Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Scott Ritter served as an intelligence officer in the United States Marines including being a lead military intelligence analyst during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the Iran/Iraq war. During Operation Desert Storm his primary job was preventing SCUD missiles from striking Israel, serving as the ballistic missile advisor to General Norman Schwarzkopf. He was a UN Weapons Inspector between 1991 and 1998, serving as chief-inspector in 14 of the 30 missions in which he participated. Ritter resigned from the team in 1998, after his team was pulled out of Iraq by President Clinton. At that time he believed that the administration and the United Nations had made a "mockery" of the inspection process. According to Scott, the CIA had infiltrated the inspection teams, Iraq was not properly complying with UN resolutions, and neither the UN or the United States seemed to take the inspection process seriously. By 2002 however, Scott became an outspoken critic against the march towards war in Iraq, and has been a leading voice against the Bush administration's policies in the Middle East.

Ray McGovern is a 27-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). A senior-level analyst, in the later days of his career, McGovern was in charge of writing the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), and personally briefed top administration officials including the Vice President (George HW Bush), the Secretaries of State and Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He retired from the CIA to work for a non-profit organization helping those seeking to help the marginalized poor. During his time in the CIA, Ray lived by the ethic of "telling it like it is" without fear or favor. By 2003, he and other intelligence professionals recognized a sea change in ethics as intelligence was molded to match the case for war. He and others founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, in an attempt to shed light on the misinformation being used to justify war.

Faiza Al-Araji is an Iraqi citizen, a mother, a Shia married to a Sunni, a civil engineer, and now a blogger with a family daily diary telling the story of what life has been like since the start of the war (afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot. com). After her son was kidnapped and held for ransom by the Iraqi Interior Ministry, her family raised enough money to get him freed and they all now live in exile in Jordan. She continues to write her blog based on correspondence from friends and family still in Iraq, and is currently touring the United States as part of a group if Shia and Sunni women, sharing their stories with the American people in the hope of bringing a quick end to the occupation.

Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of Global Exchange and Code Pink. She is brilliant, compassionate, outrageous, and incredibly courageous. She has been working for peace and social justice for many years and is one of the most effective organizers in the world. After Baghdad fell she launched an organization to oversee the military and corporate occupation of Iraq, bringing news from on the ground to a world inundated by carefully filtered mainstream media reports, tightly crafted propaganda, and outright lies.

WEAPONS - THERE WERE NO MORE WEAPONS

The evening's main sponsors, Multifaith Voices for Peace And Justice (www.multifaithpeace.org) and American Muslim Voice (www.amuslimvoice.org) opened the evening by sharing scripture and prayers from our various faith traditions. Each dealt with the issue of telling the truth.

Scott and Ray then had a conversation with each other. They've been doing this style of presentation for a while now, appearing in Santa Cruz only hours before and in Oakland the previous evening. Their banter, though, still seemed fresh.

"So Scott," Ray asked, "what happened to all those weapons of mass destruction we all heard so much about."

Scott laid out the case he has been making for the past few years. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a liar and had tried to hide his weapons and the existence of ongoing weapons programs. At some point, however, he realized the box he had himself in with sanctions and the constant presence of inspectors and decided to destroy everything. Between the inspectors and Saddam's own people, the WMD that existed in Iraq were dismantled, destroyed, or in the case of some chemical weapons, were simply allowed to rot (causing them to become useless as weapons).

By 1996, the inspectors were able to verify that 98% of the weapons had been destroyed and that Saddam Hussein no longer had any active weapons programs.

98% is a very important number. Without 100% certainty, the sanctions against Iraq could not be lifted. According to Scott, President Clinton did not want the sanctions lifted. His policy, like the future President Bush's, was to work towards regime change in Iraq, and lifting the sanctions was simply not a good option to achieve that end.

The inspection teams in Iraq worked under special rules when it came to "sensitive" locations, like Presidential Palaces. The Iraqis believed that one of the roles for the inspectors was to provide intelligence information that would be helpful in targeting and killing Saddam Hussein. Because of that fear (which turned out to have been well founded), certain locations required special conditions for inspections. While mainstream media made it seem as though the Iraqis made those locations completely off limits, the truth was that they simply required special treatment.

