February 2007 Archives
"Pro" means "for", and "life" is for "protecting life," right? So does "pro-life" mean protecting cells, or protecting the living and breathing here on earth?
I was forced to confront these questions today. And I, in return, attempted to force an unsuspecting telemarketer from a company called MDS Communications to confront them, too.
She contacted me because her firm was hired by Dr. Beverly Lahaye from the Concerned Women for America to fundraise for them. She explained how using her firm was more cost-effective for her client than if the CWFA did it on their own.
"Whatever!" I thought. I was just ticked that a telemarketer had somehow gotten my number. Yet because I had not heard of either organization before, I allowed her to continue with her script as I quickly wrote down the URLs.
"You are being contacted because we show you might be pro-life. Are you pro-life?"
"I am pro-life," I said in response. I suspected she might have meant 'anti-abortion,' but I wanted to hear more about what she had to say in case it would give me a clue as to how the CWFA got my number. Besides, I really am pro-life; I just don't consider anti-abortionists to be the only ones entitled to that label.
And so she continued with her pre-canned rap track...
Two Bush-appointed nominees for full-term ambassadorships come up before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this afternoon. One of them is thoroughly qualified for the position he's been nominated for. The other guy? Well, not so much.
One the one hand, we have: Curtis S. Chin, of New York, to be United States Director of the Asian Development Bank, with the rank of Ambassador.
According to this 2006 Wall Street press release:
Chin is a public affairs & policy specialist with extensive experience working with corporations, not-for-profit organizations and the public sector in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere around the world. ... Chin has worked in the firm’s Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Washington, D.C., and New York offices. He also served in the Administration of President George H.W. Bush as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. During the Administration of President George W. Bush, Chin served on the U.S. Department of State’s Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy.
Wow. That's a pretty strong set of credentials, don't you think? Sounds like Chin would be a good choice for the Asian Bank gig.
But then, on the other hand, we have:
Sam Fox, of Missouri, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Belgium.
And that is just all kinds of wrong.
Why? Well, let's let these guys tell you about Sam Fox in their own words:
The classic saying is that "everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." Well, thanks to the recent release of the IPCC report, the stunning success of "An Inconvenient Truth", and high-profile groups like StopGlobalWarming.org, that adage is no longer true. Everybody is talking about the weather. But now ever-increasing numbers of them actually are doing something about it.
Al Gore, the rock star of the global-warming environmental movement, is definitely one of those people, of course, and he's doing something about it in a very big way. He's been working on these issues for decades, but with his Oscar-winning documentary and his tireless touring presentations he has now made doing something about the climate change crisis trendy in all the very best circles.
And when I say trendy, I do mean trendy. Greenhouse gases: they're not just for scientists and policy wonks any more. Now everybody is getting in on the act... literally:
It's that time of year again: Arts Advocacy Day. This year thirty three students, two alums, and six dance educators are part of the entourage of dancers speaking to members of Congress.
Last year, at Arts Advocacy Day
As I prepare these wide-eyed students for what will be a life-changing experience for some of them, I've been reflecting on the whole lobbying-advocacy influence continuum. Here is my conclusion:
It works. It may be the most effective means of making Congress accountable.
We Americans need to address some history that should probably have been more prevalent in news media coverage and analysis in 2002 and 2003 -- as discussed in a book by Vali Nasr, titled "The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future".
In the preface to his book, Mr. Nasr recounts an incident that he observed, which I recall as well, observed through the global eye of television. I interpreted it much differently than he did. Unfortunately for our soldiers, our government did not understand the significance of such an event either.
I was on a research trip in Pakistan in April 2003 when two million Shias gathered in the Iraqi city of Karbala to mark the Arbaeen, the commemoration of the fortieth day after the martyrdom of the Shia saint Imam Husayn [Hussein] at Karbala in 680 C.E. ... On that particular "fortieth day," so soon after the one on which U.S. Marines and jubilant Iraqis had pulled down Saddam's hollow image in Baghdad's Firdous Square, I happened to be on the outskirts of Lahore, visiting the headquarters of a Sunni fundamentalist political group known as the Jamaat-e Islami (Islamic Party). The office television set was tuned to CNN, as everyone was following the news from Iraq. The coverage turned to scenes of young Shia men standing densely packed in the shadow of the golden dome of Imam Husayn's shrine at Karbala. They all wore black shirts and had scarves of green (the universal color of Islam) wrapped around their heads. They chanted a threnody in Arabic for their beloved saint as they raised their empty hands as if in prayer toward heaven and in unison brought them down to thump on their chests in a rhythmic gesture of mourning, solidarity, and mortification. The image was magnetic, at once jubilant and defiant. The Shia were in the streets and they were holding their faith and their identity high for all to see. We stared at the television screen. My Sunni hosts were aghast at what they were seeing. A pall descended on the room.
