I had to read a lot of books about the current war and occupation in Iraq before I found one that's laugh out-loud hilarious. It's a book about a U.S. military hospital in Iraq, a journal kept for a 10-month tour of duty by an operating room medic. The story never leaves the hospital, and it focuses in large part on the relationships among the characters working there, including pranks and hijinks aplenty. One almost inevitably thinks of MASH and its fictional Army hospital in Korea, but there are major differences.

The basic similarity between MASH and this brilliant new book, "Mass Casualties" by Michael Anthony, is disturbing to consider. These are two episodes from different corners of an empire of bases, wars, and occupations spanning multiple generations and continents. Unless the United States shuts down its empire or is forced to do so, similar accounts will be possible in endless times and places for years to come.

The novel on which the MASH movie and television show were based was written by an Army surgeon, but written as fiction. "Mass Casualties" is presented as nonfiction, although written with the touch of a good fiction writer. This new story is packed with adultery, drug abuse, corruption scandals, blackmail, depression, insomnia, suicide, emailed sex photos, and other elements that are not exact parallels to MASH. But the overriding theme, the straight-man to the pranks and dark humor, is the familiar and powerful force of military stupidity.

The military stupidity in this tale includes bureaucratic unaccountability, and -- in the background -- the general cluelessness as to what the whole point is of being in Iraq. But the dominant dimwittedness is found in some of the individual characters, whose names have been changed but who are supposedly presented as they really were. These include a superior officer so angry and abusive that Anthony's unit bonds over its members' common hatred for this man.

Serious injustices and self-destructive policies are addressed head-on in this book, but they pop up in the course of such an entertaining drama that they do not look like they would from a more familiar angle. I'm reminded of the Bush Chain Gang, the giant papier mache heads of Bush, Cheney, and gang with prison outfits and balls and chains, produced by the Backbone Campaign. When these comical creatures come marching through town and absolutely everyone of all political persuasions wants to have a photo taken with them, conversations are opened up about the lawlessness of high officials that would not otherwise occur and could not otherwise take the form they do.

"Mass Casualties" is a book I would recommend to any young person being targeted by military recruiters, to any person opposed to war, to any person in favor of war, and in fact to anyone with an interest in humanity and the enjoyment of an uproarious story about a bunch of ordinary people put through outrageous hardships who for the most part make no attempt whatsoever to come through with any dignity intact.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book .

I've been reading a brand new book called "The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle," which is in large part an analysis of what worked in the protesting of the World Trade Organization 10 years ago. Why is it, I wonder, that activists were able to shut down the center of this major city in Washington state, but for years we have been unable to shut down the center of Washington, D.C., in opposition to wars.

Certainly, we've turned out more people to march around DC on a Saturday than took part in the Seattle action. But we've never shut the place down on a series of weekdays and prevented congressional, White House, and military staff from getting to work. And we've never tried to do so -- not with the sort of broad-coalition, grass-roots, strategic organization that led up to Seattle. Handfuls of dedicated activists, sometimes including some of the same people who organized Seattle, have made feeble attempts. Here's an effort that I coordinated, which failed: http://campdemocracy.org A couple of Iraq War Anniversaries ago, peace groups engaged in creative nonviolent action in DC, but with a different approach from Seattle, and with meager results. As side-shows to marches, or as independent actions, we've gotten arrested, including at the Capitol, but we haven't closed the place down.

Now there are plans for major protests in Copenhagen, but there are also plans to shut down DC in March: http://peaceoftheaction.org Unless this effort grows dramatically very soon, it too will not match what was done 10 years ago. It may be worth our while to look at the lessons in this new book by David Solnit, Rebecca Solnit, and other contributors. One obvious point is that the WTO was scheduled to meet briefly, and a limited protest could actually prevent that meeting. Even if we know that Congress is scheduled to vote on war funding, we could shut Congress down for a week and then watch it pass the war funding on the 8th day. But the WTO, too, could have delayed or moved its meeting. If we were to shut things down for a week and convey the popularity of our cause, we might shut the wars down for good. The popularity of our cause depends on good communications strategies and strict adherence to nonviolence, and therefore also good strategies for countering false charges of violence.

We have to invest months of hard work in planning and coalition building. Seattle was built at the grass roots for months through educational efforts and the facilitation of creative planning by diverse groups. A coalition was built that included communities directly impacted by the WTO's actions. And it was a diffuse, decentralized coalition of affinity groups and clusters using open democratic decision-making and collective leadership. People were trained, and trained well, in nonviolent resistance, including in the use of locks and other equipment for the creation of human barriers. The city was divided into pie slices with the WTO meeting place at the center, and different groups had the responsibility to shut down their slice of the pie.

There is a myth that Seattle had the advantage of surprise. On the contrary, it had the advantage of extensive publicity. Plans were heavily publicized and, therefore, mainstreamed. Labor unions participated. Taxi drivers and longshoremen and warehouse workers went on strike. And a great deal of energy went into art and street theater used to energize and communicate messages, as well as to block streets. People were presented with very clear and immediate reasons they should participate. A flyer that was used is reproduced on the last page of the book. It explains, very succinctly, the damage done by the WTO to anyone who eats, works, breathes, goes to school, or lives. That's pretty inclusive.

We can easily create a powerful message for war opposition. Here's a rough draft of one:

Wars kill innocent people.
Wars kill soldiers and mercenaries.
Wars wound, injure, traumatize, and brutalize.
Wars take our resources away from food, housing, healthcare, jobs, education, clean energy.
Wars take our civil rights away in the false name of national security.
Wars make us less safe, enraging people against our country.
Wars poison our environment.
Wars encourage racism and bigotry at home and abroad.

We can identify a time for action, such as the week of March 22, 2010, following the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. We can identify a demand: no more money for foreign wars and occupations. But do we have the institutional structure to organize a broad coalition? Can we reach the unemployed and homeless already on the streets of Washington? Can we persuade a single labor union to take part? Will the nonprofit industrial complex engage in resistance of our government's actions when the president has a D, instead of an R, after his name? These are all major hurdles, but we are helped by the lessons gained in past struggles. We are helped by the hard-earned knowledge of what does NOT work. We are helped by the current public debate over the insanity of war in Afghanistan, which is certain to be followed by more war in Afghanistan. We are helped by the fact that the Iraqi people will be denied again in January an opportunity to vote on the occupation of their country. We are helped by the growing awareness in our own country that we cannot survive economically while paying for these wars.

If you think it's time we shut down the empire at the heart of the WTO with tactics so effectively used to weaken the WTO, pick up a copy of "The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle" and get in touch -- and get your organizations in touch -- with this group of dedicated citizens in order to coordinate your own independent efforts to close off a pie-slice of Capitol Hill: http://peaceoftheaction.org

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book .

"If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union. It's that simple. We need to stand up to the business lobby and pass the Employee Free Choice Act. That's why I've been fighting for it in the Senate and that's why I'll make it the law of the land when I'm president of the United States." --Barack Obama

Nobody is making it the law of the land. Nobody is fighting for it. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) has drifted down to the bottom of the AFL-CIO's website, buried beneath good economic proposals which, however, do nothing to build a labor movement. EFCA is not to be found anywhere on the front page of Change to Win's website at all. The media's not smearing EFCA with U.S. Chamber of Commerce lies anymore. Congress and the White House are silent. Any escalation of pressure on senators from union members has never materialized, the polite letter-writing campaigns having drifted away rather than ramping up into pickets or sit-ins.