The "modality" for entering those locations was that a team of only four inspectors could enter, do a comprehensive search of the location, and only if they found something suspicious could a regular large-scale team be brought in. In 1998, however, the inspectors were ordered to demand immediate and full access to Baath Party political headquarters. This was considered a special location and the rules for entering it were clear to the Iraqis, who refused to allow a full team in.

President Clinton, using that refusal as an excuse, pulled the inspectors out of Iraq and bombed several locations, including Presidential Palaces and other locations at which the CIA believed Saddam might be residing. Information gathered by weapons inspectors was used in the targeting of these bombs. After the bombing, the inspectors were not invited to return to Iraq. President Clinton, however, did not want to launch a full-scale war against Iraq.

Scott resigned from the UN inspection team. At that time, Scott is quoted as saying that he felt the inspection process had become a mockery. The CIA had infiltrated the teams, the United Nations didn't seem serious about enforcing its resolutions, and the United States policy was misguided and achieving nothing. In reading Scott's words from that time, it seems like he wanted a much more vigorous inspection process, with a stronger threat of military force, that could once and for all disarm Iraq and bring an end to this terrible chapter in history.

DEBACLE OR PLANNED CHAOS

Soon, the discussion of the evening turned towards post-Saddam Iraq. Why was the war going so badly? We heard from Ray, Scott and Faiza at different times. Here, I'd like to summarize what we heard from all of them, plus a bit of what Medea Benjamin revealed a few months after the fall of Saddam.

The basic thrust of Ray and Scott's position is that the United States could not have a stable Iraq if the administration's plans were to move forward. In what many will find provocative and controversial, the point seemed to be that President Bush needed the appearance of civil war in order to justify keeping our troops in Iraq. We are, according to many, building at least four gigantic military bases in Iraq, for permanent housing of United States troops. Add to those bases the massive embassy compound in Baghdad, and there's little doubt that our plan is to stay in Iraq a long time, if not forever. The American people, however, were given the impression that our plan was to invade, drive out Saddam, help form a democratic government, and then leave.

Three years after the invasion, Iraq is in terrible shape. Hundreds of bodies arrive at morgues every day, shot execution style, decapitated, ripped to shreds by suicide bombs, torn apart by Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), strangled, and mutilated. It is an absolute living nightmare for the Iraqis and U.S. forces. Busloads of people are forced onto their knees and shot in broad daylight. Children are kidnapped for ransom. Teachers are beheaded in front of their students. Women are beaten for not dressing the way religious zealots expect them to dress. Raw sewage fills the streets. Taps that used to provide clean water run dry, and the most anyone can expect is an hour or so of electricity each day. Long lines of cars wait for gas that is ten times more expensive than it was a year ago. Frustration, fear, and anger have replaced any signs of hope.

Why has all this happened? According to Scott and Ray, perhaps it was necessary to let the country fall into chaos in order to convince Americans that our forces were still needed there.

Soon after Baghdad fell (June 2003), Medea Benjamin opened an organization in Iraq to oversee the occupation. She returned from a trip there and spoke to members of Congress and just plain folks across the country. Here are the main points she brought up, which are important to note given the way things have turned out in Iraq since then.

Firing the Military & Baath Party Members

As the United States and Britain geared up for war in Iraq, we launched a propaganda war. Millions of leaflets were dropped on Iraqi troops. We promised them that if they took off their uniforms and went home when the war began, they could join us in leading a new and free Iraq after Saddam was defeated. Given the relative ease with which the coalition brought Baghdad to its knees, it is obvious that the soldiers in Iraq's army took the United States at its word. We had very little resistance.

Yet, when the U.S. established control of Baghdad, and thousands of Iraqi soldiers came to the occupation headquarters and asked for their jobs back, we told them to go to hell. We had officially disbanded the old Iraqi military and didn't want any of them working for the new Iraq. The message was clear to these thousands and thousands of former Iraqi soldiers. You will never work again. Your lives are over. We don't want you around here.

Medea's take on this was that we had betrayed these soldiers, lied to them. By doing so we were guaranteeing disastrous results.

1.    These soldiers would become insurgents because they had no hope of ever feeding themselves or their families again.
2.    The borders of Iraq would be flooded by foreigners, because we didn't have enough troops to guard those borders.
3.    Weapons caches around the country, which were going unguarded because we didn't have enough troops to protect them would be looted, and those weapons would be used against U.S. forces and eventually in a civil war.

