Don't Help Them, Label Them.........

Sent into Hell by those Who Won't Ever Experiance, on this Planet but will in the everafter, Cheered On by False Flag Waving Patriots of Same Ilk, than Shit On When They Return, Same Ole-SameOle!
Now Instead of Paying To Help, Label Them and Strip Them Of Their 'Freedoms' and 'Outcast' them from Society!!!
Why not make them wear a Sign 'Once Sane now War Veteran and Insane', after all will tracking them be enough!!
You Don't Want To Help Them, Than Don't Send Them and Cheer On The Destructiveness Of Wars!!

TSA Looks to VA and DoD for Mental Defectives

The TSA is looking for contractors to build new databases to help screen airline passengers. They want to include information about military personnel from Department of Defense (DoD) files and veterans from Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) files. According to the TSA, here’s what they want: “Examples of new data sources would be DoD files for military service histories or VA files for lists of persons who have been declared mental defectives.”

{You can leave a comment to this at above site URL of Veterans for America}

How far are we willing to go when it comes to “security” on commercial airline flights? The ugly side of that question came to light on November 15 when the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) posted a “sources sought” inquiry on their web site.
The TSA is looking for contractors to build new databases to help screen airline passengers. They want to include information about military personnel from Department of Defense (DoD) files and veterans from Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) files.
According to the TSA, here’s what they want: “Examples of new data sources would be DoD files for military service histories or VA files for lists of persons who have been declared mental defectives.”
Read Larry Scott's complete column here

Now Scott's Report was written, and posted, on December 18, 2005. visit the site and read what he has to say!

Above was reported long before what occurred yesterday:

Official: Passengers tackle Iraq vet ramming cockpit door
A U.S. Army soldier who had served in Iraq was tackled by airplane passengers after he ran down the aisle and rammed the cockpit door on a flight from New York to Tampa, an official said.

It would be extremely interesting to find out Exactly how much Help this Soldier recieved prior to this Clear Incident of the Trauma of PTSD took hold on that flight!

It would also be Extremely Interesting to find out how much Help the Soldier, now accused of Rape and Murder in Iraq, wether military suspected the incident or not, after he was Dumped Back Into Society on an Already much reported Mental Disorder, this one was a Time Bomb waiting to go off, if the Aligations are true about Iraq Atrosity!!

Any Budding Investigative Journalists Interested? Here's your chance, along with So Many Others, but with this one 'You' can Make a Big Differance for All of Society and beyond!!

Now as a Vietnam Vet, having returned some 35yrs. ago from In-Country, and seeing to many of my fellow brothers from 'Nam living with the Destruction of Their Nightmare Lives, we get the following:

Veterans benefits commission to focus on PTSD
The Veterans’ Disability Benefits Commission will focus on post-traumatic stress syndrome during its July 13 meeting. Commissioners will look at studies being conducted by the Center for Naval Analyses and the Institute of Medicine on how the military diagnoses and assesses new PTSD cases and also at post-deployment health programs and how eligibility for benefits is verified.

Question: What The Fuck Have These People Been Doing While Collecting Our Paychecks To Them, With The Great Bennies??? Besides recently taking Sensitive files Home with them for god knows what purpose!!

And than of course we have the Modern Military, All Volunteer, and Comprised of More Women Serving Direct Combat Duty, knowing what the Trauma does to men and innocents, how will it effect:

Women at war: Mental health toll unkown
More American women are closer to combat in Iraq than in any other modern war, and there are many unknowns about the mental health effects they may experience when they come home from the war zone. "In the civilian world, post-traumatic stress disorder has traditionally been much more common in women than in men," says Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, the psychiatry consultant to the U.S. Army surgeon general. "This is the first time that we've really had a large number of women that are over in a combat zone so we are studying how they do, but the results aren't out yet."

With the daily trauma of War wearing on all, women have to face even more from the few, frankly deranged, male counterparts:

Command Rape
Suzanne Swift's story begins in an all-too-familiar way. A dead-end job, a friendly military recruiter, a promise that signing-up as military police would mean no deployment to Iraq, a broken promise, and a trip to war. Then it takes a less commonly heard of turn, one involving a practice known as "command rape."

Get Them The Hell Out Of This Mess, NOW!!