In this context, Steve Early's new book "Embedded With Organized Labor" may be an extremely valuable resource, especially part IV on "Workers' Rights and Wrongs." Early is a journalist, an activist, a book reviewer, a historian, and a synthesizer of lessons from the past and present. We should draw on his knowledge, rather than viewing the current vice president's "middle class task force" out of the context of so many recent failed commissions.

The Clinton administration's "Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations" sought to determine how, and whether, unions could benefit management -- as if that were the only good they might accomplish. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich was then able to encourage the commission to question the need for having unions at all: "The jury is still out," Reich wrote, "on whether the traditional union is necessary for the new workplace."

It strikes me that the fundamental error in such endeavors (commissions, task forces) lies in avoiding the real goal. When you push for a living-wage law because it will benefit businesses, you can lose out to the advantages of paying poverty wages. When you push for peace because Americans die in wars, you can lose out to wars carried on by drones and mercenaries. When you reform healthcare with the goal of pleasing the insurance companies, you lose sight of actually reforming healthcare. And when you defend union organizing as good for management, you lose touch with the purpose of union organizing, namely to allow workers to have some control over their lives.

The same mistake can be made when laws ARE passed. The National Labor Relations Act (or Wagner Act) of 1935 sets up an official body to mediate labor disputes. But when that body delays, stalls, and abuses its power, workers can be left with a weaker right to organize than they had to begin with. Just as the War Powers Act weakened congressional checks on warrior presidents while trying to strengthen them, just as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act weakened Fourth Amendment protections, just as statutory contempt eliminated the Congress's power (or at least habit) of holding people in contempt itself, a law that formalizes something won through eternal struggle cannot replace the struggle and risks creating new impediments.

That doesn't mean better laws aren't part of the solution. The Employee Free Choice Act would give teeth to the right to form new unions, assuming it was enforced after passage -- something which will have to be fought for, not assumed. But what happens when a first contract runs out and new union members go on strike to demand a decent second contract? They can legally be replaced by scabs, and other unions cannot legally strike to support them. Those restrictions on our freedom of assembly must be undone with new laws that go further than EFCA, laws that repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and ban replacement workers. And then enforcement of those new laws will have to be insisted upon through collective action for as long as we hope to have them enforced.

How can this be done? How can we even get to the first step of demanding passage of EFCA? Whether we influence enough key senators to throw out the anti-democratic filibuster rule and then force 50 senators to pass EFCA, or we compel 60 senators to pass EFCA under the current outrageous arrangement, either way we are going to need an aggressive and activist labor movement organized democratically and controlled by its members, working in coalition with other groups, and investing in the long-term future of labor organizing as well as broader national policies that benefit workers and a communications system that benefits workers. This will necessarily mean a labor movement capable of recognizing and acting on the fact that electing Democrats alone accomplishes very little. Our labor movement's leaders need to develop a lot less interest in access to elected officials and a lot more in access to unorganized and organized workers. And that access to workers must be used not merely to build membership from the top down, but rather to facilitate workers' own building of a movement, a movement that includes all of us who work for a living.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book .

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate "mainstream" media make quite a pair. We're hearing a very "balanced" debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?

We're not hearing that trying criminals for the crime of 9-11 ought to have been what we did years ago, rather than waging wars in response to a crime. We're not discussing the possibility that had alleged 9-11 criminals been tried years ago rather than being imprisoned and tortured together with hundreds of innocents depicted as subhuman monsters, the "war on terror" might have been replaced with simply the wars on Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis. What effect might that have had on Americans' willingness to surrender their Bill of Rights? We aren't hearing about that.

Aside from a column by my friend Ray McGovern, not of course published by the corporate media, what are we hearing or seeing about KSM's motive? Isn't motive a traditionally important element in a criminal investigation? We're told that putting KSM on trial would give him a platform for propaganda, but we're not told what that propaganda might be. If it were really so pernicious, why not expose it and refute it? Isn't that what societies that believe in free speech do with misguided speech? Don't they defeat it with more and better speech? Or is that only when it can be done without using the word "Israel"?

Outside of progressive blogs, we're not hearing that giving a somewhat fair, if less than speedy, trial to those most likely to plead guilty or be convicted, and a less fair military trial to others, and no trial at all to others still, reveals this show of justice to be a sham. If KSM were acquitted, President Obama would order him imprisoned outside the rule of law until he dies. If he is found guilty, as everyone universally expects, he may be officially murdered by the United States, motivating others to take up arms against a nation that wages and funds illegal wars, imprisons people without charge, tortures, kidnaps, renditions, and executes.

If the justice system is bent to ensure that KSM is convicted or permitted little opportunity to speak, will that bending have any permanent repercussions for our justice system? Or, to move in the other direction, having determined that "military justice" is not good enough for alleged mass murders, must we continue to pretend that it is good enough for members of the military? Can we not admit everyone into a single and improved justice system? We're not hearing that discussion.

An improved justice system would require the admission into court of videos of all confessions and interrogations. This would not include admissions made to a journalist prior to imprisonment, as in the case of KSM and Al Jazeera, but would include all interrogations since that time. And in KSM's case it might include video of the "interrogation" of his children. Years ago, allegations were made that the United States had tortured his children, including in little-heard-of manners, such as locking a child in a box with a supposedly deadly insect. More recently, secret memos emerged showing the United States to have authorized just those techniques. If this were a story about missing sex tapes, the media would be all over it. A story about the possible torture of children is far less interesting. It might open up difficult questions, such as whether someone who has been endlessly tortured, and whose children may have been tortured, can -- while still in the custody of the torturers -- give an un-coerced confession. Questions might even have to be asked about leniency in sentencing for someone who has already served time and been horribly tortured.

If this were a story about a singer or actor or athlete, we'd see investigations of the time KSM spent attending college in North Carolina. Why didn't the Americans he lived among persuade him of how horrible it would be to murder people in this country? Our media pundits are completely incapable of asking such a question without either blaming KSM's American acquaintances for his crimes or declaring KSM to be an inscrutable monster whose thinking is of absolutely no interest.

Other questions might be asked as well, such as why Dick Cheney and his supporters never talk about the two memos anymore. Remember the two memos that Cheney claimed would show that the torture of KSM and others revealed important information that saved lives. The memos are now public and show nothing of the sort. Nor was torture needed in order to prosecute KSM himself. In fact, as Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, the ability of the government to prosecute him without using evidence obtained through torture demonstrates that torture was not needed for that purpose. But why are we not talking about the two purposes torture actually serves? We know it does not produce useful information, but we also know that it produces desired lies, such as agreement to false rationales for war. And we know that it scares people, both people who fear they might be tortured and people who fear the wild beasts depicted as reachable only through torture.

As Glenn Greenwald has touched on, behaving as though terrorized, irrationally unable to believe an alleged terrorist can be held in a cell and tried in a court, is to give in to the terrorism. Worse, it is to advance it. More Americans are more terrorized following TV discussions of KSM's possible prosecution than were beforehand, because the voices on the TV promote the terror rather than the prosecution.

We are hearing about the need to avoid evidence obtained through torture. But at the same time we are hearing absolutely nothing about the need to prosecute the torturers and the creators of the torture program, at least one of whom, John Yoo, is given a platform as one of the disinterested media commentators in the MSM. This failure is an ideal way to create more KSMs. Why don't we talk about it?


David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book .

My dear Republicans friends, it's probably not my place to ask. I'm not one of you, but I'm not your enemy either. I'm not an apologist for the other party or a third party. I'm an advocate for replacing the two parties with three branches. We still teach our children about the three branches of our government, but I'm afraid most adults have forgotten what that was supposed to mean.

