Donle’s Daily Dispatches

Volume 1 Issue 179         Today’s News and Views     Sunday, June 25, 2006

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Update of US Casualties in Iraq: 2517

Update of US Casualties in Afghanistan: 312

Figures provided by

the Iraq Coalition Causality website

Support Our Troops

IMPEACH Bush/Cheney

Hoosiers for Peace requests the honor of your presence…

What: Share Sunday Gravy with Local Progressives at Pasta for Peace. Good Food, Stimulating Conversation, Inspirational Music, Film, and Art and a Silent Auction. Did we mention the pasta was shaped like peace signs? To reserve your seat, call 202-9302 or e-mail heather@hoosiersforpeace.org. Seats are limited and going fast.

When: June 25, 2006 from 1 to 4 p.m. (with dinner at 2 p.m.)

Where: Indianapolis Peace and Learning Center (6040 DeLong Rd.) in Eagle Creek Park.

Why:  Now is the time to spread the word to mainstream America to unite and stand up for peace. Hoosiers for Peace is sponsoring a statewide advertising campaign, which is focused on uniting the community to call for peace. This campaign will cost $14,000. This money will be used to pay for a full-page ad in the Indianapolis Star to ask more than 700,000 Hoosiers to call for peace. To find out more visit www.hoosiersforpeace.org

Cost: Adults $20, Children 5-12 $7, Children under 5 eat free. All proceeds will go towards the advertising campaign. Seats are limited, contact Heather for tickets today: 202-9302 or e-mail heather@hoosiersforpeace.org.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. 
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

May 7, 2006

Dear Peacemakers,

Will you help to spread and encourage peace? With a record number of American soldiers dying in April 2006 and possible military action against Iran becoming daily news, now is the time to spread the word to mainstream America to unite and stand up for peace.

Hoosiers for Peace is sponsoring a statewide advertising campaign, which is focused on uniting the community to call for peace. This campaign will cost $14,000. This money will be used to pay for a full-page ad in the Indianapolis Star to ask more than 700,000 Hoosiers to call for peace. We are contacting dozens of organizations to make a proposal to form a coalition to raise funds and send a collaborative message to Hoosiers to Call for Peace. The message is: Call your friends, your family, and your representatives and ask them to support the Call for Peace.

Like most Americans, we oppose war based on the following, which will be reflected in the advertisement:

A.    War Kills. More than 2,400 American Soldiers have died and nearly 1,000 Hoosier soldiers are in harms way.

B.    War depletes our resources. Billions of dollars are going to sustain war efforts while ordinary citizens struggle for social services.

C.    War will not make us secure. Studies have shown that the U.S. is no more secure today than it was before 911.

Hoosiers for Peace, a website sponsored by Progressive Indiana, requests your support to make this advertisement a success. We will use the advertisement to call for peace. Each group in the coalition  working on this project will be listed in the ad. Each group will be asked to raise $1000 by October 1, 2006. Below are some suggestions for fundraising:

1.                Letter Writing Campaign: Contact your family and friends and ask them to support this call for peace. Tell them how many people we can reach and ask them to make a generous donation and spread the word. You may collect the money through your organization or you may refer them to Progressive Indiana. Donations may be sent through our secure online giving by going to www.progressiveindiana.org and click on donate now or log onto www.hoosiersforpeace and click on donate now. Checks may also be made payable to Progressive Indiana and mailed to:

                Progressive Indiana

                P.O. Box 55253

                Indianapolis, Indiana 46205-0253

2.                Host a house party. Go grassroots and organize a pasta dinner or backyard barbecue and ask for a donation from each guest. Play poker and donate half of each pot to the campaign for peace. Have a bake sale through your church or place of employment.

3.                Plan a small event.  Invite your community to an event and ask for donations for the ad. Small concerts, speakers, and socials are some ideas for these events. Get creative and network!

We need at least 14 groups to join the coalition and many more people to join the campaign to help fill in possible gaps. If we join together we can make this happen and we can bring Hoosiers together through this ad. As we Honor the Dead, Heal the Wounded, and call for an End to the War we can stand united for peace. We can make a difference by showing ordinary Hoosiers that there are many people like them working for peace. Please contact us as soon as possible if you would like to participate in this campaign. With a little work and collaboration we can make a large impact on our community.

