ArmsControlWonk | an arms control weblog: Washington Feng Shui: "The CIA Inspector General recommends disciplinary reviews of current and former CIA officials, including George Tenet, for failures leading to the September 11 attacks."

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

Salon.com Wire Story: "The U.S. military announced Saturday that it released nearly 1,000 prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison over the past few days in response to a request by Iraqi authorities.

The move, the largest prisoner release to date, followed appeals by Sunni representatives to start releasing thousands of prisoners who have been languishing in the jail for months without being charged.

After a meeting with President Jalal Talabani on Thursday, Sunni negotiator Saleh al-Mutlaq said the president agreed to release many detainees before the Oct. 15 referendum on the constitution. Al-Mutlaq said hundreds of detainees, most of them Sunni Arabs, were to be set free."

(Via Salon.)

Salon.com News | I invaded the White House press corps: "In the last few years, the press has lost all sense of its own mojo. Things bottomed out after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, when any aggressive grilling of the administration branded reporters as unpatriotic, which potentially alienated their audiences. The high emotion surrounding 9/11 and the War on Terror (or the new, improved Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, which the Beltway kids snarkily refer to as G-SAVE) have made them very useful hostage babies for the administration cowboys to shield themselves with during shootouts with the press. Somehow, aggressive questioning of the White House got spun as a heretical insult to slaughtered American innocents. It was so demoralizing that after a while the press succumbed en masse to what I call the Potomac dinge: passive cooperation in one's own degradation -- the deranged, unconscious complicity that is found in victims of ritual abuse.

'This is the most complacent and complicit media I've ever seen,' Helen Thomas, the most senior member of the White House press corps, told me in an interview at her office at Hearst.

The Rove affair, however, and the artless info-block by Scott McClellan that followed, was one twist too many in the press corps' shorts. The long-simmering scandal about the leaking of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, wife of Bush critic Joe Wilson, became a full-on plumbing emergency when it was revealed that the black stuff all over the faucet was the fingerprints of Karl Rove, President Bush's right-hand man, realpolitik guru and pet genius. Despite White House denials of any administrative vendetta, Washington smelled Rove's funk in the air. The stakes were raised by the president's assertion that anyone found to be involved in the Plame leak would be fired. When the humble folk of Press Town got word that Rove was, indeed, involved in the outing of Wilson's wife, they finally got morally indignant enough to go after McClellan and his boss lynch-mob style, with rolling pins and pitchforks.

As Helen Thomas observed, 'They're beginning to come out of the coma a little bit.'"

(Via Salon.)

Technocrat.net | China Building First Aircraft Carrier: "That's the speculation at Jane's as reported at Mosnews. They appear to be retrofitting a used carrier they bought from Russia."

(Via Technocrat.net.)

The Counterterrorism Blog: Radical Indoctrination in the U.S. Prisons: "The investigation of a recent alleged terrorism plot that law enforcement officials say was hatched in a California prison has raised fears about radical Islamic indoctrination in the country's prison system.  Law enforcement officials told ABC News that former Oakland gang member Peter Martinez and cellmate Kevin James, both held in the New Folsom State Prison, organized a plot to attack military and Jewish targets in the Los Angeles area this coming September 11.  The plot was discovered when former Folsom Prison inmate Levar Washington (who converted to Islam while in prison) and an accomplice were arrested for a string of gas station robberies."

...

I would like to shed some light on the kind of material that has been used in recent years to indoctrinate prison inmates by showing selections from two books that were widely distributed in American prisons by the U.S. branch of the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which was designated a sponsor of terrorism by the Treasury Department in September 2004.  The .pdf's that you can dowload below are a Counterterrorism Blog exclusive.