At the same time, the United States declared that former members of the Baath Party were not welcome in the new Iraqi government. While the top leaders in that party should have been removed, the idea that the entire governing structure of the country should be given pink slips was inappropriate. Hundreds of thousands of people, who had been running the various ministries, utilities, schools and hospitals found themselves not only unemployed, but permanent pariahs.

Medea saw these people as yet another cesspool of  despair and potential insurgency, bubbling up and waiting to be given marching orders. Medea was absolutely correct back then, in saying that these decisions would lead to death, destruction, and civil war. But, were they mistakes by the occupation or........

NOT MISTAKES?

While until March 25th 2006 when Scott, Ray, Faiza and Medea spoke, I thought the things Medea has raised three years earlier sounded like stupid mistakes by the Bush administration, now, it seemed like they might been done on purpose.

If not for these many "mistakes" there might not have been an insurgency as we are seeing now. Had we kept most the military in place, we could have secured the borders and all of the weapons depots. We could have kept the streets and roads safe. We could have provided security for the emerging Iraqi government structure and the new courts. Had we kept the technocrats in place, we would have had an easier time keeping water and electricity flowing.

Instead, we have chaos, misery, and blood and only two real choices for how this came to be.

1.    The Bush administration is completely incompetent.
2.    The Bush administration wanted the chaos.

The first would not be surprising, the latter despicable.

AN ANGRY VOICE - Faiza

Faiza's time of sharing that evening was very painful to hear. She is a very angry woman. Faiza told us that until the war, women had reasonably good lives in Iraq. Women like her could go to school (paid for by the government), get virtually any civilian job that a man could get, and they got equal pay for equal work. Certainly, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator and the sanctions against Iraq made life harder than it needed to be. But people like Faiza had husbands, children, homes, friends, family, jobs, books, movies, and all the other little and big things that make for a reasonably good life. Like most Iraqis, she said, she was glad that Saddam was gone. But why didn't the Americans pack up and leave afterwards? Why did they stay and cause all of this chaos?

How could Americans not understand what life was like now and how badly things were going? If she wanted to know what was happening in Basra, she could go to the Internet café and check things out on the web. When there was electricity, Iraqis rushed to turn on their TV's to watch the news, to see what was happening around the country. How could Americans who have computers in their homes and TVs everywhere be so ignorant? And, having traveled across our country recently and heard questions from well-meaning people, she still couldn't help feeling rage over their absolute ignorance about things.

One point especially irked her and that was the concept that women were better off now than before.

How dare any American claim that our invasion has made life better for Iraqi women? Their lives are far worse.

Her own child was dragged away from his home by thugs working for the Interior Ministry. His crime? He had not shaved his beard. No charges were brought. He was taken to no court for trial. Instead, his family had to raise thousands of dollars in ransom to gain his release. Soon after his release, Faiza took the family and fled to Jordan where she now lives.

Women can't walk the streets safely any more, their lives are living hell. Faiza's friends and family are terrified, hungry, and thirsty. Many children can't go to school any more, especially girls. Will all the women have to wear burquas soon? Will they no longer be allowed to work or drive cars?

Faiza went back to Iraq to vote in the election, to get her purple-stained finger, because she loves her country and wants things to get better so that she can go home. But since the last election things have only gotten even worse, and she blames the United States for it all.

And, she says, don't blame it on ethnicity or religion!

Before the invasion, Sunni lived next to Shia and there wasn't any sectarian fighting. Even after Saddam fell, they all still got along, and even helped each other with money and food. But, when foreign fighters were allowed to flow across Iraq's unguarded borders, they began to stir up most of the sectarian trouble. Car bombs, suicide bombs, kidnappings, mass executions, roaming death squads, all ran rampant with seemingly no resistance from the U.S. occupation forces.

Sectarian militias have formed to protect enclaves of people, and to avenge horrific deeds. The cycle of violence is staggering.

Iraqis wouldn't do these things to each other, she cried. We lived together in peace before. Why did the United States allow these things to happen? Why don't they just leave and let the Iraqis sort things out?