In Peace,

Heather Allen-Garde

Director, Hoosiers For Peace

heather@hooisersforpeace.org

heatherreneeallen@yahoo.com

317/202-9302

It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it – Eleanor Roosevelt

David Korten

Butler University

June 26, 2006

7pm

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Clinton Says GOP Blindly Follows Bush
She Calls an Open Debate on the Iraq War More Important Than Party Unity

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 24, 2006; A06

One day after suffering a pair of defeats on the Senate floor, Democratic leaders argued yesterday that their internal divisions over Iraq will help push the country toward a change in policy and accused Republicans of blindly following President Bush on a path that has been disastrous for the nation.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said Democrats emerged from this week's Senate debate more united than critics contend around a policy aimed at forcing the new Iraqi government to take responsibility for suppressing the insurgency. Party unity is important, she said, but not as valuable as an open debate about how best to change course.

"We're not blindly united like the other side is, where they are like the three monkeys -- 'hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil,' " she told reporters after a speech to the Democratic group NDN. "They're not going to say anything negative about the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense or anybody else. I think that's irresponsible. It's negligent."

Clinton's comments reflected Democratic efforts to regroup on Iraq after being thrown on the defensive by Republican charges that they favor a "cut and run" policy of retreat and after seeing competing approaches to the withdrawal of U.S. forces lose badly on the Senate floor.

One proposal, written by Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), would have forced the withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops by next summer. That proposal was rejected on a vote of 86 to 13, with the majority of Democrats opposed and many irritated that Kerry and Feingold had given the White House such a clear target to attack.

A competing resolution, sponsored by Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), called for troops to begin a redeployment by the end of this year but set no fixed timetable for their full withdrawal. That was rejected on a 60 to 39 vote, with six Democrats defecting to the Republicans and one Republican siding with the Democrats.

The aggressive Republican rhetoric throughout the debate caused considerable consternation among Democratic politicians and strategists. For several days, the Republicans enjoyed the upper hand in the political warfare on the Senate floor, with Democrats privately lamenting that they were losing the message battle despite what polls show is an unpopular war.

By yesterday, however, Democrats were saying that the Levin proposal demonstrates party consensus and reflects public opinion more clearly than do the president's policies.

Democrats said Republicans have now embraced an open-ended commitment in Iraq and predicted that the GOP will suffer at the ballot box in November unless there is a dramatic change for the better in Iraq. "They're united in a failed policy," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said of the Republicans on NBC's "Today" show yesterday.

Biden would not answer the question of whether the Kerry-Feingold proposal for a fixed timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops would hurt the Democrats. "We don't agree with John Kerry," he said. "The vast majority of Democrats don't think we should set a date of a time certain."

But Clinton said she is not disturbed by talk of Democratic divisions. "When people say, 'Gee, the Democrats seemed not to have a unified position,' I can very straightforwardly say I'm proud of the debate that we're having," she said. "We are trying to fulfill our responsibilities, in contrast to our friends on the other side, who have abdicated theirs."

Republicans dismissed the Democratic arguments, saying leaders such as Clinton and Biden are mischaracterizing the Democrats' proposals. "People want the troops out, but they want the troops out after the success has occurred," said Republican pollster David Winston. "What the Democrats were putting forth had nothing to do with success; it was just about getting out."

Winston also said the Democrats will have trouble making Iraq a central issue in the fall campaigns because "on the number one issue people are discussing, they have no plan because there's not consensus on their side."

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt offered a harsher appraisal, saying that the Democratic divisions add up to "surrender to the terrorists."

Recent polling shows support for reducing troop levels in Iraq and for politicians who advocate such a redeployment. A recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that 54 percent of those surveyed said they were more likely to support a candidate who favors pulling all American troops out of Iraq over the next 12 months.

That same poll showed that 57 percent of Americans favor reducing troop levels but that only 38 percent support a fixed timetable for removing them.

Clinton said her party's stance of "honestly and openly struggling" with the issue of Iraq is in contrast to the GOP's embrace of the White House's conduct. "There is very little willingness to do what should be done in holding this administration accountable," she said.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Anthony D. Romero, condemned the program, calling it "another example of the Bush administration's abuse of power."