...The CNN commentator was gleefully boasting that the Iraqis were free at last--they were performing a ritual that the audience in the West did not understand but that had been forbidden to the Shia for decades. What Americans saw as Iraqi freedom, my hosts saw as blatant display of heretical rites that are anathema to orthodox Sunnis. ... "These actions are not right," said one of my hosts. Iraqis--by which he meant the Shia -- "do not know the proper practice of Islam." The Shia-Sunni debates over the truth of the Islamic message and how to practice it would continue, he added, not just peacefully and symbolically but with bombs and bullets. He was talking not about Iraq but about Pakistan.
So what are these differences between Shia and Sunni and how have they evolved? That's not something that I can adequately cover here but I can point you toward a few resources that will start you on a journey of understanding that we all should have taken 5 years ago.
Liam Madden is a 22 year old who grew up in Vermont. He joined the Marines six months after high school. He is sweet-looking, polite, just the kind of young man any country would be proud of.
Liam in front
His most recent project is to appeal Congress for redress; for a withdrawal of the troops and an end to the war. The statement, now signed by over 1200 military, reads as follows:
As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq. Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.
Liam is on a national tour to speak to students about the war and his efforts to end it.
We spoke with Liam about patriotism and bravery. What does it mean to speak out against the war? He is still learning, but it is something worth taking seriously and to heart, and his heart is right there, for all to see and feel.
Garrett Reppenhagen is a member of Iraq Vets Against the War and Veterans for America (formerly Vietnam Veterans Against the War). He is working on several fronts, but one of the most important is the work he is doing to find a retreat and treatment center for homeless vets. He is seeking federal and state funds to build the center. Sitting around the table and talking with Lori, Tina Richards, Liam, and Richard and me, Garrett pointed out, "The soldier is only the bullet. It's the American people who pull the trigger."
L to R: Garrett, Sunsara Taylor, Liam
Garrett met with Sen. John Kerry, who told him "Look, I've had 500 people here in my office this week. The other 499 were here for other reasons than the war." Why is this? Why are there not 500 people in each office, demanding an end to this nightmare?
Tina Richards is a Mom from Missouri. Her son, Cloy, is 23; one year older than Liam. He's done two tours of duty in Iraq, has severe PTSD (although the Marines will not acknowledge that he is suicidal), and has just received notice that he can be deployed for a third tour. Tina is a bit upset about this, and she is here in DC to share her concerns with Congress, the American Enterprise Institute, and 36 legislative aides and Chiefs of Staffs and eight legislators, and peace and justice groups throughout DC.
Tina Richards
She has spent the past few years networking across the Midwest. The unions, peace and justice groups, military families all work together and support each and every action. But she has not found that same organization locally in DC and Maryland. So she has been encouraging local groups to coordinate and work together in her spare time.
She delivers letters to Members offices; 379 letters to Claire McCaskill alone. She met with Rep. John Murtha and delivered a note her son wrote to him:
We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America)
The Backbone Campaign created a giant version of the Constitution and hung it in the town square in Seattle on President's Day. They offered flags for those who answered trivia questions and they encouraged people to sign the Constitution "while we still have one." Copies of the Constitution were given to passersby, courtesy of WeThePeopleMarch4th.org, when activities will take place all over the country. They will carry out further activities on that day, with music and family events.
On Monday the young people who like to congregate downtown showed a lot of interest in learning, as did shoppers and tourists. As events unfolded, we had a surprise visit from the Pissed Off Patriot Tour. I know for a fact that the Backbone Campaign was not expecting them. They pulled their vehicle up to the town square and opened its doors to show off their collection of Patriot materials.
We've been following the developments in the breaking-news accounts of the terrible conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for the last few days here, with our eyes wide in anger and our jaws clenched in horror. The biggest surprise isn't that it was ever allowed to happen -- it's that we should even be surprised to be told that it happened in the first place.
The original Washington Post story about the abuses at WRAMC and its equally-horrifying followup piece are just two more bricks in the wall when it comes to illustrating just how much of a huge steaming crock the the flag-wavers' strident shouts of "Support the Troops!" really are.