Like you, I'd like us to be able to unelect people as well as elect them in fair and verifiable elections. Like many of you, I oppose massive bailouts for Wall Street, bipartisan gerrymandering, corporate control of government, warrantless spying, ballot access restrictions, budget deficits, lying politicians, and the so-called mainstream media.

And, like you, I think President Barack Obama has way, way, way too much power. But, unlike you, I'm not principally to blame for that. Obama was handed his power by Bush, and Bush seized his power with hardly a peep of protest from most Republicans. In fact, I was often called "unpatriotic" by Republicans when I protested. Of course, the Democrats in Congress didn't resist Bush's power grab, but they're Democrats. They're wimps. They never resist anything.

Republicans know how to play offense and fight for their goals. The trouble is that stripping the presidency of unconstitutional, illegal, and dangerous powers is not a Republican goal any more than it is a Democratic one. Both parties are delighted to have nearly all governmental power in the hands of one person, they just want the next such person to be a member of their team. Republicans grouse about czars and department heads, but there is no organized Republican effort to roll back the imperial presidency's central power gains.

When Bush altered laws with signing statements, you guys didn't say a word, because Bush was a Republican. When Obama, after having condemned the practice as a candidate, began engaging in it himself, as well as maintaining Bush's signing statements, most Democrats didn't object for a minute. Some Democrats now even advocate a greater use of signing statements. We can't expect Democrats who wouldn't fight this abuse when it was new and Bush's to fight it now. But it seems to me that you Republicans might have the nerve (as well as the short-term partisan interest) to fight it now. After all, it was your guys who invented this abuse and handed it to Obama.

The same goes for making laws with executive orders, making laws with secret memos legalizing blatant crimes, launching and escalating wars without Congress (including strikes into Pakistan and other such actions that nobody calls wars), operating in secret, spending money in secret without Congress, making treaties and appointments without Congress, running the nation through czars not overseen by Congress, granting immunity to unnamed criminals, imprisoning people without charge or trial, spying without warrant, engaging in rendition and torture, obstructing justice, and claiming immunity for crimes. All of these abusive, unconstitutional powers were dramatically expanded by Bush and Cheney, and you guys didn't protest. Now Obama is further expanding on the same abusive powers, and your objection seems to be that he's a socialist or a liberal or a Democrat or was born in Africa.

Forgive my directness, but what the hell difference does it make to future generations what you call him? The actions he is taking that will have by far the greatest impact on the world are those he is taking to increase and solidify imperial presidential powers. Do you imagine that Democrats who would not fight this trend when Bush was president will fight it now? They're afraid of their own shadows. They've left the fate of our system of government in your hands. But your hands seem to be too full of posters and guns and teabags. You've stuck the Constitution in your pocket or dropped it in the gutter.

Whatever your political persuasion, you are not going to love every future president. But the way you're allowing presidential power to accumulate suggests that you plan to worship every future president, even if none of them are Republicans. The Democrats and Independents are doing the same thing, but that's mostly because they're cowards. You guys have, time and again, proven your willingness to fight aggressively, even for the most ludicrous fantasies. I'm asking you to fight for a representative republic before it becomes a monarchy.

How do you do that? First you insist that Congress reclaim its place of power and use it to represent US, not money, not media, and not parties. This means that congressional committees must subpoena members and former members of the executive branch and enforce those subpoenas with the Capitol Police rather than begging the Justice Department to enforce them. Congress has to conduct oversight of the executive branch regardless of whether the executive belongs to the same party as the committee chairs. The bill in the House that would allow Congress to see what the Federal Reserve does with our money has a majority of cosponsors already, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to allow a vote. The warrantless spying programs are continuing, and Congress still doesn't know what they involve. Jay Bybee, who signed memos purporting to legalize aggressive war and torture, is now an appeals court judge. Congress must be willing to hold impeachment hearings on someone like Bybee regardless of what party he belongs to or whether he worked for the Justice Department.

Obama's Justice Department is fighting tooth and nail to cover up any wrong doing by Bush and Cheney. In the process, Obama is claiming the power to shut down whole categories of law suits just by saying the words "state secrets." Democrats can't see the danger in this because they imagine Obama is their friend. You think he's a socialistic grandmother killer, and yet I don't hear any complaints out of you about the incredible powers he's seizing. A full and open review by a select committee of Congress into presidential power abuses would not have to become a partisan lynching in one direction or the other. The presidents who've claimed the power to "render" kidnapping victims to nations that torture are named Clinton, Bush, and Obama.

But such a review would require a shift in attitude toward "the war on terror" as a catch-all excuse for stripping away any of our rights and imposing any new power desired by a president. The founders of this country knew that if presidents were going to evolve into royalty they would do it through wars. That's why the founders gave Congress the exclusive power to determine whether to engage in wars. The question is not whether or not you think it is wise to be blowing our grandchildren's unearned pay on illegal and counterproductive killing sprees in the Middle East. The question is whether you think a vague announcement of eternal war against an emotion or a tactic should excuse the aggrandizement of the presidential office that James Madison warned us to avoid.

If you will not push back against this trend because presidents are sometimes Republicans and you like supporting wars, and if Democrats will not push back because presidents are sometimes Democrats and pushing back is scary, then who exactly is going to prevent the gradual loss of our republic? The peace movement won't even ask Congress to oppose wars any more. Now it asks the president, because he's a Democrat. We're lost without you. Please think about it. Don't do it for me. Do it for your children.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book .

David Swanson Book Event: "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union"

New York City - December 1, 7:00 p.m.

With Mark Crispin Miller.
AND With John Nichols, author of the Foreword to "Daybreak".

At McNally Jackson books.
52 Prince St.
(b/t Lafayette & Mulberry)
New York, NY 10012
212-274-1160

The last time I was on Laura Flanders's GRIT tv I argued that the American public opposed the occupation of Afghanistan, but another guest -- some Washington, D.C., "progressive" -- argued that this had no relevance, since the American public didn't know anything about Afghanistan.

When the RAND Corporation held a forum on Afghanistan recently on Capitol Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that it was uncontroversial that US troops had to stay in Afghanistan. I pointed him to polls of Americans, and he replied that Americans get fatigued and don't know any better.

When I spoke to a philosophy department at a university this month, a number of the professors objected to my advocacy of majority-rule on the grounds that experts often know best.

Let's set aside for a moment the ludicrous propaganda that maintains that the reason we occupy other people's countries is to impose democracy on them. Let's assume we're imposing the rule of elite experts. Even so, even on those terms, here are some possible responses to this line of thinking.

1.-While spokepeople for the U.S. military (including television news experts) are certainly the experts at war, they are not the experts at peace. If the question is one of choosing between war and peace, or deciding whether warlike or peacelike means will best reach some desired end, then why only include one type of expert opinion?

2.-While U.S. experts on war and peace could provide two different views, there are experts, including historians, from around the world whose knowledge should be utilized. And the experts on Afghanistan ought, by any understanding, to include the Afghan people. If the US public is irrelevant because it does not know Afghanistan (and somehow this is an argument for bombing the place rather than refraining from doing so), surely the Afghan public knows something about their nation. And they want the occupation ended. How can we so easily dismiss THAT expert opinion?