Lauren Weinstein, the head of the California-based Privacy Forum, an online discussion group, raised concerns about lack of independent review of the operation. "Oversight is the difference between something being reasonable and something being abuse," he said.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he had sent letters on Friday to both Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on the issue. While he declined to release the letters, he said he was concerned about the legal authority for the operation.

Mr. Specter has been at odds with the administration over another previously secret counterterrorism operation, the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. The senator said he was particularly troubled that the administration had expanded its Congressional briefings on the financial tracking program in recent weeks after having learned that The New York Times was making inquiries.

"Why does it take a newspaper investigation to get them to comply with the law?" the senator asked. "That's a big, important point."

In explaining the program, Mr. Levey, the Treasury under secretary who oversees the program, said in an interview earlier in the week that "people do not have a privacy interest in their international wire transactions." But Mr. Specter was skeptical.

"I'm not surprised that a Treasury official would take that position, but I'm not so sure he's right," the senator said. "I don't think it's an open-and-shut question."

Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who has made privacy a signature issue, said, "I am very concerned that the Bush administration may be once again violating the constitutional rights of innocent Americans as part of another secret program created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks."

But Mr. Cheney was emphatic on Friday in arguing the program is necessary, and predicted that the Bush administration might be criticized over it in much the same way that critics have assailed the National Security Agency eavesdropping, which has been done without warrants.

"The fact of the matter is that these are good, solid, sound programs," the vice president said at the fund-raiser in Chicago for David McSweeney, a Republican who is running against Representative Melissa Bean, a freshman Democrat.

"They are conducted in accordance with the laws of the land," Mr. Cheney continued, adding, "They're carried out in a manner that is fully consistent with the constitutional authority of the president of the United States. They are absolutely essential in terms of protecting us against attacks."

Mr. Cheney's sentiments were echoed Friday by two other top administration officials, Treasury Secretary Snow and the White House press secretary, Tony Snow.

The two men, who are not related, defended the program in separate news conferences on Friday. The Treasury secretary called the operation "government at its best," and the press secretary derided criticism of it as "entirely abstract in nature."

The Treasury secretary called the program "an effective weapon, an effective weapon in the larger war on terror."

Administration officials spoke to various reporters about the financial tracking program Thursday night after The New York Times published an article about the program on its Web site. Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, has said the newspaper decided to publish the story because "we remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Swift has said that its role in the program was never voluntary, but that it was obligated to comply with a valid subpoena, and had worked to narrow the range of data it provided to American officials.

But the Treasury secretary, Mr. Snow, said Friday that after the Sept. 11 attacks, Treasury Department officials initially presented the cooperative with what he described as "really narrowly crafted subpoenas all tied to terrorism." Officials at Swift responded that that they did not have the ability to "extract the particular information from their broad database."

"So they said, 'We'll give you all the data,' " Secretary Snow said.

Craig S. Smith contributed reporting from Paris for this article, Eric Dash from New York and Laurie J. Flynn from San Francisco.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Residents of Mansour have good reason to be afraid. The wave of insurgent crime has already sunk neighborhoods in western Baghdad into anarchy. In Dawra, it is impossible to collect the bodies of the murdered because of sniper fire.

Ali Aziz, a Shiite, had to hastily load the body of his friend into the back of a pickup in Dawra in late April, after the police refused to respond to pleas from the man's widow. He waited until he had reached the safety of a police station to put the body in a coffin.

"There is no government there," said a computer programmer who moved earlier this month from another western Baghdad neighborhood, Amiriya, after four murders on his block. "I want to go to my home, to bring some clothes, but I can't go there. My own country, my own home, and I can't go there."

In Mansour, by contrast, life has not shut down entirely, but has slowed from a bustle to a trickle. An internal American Embassy security document, recently posted on the Internet by The Washington Post, quoted an Iraqi employee who had said Mansour was "an unrecognizable ghost town."

Threats have closed a number of shops on Mansour Street, and the emptiness in the early afternoon is palpable. Earlier this month, two jewelry shop owners were sitting in the back room of a house in the afternoon, watching a World Cup soccer game. Just days before, they had shut their shops when they received telephone calls from a man threatening to bomb them if they did not pay money. It was the day, coincidentally, that Mr. Zarqawi was killed.