Let the economy collapse, because right now this conflict is the biggest thing holding this stagnant economy from collapsing completely!

And When They Get Home TAKE CARE OF THEM!!

And this Country owes it to the people of Iraq and Afganistan to Take Care of their Citizens Traumatized by the Wars We've Inflicted on them, not just blowing them off as we recently did to the Vietnam Innocents!! {I would suggest a re-visit on that subject after We The People Take Back Our Government!!}

Real Oil Crisis

What would happen if the world were to start running out of oil? Conventional wisdom says we’ve got 30 years, but there’s a growing fear amongst petroleum experts it’s happening much sooner than we thought – that we are hitting the beginning of the end of oil now. So how soon will the oil run out, and can we stop our economy collapsing when it does? How prepared are we for the real oil crisis?

ABC Australia: Run Time 13 minutes

Windows Media Player

Real Player

PEACE TAKES COURAGE {Flash}

This young Lady has another short but 'Powerful' New Flash up!!

7/04/2006
Independence Day

Declaration

DEAD NOT FREE {Flash}

"Terrorism is the taking of innocent lives for a false political purpose." Colin Powell - 2002

DEAD NOT FREE

In Cold Blood: {NOT A Relaxing Read}

From the Los Angeles Times

In Cold Blood: Iraqi Tells of Massacre at Farmhouse

A cousin describes finding the shot and shattered bodies. A U.S. soldier is in custody.
By Raheem Salman and J. Michael Kennedy
Times Staff Writers

July 6, 2006

BAGHDAD — He was the first to enter the charred farmhouse where the bodies of his relatives lay strewn about the floor, shot and bludgeoned to death.

And he watched more than three months later as a U.S. Army officer took the two surviving children in his arms, barely able to hold back tears as he told them that the people who had killed their family would be punished.

"Never in my mind could I have imagined such a gruesome sight," Abu Firas Janabi said of the day in March when his cousin, Fakhriya Taha Muhsen; her husband, Kasim Hamza Rasheed; and their two daughters were slain and their farmhouse set ablaze.

"Kasim's corpse was in the corner of the room, and his head was smashed into pieces," he said. The 5-year-old daughter, Hadel, was beside her father, and Janabi said he could see that Fakhriya's arms had been broken.

In another room, he found 15-year-old Abeer, naked and burned, with her head smashed in "by a concrete block or a piece of iron."

"There were burns from the bottom of her stomach to the end of her body, except for her feet," he said.

"I did not believe what I was seeing. I tried to fool myself into believing I was in a dream. But the problem was that we were not dreaming. We put a piece of cloth over her body. Then I left the house together with my wife."

At least four American soldiers from a nearby checkpoint are the prime suspects. The case, which includes the alleged rape of the older daughter, has caused a firestorm in the United States and Iraq. And the soldiers, including one charged Monday with rape and murder, have become lurid symbols of the American military at its worst.

The image has not been helped in recent weeks by the emergence of other accusations that U.S. soldiers had killed Iraqi civilians.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki complained Wednesday that immunity from Iraqi prosecution had encouraged atrocities by American troops. And the U.S. military is clearly on the defensive. On Wednesday, Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, defended the troops here, complaining that the "acts of a few outweigh the deeds of many."

Janabi, who has emerged as a potential witness, has been interviewed by a U.S. investigator.

He lives about half a mile from the scene of the killings, just outside the town of Mahmoudiya. It's agricultural country, where the small farms are divided by mesh wire fences and the people who toil on them make a subsistence living.

Janabi and his wife were home March 12 when a neighbor ran to tell him that the farmhouse of his cousin and her husband was on fire and that he could see slain family members inside the burning building.

Janabi said that when he arrived at the house, he began to call for others to help him.

"But nobody came," he said in a telephone interview Tuesday from Mahmoudiya, describing the eeriness he felt as he and his wife stood there. "I felt that I had made a disastrous decision. I felt I had made a mistake to rush so quickly to the house, because if the murderers were still there, they would kill me as well."

He and his wife had to douse some of the flames before they could enter the home.

The couple had found the two young boys in the family crying as they stood outside the farmhouse, where they could see the bodies inside. The boys had been at school when the killings occurred but were home by the time Janabi and his wife arrived.