3.-Don't trust Afghan opinion? Want to save Afghanistan from the Afghans? Well, what about this: Howard Hart, a 25-year CIA veteran who ran operations in Afghanistan for three-and-a-half years during the Cold War, spoke at the University of Virginia yesterday and argued that the United States should withdraw from Afghanistan. He said that the original goal had supposedly been to destroy al Qaeda, which had long since left, and that creating a legitimate government (something most people and the law hold that a foreign occupation can NEVER do) would require hundreds of thousands of troops, cost “umpteen billion” dollars, and still be next to impossible. Watch three former high-ranking CIA officials say the same thing, and a lot more worth watching, at http://rethinkafghanistan.com

4.-Too out-dated for you? The current U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, General Karl W. Eikenberry, who was responsible for building and training the Afghan security forces from 2002 to 2003, and who was top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, has told President Obama he opposes sending more troops. He argues for sending civilians to assist with agriculture and other useful projects that would give Afghans an alternative to violence. This is a direction supported by US activist groups that have visited Afghanistan and studied the problem, such as http://jobsforafghans.org

5.-New York Times reporter David Rohde was held hostage for seven months by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and upon release reported on what motivates Afghans to engage in violence. The reasons he provided suggested that (as with most foreign occupations in any other time or place) the occupation was motivating the violent resistance to it rather than helping to ease unrelated tensions:

"Some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charge. . . . They said large numbers of civilians had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings. Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges. To Americans, these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical and duplicitous power that flouted international law. When I told them I was an innocent civilian who should be released, they responded that the United States had held and tortured Muslims in secret detention centers for years. Commanders said they themselves had been imprisoned, their families ignorant of their fate. Why, they asked, should they treat me differently?"

6. The senior U.S. civilian diplomat in Zabul province, a former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq named Matthew Hoh, not only agrees with the U.S. Ambassador that escalating the war in Afghanistan makes no sense. He resigned in September in protest of the continued occupation. He wrote in his resignation letter:

"The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified. In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul. The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency. In a like manner our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people. . . . Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency's true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam."

7. A career diplomat and former Army Colonel who helped reopen the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Ann Wright, similarly resigned in protest of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. She now agrees with Hoh's assessment on Afghanistan. It is to such authorities, who have been right years ahead of any permissible schedule, that we should turn for guidance. Also of note, the United Nations has withdrawn much of its international staff and threatened to withdraw entirely from Afghanistan. NATO allies are scheduling the end of their participation as well.

8. U.S. President Barack Obama's national security adviser, James Jones, says there is no guarantee that sending troops to Afghanistan would accomplish anything useful, and that they could just be "swallowed up". Is the National Security Advisor's advice worthless? What about Vice President Biden who never saw a war he didn't like? He doesn't like this one and wants to move it somewhere else (like Pakistan).

9. Mikhail Gorbachev has some experience with occupations of Afghanistan. He advises withdrawal.

10. Increasingly, U.S. military veterans are advocating for withdrawal, and -- in small but rapidly growing numbers -- active duty soldiers (in the UK as well as the US) are refusing to comply with the illegal order to participate. If the military is an authority, are its members -- rather than its top commanders alone -- not a part of that authority?

11. The money to pay back the loans and the interest on those loans that are used to fund this war must come from the American people. There is no higher authority on where the American people choose to spend their money than the American people. So, at some point we must return to them as the rightful deciders.

12. Those who opposed attacking Afghanistan in the first place, including Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and those who opposed attacking Iraq as well, included long-time diplomats, historians, public commentators, journalists, bloggers, activists, politicians, and scholars. The extraordinary degree to which they got things right is routinely treated as reason to exclude them from public debate. We take as authoritative the opinions of people who are usually wrong, but censor the latest views of those who are usually right. We do this at our peril. Instead, we would be well advised to get some real news from RealNews.com: http://tr.im/ETuV And if we have to watch television, watch Bill Moyers who says he would support a draft if it would end these wars. Or listen to Norman Solomon, Ray McGovern, Tom Hayden, Gareth Porter, and all the valuable reports not shown on Fox or MSNBC: http://afterdowningstreet.org/taxonomy/ter...

13. Ought not the highest authority for non-criminals to be the law? It is illegal to invade and occupy other nations. It is illegal to target civilians. It is illegal to use depleted uranium. It is illegal to imprison people without charge or trial. It is illegal to torture. An unelected government supported by a foreign occupying army has no legitimacy. The damage we are doing to the rule of law cannot be overstated. The United Nations has warned the United States about its ongoing illegal use of drones.

14. Just ask some of the more courageous members of the Afghan Parliament, who have been locally elected. Ask Malalai Joya.

15. Ask experts on occupations and insurgencies like William Polk, who says the United States should withdraw.

16. Ask Congress, where members are speaking out for withdrawal, signing bills in support of exit plans and against escalation, and committing to voting No on any funding bills to continue the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq: http://afterdowningstreet.org/whipwars Even former Congressman Charlie Wilson says: Get out of Afghanistan. Even Congressman David Obey has expressed concern, and he chairs the committee that writes the checks.

17. Shouldn't reverse experts be considered as well? Those pushing to continue and escalate our wars have been endlessly wrong and indisputably dishonest. Shouldn't any elite in-the-know expert think twice before agreeing with Dick Cheney?

I'm not accepting the notion of just rule by experts. I favor majority rule, with minority rights protected, and freedom of the press made real. My point is that even on its own terms defending the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq as validated by experts is a miserable failure.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book .

If you have an interest in grassroots organizing, international alliance building, the peace movement, the labor movement, the conversion of the U.S. economy from weapons to human needs, the preservation of life on earth (come on, admit it), the weaponization of space, or the autobiographical insights of smart and determined people, then I cannot more strongly recommend that you get a copy of "Come Together Right Now: Organizing Stories from a Fading Empire," by my friend and ally Bruce Gagnon.

Gagnon provides further confirmation of Randy Shaw's thesis in "Beyond the Fields," that the best organizers come out of the United Farm Workers. Gagnon got his training as an organizer working for the UFW in Florida after having grown up Republican, joined the military, and then been reached and persuaded by the peace movement. Gagnon later came to the decision that organizing the poor to demand basic needs was the uphill struggle it was, at least in part, because those with power were directing too many of our resources into wars and militarization. Gagnon became a leader of the peace movement in Florida, and then the leader of an international network of activists called the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

I was privileged to participate in the Global Network's annual conference last year in Omaha, Nebraska. And just this month Bruce and I spoke at a rally in Maine, where he has made his home for several years.

Bruce's book is part autobiography, but it is made up largely of articles and reports and diary entries and even a play that he wrote during the past 20-some years. These thoughts of an activist and an organizer, as he was thinking them, presented here in chronological order tell a wonderful personal story, but also a story of where our country and world have gone. In early descriptions of campaigns we see Gagnon and his allies able to make use of "mainstream" media outlets. Fourteen years ago he already had a crystal clear grasp on how Washington, D.C., corrupted movements, and he was proposing that all social justice movements get out of that town and engage in grassroots organizing and educating. But he made no mention of investing in communications media. In contrast, five years ago, Bruce was writing about two strategies:

"work hard to reach people by speaking to them directly; and utilize mass communications where possible. When mainstream media is not available to us, create our own and promote it widely."

I recommend visiting the Global Network's website and assisting in that project. Figures in Bruce's book suggest that the United States is spending at least $70 billion a year (as of four years ago, no doubt higher now) on military space development.

"Queen Isabella," Gagnon writes, "began the 100-year process of building the Spanish Armada after Columbus' 'successful' return voyage from the Americas. Spain's naval armada helped create a global war system, that we suffer from today, as all the European powers were soon building navies to 'compete' for control and domination of the sea lanes for resources and markets."

