Today, hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered in Washington to express their displeasure with the current administration, it's policies in Iraq and the horrible effect those policies are having on people across America....Aldon says that we'll hear soundbytes about the March, but they will not reflect what is really happening out there in D.C. and on other American street corners.
It wasn't just the national politics that united us. Several of us talked about the importance of races further down the ticket, such as Melissa Berger's campaign for House of Delegates in Maryland. We talked about the importance of reaching out to people in rural America such as Rob at turningblue has been doing in Georgia.There were 100,000 people who protested the war in D.C. yesterday...and there were a couple hundred anti-peace types who were apparently unaware that there already was no peace in Iraq...
At the end of the day, I spoke with Kim who is up in Burlington and about the importance of campaigns around the country. I write this post sitting in Hypatia's kitchen as numerous bloggers eat, laugh and take pictures.
The way we are going to take this country back is through the friendships that we all share on this blog, when we get together for fun and when we work together on campaigns.
Senate sources tell TIME that the Captain has also reported his charges to three senior Republican senators: Majority Leader Bill Frist, Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner and John McCain, a former torture victim in Vietnam. A Senate Republican staffer familiar with both the Captain and his allegations told TIME he appeared "extremely credible."..The new allegations [Human Rigts Watch] center around systematic abuse of Iraqi detainees by men of the 82nd Airborne at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base located near Fallujah, the scene of a major uprising against the U.S. occupation in April 2004.At Think Progress:
On July 27, the same month the Captain came forward, Sen. Frist single-handedly derailed a bipartisan effort — led by Sen. McCain — to clarify rules for the treatment of enemy prisoners at U.S. prison camps. In what news reports at the time described as an “unusual move,” Frist “simply pulled the bill from consideration” before it could be debated.A suggestion is made that Bill Frist should "come clean: Was his office told of the “systematic abuse” in the 82nd Airborne before he torpedoed the new detainee laws?"
I will be the first to say that adults in our society need to take responsibility for themselves if they possibly can. But until we come to a real understanding of the structural problems in our economy and society that are getting in our way, we will continue to legislate by bumper stickers and slogans. We need to have an honest national conversation, and an honest conversation in every community, about what is really going on, why we face the unacceptable level of poverty and near-poverty, and what we are going to do about it.