Sure, they support the troops -- as long as the troops are doing what they're told and are kept conveniently off-camera. Whatever else happens, don't you dare take pictures of flag-draped coffins. And don't you dare tell stories of brave men and women being given the shaft if they actually make it back home again.
Dana Priest, one of the two reporters who broke the WRAMC story for the WashPo this weekend, said that most of the bloodied but unbowed troops she spoke to in pursuit of her expose articles were afraid to speak out because they expected reprisals from an angry military hierarchy if they did.
That kind of reprisal is, of course, illegal. Priest has publicly promised to monitor their situations and report on any such abuses. That's great, and we give her full props for it. But the very fact that she had to make such a public promise just underscores how totally FUBAR things are at the WRAMC.
As noted in this space yesterday, while Democrats and Republicans play words games about what the meaningless resolutions of "doing nothing" and "doing nothing" are, this goes on a short distance down the road:
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is only part of the problem though. Here's the other part of the problem (emphasis mine):
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (AP) -- The Army opened a $50 million high-tech rehabilitation center Monday that is designed to serve the growing number of soldiers who return from war as amputees or with severe burns.
Of the roughly 20,000 soldiers injured since the start of the Iraq war, more than 500 have lost a limb -- many of them in roadside bombings.
The Center for the Intrepid, a privately funded facility, includes a rock-climbing wall, a wave pool and a virtual reality computer system.
Private funding is necessary for our troops to recover from their injuries -- while a Congress of Neros debates how long we should keep extending federal funding for fiddles.
While the politicians are pandering, and the spinbots are shouting, and every monkey in a red-white-and-blue suit is screeching "I support the troops! We support the troops!"... the torn and tattered veterans of the neocons' illegal and immoral war for conquest in the Middle East are being warehoused in Washington in conditions that most Americans would never even dream of letting their house pets live in, let alone their wounded warriors.
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Have you ever played 'monkey in the middle'? You might remember being the person in the middle who has to catch the ball before it gets to the other side. When you catch the ball, you're no longer the monkey in the middle but the person who didn't successfully complete the pass, then replaces you as the monkey in the middle.
It's a childhood game and it stinks! Yet, this is what our health care industry is like in our country today.
We're the monkeys in the middle, chasing the ball hither and thither to get some insurance while the corporations where we work(ed) eliminated coverage. And the insurance companies continue to lobby our Congressmen because they happen to like the status quo -- profits and the 'free market' system suits their purpose just fine!
In the meantime, the federal government and the state governments bicker over whose responsibility it is to insure the people in their state. They can't pay. Nobody wants to pay!
So they keep tossing that ball out of our reach too.
Nobody wants to get stuck holding the bill and being the monkey in the middle.
I hated that game then, and I hate it now.
It's been just a few weeks since Molly Ivins went to the great editorial meeting in the sky, but we already miss her like crazy. So much weird, wild, woeful, and wonderful stuff is going on in the world of people-powered politics these days that we really need somebody like Molly to help us make sense of it all. And knowing how much sheer unadulterated delight she took in the rough and tumble nature of citizenship in this great big sprawling country of ours, it's a real shame that she's not here to enjoy all the goings-on now that things are finally turning back towards civic sanity again.
"Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce."
-- Molly Ivins, 1944-2007
Molly's not here now, though. That means it's up to us to step into her Texas-sized shoes and do what she asked us to do in her stead. So here are a couple of causes that were always near and dear to Molly's heart, and some ways in which we can all go kick some Beltway butt the way Molly always kept telling us to do.
Climate report author Sir Nicholas Stern laid down the law at a U.S. Senate hearing: the costs of inaction on climate change will be far higher than the costs of acting today. No more excuses.
DCP co-founder Richard Bell wrote about Stern's appearance on Capitol Hill for the Global Public Media website. The following is a condensed version of his report.
Yesterday was another climate change trifecta at the U.S. Congress, with one hearing in the House on “Addressing Climate Change,” and two in the Senate, one on the "U.S. Climate Action Partnership Report,” and one featuring Sir Nicholas Stern, author of the last fall’s highly influential Stern Review of The Economics of Climate Change. All three hearings went off at 10 A.M.
I decided to bet on Sir Nicholas, and headed to the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, where Committee Chair Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) cited the trifecta as evidence that the “ground in the U.S. [on climate change] has shifted substantially… I believe there is an opportunity to move forward this year.”
Last night Richard, Marietta and I experienced one of the more disturbing evenings of our lives inside the beltway; the Council of Foreign Relations/HBO presentation of Rory Kennedy's documentary, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.