Gagnon suggests that debating whether so-called "missile defense," the offensive intentions of which he documents, can ever work misses the larger view. We are "debating the size of the cannon balls on the Spanish armada ships rather than discussing the long-term implications of creating a new arms race in the heavens." Whether or not "missile defense" ever works, Gagnon writes, it has "already allowed the Pentagon and the aerospace industry to move tens of billions of dollars into research and development programs for space offensive warfare."

According to NASA's director in 2005 Mike Griffin, "For America to continue to be preeminent among nations, it is necessary for us to be the preeminent space-faring nation."

But we are not preeminent in raising life expectancy or lowering infant mortality. We're nowhere near preeminent in reducing poverty or achieving an environmentally sustainable economy or lifestyle. We have no preeminence in educational achievements. Preeminence in job security, limited work hours, paid leave, healthcare, family stability, community support, quality of life, and happiness all belong to other nations. Yet we've given such massive secret unaccountable budgets to the military that a movie in theaters now depicts, in a not entirely fictionalized manner, a program in which people were trained in skills as stupid and fantastical as staring at a goat until it dies -- a program that referred to its trainees as Jedi, clearly influenced by someone having viewed the movie "Star Wars."

Bruce Gagnon's book and his life are models of how, on every level, we can shift our priorities to what, in contrast to Star Wars, we might call earth lives.


David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has 82 members, 81 in the House and 1 in the Senate, but has taken the anti-progressive onslaught of recent years lying down. The CPC can be counted on to say some pleasant things, but in the end 1 or 2 or 8 or 14 of its members will vote a progressive position. Almost never will the CPC attempt to organize its members to all take a stand. When it did organize 90 members to sign a letter to President Bush "opposing" war funding, virtually all of them turned around and voted for the funding.

Some observers held out hope that change might be on the way when Congressman Raul Grijalva this year took over one of the caucus's two Co-Chair positions. But change hasn't arrived yet, and Grijalva has made clear that he will sit by and wait for the president to deliver it. This is disconcerting, to put it mildly, for citizens who thought the role of a caucus of congress members might involve action as well as commentary.

Here's an audio clip of an interview that Congressman Grijalva just did with Air America radio host Nicole Sandler. In it he blames the "leadership and the White House" for "prematurely" deciding to "take single-payer off the table." He does not mention the fact that the CPC obediently fell in line, that the CPC agreed to not say a word about what most of its members and most Americans support. Astroturfing activist groups and labor unions took their lead from the CPC in self-censoring single-payer talk and pretending that the "public option" was not only something they would settle for, but their ideal. Of course, this was premature. Of course, it transformed a miserable compromise -- the "public option" -- from a center-right "middle-ground" to the extreme left side of the debate. Of course, this resulted in a further compromise rightward from there. But what good does it do us to have someone in a key position of responsibility talk as if he is one of us on the outside looking in?

Well, to Grijalva's credit, with help from other CPC members like Donna Edwards, and with a lot of pushing by activists and bloggers, the CPC -- together with other caucuses -- took a stand for the miserable compromise. In July, 57 congress members signed a letter saying that they would "regard as unacceptable" any healthcare bill without a public option tied to Medicare rates. This month 55 of them voted for such a bill, whether or not they "regarded it as unacceptable." And progressives in Congress wonder why nobody pays any attention to what they say.

Grijalva tells Sandler that he was not "satisfied" with the bill but wanted it to "move on." The bill was already worse than what he and 56 others had said they could not accept, and everyone knew the Senate would only worsen it further. But Grijalva offers his pessimistic expectations of the Senate as precisely the reason he backed a bill he "opposed." Since he expects a Senate bill to include no public option at all, or one with triggers and opt-out clauses that, in his words, "effectively kill" the public option, he chose to back a House bill that at least contained some pathetic semblance of a public option, albeit one designed to reach 2 percent of Americans without even its rates publicly determined.

Grijalva says he wanted to "have a dog in the fight." Well, it's a dog for sure, but what sense can be made of this strategy? The Senate cannot legislate without the House. Either the House has a dog in the fight or there is no fight. You can claim to have changed your view and to have determined that a lousy bill is really the best bill possible, and you can claim that such a bill is better than nothing. I happen to disagree in this case, but let’s allow those claims. None of that alters the fact that when you take a stand on something, and the whole world expects you to roll over, and you do so, the result is to make yourself a dog without any fight in him, a dog unworthy of even a passing kick from the people who run the country.

Adding insult to injury, the Democratic "leadership" made a major last-minute concession to those Democrats who do take stands, passing an amendment restricting women's right to abortion, and the CPC went happily along with it. Grijalva tells Sandler that his own daughter told him he had sacrificed women's rights, and he "didn't have a good answer for that." Let me give you a suggestion for next time, Congressman, VOTE NO and whip your caucus to do the same. If you only want to be a spectator, get off the damn field.

Grijalva tries, in this interview, to grab a little credit for Congressman Dennis Kucinich's short-lived amendment that would have made it more feasible for states to solve the healthcare crisis without Washington. "I have nothing but admiration for Dennis' stand on that," Grijalva says. But what if he'd had more than admiration? What if he'd done something? For the past four months, the CPC has refused to support keeping that amendment in the bill. When they held a press conference in July to announce their 57-member letter (which 55 of them would go back on, the two exceptions being Eric Massa and -- in fact -- Dennis Kucinich) the CPC refused to include Kucinich or mention of his amendment in the event.

Grijalva says that he understands why Democratic voters stay home in elections, but does he? He has the unmitigated imperialistic gall to complain that the president has failed to draw a line on progressive issues or to take a stand for majority positions. Well, what in the name of all that is decent and good, is the purpose of a Congressional Progressive Caucus if not to draw a line and take a stand for progressive legislation? Even when they disagree with the president, the Blue Dogs still fight for their destructive proposals. What is Raul waiting for?

If it's a written invitation, here's one. Congressman, you have 57 names committed to voting No on any bill as bad as the current House one, and the Senate is going to make it worse. There is reportedly a letter with at least 41 House members' names swearing they'll vote no on a bill (like the one they just voted yes on) that includes the abortion amendment. You have a pledge from a dozen members committed to opposing any bill in which the public option is reduced by triggers or opt-outs, much less both. You may only need a dozen votes to block this bill when it comes back to the House.

If you do so, then for the first time progressives will have to be listened to. The next attempt to reform healthcare will have to include progressive ideas. Legislation on any other issue will have to include progressive ideas. Commitments to vote No on war funding will have to be treated as if those making them might actually be serious. Washington and the world will change for the better if for once you take a stand on something and follow through.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book

Next stops on the David Swanson "Daybreak" Tour to discuss my new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union":

Nov. 19 Davis, CA
Nov. 20, Grass Valley, CA
Nov. 21, Fresno and Fair Oaks, CA
Nov. 22, Bay Area, CA
Nov. 23, Los Angeles, CA
Nov. 24, Orange County, CA

The United States of America owes much of the hope it has right now of remaining what John Adams called "a nation of laws, not men" to Italian law enforcement. Were it not for the fact that Italian prosecutors, unlike their American counterparts, answer to the law rather than a president, the enforcement of laws against a massive crime spree by U.S. officials (and their Italian accomplices) would not have begun.

In 2003, the CIA and the United States military kidnapped a man, a political refugee, in Italy. His name was Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. Our CIA agents spied on him from their luxury hotels and gourmet-meal lives in Milano (all paid for by U.S. tax payers). They were told to kidnap Nasr and send him to Egypt to be tortured, and they did so. According to recent statements by two of them, they knew perfectly well they were violating the law. But they were not worried enough at the time to refrain from discussing the matter on their cell phones as they enjoyed the dolce vita and racked up credit card bills wasting the same currency our government claims it has a moral duty not to waste on healthcare.

