Peace and War

By David Swanson

On June 22, 2005, Democratic Senators Kerry, Johnson, Corzine, Reed, Lautenberg, Boxer, Kennedy, Harkin, Bingaman, and Durbin sent the following letter to the Republican Chairman and Democratic Ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The letter stressed the urgent need for an investigation that over two years later has not been done. Only, now the Democrat is Chairman of the committee, and the other 10 Democrats have gone as silent as the dead.

June 22, 2005
The read more

By David Swanson

A constituent of Senator Jay Rockefeller, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent his office an article I wrote lamenting his failure to conduct over the past 10 months the investigation of White House war lies that he spent the previous three years criticizing the Republicans for not doing.

Rockefeller’s office replied thus: “The Committee is still working on a final report that examines public statements by government officials and whether they were supported read more

By David Swanson

On Wednesday, I spoke with Congresswomen Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey about getting out of Iraq. They are moving in the right direction, but are not yet serious about ending the occupation this year. They are resigned to putting up an effort in a misguided approach, and then hoping to actually end it in 2009. It has not yet penetrated anyone’s understanding that the best chance we have to end the occupation of Iraq between now and 2013 is during the next 14 months.

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By David Swanson

Jeremy Scahill, author of a terrific book on the Blackwater mercenary army, spoke in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Tuesday to a packed hall. He took questions at the end, and one man asked something to the effect of “Why does the government want to privatize the military? We taxpayers have been paying for the Army.” I wished Scahill had pointed out that it’s the tax payers who are now paying the private corporations, but the answer Scahill gave was critical. read more

By David Swanson

From the point of view of a corpse, Thursday’s die-in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol was overwhelming and diminishing. I was one of twenty some corpses lying dead in a river of blood in front of police and tourists and a color guard of Iraq veterans. I was one of a pile of corpses. You could have added or taken away a corpse or two, and nobody would have noticed. Thirty or forty other corpses were picked up inside the Capitol and taken to jail, and nobody noticed. read more

By David Swanson, www.BetrayUsReport.com

Are you here to communicate your own view, that of the White House, or both?

Please name all the people with whom you have had communications in preparing for this testimony.

What does the White House expect from your testimony?

Are you submitting a written report to this Congress? Did you ever plan to do so? What changed your mind?

Are you submitting a written report to the White House? Why not?

Are you aware that the President is required by law to submit read more

By David Swanson, http://www.BetrayUsReport.com

“Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning…”

If you read the rest of The Trial by Franz Kafka you’ll find that K. is not just arrested, but also executed, and that his execution comes as the perfectly natural conclusion to a series of infuriating steps, stages, and shiftings of goal posts.

In the end, General David Petraeus will appear in Congress read more