First, the al-Haramain Foundation distributed The Noble Qur'an, translated by Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali and Muhammad Muhsin Khan, to an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 prisoners.  (Download NQ_Title.pdf)  This translation uniquely advances a radical interpretation of the Muslim holy book through the use of footnotes and bracketed material that does not appear in the Arabic text, but rather serves an entirely "explanatory" function.  An early footnote in this translation lays out, at length, the importance of jihad:  "Al-Jihad (holy fighting) in Allah's Cause (with full force of numbers and weaponry) is given the utmost importance in Islam and is one of its pillars (on which it stands).  By Jihad Islam is established, Allah's Word is made superior, . . . and His Religion (Islam) is propagated.  By abandoning Jihad (may Allah protect us from that) Islam is destroyed and the Muslims fall into an inferior position; their honour is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish.  Jihad is an obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim, and he who tries to escape from this duty, or does not in his innermost heart wish to fulfil this duty, dies with one of the qualities of a hypocrite."  (Download NQ_71.pdf)  Thus, this translation both rules out non-military interpretations of jihad by specifying that it involves "full force of numbers and weaponry) and also states that it is "an obligatory duty on every Muslim."

(Via The Counterterrorism Blog.)

Martini Republic - Lead, follow, or have a drink.: "Colonel Davis is not the only one to breath the dreaded V word in connection with Iraq:

Military officials now frequently compare the fight in Anbar to the Vietnam War, saying that guerrilla fighters, who blend back into the population, are trying to break the will of the American military - rather than defeat it outright - and to erode public support for the war back home.

'If it were just killing people that would win this, it'd be easy,' said Marine Maj. Nicholas Visconti, 35, of Brookfield, Conn., who served in southern Iraq in 2003. 'But look at Vietnam. We killed millions, and they kept coming. It's a war of attrition. They're not trying to win. It's just like in Vietnam. They won a long, protracted fight that the American public did not have the stomach for. ... Killing people is not the answer; rebuilding the cities is.'

How long before concentration camp-enthusiast Michelle Malkin registers her disgust for these brave soldiers fighting in Iraq for using the dread 'V' word, the way she did when decorated and wounded veteran Hagel had the audacity to state the obvious?  Or maybe Rush Limgbaugh will call them 'pukes.' "

(Via Martini Republic.)

President Bush's Loss of Faith - New York Times: "It took President Bush a long time to break his summer vacation and acknowledge the pain that the families of fallen soldiers are feeling as the death toll in Iraq continues to climb. When he did, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Utah this week, he said exactly the wrong thing. In an address that repeatedly invoked Sept. 11 - the day that terrorists who had no discernable connection whatsoever to Iraq attacked targets on American soil - Mr. Bush offered a new reason for staying the course: to keep faith with the men and women who have already died in the war.

'We owe them something,' Mr. Bush said. 'We will finish the task that they gave their lives for.' It was, as the mother of one fallen National Guardsman said, an argument that 'makes no sense.' No one wants young men and women to die just because others have already made the ultimate sacrifice. The families of the dead do not want that, any more than they want to see more soldiers die because politicians cannot bear to admit that they sent American forces to war by mistake."

(Via NervousFishBlog.)

Where Did Iraq Get Its Weapons of Mass Destruction?: A list of news articles linking Saddam to US and German suppliers.

(Via The Future of Freedom Foundation.)

An Anti-Democracy Foreign Policy: Iran by Jacob G. Hornberger: "In a speech delivered in March 2000 by Madeleine Albright (then secretary of state), the U.S. government finally acknowledged what it had done to the Iranian people and to democracy in Iraq:

In 1953, the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons, but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs. Moreover, during the next quarter century, the United States and the West gave sustained backing to the Shah’s regime. Although it did much to develop the country economically, the Shah’s government also brutally repressed political dissent. As President Clinton has said, the United States must bear its fair share of responsibility for the problems that have arisen in U.S.-Iranian relations.

Not surprisingly, Albright’s ‘apology’ fell on many deaf ears in Iran. While Iranians certainly have not forgotten the U.S. government’s support of Saddam Hussein and Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War during the 1980s, including its furnishing Saddam with weapons of mass destruction to use against the Iranian people, the root of Iranian anger lies with the anti-democracy foreign policy of the U.S. government, by which U.S. officials ousted the Iranian people’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, from office in 1953."