Nasr was indeed kidnapped, flown to Egypt, and tortured. His wife, Ghali Nabila, testified in Italian court for over six hours. In October 2004, she had been able to see him, briefly out of Egyptian prison. (He was eventually released years later.) Nabila said in court:

"I found him wasted, skinny - so skinny his hair had turned white, he had a hearing aid."

Ordered, against her will, to describe his torture, she said:

"He was tied up like he was being crucified. He was beaten up, especially around his ears. He was subject to electroshocks to many body parts."

Asked if that included genitals, she replied "Yes."

Nasr himself wrote in a letter smuggled out of prison and printed in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera:

"I was hung by my feet from the ceiling, my head down, my hands tied to my back, my feet tied up. I was subjected to electric shocks all over my body, especially in my head, nipples, testicles, and penis. My testicles where also beaten with a stick and squeezed tightly if I refused to answer their questions or was suspected of telling lies. They fixed my body to an iron door and on a wooden instrument they call the bride, where my hands where tied over my head from behind and my legs tied together or sometimes each leg on different sides. The torture that takes place during this is electric shocks, and beating with a shoe and cables."

Presidents Barack Obama and Silvio Berlusconi oppose prosecuting Americans or Italians for kidnapping this man and transporting him to his torturers. The U.S. Department of Justice will, therefore, not prosecute. In Italy, on the other hand, there is still some measure of law, law as a standard applied to all equally, without immunity for those with the power to commit the greatest crimes.

Last Wednesday, an Italian court convicted 22 CIA agents, including the CIA's current second ranking official Stephen Kappes, and one member of the U.S. Air Force. The prosecutor Armando Spataro has repeatedly asked the Italian government to issue an international arrest warrant and request extradition by the United States. It has not yet done so.

One of the convicted CIA agents, Sabrina De Sousa, openly admits that the kidnapping was illegal, but says that she feels betrayed by those who authorized the operation and failed to protect its participants from prosecution. De Sousa ignores Nuremberg Principle IV, which requires noncompliance with illegal orders or instructions:

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

But De Sousa also has a point, one well exemplified at Nuremberg: Those at the bottom are not the most responsible. Those who must be held accountable first and foremost are the decision-makers at the top. And who authorized the policy of kidnapping people and shipping them off to be tortured? Three top U.S. officials have authorized rendition: Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama. And in this case, the presidents responsible were Bush and, almost certainly, Berlusconi.

For justice to reach to those highest levels and thereby deter the practice of kidnapping, under the name rendition, in the years ahead, justice must be permitted to proceed on the paths it has blazed thus far. Americans must make Italians aware of our gratitude for their efforts to save us from ourselves. And Italy must be compelled to obey its laws rather than its president on the question of issuing international arrest warrants and a demand for extradition. The 23 fugitives already can expect arrest if they visit any nation of Europe. They should not be free to roam the rest of the world.

By U.S. standards, Italy would be justified in kidnapping these fugitives and "rendering" them to Italian prisons. An extradition request would be a generous favor of a sort that the United States does not grant to others. Failure to take that step on behalf of the rule of law will put the blood of future rendition victims on the hands of the Italian as well as the American people.

Vi prego, i miei carissimi fratelli e sorelli, salvateci da noi stessi.

##

PS: One opportunity for Americans to force this issue in our own country will occur when Attorney General Eric Holder testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee at 10 a.m. on November 18th in Dirksen room 226. We should ask Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who claims to oppose torture, and Senator Patrick Leahy who chairs the committee, as well as Senator Russ Feingold and the rest of them to raise these issues, and be there to raise them ourselves.

Does Holder consider rendition legal. How does he distinguish it from kidnapping?

Will Holder extradite 23 figitives to Italy? Would he expect Italy to do the same?

Holder has accepted the instructions of the president not to prosecute top officials for known crimes. He needs to be grilled on that and informed that Congress will step up where he fails.

Holder is burying the OPR report (his departments own, years-old report on its authorization of torture), providing Congress with an excuse for inaction. He needs to be told to release it or watch it be subpoenaed and watch Congress proceed without using its delay as an excuse any longer.

In April Leahy asked top torture lawyer Jay Bybee to come in. He hasn't. Leahy needs to tell Holder that Bybee is being subpoenaed.

In April Holder testified on the House side and told me I'd be proud of my government -- When might I?

##

PPS: Speaking of the House side, Rep. Jay Inslee introduced this bill two years ago. This is the full text:

RESOLUTION
Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

--

The momentum of cosponsors signing onto this bill was almost certainly a large factor in the decision to have Gonzales resign.

A similar resolution that would be of use now might read as follows:

RESOLUTION
Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Jay Bybee, former assistant Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Jay Bybee, former assistant Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

--

Reasons to get this introduced:

The DOJ (and White House) have made clear they will not enforce the law.
We have very limited ability to influence them.
People all over the country who want a sign of hope and somewhere to put their energies that might have an actual impact could lobby for cosponsorship.
Cosponsorship of such a resolution would constitute a threat to expose secrets through a privileged impeachment hearing.
Such a threat would open up the possibility of committees using the power of subpoena as a lesser step.
A nation without laws cannot last.


####

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book .

Around the United States, peace groups are engaged in effective campaigns against proposed new military installations, local funding of weapons companies, and the routine destruction of the environment and of workers' health by such companies. Activists are building better media outlets, educating young people, educating old people, keeping military testing and recruiting out of schools, and discouraging the Army from building real-weapon video arcades in shopping malls. But when it comes to stopping our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, our citizens are less clear how to go about it.

The peace movement was defunded and demobilized by the absurd belief that an election alone would make a difference, and now there is widespread desire to tell everyone that it didn't. Certainly, it didn't. We have a larger military budget, bases in more nations, and more troops and mercenaries on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq combined now than before the election. We need to understand that this was entirely predictable and predicted. Those who expected something from an election alone need to be clear that such expectation was entirely - not just partially - misguided. Disappointment with a president needs to be replaced with acknowledgement of strategic error. The latter generates less despair and allows clearer thinking about strategy going forward.

There is still and will always be a role for journalists, bloggers, authors, and pundits to expose the abuses of any and all government officials, including the president. But the primary role of peace activists should have nothing to do with presidents, or with senators. We have virtually no ability to influence them. When you're invited to discuss these wars on a television show, by all means expose what the president is doing. But asking members of an activist group to spend their time writing or calling the White House is a waste of energy that could be better used. It should be directed at the House of Representatives.

And when we look at the House, we see that the easiest way to quickly generate a large list of cosponsors is to propose bills. This pleases our closest allies in the House and impresses funders and allies in Washington, D.C. But it is not the easiest way to use the House to actually end wars. A bill with no teeth to it instructing the Pentagon to produce a plan to exit Afghanistan someday is something that one could almost imagine passing the Senate and being signed by the president. At best that process might move public opinion a bit more in the right direction. But it would further enforce in the public's minds, and Congress's, the idea that when and where wars are fought should be determined by the president or the Pentagon.

Passing a bill barring the spending of any money on an escalation in Afghanistan shifts the discussion to one of opposing an escalation rather than demanding withdrawal. This has led many peace groups to self-censor their demands for withdrawal. And passing such a bill through the Senate and persuading the President to sign it, or overriding a veto is a beautiful fantasy, but a far, far, far more difficult undertaking than a simpler and more direct approach.