"I thought it was one of my friends joking," said one owner, Omar, who declined to give his last name. He later checked the phone number with a friend, who said he had received three calls from the same number. Omar never considered going to the police.

Now he barely recognizes his life. He washes his car, and goes shopping. He naps in the middle of the day. He is losing about $500 every day he keeps the store closed.

Some shop owners said insurgents had told Shiite merchants to take down pictures of Shiite saints, but Omar scoffed at the idea that the threats, which have closed down a number of businesses, had mostly sectarian motives.

"It's all about money," he said, the Dutch and Serbian soccer teams flashing on the screen behind him. "The pictures are just an excuse."

Fatalism and dark humor infuse conversations around dinner tables and among friends in Mansour.

"Someone was wearing shorts, and someone else said, 'Well, at least we know that when Zarqawi's people arrive, you'll be the first one they grab,' " one foreign resident said, because such dress might seem immodest.

Even so, Iraqis expressed some hope that the new government's security program would produce meaningful results. Last week, a smiling Iraqi Army soldier stood waving cars by a makeshift checkpoint near Mr. Chalabi's compound, across from the Hunting Club. Mr. Mualla, the club's director, said the area had been quiet since the program began.

A major problem is the state itself. With the central government weak, powerful Iraqis — rich men, political leaders, tribal sheiks — manipulate it with ease, using their influence to enlist Iraqi police officers and soldiers to do their bidding. Smaller-time criminals buy uniforms. As a result, it can be all but impossible to differentiate between criminals and official forces.

Consider the case of Iraqna, one of the country's largest cellphone providers, whose shop in Mansour was raided in early April by about 10 Iraqis in army uniforms. The soldiers — or criminals dressed to look like them, or some combination of the two — locked 60 employees on two floors in a room, rummaged through drawers and took phones and wallets. Two Iraqis were killed.

Company executives are still puzzling over whether the forces were legitimate government ones (none have admitted to it) or thieves dressed as soldiers. Alain Sainte-Marie, the company's chief executive, said he had filed a criminal complaint in court to force the state to get to the bottom of what happened.

"Witnesses said it was a raid done by official troops," Mr. Sainte-Marie said, in the company's elegant headquarters with a spiral staircase in a fortified area of Mansour. "To tell you frankly, the way that it happened, I still have doubts."

The branch is now closed, and Mr. Sainte-Marie is reviewing new security plans. For aesthetic reasons, he has balked at suggestions for giant chunks of concrete.

"It has to stay friendly," he said. "I won't accept it to look like a bunker."

Mr. Mualla, the Hunting Club director, sips ice-cold water in his renovated office in the back of the club and worries. Business — receptions and banquets — is down by about half over the past two months. Weddings are now booked just a week in advance, not a month.

"I'm tired," he said. "I'm very tired of controlling the situation. Nobody is helping me."

Hosham Hussein and Sahar Nageeb contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Staying the course is politics, not planning

Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Instead of running for majority leader if Democrats take control of the House in 2006, maybe U. S. Rep. John P. Murtha ought to run for president. He may be 74, but the man knows how to handle himself in a fight, a skill too many genteel Democrats appear to have forgotten. Here’s the story: After escaping indictment last week, the new Republican ethical gold standard, White House apparatchik Karl Rove hustled to New Hampshire for a GOP fund-raiser. There he engaged in the kind of cheap smear for which he’s justly infamous. Of Democrats like Murtha who voted to confront Iraq but have become war critics, Rove said: “Too many Democrats—it strikes me they are ready to give the green light to go to war, but when it gets tough and when it gets difficult, they fall back on that party’s old pattern of cutting and running. They may be with you at the first shots, but they are not going to be there for the last tough battles.” Let’s pass over the fact that when George W. Bush presented the Iraq resolution, he vowed that it wasn’t a declaration of war. Most people knew better. When Tim Russert played the videotape of Rove for Murtha on “Meet the Press,” the crusty old former Marine reacted angrily.

“He’s in New Hampshire,” Murtha said. “He’s making a political speech. He’s sitting in his air-conditioned office with his big, fat backside, saying, ‘Stay the course.’ That’s not a plan. I mean, this guy—I don’t know what his military experience is, but that’s a political statement.”