(Via Lew Rockwell.)

A Modest Proposal for Iran by Anthony Gregory: "If you think about it, he's the right man for the job. The U.S. government has had a long history working with him. In 1959, he was a CIA asset in an assassination plot; in 1968, the U.S. helped bring his party to victory; and, in 1979, he became president of Iraq with a nod from the U.S. and positioned himself as an anti-Soviet U.S. ally in the Cold War. Throughout the 1980s, the Pentagon and CIA armed, financed and advised his regime in a devastating war against Iran. If we trusted him then to keep the Iranian Mullahs in line, why not trust him now to tame the newly empowered Iraqi Mullahs? He was for years our secular point man and a check against his theocratic neighbors. He can do it all over again, with just a minor change of scenery.

All we have to do is free Saddam from his military prison, fortify 100,000 U.S. troops along the Iraq-Iran border, invade, starting with special forces, take out the major military and government installations with bunker busters, tactical nukes and other precision ordnance – we can call the operation 'Strike and Stun' – and install Saddam as the new supreme leader and president of the Iranian government. The U.S. has picked favorites to run that country before, so it shouldn't be too hard to do again. In fact, it will be a cakewalk. The Iranians, oppressed as they are, will be overjoyed at the sight of American troops and will welcome their liberators with flowers and candy. The invasion and rebuilding can be financed completely from Iranian oil revenues. And the Iranian nuclear weapons program will be neutralized, put under the authority of Saddam, who, as we now know, can be trusted to tell the truth about such matters."

(Via Lew Rockwell.)

Salon.com Wire Story: "Black, Hispanic and white motorists are equally likely to be pulled over by police, but blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched, handcuffed, arrested and subjected to force or the threat of it, a Justice Department study has found.

The study, by the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, was completed last April and posted on the agency's Web site after Bush administration officials disagreed over whether a press release should mention the racial disparities.

Traffic stops have become a politically volatile issue as minority groups have complained that many stops and searches are based on race rather than on legitimate suspicions."

(Via Salon.)

(Via The Onion.)

Political Wire: Nixon and Bush Compared: "While Think Progress notes President Bush is now less popular than President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, Stuart Thiel provides an interesting graph charting the approval rates of both presidents throughout their administrations."

(Via Martini Republic.)

Salon.com - War Room: "The man can't catch a break from protestors opposed to his war in Iraq, even when he ventures off into the reddest of the red states. Even with Cindy Sheehan off to visit her ailing mother, protestors are still camped out near the president's estate in Crawford, Texas. They filled a park and lined the streets when he spoke Monday in Salt Lake City. And about 200 protestors turned out to greet the president this week in Donnelly, Idaho -- population 138 -- as he prepared for some rest and relaxation there.

Idaho may be the Bushiest state in the nation, but it doesn't seem to matter. 'President Bush probably breathed a sigh of relief when he landed in Idaho last night,' the Washington Post quotes Laura McCarthy, whose son Gavin is serving in Iraq, as saying at a protest in Boise this week. 'But no matter where he goes, he's going to find a Cindy Sheehan in every community across the United States. The name is going to be different, but the message is going to be the same.'"

(Via Salon.)

Salon.com Wire Story: "Same-sex couples who raise children are lawful parents, and just like heterosexual couples, they must provide for their children if they break up, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The justices ruled for the first time that custody and child support laws that hold absent fathers accountable also apply to estranged gay and lesbian couples who used reproductive science to conceive.

Being a legal parent 'brings with it the benefits as well as the responsibilities,' said Justice Joyce Kennard.

The court's ruling, involving three separate cases, is the latest to recognize rights of same-sex couples."

(Via Salon.)

Salon.com Wire Story: "Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to stop his country from becoming 'a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism.'

'We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,' Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network's 'The 700 Club.'

'We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator,' he continued. 'It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.'

Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush, accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have called the accusations ridiculous.

'You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,' Robertson said. 'It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.'"

And people wonder why the separation of chuch and state is so important...

(Via Salon.)