Together, they went to a checkpoint guarded by Iraqi soldiers to tell them what had happened. Then they went back to the house and watched as the bodies were placed in nylon bags and taken to a nearby Iraqi base.

Janabi said Abeer was not in school and, like other peasant girls, seldom left the house. But he said that three days before the killings, the Rasheed family was at his house and his cousin was complaining that the American soldiers at the nearby guard post were constantly searching her house. Janabi said the parents believed that the "girl was the target."

"I suggested they come and live in the house beside mine that was empty," Janabi said. "But they said, 'There are a lot of families close to us, and nothing bad will happen.' "

Janabi said he returned to the burned-out house the day after the attack as villagers gathered to scavenge for furniture. He asked the villagers whether they knew of any enemies that Kasim had made. They answered no, saying he was just a poor farmer like them who barely made ends meet, working in a Baghdad factory to earn an extra $3 a day. But the villagers had heard stories about the slayings.

In one story, the killers wore black shirts and military pants. In another, they were wearing track suits, and in a third, there was a dog with them.

Janabi said he suspected the Americans because the dozens of shots fired would have been heard by U.S. troops at the nearby checkpoint. And from what he could gather, the killers were at the house for more than two hours, too long for them to have gone unnoticed by the Americans. He also said he suspected that whoever carried out the killings had used Kasim's AK-47 assault rifle, the only item that Janabi said was missing from the house.

Initially, U.S. military officials said the killings were the result of intra-Iraqi feuding, a plausible conclusion given the dozens of revenge killings that happen each day in the country. But a U.S. soldier came forward recently with rumors of American involvement in the alleged rape and killings.

On Monday, Steven D. Green, 21, a former private with the 502nd Infantry Regiment, was charged in Charlotte, N.C., in the case. The Army has said that no other soldiers have been charged or detained, but that several were under close supervision in Iraq.

Janabi said he learned of the inquiry involving the soldiers last week, and an American investigator asked him to tell his side of the story.

"He was saying that he wants to find out the truth," Janabi said. "I told him I didn't want any money or compensation. The most important thing is that the criminal must be punished in a punishment in the same level of the crime he committed. He must not be imprisoned for four to six months and that is all."

Janabi said he asked the investigator why all this was happening now, when the killings took place three months earlier.

"He told me that a soldier confessed and we want to know the truth," he said.

Then, Janabi said, the investigator told him that a high-ranking U.S. officer wished to pay his condolences to the family. The next day, he brought Fakhriya's cousin, Mohammed, to the base along with the two boys to meet the commander.

"He hugged the children and kissed them several times," Janabi said. "It was hard for him to control his tears."

The discussions, Janabi said, now center on whether the bodies can be exhumed for autopsies. He said they received only a cursory examination when they were taken to the Mahmoudiya hospital in March.

Janabi said that the two boys were with their uncle in the village of Iskandariya, but that their faces told the effects of their misery.

"They lost their father and mother," Janabi said. "They lost their house and sisters. Basically their family was too poor and they have not inherited anything. Their life is deplorable."

WMDs Found Again!!!

Quote for this Day

“See, free nations are peaceful nations.
Free nations don't attack each other.
Free nations don't develop
weapons of mass destruction.”

-- George W. Bush
Born on this day in 1946

Thanks to MSOC over at My Left Wing for posting this up as lead in to her open thread!

Defending The Constitution

On this July 4th, it is clear that the American Constitution is in grave danger. Consequently, Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel argues in Editor's Cut that "It is time to make the defense of the Constitution a national theme for all candidates in this year's electoral contests."

"Some will shrink from defending the Constitution out of fear that the public is not interested in such a discussion or lacks a real commitment to constitutional government--that it's a losing issue." But they, writes vanden Heuvel, should "have more faith in the American people. Given a clear choice, Americans will choose defenders of the Constitution over those who would destroy it. But the choice must be put clearly before them."

Thomas Jefferson and Frederick Douglas would agree, as evidenced by John Nichols' Online Beat remembering Jefferson's Fourth of July advice given on his deathbed 180 years ago and Jon Wiener's Notion look back at the July 4th words of the great abolitionist.

