whalen. "Iraq does not."

It's easy to delight in the Hastert/Foley meltdown, and how it's hit a national nerve. Building on all the administration's abuses, failures, and lies, the cover up of this out-of-control congressman may just give America the inadvertent gift of a chance to finally change course.

As I read the daily stories, though, I fear that too many of us will devour them with relish, then do little more than gloat. I worry that we'll be so busy following each breaking revelation about the self-destruction of a regime so drunk on it's own power it's finally overreached, that we'll end up doing nothing but cheering. At a moment when those long disengaged or disagreeing might finally be receptive, that would be a profound loss. Because the degree of the electoral shift in this key election will likely be decided by the volunteer energy that turns out borderline participants to vote.

Tony Judt, the NYU professor and liberal writer for the New York Review of Books, has just discovered some of the consequences of publicly criticizing Israeli government policies, as he has been doing. Here's a message he released on Oct. 4: "I was due to speak this evening, in Manhattan, to a group called Network 20/20 comprising young business leaders, NGOs, academics, etc, from the U.S. and many countries. Topic: the Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. The meetings are always held at the Polish Consulate in Manhattan.

No one knows exactly how many Iraqi civilians have died from the war’s violence since the invasion of their country. The new study from public health researchers at Johns Hopkins University estimates that the number of those deaths is around 601,000, while saying the actual total could be somewhere between 426,369 and 793,663. Such wartime figures can’t be precise, but the meaning is clear: The invasion of Iraq has led to ongoing carnage on a massive scale.

While we stare at numbers that do nothing to convey the suffering and anguish of the war in Iraq, we might want to ask: How could we correlate the horrific realities with the evasive discussions that proliferated in U.S. news media during the lead-up to the invasion?

In mid-November 2002 -- four months before the invasion began -- a report surfaced from health professionals with the Medact organization and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “The avowed U.S. aim of regime change means any new conflict will be much more intense and destructive than the [1991] Gulf War,” they warned, “and will involve more deadly weapons developed in the interim.”

What blessings, what outrage.

The Amish child said, "Shoot me first." The survivors counseled forgiveness and prayed for the soul of the murderer. This was all too solemn and too real to be purveyed by the mainstream media as picturesque curiosity, horse-and-buggy morality in the age of the Hummer.

The Amish modeled courage and healing for the rest of America. They modeled a peace built not on intimidation and conquest but on respect and forgiveness. They shut down the cynics for almost a week. They grieved, they buried their dead and they reached out to the killer's widow.

Kneel with them, mourn with them, rise up angry.

The body count in our nation's schools over a period of barely a week was eight innocents: students, a teacher, a principal, shot point-blank by psycho-terrorists with easy access to personal arsenals. Another eight were injured and at least one of them, an Amish girl, is in grave condition. More than 400 people have died in school violence in the last dozen years, many hundreds of others have been wounded, and uncounted close calls - like the one this past Monday morning - have been averted.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Nobody else seems to be asking the obvious question about Susan B. Ralston, former administrative assistant to Jack Abramoff and, until last week, assistant to Karl Rove. She got hired by Rove at $64,700 after the 2004 election and then received a raise to $122,000. Why? I've never gotten a 100 percent raise. Did you? Is this common?

Moments after hearing about North Korea’s nuclear test, I thought of Albert Einstein’s statement that “there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world.”

During the six decades since Einstein spoke, experience has shown that such understanding and insistence cannot be filtered through the grid of hypocrisy. Nuclear weapons can’t be controlled by saying, in effect, “Do as we say, not as we do.” By developing their own nuclear weaponry, one nation after another has replied to the nuclear-armed states: Whatever you say, we’ll do as you’ve done.

In early summer, with some fanfare, officials in Washington announced the dismantling of the last W56 nuclear warhead -- a 1.2 megaton model from the 1960s. Self-congratulation was in the air, as a statement hailed “our firm commitment to reducing the size of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile to the lowest levels necessary for national security needs.” That’s the kind of soothing PR that we’ve been getting ever since the nuclear age began.