Salon.com News | Iraq: The unseen war: "The grim reality of Iraq rarely appears in the American press. This photo gallery reveals the war's horrible human toll."

...

"Governments keep war hidden because it is hideous. To allow citizens to see its reality -- the shattered bodies, the wounded children, the incomprehensible mayhem -- is to risk eroding popular support for it. This is particularly true with wars that have less than overwhelming popular support to begin with. In the case of Vietnam, battlefield images played an important role in turning the tide of public opinion. And in Iraq, a war whose official justification has turned out to be false, and which a majority of the American people now believe to have been a mistake, the administration would prefer that these grim images never be seen.

But the media is also responsible for sanitizing the Iraq war, at times rendering it almost invisible. Most American publications have been reluctant to run graphic war images. Almost no photographs of the 1,868 U.S. troops who have been killed to date in Iraq have appeared in U.S. publications. In May 2005, the Los Angeles Times surveyed six major newspapers and the nation's two leading newsmagazines, and found that over a six-month period, no images of dead American troops appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Time or Newsweek. A single image of a covered body of a slain American ran in the Seattle Times. There were also comparatively few images of wounded Americans. The publications surveyed tended to run more images of dead or wounded Iraqis, but they have hardly been depicted in large numbers either."

The photo gallery is available behind the link above.

(Via Salon.)

The New Republic Online: Island Mentality (1 of 2): "How much 'duress' a detainee endures in the interrogation room is a matter of both confusion and controversy. FBI interrogators who visited Guantánamo in 2003 and 2004 informed their superiors that, 'on a couple of occasions,' they found detainees 'chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor'--that is, secured to the small bar I saw--'with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more.' The air conditioning was set to make interrogation rooms so cold that the detainee was violently shaking or so 'unbearably hot' that the detainee, who endured the temperature for hours, was practically unconscious and had 'apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night.' Detainees had been blasted with 'extremely loud' songs by Lil' Kim and Eminem, as well as a Meow Mix cat food commercial, for extended periods. In June, Time magazine published excerpts from the interrogation log of the suspected would-be twentieth September 11 hijacker, Mohammed Al Qatani, which states, among other things, that Qatani's questioners injected him with massive amounts of fluids and forced him to urinate on himself. "

Emphasis Mine.

(Via The New Republic.)

The New Republic Online: Island Mentality (1 of 2): "By the time the unclassified portion of the hearing closes, the detainee is silent and still, once again acquiescent to another year of probable detention--either at Guantánamo or, under a deal announced last week to send detainees to prisons in their own countries, in Afghanistan. 

The outcome of the hearing was probably not in question--in large part because it was not a legal proceeding. The officer advising the detainee is not a lawyer. His job is not to challenge the government's case for continued detention, but rather to help the detainee 'understand' the proceedings. The hearing doesn't ascertain the detainee's guilt or innocence, but rather the threat he poses to the United States, as well as what intelligence value he possesses. (That consideration is undertaken in a classified hearing.) What I saw, however, made it difficult to escape the conclusion that the detainee's guilt is largely taken for granted. Justice, conventionally understood, is not a priority at Guantánamo."

(Via The New Republic.)

Defense Tech: Jet Defense Gets Off Ground: "It's taken nearly three years. But the Homeland Security Department is finally ready to start testing out missile countermeasures on commercial planes.

Back in November 2002, an Israeli 757 was attacked with two shoulder-fired MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) over Kenya. Luckily, the missiles didn't connect. But many analysts think it's only a matter of time before an American jetliner is hit; MANPADS have killed hundreds of airline passengers since the 70's. And unless some kind of countermeasure is put in place, the planes will continue to be 'almost like sitting ducks. Those aircraft are very slow... Everyone can [attack them],' an Israeli defense researcher told CNN."

...

"Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems have been working on cheaper, easier-to-maintain versions of the countermeasure. And Northrop says it should be ready to begin 'operational testing and evaluation... aboard an MD-11 airliner later this month and a Boeing 747 later this year.'