For the record, Rove’s military experience, like Vice President Dick Cheney’s and that of virtually all the neo-conservative architects of this ill-conceived utopian fantasy, is absolutely zero.

Murtha knows about war. A native of the coal-mining and steel-making region of western Pennsylvania, he volunteered to fight in Korea and Vietnam, where he won two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star with Combat “V” and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. I’m confident that even at 74, he could kick Rove’s pasty posterior with one leg—assuming he could outrun the little creep.

As history, this cut-and-run business is nonsense. It wasn’t Democrats who made peace in Korea. It was President Dwight Eisenhower. Democrats didn’t dispatch Henry Kissinger to whisper to China in 1972 that the U. S. could live with a communist Vietnam. President Richard Nixon did. He began the long, bloody retreat that ended with the North Vietnamese taking Saigon under President Gerald Ford.

Maybe the oddest thing about the legacy of Vietnam is that the worst thing that could happen, from a rightwing perspective, did happen. The U. S. lost the war. Communists conquered much of Southeast Asia. And the effect on national security ? Well, we got lots of good Vietnamese restaurants out of it. Otherwise, none.

The communists soon fell to fighting among themselves, with Vietnam invading Cambodia, China attacking Vietnam, and the Chinese and Soviet Russians entangled in a blood feud. Next, Russia invaded Afghanistan. Domestic fallout from that bloody fiasco helped cause the collapse of the U. S. S. R. and the demise of communism almost everywhere—also because nobody but a few crackpot professors in the West believed in it anymore.

Exactly why so many like Rove, Bush and Cheney, who avoided Vietnam, subsequently metamorphosed into country club Napoleons is mysterious. Personal psychodrama appears to be involved.

It’s past time to get real, Murtha says. Invading Iraq was an unnecessary folly.

“We didn’t have a threat to our national security. That’s been proven,” Murtha told Russert. “Second, we [sent ] inadequate forces to get it under control in a transition to peace.... [T ] he third thing was no exit strategy.

“ It’s no longer a military war,” Murtha said. “We have won the military war against [the ] enemy. We toppled Saddam Hussein. The military’s done everything that they can do. And so it’s time for us to redeploy.... Only Iraqis can settle this.”

Murtha didn’t say so, but there’s no chance of an Iraqi democracy friendly to the U. S. That’s a delusion. Bush’s photo-op visit merely underscored the point. Three years after “Mission accomplished,” and the mighty conqueror flies into the fortified “Green Zone” unannounced and can’t trust Iraq’s prime minister enough to give him, oh, an hour’s notice? That’s not how Alexander the Great did it. Meanwhile, Murtha says, the U. S. is spending $ 8 billion a month while American soldiers are being killed and maimed, physically and psychologically, mainly to provide political cover for Bush. Intimidated by Rove? Not hardly. “You can’t sit there in the air-conditioned office,” Murtha said, “and tell these troops—they’re carrying 70 pounds on their back inside these armored vessels and hit with improvised explosive devices every day, seeing their friends blown up, their buddies blown up—and he says, ‘stay the course.’ Yeah, it’s easy to say that from Washington, D. C.”

—–––––•–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.

Copyright © 2001-2006 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc.

So many have sacrificed so much in Iraq, and for what?

By Gordon Livingston

June 23, 2006

In any discussion of the war in Iraq and its consequences, it is obligatory for everyone to acknowledge the sacrifices required of the men and women who have been sent there. More than 2,500 of them have died and about 18,000 have been wounded. The rate of post-traumatic stress disorder among those who have returned has been estimated to be as high as 20 percent.

I was a soldier once in a war similar in many respects to this one. Like members of our current military, I was a volunteer. I remember that when I returned from Vietnam, I was struck by how little society knew or cared about what was happening there. I didn't expect anyone to understand or be grateful for what I had done because it was apparent to me that the nation had not benefited from my service. No one was any safer. Our freedoms were no more secure. I never felt that the lives of the Vietnamese had been materially improved by our efforts. Quite the contrary, our primary gifts to that small country had been death, destruction and a flourishing sex industry. I came away from the experience believing that the American lives I had seen lost were wasted sacrifices. We who had served had been betrayed. Why would I expect a grateful homecoming?