Finally, don't miss The Nation's salute to America's true patriots: librarians on the frontlines of free inquiry, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and peace activists across the nation.

Happy Holidays,
Peter Rothberg,
The Nation

More Viewing For Your 4th

Coming In September.......

The U.S. vs. John Lennon

View Trailers HERE!
After viewing the trailer you may agree with me, this will be another Powerful Documentary following in the footsteps of Sir! No Sir! and Winter Soldier, of times we should have Remembered and Learned From as We Said We Would, instead of the Apathy that followed them!!!

"Why We Fight"

is a powerful & important movie which rips this war!
You can View Trailer HERE

"Troops Home Fast" Photos and Report

by David Swanson
Grannies for Peace and CODE PINK Women for Peace and Gold Star Families for Peace and Veterans for Peace and just about everybody under the sun for Peace rallied and marched and broke bread before fasting in DC today. The photos tell the story.
Find 192 photos here from the "Troops Home Fast" events today {July 3rd} in Washington, D.C.

About Face:

A Radio Show of and by Veterans that is a Must Save to Favorites and Tune Into!
The following was posted on the VFP Group Board, yesterday July 3rd.
VFP Phoenix on Air America

Please tune into Air America Phoenix this Sunday morning to hear VFP
Chapter 075's new radio show "About Face." The show is hosted by VFP
members John Henry and Dennis Stout and airs live at 8am Mountain
Standard Time this and Every Sunday.

Those of you in the Phoenix area can tune in on 1480AM. All others can
listen on the internet at:

Air America Phoenix

Just click the "Listen Live" link in the upper right corner of the page.

This week's show will deal with the stress of combat. Guests on the
show will include IVAW's Jeff Englehart.
{This was posted on the VFP Group Board and I would believe this was the show this past Sunday}

So please, tune in and help support VFP media.

Thank You,
Chris Snively
Veterans For Peace National Office

Checking the Air America Site this isn't National Yet, lets see what we can do by tuning in and streaming it on your puters, maybe we can give it a boost!

July 4th

Some interesting History reading, on this Forth of July 2006.

You can find the below list HERE or take your pick of what might interest you from list below.


Top 5 Myths About the Fourth of July By HNN Staff

Old Glory: Patriotic Symbol? By Rick Shenkman

The Biography of the Flag By Marc Leepson

Why Does Hollywood Ignore the American Revolution? By Clint O’Connor

Happy July 5th! By Louise Mirrer, James Oliver Horton and Richard Rabinowitz

Why Americans Are Crazy About the 4th of July By Walter A. McDougall

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? By Frederick Douglass

A July 4th to Lament What's Happened to Our Country By George Beres

Why Tom Paine Is Now So Popular By Harvey Kaye

Why Blacks Used to Celebrate July 5th By William Loren Katz

Gettysburg: A Battle Worth Remembering this July 4th By Patrick W. Gavin

What Are We Celebrating on the Fourth of July? By Robert Jensen and Rahul Mahajan

We Remember the Wrong Tom on July Fourth By William C. Kashatus

About Face:

VFP Phoenix on Air America

Please tune into Air America Phoenix this Sunday morning to hear VFP
Chapter 075's new radio show "About Face." The show is hosted by VFP
members John Henry and Dennis Stout and airs live at 8am Mountain
Standard Time this and Every Sunday.

Those of you in the Phoenix area can tune in on 1480AM. All others can
listen on the internet at:

Air America Phoenix

Just click the "Listen Live" link in the upper right corner of the page.

This week's show will deal with the stress of combat. Guests on the
show will include IVAW's Jeff Englehart.
{This was posted on the VFP Group Board and I would believe this was the show this past Sunday}

So please, tune in and help support VFP media.

Thank You,
Chris Snively
Veterans For Peace National Office

GI SPECIAL 4G3: Zombie Soldiers.pdf

G.I. Special is once again being posted at, and archived, at Toms Original Site: MilitaryProject.org

A NEW DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

By Dave Meserve

It is time for a New Declaration of Independence.

Do you worry about the future that your children and grandchildren will inherit?

Do you fear your government as it shows increasing disregard for the Constitution and for basic human rights and civil liberties?

Do you become angry at your powerlessness to change the course of your own government, motivated as it is by greed and lust for power in its quest for world domination?