If you want to stop funding wars, or even just the escalation of wars, the easiest way is to just not fund them. This can be done in the House alone. The Senate is not needed. The president is not needed. Rather than passing a bill stating that you won't fund wars, and then dreaming about getting the Senate to pass it too, you can choose to not pass bills that fund the wars. If the House makes clear that it will not fund an escalated war, then the war cannot be escalated. If the House makes clear that it will not fund a continued war, then the war cannot be continued.

The process of signing congress members onto a bill against funding or a bill requiring an exit plan is not counterproductive. It nudges them in the right direction. It creates a discussion about the possibility of including such measures in funding bills. It identifies lists of congress members to target in lobbying for stronger commitments. But when these bills are all we ask for, then they are not compromises or middle-ground. They are harder to move forward when they are all we ask for. And moving them forward without a broader vision of how we actually end the wars doesn't get us anywhere in the end.

Our primary demand must be: publicly commit to voting no on any bill that funds these wars. If unrelated measures are included in such bills, they must still be voted down and those other measures passed separately. If your representative is worried about funding a withdrawal itself, assure them that a bill to fund purely withdrawal has our support. If they are worried about abandoning foreign nations, assure them that we support diplomacy and aid. But we need them to join the list of their colleagues who have committed to voting no on bills that fund the wars. And we need them to lobby their colleagues to join them on that list.

By moving our focus to Congress we do something else useful. We allow people to protest wars who refuse to protest a president. By identifying wars with a president, we grant all future presidents the power to make wars, and we discourage participation in citizen activism by people who fantasize about the president being their friend or who think it's not wise to protest a popular president.

Our focus on Congress should include their responsibility on Iraq as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Congress has now required the Pentagon to provide it with monthly reports on its progress toward fully withdrawing from Iraq by the end of 2011. When those reports are not forthcoming or do not credibly suggest progress toward that goal, congressional committees must be forced by us to subpoena Secretary of "Defense" Robert Gates. And in fact, the House Judiciary Committee must be compelled by us as soon as possible to restore the checking power of impeachment by opening an impeachment inquiry into Jay Bybee, a federal judge who, while employed by the Justice Department, signed memos purporting to legalize torture and aggressive war. At the very least, Bybee must be subpoenaed, and Congress must use the Capitol Police to enforce that subpoena rather than futilely asking the Justice Department to do it.

If Congress asserts the power to hold war criminals accountable (which, again, can be done without the Senate or the president), we will be in a far better position to deter further wars and escalations, and Congress will be in a better position to cut off funding.

In June, 32 congress members voted No on war funding. They should be thanked and rewarded. But they should, above all, be asked and pressured to make a commitment to join this list of members committed to voting No from here on out: http://afterdowningstreet.org/whipwars

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said that he'd like to see another $50 billion passed in another supplemental war spending bill in the next few months. This is money to fund an escalation that we are supposed to believe has not been decided upon yet. This must be stopped. Some congress members are speaking against it. Even the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee David Obey has suggested he might oppose this. He very much needs to be encouraged by people around the nation to not put our money where his mouth isn't.

I just had the privilege of speaking at a rally in Portland, Maine, where an enthusiastic crowd of Mainers demanded the actions I'm proposing here. Their two congress members voted the right way in June, and they are working to win their public commitments to continue that practice and to lobby their colleagues to join them in that commitment.

Resources to help in this effort (and a place to report your results) in your congressional district can be found at http://afterdowningstreet.org/whipwars . Here's a flyer on ending the war in Vietghanistan: PDF. Here's how to step up your activism. Here's what's needed instead of bombs and guns. Here's a way to nonviolently resist.

Here's a very useful list of top targets and multiple ways to contact them. You can help with that even if they are not your representative.

What I am proposing is not easy. It's just the easiest path we have. It will be easier, the more of us get involved, the more of us refrain from discouraging each other with our knowledge of how hard the struggle will be, and the more of us who are willing to go beyond lobbying to nonviolently disrupting, including by sitting in our congress members' offices and refusing to leave until they agree to leave Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. These wars, like all wars, are Congress's wars. The blood is on their hands and they represent us.

Statements of undisputed facts about President Barack Obama's actions can generate declarations on progressive websites that one has "gone too far" or said something that "should not be said." Honesty has been replaced by loyalty.

The most common place to find accurate statements on presidential abuses of power is buried in a sea of lunacy on rightwing websites that conclude their analyses with encouragement of violence, gun purchasing, and assassination.

Denunciations of rightwing incitement of violence and hatred come most often from groups and individuals eager to change the topic from the abysmal failures of Democrats who have been given large majorities in the House and Senate, plus the White House, and chosen to do nothing.

Tough talk about the failures of Democrats is most often heard from racist, xenophobic believers in fantastical fairy tales with very little connection to reality.

Room needs to be created for other types of speech. We must be able to criticize and even legally prevent incitement of political violence, while at the same time examining what has made some people susceptible to that kind of talk, and while simultaneously speaking honestly about the failings of the people being targeted.

To do this, we have to be clear about what is unacceptable speech, what is acceptable but misguided speech, what we honestly believe, and what amounts to adoration rather than advocacy. Comparing someone's actions to those of Adolph Hitler is not, by itself, speech that should be suppressed. The phrase "enemies, foreign and domestic" is not verboten. If dictatorial power or fascistic tendencies could not be discussed, huge chunks of what has been said about Bush and Cheney would have to be eliminated along with hours of rightwing radio Obama-bashing. We cannot resist what we cannot mention.

What we should not have on our airwaves are calls for violent "revolution", for persuading our elected officials of their errors by increasing the statistics on gun sales, for hating people's religions or nations or races or sexual groups, and for assassination. We can most effectively resist abuses of power through nonviolence. Blocking the encouragement of violence does not deprive us of any rights. So, the question is not whether the violence is driven by accurate facts and agreeable theories. The question is simply whether violence is being encouraged. Theories that depict groups of people as evil and in need of elimination tend to encourage violence.

What we should have openly reported and discussed are people's fantasies and the possible resentments producing them. These include claims that Obama was born in Africa and claims that Bush shot a missile from an invisible plane into the Pentagon, as well as claims that Jesus will come back if we can start enough wars in the Middle East. We should see the people of Afghanistan burning Obama in effigy and hear honest analysis of why they might be doing that. We should see anti-abortion activists burning Congressional Democrats in effigy, and hear honest analysis of why they might be doing that. The analysis can include the possibility that people are badly misinformed and hurting their own interests, but it must be open, honest, and accurate.

When assassination threats increase, when people begin killing police officers or census workers based on fantasies that politicians and pundits have used to manipulate them, when police themselves begin abusing and even killing members of minority groups that have been scapegoated, clear connections to hateful and inciting language must be drawn and all those responsible held accountable.

But there is no conflict between that and speaking or writing honestly about the actual failures of some of the real people so destructively depicted as the antichrist or devils. We must oppose the use of violence against anyone and everyone. By opposing the assassination of an elected official, I am not joining his or her team. I am not signing a loyalty oath and agreeing to pretend that a bailout for health insurance corporations is meaningful progress. I can oppose the burning of effigies and still describe the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan as massive crimes legally equivalent to mass-murder. I can reject racist portraits of President Obama that label him a socialist, and still advocate for more socialistic policies in our government.

We've all mistaken politics for personal relationships. Our role is not to be a friend or an enemy to a politician. Our role is to encourage them when they work for what we believe is needed, and to discourage them when they move in a different direction. We can best do either of those things by remaining independent and indifferent to the childish notion of being with them or against them. And we can best do either of those things by nonviolent means. In fact, nothing would move our government in a more dangerous direction than anti-governmental violence. And nothing would encourage such violence more than insistence that everyone refrain from criticizing politicians.

