Did you see Virginia Sen. Jim Webb's response to the President's State of the Union address last night? Here's the text. The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two…
The American public has a friend in Ed Markey, the Massachusetts' representative who is the now the Chairman and the highest-ranking Democrat of the House Subcommittee on Telecomunications and the Internet. Markey knows media well. This video is proof. He knows that the telephone companies have one full-time lobbyist in…
President Bush is going to send more than 20,000 more troops into Iraq and spend billions of more dollars to carry on a hideous war. Why? To protect Americans from terrorists, he tells us. Bush convinced Americans to invade Iraq by accusing Iraq of being responsible for the 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 Americans. This argument suggests that the deaths of 3,000 people is a horrible thing.
Whenever 3,000 people die, it is a horrible thing. It might justify hundreds of billions of dollars, though certainly not the diversion of money from programs that save equal numbers of lives. 3,000 deaths justifies the deaths of more than 3,000 soldiers, we are told. I don’t agree with this. The political party that argues that there are clear moral rules (the Republicans) isn’t convincing me.
Does it make a difference that 3,000 innocent Americans die on the same day rather than over the course of a year? I wouldn’t think so. A death is a death, in my opinion. And 3,000 deaths are 3,000 deaths.
Therefore, shouldn’t the 16,000 murders that occur every year in the US require a response five times bigger than the invasion of Iraq? That’s 3,000 every ten weeks. Shouldn’t it require focused efforts to protect these victims? Shouldn’t it require a revamping of our entire criminal justice system, especially our prison system, which so often trains criminals to be even more vicious, rather than preparing them for ready for release? Where is our war on criminal violence? …
According to ABC News, the White House and the Secret Service "quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public." The agreement is in the form of a five-page…
This question is misleading. In 2003, approximately 40% of us opposed the invasion. But it felt like there were only a handful of us.
I was looking through my 2003 writings to recall my rational for opposing the Iraq invasion. I don’t see that I wrote anything much about Iraq back then. I do remember thinking the invasion was a big mistake. I do remember thinking that Colin Powell was blowing smoke at the U.N.
Though I didn’t find much in writing from 2003, I found this 2004 email I wrote to a friend who was very much in favor of the war:
…I’ve been working a lot of hours lately, but I can’t help but feel deep gnawing need to pry myself away periodically to do my small part to stop this insane movement that goes in the name of “conservatism.” Squandering the budget is only one part of it for me. Every day, this lunatic’s rhetoric and actions are causing 100 talented young men from the Middle East to dedicate their entire lives to lighting a nuclear fire so as to melt New York. I truly believe that the short term temporary good that Bush has accomplished in the Middle East is far outweighed, not only by the blood spilled to accomplish it, but by the horrors we will be facing 10 and 20 years from now. This country would never have gone to war had Bush and his team not bald-faced lied about the alleged urgent need