Do you wish you could alter or abolish that government, through the ballot box or by non-violent resistance to its tyranny?

Do you view the government as separate from yourself and your values, and wish to withhold your consent from its actions?

This is exactly how many people felt in 1776, and how many feel today.

Reread the Declaration of Independence. The grievances suffered under King George III bear an uncanny resemblance to those under our own George W. The following document draws directly from the words of the Declaration, written 230 years ago.

Fortunately for the Founding Fathers, the government from which they wanted to separate was rooted across the Atlantic Ocean, and they were only one colony in its vast empire.

The government today, that is acting in opposition to our basic moral beliefs, is our own and is rooted in Washington, DC.

It seems impossible for “One people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them with another,” when we all live on the same continent, and when we the people still hold a democratic hope of being able to change the actions of our government. We are not yet strong enough to declare independence, nor are we exactly sure what that would mean in the present context, but perhaps that time will come.

Today, we may only be able to declare our moral separation from the actions of the federal government.

These actions have created a moral and Constitutional crisis that demands a response from the people. I humbly offer the following as the first draft of a new declaration, which I call the “Declaration of Moral Separation.”

Declaration of Moral Separation

When in the course of Human Events it becomes necessary to separate Ourselves from the Evil being perpetuated by our Federal Government, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Humankind requires that we should declare the Causes which impel us to the Separation.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Humans are created equal, that we are endowed with certain Unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, that to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.

The History of the present President of the United States is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these United States and all the Nations of the Earth. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid World:

The President and his Inner Circle have refused to assent to Laws the most wholesome and necessary for the Public Good.

They base their Power on Elections that did not represent the Will of the People.

They seek to make the Executive supreme over the Legislative and Judicial branches of Government.

They have affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

They have invaded and occupied Sovereign Nations in violation of our Constitution, and of all Principles of International Law, Diplomacy, and Human Ethics.

They have lied about the Threats posed by these Nations, in order to gain Support for the Invasions.

They have killed countless innocent Civilians in their pursuit of those they call “Terrorists.”

They have held Prisoners without due process, for extended periods, with no opportunity to prove their Innocence.

They have tortured Prisoners, and subjected them to Inhumane Conditions, with the Approval of our Highest Officials.

They have drained the National Treasury to fund Senseless Wars.

They have failed to respond to Domestic Emergencies brought about by Natural Forces.

They have personally profiteered from their Policy Decisions.

They have supported the Wealthy and abandoned the Poor of our Nation.

They have cruelly lured our Sons and Daughters to kill and die in their Senseless Wars.

They have erected a multitude of new Offices under the PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act, and, in the names of the FBI, and CIA, and NSA, have sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out our Substance, in violation of our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and Common Decency.

They have damaged our Reputation and Standing among the Nations and People of the World, lacking a decent Respect for the Opinions of Humankind..

They have made us fear to travel the World because so many hate our Government.

They have impugned the Patriotism of those who oppose their Brutal Policies.

A Government whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant is unfit to be the Ruler of a Free People.

We, therefore, as a Community assembled, declare that our Consent is withdrawn from the Government of the United States of America for all of its Actions that violate our Constitution, Federal and International Law, and the Shared Moral Beliefs of Humankind.

We further declare that that the President and his Inner Circle must be prosecuted for their Crimes.

And for support of this Declaration, We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor.

Will you support this document in principle and work with others on revising and expanding its scope, and on adopting a unique draft within your own community?

Please visit New Declaration of Independence to read the original Declaration of Independence, to compare it to the new Declaration, and to get involved in the movement.

{Dave Meserve is a home designer and builder, who serves on the Arcata, CA City Council.}

On the Fourth, Read the Declaration of Impeachment

By David Swanson
After Downing Street

Sunday 02 July 2006

Veterans for Peace has drafted a Declaration of Impeachment{pdf} using nothing but excerpts from the Declaration of Independence (plus a few words in parentheses). It reads as follows, and should be read at picnics and protests on the Fourth of July:

"... whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

... all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations ... design(s) to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

... The history of the present King (George)... is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny ... To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.


He has ... deprive(ed) us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury ... transport(ed) us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences


He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us ...