A company spokesperson says that the system 'will cost airlines $0.003 to operate per available seat mile or about 70 cents per passenger on a 2,000-mi. trip. This is about the cost of a bag of peanuts,"

(Via a DefenseTech.)

Slashdot | Scientists Create New Human Embryonic Stem Cell: "'U.S. scientists were successful in creating a new human embryonic stem cell. From source, 'U.S. researchers said on Monday they have created a new human embryonic stem cell by fusing an embryonic stem cell to an ordinary skin cell. They hope their method could someday provide a way to create tailor-made medical treatments without having to start from scratch using cloning technology. That would mean generating the valuable cells without using a human egg, and without creating a human embryo, which some people, including President George W. Bush, find objectionable. ''"

(Via /.)

Martini Republic - Lead, follow, or have a drink.: "Celeste Zappala, the Methodist peace mom who lost her son Sherwood Baker to Bush's war, will be leading the protest in Utah tonight, at a park not far from where Bush will give another promotional war speech.

'We all know that noble cause for war that Bush talks about has changed several times,' Zappala said.

Zappala's son was killed while looking for weapons of mass destruction that didn't actually exist."

(Via Martini Republic.)

Martini Republic - Lead, follow, or have a drink.: "The ironic Sovietization of 'free' America continues apace: a tv station in Utah won't run an ad featuring Cindy Sheehan's simple pro-truth message.

In a statement Saturday evening explaining its decision, KTVX said that after viewing the ad, local managers found the content 'could very well be offensive to our community in Utah, which has contributed more than its fair share of fighting soldiers and suffered significant loss of life in the this Iraq war.'"

(Via Martini Republic.)

The Counterterrorism Blog: Signs that al Qaeda is Flush With Cash: "There is growing evidence in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond that al Qaeda and its allies are newly flush with cash, able to buy new weapons, more sophisticated communications equipment and deadlier and more complex explosives. This contradicts the more optimistic public assesments Bush administration officials, who continue to assert that the financial war on Islamic radicals is going well. For one of the best recent assessments of the situation, consistant with what my sources are telling me, can be found in recent Knight-Ridder reporting here. The reporting also outlines the growing links among radical Islamists in the two fronts of their war.

This expansion and procurement takes money, and is taking place against the backdrop of an insurgency in Iraq that has steadily grown more sophisticated in its manufacture of explosive devices and weapons used on the ground. This, too, takes money. Some in the military intelligence community believe there is serious cross-training going on among the combatants in Afghanistan and the Islamist mujahadeen in Iraq, and again this is a considerable cost. Finding the source of that money and slowing it down will be key to keeping the insurgencies in both countries from gaining more ground.

One of the most worrisome factors, according to sources working on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan, is the role played by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hizb-e-Islami party in the protection and arming of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Hekmatyar fled to Iran when the Taliban took over, but returned after their defeat by coalition forces and, in fine Afghani style, allied himself with his erstwhile enemies. Hekmatyar poses a serious problem in addition to his wealth, power and sympathies to the most radical elements of al Qaeda. He remains very close to the regime in Tehran that gave him asylum and now supplies him with weapons, intelligence and money. "

(Via a DefenseTech.)

Raed in the Middle: Deadline: The Iraqi Constitution:

"Another two weeks!
Another two hours!
Another two minutes!

The Iraqi constitution committee is begging for another last minute, as if the world is ending tomorrow. With all the internal pressure (i.e. the daily insurgent attacks) and the external pressure (the US administration’s imposed deadlines), the committee finds itself between a rock and a hard place. The US ambassador to Iraq attends all the constitution meetings and gives the Iraqi stakeholders some printed ‘suggestions’ to break the deadlock, while the Iraqi resistance’s assassinations and attacks are getting stronger and more effective.

The Iraqi ‘governments’, established and supported by the occupation, has spent the last couple of years collapsing. Every new day is a worse day; every yesterday is brighter than any tomorrow."

(Via Iraq The Model.)