On the other hand, nothing would move our government in a more positive direction, than uniting the 90 percent of Americans who oppose Wall Street bailouts around a campaign of nonviolent resistance to antidemocratic abuses, regardless of parties, free of delusions, and apart from all bigotry and foolish distraction.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book .

Imagine public elections in which 2 percent are allowed to vote and Diebold gets to nominate the candidates. Or public parks with guest lists of 2 percent of the public, and private prisons for anyone else who tries to enter. Or how about public schools serving 2 percent of children with fully televised lessons broken up by commercials promoting illiteracy? Welcome to the world of the robust public option.

At first the "public option" was to be a massive but less-than-universal healthcare plan that would prove so efficient and effective that over several years the public would all opt into it. It was a backdoor to a civilized system of Medicare for all. Now what's left of it? Now it's a public option for 2 percent of Americans, and in some states 0 percent, to be run by private corporations, with prices set to avoid any efficiency or competition for the wasteful health insurance companies.

Is that better than nothing? No, it's worse, because this pathetic scam of a healthcare plan is plastered like lipstick on a pig to a bailout for the health insurance corporations. (Sure, the bill contains some reforms to the insurance corporations' practices, but that's like trying to reform piranhas.) And when the healthcare crisis continues to worsen in the coming years, the blame will be placed on the nearly nonexistent public option, thus justifying making things even worse, if possible. And the same bill goes out of its way to prevent states from solving the problem on their own, allowing them to opt out of the perverse public option (opting into which would hardly be noticeable anyway) but denying states the ability to create real healthcare funding for their residents. Congressman Kucinich's amendment to remedy this has been stripped out by Speaker Pelosi.

Now, enough House Democrats have publicly committed to voting No on any bill this bad, that it could not pass. On July 30th 57 of them signed a letter saying that any bill without a public option based on Medicare rates would be unacceptable. And therefore, this bill would be dead, and we could go into round 2 with a stronger demand for a bill that might actually save a significant number of lives. And we could move ahead on easy steps, like busting monopoly protections, passing the Kucinich amendment, and passing reforms proposed by Senator Sanders. That is, we could imagine all such scenarios if you could trust a progressive member of Congress as far as you could throw one. And some of them are pretty robust, if you know what I mean.

Sadly, these people's word is as trustworthy as the promises of a health insurance company. (And when they prove that yet again, you can forget about progressive legislation or action on any issue in the months and years to come.) And most so-called progressive and labor organizations don't even want to ask them to keep their word. So-called citizens' groups, now actually taking their directives from the very people they pretend to lobby, are so obsessed with passing any sort of bill, that the content of the bill is virtually irrelevant. I say virtually, because the collective decision is that it must contain something or other that can be mislabeled a "public option." Other than that, it could sentence millions of Americans to death, and it would still be fine and dandy. And that is exactly what it does.

And why is a bill better than no bill? Why is a bill that funds absolutely useless parasites like health insurance companies at the expense of our grandchildren's unearned pay better than nothing? Why -- when blocking a bill would almost guarantee a better debate in round 2 -- is it more important to pass the bill and close off the opportunity for valuable reform? Is there nothing this bill could do that would lead you to oppose it? If the senate turns the "public option" into something that does not even exist until possibly "triggered" years from now, then will you oppose the bill? But the public option barely exists in the House version either. Why wait until the last minute to pointlessly pretend you oppose this pig?

Why not speak up now wen it might make a difference? Why not at least demand No votes unless the Kucinich amendment is restored?

Silence is not speech.

War is not peace.

Illness is not health.

And 2 percent is not robust or public or an option.

"Glaubt es mir - das Geheimnis, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst: gefährlich leben." - Friedrich Nietzsche

On Thursday night I had the privilege of viewing a premier of a film together with its star. The theater was in the U.S. Capitol, and the film was "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" ( http://www.mostdangerousman.org ). This is a powerfully and engagingly constructed film about one of the most effective instances of whistle-blowing in our nation's history.

Ellsberg risked life in prison to expose the lies that had taken this nation into war in Vietnam, lies from Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. And Nixon believed that Ellsberg had incriminating documents on his own lies, which led Henry Kissinger to call Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America."

Like most whistle-blowers, Ellsberg was not an outside reformer. He had promoted and advanced the war from inside the Pentagon. He had tried to be a force for moderation. But peace activists reached his conscience and persuaded him that he could and must do more. Those close to him supported his decision. Colleagues took similar risks to assist him. Major media outlets risked their futures to publish what Ellsberg gave them and to interview him while he was in hiding from the law. A member of Congress (former senator Mike Gravel, who was present on Thursday) risked his future to read the Pentagon Papers into the congressional record. The Supreme Court ruled against the president of the United States. And Ellsberg became a brilliant spokesman for his cause.

A lot of factors combined to create an incredible impact from the leaking of one 7,000-page pile of documents. This exposure helped end the war in Vietnam, and helped put some spine into our media outlets, our Congress, and our courts' treatment of the First Amendment.

However, Ellsberg expected more. He expected Americans to change their thinking about wars. He expected us not to fall for obvious lies about wars anymore. He thought that people would digest and synthesize the untold story he exposed. So, in some ways, he was of course disappointed. And, of course, what good he did for the media and Congress quickly wore off.

In the film we're told that the New York Times decided to publish top secret documents because it thought it would not be able to survive the disgrace of the world eventually learning that it had acquired the documents and not published them. This sounds like something out of Alice in Wonderland today in our world where the New York Times buries most interesting stories, where it dutifully kept a warrantless spying story secret for a year, where it still hasn't reported on most of the stories found in the same book that forced that story out, and where it pushed war lies about Iraq and now does the same for Iran.

Most crimes today are public. Bush and Cheney brag about torture on television. Nothing happens. Documents like the Downing Street Minutes are studiously ignored. Whistleblowers post their stories on the internet. Congress no longer impeaches or even issues subpoenas. And the RAND Corporation, from which Ellsberg leaked his documents, held a propaganda-fest about escalation in Afghanistan on Capitol Hill the same day as the movie premier.

In the film we're told that Americans were enraged to learn from the Pentagon Papers that the Vietnam War was being fought to "save face." At RAND's forum on Thursday, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution openly argued for an escalation in Afghanistan, because withdrawal would mean a "huge PR victory for al Qaeda".

Our crimes, like our system of campaign bribery or our degradation of journalism, are mostly out in the open now. No doubt there are documents in the White House or the Pentagon or RAND indicating knowledge of the hopelessness of quagmire continuation in Afghanistan. But who would ever dare leak them? Who would ever dare help that person do so? Once posted online, who would compel a newspaper or a television network to notice? Once the information was in the corporate media, who would force Congress to care? Once Congress cared, who would shut down Washington DC until the powers of subpoena and impeachment were revived?

It seems to me that what we need is not a new Dan Ellsberg for our generation. We need a whole new generation. We need dozens of Dan Ellsbergs and Dan Ellsberg accomplices throughout our government, and we need them to act frequently and with eternal vigilance. Luckily for us, Ellsberg has provided an ideal model for how to conduct yourself when in a position like his. Ellsberg has also written the foreword to a book by Ann Wright (who was there on Thursday) that provides more recent role models: http://voicesofconscience.com And those of us who are not in possession of classified crime records can help as well. We can raise bloody hell until Congress passes a media shield law and a whistle-blower bill of rights. We can befriend war-makers, modern-day Ellsbergs, and reach their hearts. And we can build media outlets that do real reporting. We must do these things. Lets do them for the most dangerous man in America.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book .