When I saw what the war in Vietnam was really like, I wrote to my wife in a "letter to be opened in the event of my death" that she was not to accept any medals and, above all, I was not to have a military funeral. I could not abide the prospect that my flag-draped coffin might serve as a justification for further bloodshed.

Now I see this pattern repeated. The difference from Vietnam is that we appear determined to reassure our troops of our continued support and gratitude.

As with Vietnam, we try to avoid the obvious question: Which of our liberties are at stake in Iraq? The stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction weren't found, and al-Qaida made an appearance there only after we invaded. Does anyone really believe that we are about to witness a flowering of democracy in the Middle East? Is Osama bin Laden now less likely to attack us here?

The troops who are fighting this war are volunteers who freely chose the military for reasons that seemed adequate to them and who are now doing what soldiers do. A small number of them have, in fact, disgraced us all with their cruelty and contempt for the Iraqi people. Some of them, it appears, have committed war crimes.

The majority, no doubt, have acquitted themselves bravely in the performance of their duty. Whether this has contributed in any way to the welfare of either this country or Iraqis is doubtful. They are men and women doing their dangerous jobs as well as they can, like firefighters or police officers. Each of their deaths is a tragedy, but not more so because they were wearing a uniform when they died. I am a parent twice bereaved, so I know this: Death is random and implacable however and wherever it occurs.

The fundamental values on which the nation was founded have been distorted by this administration under the cover of its endless "war on terror." In May, President Bush assured the graduates at my alma mater, West Point, that "this war began on my watch but it's gonna end on your watch." This idea of perpetual war and the abrogation of our civil liberties are what we ought to be worrying about, not whether we are sufficiently honoring the soldiers dying in Iraq. How about honoring them by removing them from danger?

It can be argued that no life is vainly given if the person who lays it down believes the sacrifice worthwhile. By this standard, at least some of the lives lost in this war have been redeemed. We cannot interview the dead, and the families I have heard are divided in their responses to this question. But to ask such sacrifices of our fellow citizens, there must be a defensible belief that some worthy national objective has been served.

Who can say that about this war? Must we, as our leaders tell us, suspend judgment to await the verdict of history? The deaths are now; the grief is now. We must therefore decide now if we are being played for patriotic fools by people willing to risk our children in this cause but not their own.

Gordon Livingston, a psychiatrist who lives in Columbia, is the author of "And Never Stop Dancing." His e-mail is gslcvk@aol.com.

Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun

June 22, 2006

America, The Big Picture

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by W. O. Coach

Yes indeed these are tough times for America, the memory of 9/11, an unpopular war in Iraq and subsequent loss of prestige in the world abetted by the torture scandals. Add an unpopular president, and make no mistake, a bounce to 37% approval from the low 30's still makes for overwhelming disapproval no matter how the political hacks try to spin it.  

Most Americans are depressed for very good reason. They see the loss of real wages in contrast to skyrocketing big corporation profits as an affront to their sense of fair play and reward. They shake their heads in dismay at the White House spin that tax cuts for the already rich work to their benefit. They feel Congress and the Senate are working for their lobbyist-donors and not their constituents. Who wouldn't be outraged that the burning issues in congress are somehow gay marriage and flag burning rather than exporting jobs and importing illegal workers and shall we say it, getting out of the Iraq quagmire.  

It's like the great American dream has been hijacked by a cabal of self-serving politicians whose single purpose is to remain in power. And that's both democrats and republicans. The truth is in the numbers, that 98% of incumbents get re-elected. Even dictators with fake elections don't claim to get 98% of the vote in their favor. They wouldn't dare for fear of ridicule. But that's America now, the powers that be think you're stupid, and with good reason.  

They know half of you don't vote, and the other half that will, won't squawk even if it's been proven that a few key strokes on a computer can change your vote to the opposite of your choice because of corrupt touch screen voting machines.  

The American system of democracy is broken. Badly. Large corporations through lobbyists now call the shots via campaign contributions to politicians willing to do anything to stay in power. Remember, 98% of incumbents get re-elected. How ridiculous is that when congress has an approval rating of about 20 something percent?   

So, what to do?  