A SAD BUT GENTLE VOICE - Ray

Ray spoke about various things during the evening, but the time when he became most emotional was when the subject of torture was raised. Recently, Ray had gone to the halls of Congress wearing an orange jumpsuit. He had a piece of tape across his mouth with the word "torture" written on it.

Having been in the CIA for 27 years, Ray knew the rules under which the United States was supposed to operate when it came to torture. Torture is wrong. It is un-American. Using torture hurts the United States and our behavior today could lead to horrors committed against our people tomorrow, and perhaps our eventual destruction.

Behind Ray were two large banners, each showing what appears to be a nude person kneeling. Together the banners read "My God, My God, Why Have We Abandoned Each Other?"  Ray drew the audience's attention to those banners, and said they reflected his broken heart over current U.S. policies and practices in dealing with detainees.

Just last week, an army Sergeant was convicted of using his dog to terrorize a detainee. The sergeant and another dog handler had a bet on which one could get a detainee to soil himself first by getting their un-muzzled dogs to growl and snap at the quivering detainee's faces.. They had also allowed other guards to smear peanut butter onto a woman's breasts and a man's penis, and have the dog lick the peanut butter off in front of detainees. The dog-handlers claimed that they were following orders, to soften up the detainees. The jury found the Sergeant guilty, and gave him six months in prison. A few weeks before that, another low-ranking guard was convicted of killing a detainee by wrapping his head into a sleeping bag, tying his body tightly with electric cord, and holding his hand over the detainee's nose and mouth. That guard will spend no time in jail for his crime.

Ray wondered, along with the crowd, why no high-ranking officers had been tried so far. The highest-ranking person to face the music, so far, had been a man named Colonel Pappas. The guards in the stories you've just read worked for Pappas. When investigators let Pappas know that he was going to face trial, Pappas, according to Ray, said that would be fine with him. He had signed documents from his chain of command, including General Miller, General Sanchez, and a hand-written note on a list of acceptable tactics for interrogation, by none other than Donald Rumsfeld. He had kept that little list on his wall for a long time. Rumsfeld's words on that list of tactics was simple, "Make It Happen."

Go ahead and prosecute me, Col. Pappas said. It will be interesting sharing all the documentation I have locked up and hidden away.

Instead, Col. Pappas was given what's known in the military as "Non-Judicial Punishment" and, here's the real kicker, immunity from further prosecution. The deal? He had to testify against the people under him, not over him. So far, Col. Pappas has done just that, claiming that he gave some orders, but maintaining the ruse that the folks committing these acts of torture were just bad apples.

Ray also shared that General Miller, the officer who had run Guantanamo Bay and had then gotten sent by Donald Rumsfeld to Abu Ghraib in Iraq to "take the gloves off" on interrogations, has invoked his right to remain silent and is refusing to testify in anyone's court martial.

Scott shared what anyone who has spent time in the military knows, it is unthinkable for a general officer to invoke his right not to testify in the trial of a subordinate. It can only mean that the general believes that speaking would implicate himself as a criminal. Military folks do have the same rights as civilians, not to testify against themselves. In the military that right is included in Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But, for an officer to invoke that right in a case like this goes, as both Scott and Ray said, beyond the pale.

Ray and Scott both shared their belief that the military, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA have been horribly corrupted by the Bush administration's lawlessness. Both were incredibly angry at the way our reputation has been destroyed and the horrible cruelty we've inflicted on people. This is not kind of government that either of them could ever have imagined when they were serving her proudly for so many years.

Before moving on, Ray shared his anger and sadness over the way President Bush has used "signing statements" to make it clear that no matter how hard Congress tries to stop acts of torture, he will do whatever he wants and believes is necessary in carrying out his "unitary executive power."

AN ANGRY MARINE DEMANDS CHANGE - Scott

As often happens at events like this, people hear so much bad news, so many horrible stories, so few signs of hope, that someone invariably asks, "So what are we supposed to do about all this?"

Scott took that opportunity to lambaste the assembled. According to Scott, time after time after time the people in that room and those like them had tried to achieve something and failed. We tried to stop the war in Iraq and we failed. We tried to get Bush out of the White House and we failed. We're trying to keep the United States from attacking Iran and we're failing. Our tactics don't work. Our rallies end up achieving nothing. We don't have any real leadership. We spend too much time worrying about spotted owls and frogs and whales. We're completely inept and think that going to a rally and then patting ourselves on the back for having done so is good enough. If we don't change tactics soon, we'll never succeed.