Tell Me a Secret: I found myself...: "Sleeping in a grave-size space, defined by two walls touching both my head my and feet, and surrounded with human bodies touching me from both sides, in a way that hardly leaves any chance to move at all during the long… long night, in a 12 square meters room stuffed with 35 people trying to sleep, and to hold themselves together in order not to fight…

The whole thing started when I went to the university to pay my tuition fees, the thing is that the engineering campus is separated from the rest of the university with few kilometers, but for such administrative issues, students should go to the headquarter, and this is what I did. I entered the main campus and went to the financial department to pay money. I started the paperwork process, and then reached to a point where we needed the director’s signature to finish the paperwork, but she was in a meeting. So, the employee asked me to go and waste an hour inside the campus till the meeting is over, and I did."

...

"Another guy came after a while, and asked me: who did you contact on the internet?
“my mother and brothers” I said.
He didn’t look satisfied.
“keep him” he said.

Next thing I know, a very fat policeman entered the small room, asked me to face the wall, searched me again, took my money and glasses, put a bag on my head and handcuffs in my hand (I still have the marks on my hand till now). While my hands were behind my back and my head in a bag, he made me run for about a minute, till we reached a police van, where I was forced to get in. The car starting moving towards an unknown destination…

You don’t want to know the swearing and curses I heard all the way, but maybe you’ll want to know that no one beat me."

(Via Iraq The Model.)

Hullabaloo : "So you believe we're acting as peacemakers in Iraq?

Yes and we're protecting the innocent. Muslims want to rule the world. They want to take over the whole world. That's their evil purpose."

...

"Where do you get your information about the war?

The Bible and the 700 Club. I also listen to preachers who know what's going on. Pat Robertson.

What do you like about Bush?

He's a praying man of god. He's a family man and he does care. He gets blamed for everything. If this country would turn back to god, things would get better. You can't go on killing babies and allowing homosexual stuff to stay. We do love the people, but we don't love their actions.

Do you think talking about homosexuality does anything to improve healthcare or poverty?

I guess for me I've always had to trust the lord for the next job, which is usually housecleaning. If you have your eyes on him, he'll take care of you. The government can't help us."

(Via Salon.)

Salon.com News | Can Democrats get smart?: "But this time, they are looking beyond the midterm elections in 2006 or the presidential showdown in 2008. Dozens of the richest people in America have banded together to develop a new, permanent network of progressive organizations that will, they hope, fundamentally alter the political direction of the country. Their idea is to create a sort of venture capital firm for progressive philanthropy, a new organization they call the Democracy Alliance. The Alliance will do very little substantive work itself. Rather it will direct six- and seven-figure donations to those groups -- whether they are think tanks, media outlets, or training programs for young liberal leaders -- that show the most promise.

'The Democrats for a long time have been fixed on the next election or the election after that,' says Peter L. Buttenweiser, an heir to the Lehman Brothers securities fortune and one of the Democratic Party's most generous donors. 'This is the first concerted effort to build the infrastructure of the progressive party in a way that replicates what the right has been doing for a long time.'"

(Via Salon.)

AlterNet: War on Iraq: 'Listen to Cindy': "The wife of former vice presidential candidate John Edwards writes an impassioned open letter calling for support on behalf of Cindy Sheehan."

...

"Cindy wants Casey's death to have meant as much as his life -- lived fully -- might have meant. I know this, as does every mother who has ever stood where we stand. And the President says he knows enough, doesn't need to hear from Casey's mother, doesn't need to assure her that Casey's is not one small death in a long and seemingly never-ending drip of deaths, that there is a plan here that will bring our sons and daughters home. He doesn't need to hear from her, he says. He claims he understands how some people feel about the deaths in Iraq.

The President is wrong.

Whether you agree or disagree with every part, or any part, of what Cindy wants to say, you know it is better that the President hear different opinions, particularly from those with such a deep and personal interest in the decisions of our government. Today, another voice would be helpful.

Cindy Sheehan can be that voice. She has earned the right to be that voice. Please join me in supporting Cindy's right to be heard."

(Via AlterNet.)