Actually, it's pretty simple. Give a tax break for voting! And here's how it works:  

Get a receipt for voting and you get $100.00 off your federal tax bill. To put this in perspective, only half of us vote right now. About 25% of the population is religiously insane, and they are going to vote conservative, regardless, because they believe we need to be protected from gay marriage. If we can get more than half of us to vote, game over, as long as we get back to paper ballots.  

It would be a heck of a lot cheaper than giving tax cuts to the already rich and fighting a war in a desert whose occupants share a culture we could in no way accept, anymore than they could accept ours. Think about that.  

Thank you for reading, and all I ask is that you vote in your own self interest. Even if you vote the opposite of my position, democrat, that's okay. Vote. The more people voting, the more chance we'll get the country back on track.  

Of that I'm convinced.

W. O. Coach

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

© BuzzFlash.

COLUMN ONE

'End Times' Religious Groups Want Apocalypse Soon

'End times' religious groups want apocalypse sooner than later, and they're relying on high tech -- and red heifers -- to hasten its arrival.

By Louis Sahagun
Times Staff Writer

June 22, 2006

For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.

Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.

For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.

With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

To the majority of Shiites, the Mahdi was the last of the prophet Muhammad's true heirs, his 12 righteous descendants chosen by God to lead the faithful.

Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within two years.

Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam's holiest shrines.

Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple — along with two 6½-ton marble cornerstones for the building's foundation.

Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah.

So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they failed to turn up even three white or black hairs on the animal's body.

Linking these efforts is a belief that modern technologies and global communications have made it possible to induce completion of God's plan within this generation.

Though there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown — as described by the Book of Revelation in the New Testament — is as follows:

Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years, the Holy Temple is rebuilt, billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues, the antichrist arises and rules the world, the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel, Jesus returns to defeat Satan's armies and preside over Judgment Day.

Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming of Jesus, said UCLA historian Eugen Weber, author of the 1999 book "Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages."

"And it's always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope," he added with a sigh. "What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race."

Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants.

Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch.

It didn't. According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.

"Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life," said James Davis, president of the Global Pastors Network's "Billion Souls Initiative," one of an estimated 2,000 initiatives worldwide designed to boost the Christian population.

"As we advance around the world," Davis said, "we'll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that Great Commission. Then, the Bible says, the end will come."

An opposing vision, invoked by Ahmadinejad in an address before the United Nations last year, suggests that the Imam Mahdi, a 9th century figure, will soon emerge from a well to conquer the world and convert everyone to Islam.

"O mighty Lord," he said, "I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace."

At the appropriate time, according to Shiite tradition, the Mahdi will reappear and, along with Jesus, lead Muslims in a struggle to rid the world of corruption and establish justice.

For Christians, the future of Israel is the key to any end-times scenario, and various groups are reaching out to Jews — or proselytizing among them — to advance the Second Coming.

A growing number of fundamentalist Christians in mostly Southern states are adopting Jewish religious practices to align themselves with prophecies saying that Gentiles will stand as one with Jews when the end is near.

Evangelist John C. Hagee of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel, and donated several million dollars to Israeli hospitals and orphanages.

"We are the generation that will probably see the rapture of the church," Hagee said, referring to a moment in advance of Jesus' return when the world's true believers will be airlifted into heaven.

"In Christian theology, the first thing that happens when Christ returns to Earth is the judgment of nations," said Hagee, who wears a Jewish prayer shawl when he ministers. "It will have one criterion: How did you treat the Jewish people? Anyone who understands that will want to be on the right side of that question. Those who are anti-Semitic will go to eternal damnation."

On July 18, Hagee plans to lead a contingent of high-profile evangelists to Washington to make their concerns about Israel's security known to congressional leaders. More than 1,200 evangelists are expected for the gathering.

"Twenty-five years ago, I called a meeting of evangelists to discuss such an effort, and the conversation didn't last an hour," he said. "This time, I called and they all came and stayed. And when the meeting was over, they all agreed to speak up for Israel."

Underlining the sense of urgency is a belief that the end-times clock started ticking May 15, 1948, when the United Nations formally recognized Israel.

"I'll never forget that night," Hagee said. "I was 8 years old at the time and in the kitchen with my father listening to the news about Israel's rebirth on the radio. He said, 'Son, this is the most important day in the 20th century.' "

Hagee's message is carried on 160 television stations and 50 radio stations and can be seen in Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and most Third World nations.