Not only that, Scott said, but people really didn't give a damn about the Iraqi people. How many of us could name a single Iraqi person who had been killed in this war. Until we could prove that we cared as much about Iraqis as we did about ourselves, all our rallies and marches didn't mean anything.

Ouch!

On some level, some of this criticism is appropriate. If it were completely untrue, it would not have stung as much as it did for so many. The people in that room had gone to the rallies, marched in the streets, written letters and made phone calls. Some of them had gone to Iraq and Afghanistan to try to make a difference. Many had spent a lot of their time and money trying to stop the war and bring healing in the aftermath. But, we had not stopped the war and it did seem like the Bush Administration was winning every single battle, from wire-tapping to torture. And, I suspect that many in that room could not name a single Iraqi who had died.

Folks took Scott on and did share the fact that we were working in new ways, forming larger coalitions, focusing better on one thing - bringing the troops home. Medea was especially strong in telling Scott and the folks assembled that their efforts did matter, had made a difference, and that the country was slowly but surely coming to the side of those who want an end to this war.

Ray also spoke up, encouraging people to keep working, but in his quiet yet strong manner, Ray reminded us that we should never try to do it alone. We needed to work together, care about each other, gain strength from each other.

AN ANALYST ANALYZING ANALYSTS - Craig

If my journalism teacher were reading this, he'd certainly give me an "F" and say that this entire piece was not reporting! He'd be right, especially now that I'm clearly putting myself in the story.

When Scott was blasting us that evening, I was perplexed by the level of frustration he was venting. Why did he seem so angry? Here's where my dime-store psychology comes in so please take it with a grain of salt. And Scott, if you're reading this, feel free to pipe in.

When I left the United States Air Force after eight years as a Korean linguist, I was very angry that I had to leave. I left because I'm gay and couldn't be in the closet any more. I loved my job, was incredibly good at it, and could probably have done a full 30 years if I didn't have to continue lying about who I was.

I was still so proud of my country, though, and the people I served with. The integrity of most military folks is amazing. The rules we lived under were clear. We didn't spy on Americans, we didn't torture people, we didn't assassinate people, and we recognized that in the United States, the people make the rules, not us.

All of that has changed. Today, we torture, we assassinate, we lie to Congress, and we spy on Americans. ("We" meaning those that are currently serving and misbehaving, not the readers of this article or me).

President Bush makes the rules, no matter what Congress thinks. Congress, the courts, and the people be damned.

If Scott is anything like me, these changes are infuriating. But there's a difference between Scott and me. When I left the Air Force I started a journey which brought me into the midst of people I have come to love and respect. Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others who believe in peace and social justice, and work hard to make the world a better place. People who accepted me as gay, and totally embraced me and my life partner, have made this journey wonderful. Difficult at times, but as Ray McGovern kept telling us about our journeys - don't do it alone.

I feel like I belong somewhere and I feel like the work I do with these people is important. It can and does make a difference.

I suspect that Scott was very angry when he left the UN weapons inspection team. But I don't think he has found a new place to be fully Scott, where his gifts are being applied to things he cares about, with people he likes. I believe that he was outraged at the lies that led to this war, but being an outsider from the government, his former military and UN friends, he couldn't get people inside to listen any more.

Who would listen to him? The peace activists would. The disorganized, tree-hugging, spotted-owl protecting...., line them all up and they point in all directions liberals! They would listen! I suspect, though, that Scott doesn't much like or respect most of those folks.

So, when he sits in front of them, again and again telling the same stories over and over, he can't help but vent some of his frustration and anger over the way he came to be where he is now.

OK - Enough dime-store psychology. Scott is an incredibly intelligent and driven man. I hope he finds something wonderful to do with the next phase of his life. America needs people like Scott, but it needs them to be doing things they love so they can do them with a smile.

That was my prayer for him on Sunday. (Oh and speaking of journeys, a gay Jewish man saying a prayer for Scott in a Presbyterian church must remind you of what an incredible journey it has been).

Speaking of being Jewish though......