He is at this time transporting large Armies ... to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens ... to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
A (President) whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

We, therefore ... do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People ... solemnly publish and declare, That these ... Free and Independent (People) ... are Absolved from all Allegiance to the (Bush Administration), and that all political connection between them and (this Administration), is and ought to be totally dissolved ... And for the support of this Declaration ... we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."



---------------------------


Note that the colonists didn't just write these words. They also fought and died for them.

Supporting our troops and working to ensure that they not have died in vain are notions that no longer apply to the soldiers who died in the fields around my house in Virginia. The statute of limitations has expired, and the 4,435 who died to rid America of a King George are now in fact required - as a matter of patriotic duty - to have died in vain.

In vain their deaths to free us of a unitary executive.

In vain their deaths to establish freedom of assembly.

In vain their deaths to separate church and state.

In vain their deaths to create freedom of speech.

In vain their deaths in the cause of freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

In vain their blood spilled in rivers to establish the right to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.

In vain their ultimate sacrifices to create a representative democracy based on checks and balances.

In vain the heartache of their families suffered in the name of an end to empire.

All in vain, all unsupported. Welcome to the world of free speech zones, detention without charge, no access to a court of law, no prohibition on torture. Welcome to the end of the veto and the birth of the signing statement. Welcome to an executive branch that neither obeys Congress nor so much as informs Congress of its actions. Welcome to wars of aggression for a theocratic plutocracy. Welcome back, King George.

King George is opposed by almost all Americans who identify themselves as democrats or Democrats. Only 9 percent of Democrats approve of his "handling the situation with Iraq," according to a CBS poll. The so-called Republican Party, on the other hand, is split. 71 percent of Republicans approve of the king's war, a number that is steadily declining. So, I have to say it annoys me a teeny little bit when the military industrial media complex calls the Democratic Party split and makes that alleged split the focus of reporting.

What they mean is that a little band of plutocratic leeches living in the swamps of the District of Columbia displays different tendencies from the citizenry. Within this inbred sect, Republicans are almost united and Democrats quite split on the question of whether to slaughter more Iraqis indefinitely. All the Republicans are for it, and half the Democrats are for it too. But half the Democrats have come over to the side of the American public to receive the scorn of the pundits and preachers of Objectivity.

What nobody is making note of, though, is that the anti-war Democrats in Congress can balance the scorn that the media bestows on them with the implicit gratitude of the soldiers of the War for Independence, the war in which we were opposing, not creating, a foreign occupation.

I fully expect, one day soon, to wake up to this headline: "Dems split on torturing grandmothers," followed by words to this effect: "Republicans forced a deeply divided and uncertain Democratic Party onto the defensive this week, bringing to a vote their long-planned GT bill. The Grandmother Torture Act of 2006 provides the President with the freedom he needs in handling the rising threat from seniors engaged in terrorist activities, said several Republican leaders. The defeat is expected to hurt the Democrats in November, Diebold executives reported.

Of course, on the question of building permanent military bases in Iraq, it is the Dems in Congress who are united and the Republicans in Congress who are very much split. But that story is not a story, so it doesn't really matter who's split or not split or anything else. Nor is historic justice being served the way it should. Every member of Congress working to create permanent bases in Iraq for unwanted and illegal foreign troops should have two dozen reenactors of the American Revolution occupy their office and live off their campaign funds while endlessly reciting the Declaration of Impeachment.

Happy Fourth!



---------------------------
David Swanson is creator of Meet With Cindy.org, co-founder of the After Downing Street coalition, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997. His website is David Swanson.
-------

Rolling Stone in Iraq: Video and Award-Winning Coverage

Watch Matt Taibbi's video companion to his feature "Fort Apache, Iraq," and get the best of the magazine's recent war reporting

VIDEO

Live From Iraq

(RealPlayer required)
What happens when Rolling Stone sends our ace reporter to Iraq? Watch the video companion to Matt Taibbi's feature.


Photo: Matt Taibbi


FROM THE MAGAZINE

Fort Apache, Iraq

Travel the bloody roads with GIs, meet the carpetbaggers, go inside Abu Ghraib and witness the catastrophic nature of the American conquest.
By MATT TAIBBI
June 30, 2006