Rory opened the evening by talking about the balance between national security and the rule of law, and how fluid that line has become. The price we have paid is a commitment to human rights first. She would like to see the film raise questions that lead to a policy debate, and ultimately, a rethinking of what we are doing.
So would we.
At the reception prior to the film we had met and talked with Janice Karpinski. Marietta and I told her we used some of her story in Fear Up: Stories from Baghdad and Guantanamo and we thanked her for speaking out as she has been.
The film opens with a reminder about the experimental work of Dr. Stanley Milgrim In 1961 Milgram conducted experiments in obedience. What follows is a quote from a 1974 paper on those experiments:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.We have noticed.
Sound bites followed from the young men and women who had been accused of the worst kind of torture at Abu Ghraib:
"That place turned me into a monster."
"You become like a robot."
"If you walk through all of that, when do you say 'It's enough'?"
"You'll go crazy if you don't adapt to it."
"After 9-11, I believed someone had to pay."
Here's something that we're witnessing way too much of these days, but one that we can take a proactively Position One stance on by empowering ourselves to take immediate action to resolve it.
The following is excerpted from a detailed and disturbing report on a top-notch independent media website called The Seminal (with a hat tip to this dKos diary that brought it to our attention).
The original story by Josh Nelson includes a number of useful live links and a truly impressive list of direct email contact addresses for members of the MSM, so we encourage you to go to The Seminal's article page and take advantage of their extra information to make your voices heard on this critical issue right away.
A bill introduced last week by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) is beginning to raise eyebrows.
[It] would require ISPs to record all users’ surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely. The bill, dubbed the Safety Act by sponsor Lamar Smith, a republican congressman from Texas, would impose fines and a prison term of one year on ISPs which failed to keep full records.
This is a terrifying development and it must be stopped before it gains any significant momentum.
NonnyO wrote something yesterday that stopped me in my tracks for a moment, and so I thought I would try to write about it today. As you, dear reader, know, part of my purpose here at the DCP is to help educate, activate, and empower YOU: the citizen-activist. I get to see, in the offices of Congress, the power of the informed and passionate citizen, and the way the place starts hopping when those phones start ringing.
But until NonnyO wrote "Even with phone calls and emails, physical presence counts (or, at least it would if I were in their shoes). I'll concede that all avenues of communication with Congress Critters are important: in person, by phone, by email...(Posted by: NonnyO at February 9, 2007 01:42 PM), I hadn't thought much about that in-person part, at least not the way that I do it.
You see, I have no voting representation in Congress, so there is no one person for me to dog; no one to speak truth to directly. And so I have decided to be a witness of and for those who can act.
I worry that it's a passive role, and I think about what I might be doing that would be more effective. And so I decided to do some research on the act of witnessing, in the hope that I would understand my chosen role a little better, or at least, do it a little better so I could feel more effective.
I came across this website. Dr. Kaethe Weingarten, Ph.D. founded and directs the Witnessing Project. She is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. Her latest book, Common Shock, Witnessing Violence Every Day, How We Are Harmed, How We Can Heal resonated with me. Although I would not characterize the actions of Congress as violence, at least not in the way we think of violence, regular shockwaves move through me. I often feel as if I am witnessing a train wreck, or a horror movie when I sit in hearings or offices and observe what passes for critical thinking in the halls of this government.
And so I delved further into the website, until I came to this model:
I have reverted to my first love, the environment, and am now working for a west-coast based nonprofit, the Post Carbon Institute, which focuses on finding solutions to the twinned problems of Peak Oil and global warming. Post Carbon hosts several major projects, including the Relocalization Network which ties together almost 150 local groups around the country who are working on the energy crisis at the community level. I have opened Post Carbon's Washington DC office, and report on what's happening here, from hearings on Capitol Hill to energy briefings at the Pentagon.
My very first publicly published writing was a letter to the editor about the fate of "Pokey the Whale," a small whale who made the unfortunate error of swimming up Virginia's James River and getting stuck on a sandbar. Government agencies delayed action, allowing some of Virginia's finest sportsmen to motor over with their high-powered rifles and shoot enough holes in Pokey that the whale bled to death.
So my interest in environmental issues goes way back, with stops along the way at the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance, my co-authored book Nukespeak: Nuclear Language, Myths, and Mindset (Sierra Club Books, 1982), my attraction to John Kerry as a Senate candidate because of his great work on acid rain as Lieutenant Governor, the Worldwatch Institute and Friends of the Earth.