ANGRY PEOPLE - Conspiracy Theorists

During question time, a member of the audience said that he believed that U.S. policy was controlled by a pro-Israeli lobby. Recently, a report has begun circulating that opines the same thing, that U.S. policy is controlled by highly placed pro-Israeli lobbyists and that our resulting actions are often in direct contradiction to American interests. Scott and Ray didn't dismiss this as conspiracy theory at all, instead confirming that there is a very strong pro-Israel lobby that does have, in their opinions, significant influence on U.S. policy.

Many in the audience spoke with me later, telling me that they felt this entire line of discussion was anti-Semitic. While I don't think Scott or Ray are in any way hostile towards Jews, I do think that there are many who would like to blame Jews for the world's problems, and will latch onto statements like these to justify acts of hatred towards Jewish people.

With one of the people who spoke to me about the comments, I did share what I believe to be at play in setting U.S. policy. Yes, there are Jewish people who lobby our government to work for the security and prosperity of Israel. But one has to look at all the forces that combined to promote this war to understand the conglomeration of special interests at play. And to understand that conglomeration, one need only look at the Project for the New American Century, founded in June of 1997 (that's four years before September 11th).

Worried that the United States military industrial complex was being weakened after the end of the cold war, a group of folks got together to figure out how they could maintain the largest military force in the world, given the lack of significant nation-state enemies. The United States, after all, owned so much of the world's wealth and consumed such a disproportionate amount of her resources that eventually people around the world would come to hate us. If we didn't have the most powerful military power on the planet, with constabulary forces spread across the globe, we could eventually be destroyed. So, this group of military industrialists (corporation), military planners, former government officials, and financiers got together to figure out a way to reverse the shrinking military under Bill Clinton and dedicate a much larger percentage of America's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to defense. Add to that mix some Jewish folks that were fiercely pro-Israel and millennialist Christians who were anticipating the day of the rapture, which could only come when all the Jews in the world had gathered in Israel so that Armageddon could commence. Here are the names of the folks who started what has come to be known as PNAC:

Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel and Paul Wolfowitz.

This group went to Bill Clinton and demanded that he invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. Clinton didn't listen. They produced a document called "Rebuilding America's Defenses for the 21st Century" in 2000, which laid out many of the elements George Bush eventually included in his American defense strategy documents and speeches. The enemies, they suggested we take out first, were North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

It wasn't until the nightmare of September 11th that these plans could be put into play. One need only read the PNAC documents to discover a complete blueprint for everything that has happened since.

Conspiracy theory? You decide. All about Jewish people and Israel? No.

SPEAKING OF CONSPIRACIES - Weapons Shipped to Syria?

There's a former Iraqi Air Force general pushing a book he wrote about how the WMD were all shipped to Syria before Operation Iraqi Freedom started. A good friend of mine, who sits on the polar opposite side of most issues, believes this theory so when Scott and Ray were taking questions, I asked them about it. Could Saddam Hussein have smuggled massive quantities of WMD to Syria on planes and in trucks?

No. There was nothing left to smuggle. And, if there were anything left and Saddam had tried, we would have seen it happening and would have destroyed those planes and trucks. This Air Force general is one more in a string of liars, their lies completely refuted by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Pure garbage - the only sad thing is that news organizations give them any air time or print.

WRAPPING UP

This is more in one writing than I've ever written before. I felt that it was critical for me to get it all on paper (and the web) before my aging mind lost some of it. I ask those that read it who were there to add to it through comments. Those who weren't there I ask you to add to it through editorial comments, questions, rants, whatever.... Your opinions count.

What's the main take-away from all this? Listen to prophets like Scott and Ray and Faiza. There was little completely new in what they had to say. The truth does get out, but it is smothered by tons of too much information, lies, distortions, and our very busy lives. When you sniff the truth, you've got to amplify it anywhere you can. We need more prophets like Medea, willing to do outrageous and courageous things to get the word out, to stop the war machine. As I told the audience at one point that evening, when I was speaking in a church about Afghanistan, and the looming war in Iraq was raised. I said that I was afraid that train had already left the station. We need to find new ways to lay down across the tracks to stop that next train. Scott is right, that we failed to stop this war, but that doesn't mean that we don't keep trying or that our tactics were wrong. It just means we have to try harder, be bolder, and as Ray McGovern said, don't try to do it alone.