By contrast, Bill McCartney, a former University of Colorado football coach and co-founder of the evangelical Promise Keepers movement for men, which became huge in the 1990s, has had a devil of a time getting his own apocalyptic campaign off the ground.

It's called The Road to Jerusalem, and its mission is to convert Jews to Christianity — while there is still time.

"Our whole purpose is to hasten the end times," he said. "The Bible says Jews will be brought to jealousy when they see Christians and Jewish believers together as one — they'll want to be a part of that. That's going to signal Jesus' return."

Jews and others who don't accept Jesus, he added matter-of-factly, "are toast."

McCartney, who only a decade ago sermonized to stadium-size crowds of Promise Keepers, said finding people to back his sputtering cause has been "like plowing cement."

Given end-times scenarios saying that non-believers will die before Jesus returns — and that the antichrist will rule from Jerusalem's rebuilt Holy Temple — Jews have mixed feelings about the outpouring of support Israel has been getting from evangelical organizations.

"I truly believe John Hagee is at once a daring, beautiful person — and quite dangerous," said Orthodox Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, vice president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York.

"I sincerely recognize him as a hero for bringing planeloads of people to Israel at a time when people there were getting blown up by the busloads," Hirschfield said. "But he also believes that the only path to the father is through Jesus. That leaves me out."

Meanwhile, in what has become a spectacular annual routine, Jews — hoping to rebuild the Holy Temple destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 — attempt to haul the 6 1/2 -ton cornerstones by truck up to the Temple Mount, the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock shrine. Each year, they are turned back by police.

Among those turned away is Gershon Solomon, spokesman for Jerusalem's Temple Institute. When the temple is built, he said, "Islam is over."

"I'm grateful for all the wonderful Christian angels wanting to help us," Solomon added, acknowledging the political support from "Christians who are now Israel's best lobbyists in the United States."

However, when asked to comment on the fate of non-Christians upon the Second Coming of Jesus, he said, "That's a very embarrassing question. What can I tell you? That's a very terrible Christian idea.

"What kind of religion is it that expects another religion will be destroyed?"

But are all of these efforts to hasten the end of the world a bit like, well, playing God?

Some Christians, such as Roman Catholics and some Protestant denominations, believe in the Second Coming but don't try to advance it. It's important to be ready for the Second Coming, they say, though its timetable cannot be manipulated.

Hirschfield said he prays every day for the coming of the Jewish messiah, but he too believes that God can't be hurried.

"For me," he said, "the messiah is like the mechanical bunny at a racetrack: It always stays a little ahead of the runners but keeps the pace toward a redeemed world.

"Trouble is, there are many people who want to bring a messiah who looks just like them. For me, that kind of messianism is spiritual narcissism."

But some Christian leaders say they aren't playing God; they're just carrying out his will.

Ted Haggard, president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, says the commitment to fulfilling the Great Commission has naturally intensified along with the technological advances God provided to carry out his plans.

Over in Mississippi, Lott believes that he is doing God's work, and that is why he wants to raise a few head of red heifers for Jewish high priests. Citing Scripture, Lott and others say a pure red heifer must be sacrificed and burned and its ashes used in purification rituals to allow Jews to rebuild the temple.

But Lott's plans have been sidetracked.

Facing a maze of red tape and testing involved in shipping animals overseas — and rumors of threats from Arabs and Jews alike who say the cows would only bring more trouble to the Middle East — he has given up on plans to fly planeloads of cows to Israel. For now.

In the meantime, some local ranchers have expressed an interest in raising their own red heifers for Israel, and fears of hoof-and-mouth disease and blue tongue forced Lott to relocate his only verified red heifer — a female born in 1993 — to Nebraska.

Cloning is out of the question, he said, because the technique "is not approved by the rabbinical council of Israel." Artificial insemination has so far failed to produce another heifer certified by rabbis.

"Something deep in my heart says God wants me to be a blessing to Israel," Lott said in a telephone interview. "But it's complicated. We're just not ready to send any red heifers over there."

If not now, when?

"If there's a sovereign God with his hand in the affairs of men, it'll happen, and it'll be a pivotal event," he said. "That time is soon. Very soon."

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times