Below is the beginning of my most recent article for Post Carbon. The charismatic mega fauna will get you every time.
Are polar bears going to save the planet from global warming?
Today was an energy trifecta in the U.S. Senate: you could see Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman testifying on the energy sections of the President’s new budget, find out about the Bush administration’s political manipulations of climate science, or talk about global warming and wildlife.
Charismatic mega fauna (CM) fan that I am, I headed for the wildlife hearings, held by the (who makes up these names?) Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Senator Joe Lieberman. Plus there was the distinct possibility that Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), best known for his “Global warming is a hoax” line, would be there.
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
— James Madison, Political Observations, 1795
I spent part of the weekend figuring out taxes for the year. We are part of the squeezed middle class, and will have to send money in. It's fairly daunting, since some of our money will probably go to fund warfare, and less to health and education. I know that our country is responsible for a huge segment of the planet's military spending, that we lag for healthcare, and that when budget cuts occur under conservative administrations, social programs go onto the chopping block. So I went looking for some of the particulars, to see what Congress will be handed.
Last week, I reported on my journey investigating the health care industry due to trying to help my daughter get re-insured. This time, I will describe the recent events in her journey and relate them to the unsavory side of the industry.
You're already aware that her policy was dropped December 31, 2006. About a week after it expired, they sent out a certificate that showed she had had insurance previously; this is standard procedure. This certificate is suppose to prevent the insurance companies from uprating or excluding her for any pre-existing health conditions. However, the certificate does nothing if they simply deny coverage, period.
So you can imagine our reaction when one insurance company flat out denied her coverage at all.
(DCP co-founder Richard Bell's new job is Communications Director of the Post Carbon Institute. He has been quite busy attending press conferences and hearings on climate change these past few weeks because the 110th Congress seems to be attending to the issue. He wrote the following report for Global Public Media, Post Carbon's online broadcasting arm.)
Washington, DC -- At an all-day Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee conference on “renewable biofuels,” witnesses from three of America’s premier energy research institutions cast grave doubt on the feasibility of reaching President Bush’s State of the Union goal of manufacturing 35 billion gallons a year of alternative fuels by 2017. The witnesses agreed that DOE’s spending on alternative fuels was far, far below what was necessary to meet the president’s goal, much less the more critical goals of increasing the country’s energy security while decreasing carbon emissions.
Bush’s State of the Union announcement was a major boost for the alternative fuels industry. But if the president has thrown out a number that is not supported by the best researchers in the field, the resulting loss of credibility could undercut investor confidence in the industry.
Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), the most senior Republican on the committee and its previous chairman, brought this damaging testimony to light in the last session of an all-day, all-biofuels marathon with some 33 witnesses in six panels. During their respective testimonies, several witnesses on the final panel hinted that we could not manufacture enough alternative fuels to meet the president’s goal without an unprecedented shift in federal priorities.
Looking at the witnesses before him, Domenici plaintively asked why would Bush have used the 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels goal for 2017 “when you’re telling us you don’t know how to do it.”
Before the panelists could answer, Senator Bingaman (D-NM), chair of the committee, suggested that the committee ask the Department of Energy, which was presumably the source of the president’s goal. If there were DOE representatives in the room, they kept quiet.
Lori explains strategy
She was born in Indianapolis entered the military right out of high school. The Air Force promised her college and in those days, you actually got what you negotiated for. She became a Radio and Television Broadcast Specialist, running a television switchboard, a morning radio show, daily news, and a weekend feature program. She was at Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey and Hill Air Force Base in Utah (from Muslims to Mormons, as she says).
Lori showed up just before Camp Democracy began, volunteering for everything from set up to pull down, and she handled the media the whole time to boot. If not for Lori, we would not have had the press releases on the Iraq War veterans who were arrested at the Pentagon for placing brochures about depleted uranium in the chapel, for example.
Brave warriors come in all shapes and sizes. Some fight with swords, some with pens. One of the bravest of the pen-fighters lost her final battle yesterday, when Molly Ivins passed away after a years-long and painful struggle with cancer. She kept on fighting right until the very end. And in her final column, published on January 11 of this year, she charged us all to do the same:
The purpose of this old-fashioned newspaper crusade to stop the war is not to make George W. Bush look like the dumbest president ever. People have done dumber things. What were they thinking when they bought into the Bay of Pigs fiasco? How dumb was the Egypt-Suez war? How massively stupid was the entire war in Vietnam? Even at that, the challenge with this misbegotten adventure is that WE simply cannot let it continue.
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