THE AMERICAN PRISON CAMP at Guantanamo Bay is on the southeast corner! of Cuba, a sliver of land the United States has occupied since 1903. Long ago, it was irrigated from lakes on the other side of the island, but Cuban President Fidel Castro cut off the water supply years ago. So today, Guantanamo produces its own water from a 30-year-old desalination plant. The water has a distinct yellow tint. All Americans drink bottled water imported by the planeload. Until recently, prisoners drank the yellow water.

The prison overlooks the sea, but the ocean cannot be seen by prisoners. Guard towers and stadium lights loom along the perimeter. On my last visit, we were escorted by young, solemn military guards whose nameplates on their shirts were taped over so that prisoners could not identify them.

Something fundamental about who we are as a nation is dribbling away, it seems, without alarm or even debate. We torture prisoners - it's out in the open, a done deal. We're fighting an unnecessary war that, well, yes, was launched on a lie, but too late now; we're in, we can't get out. And our neighbor's phone is being tapped.

But the worry that trumps all others is the state of this proud, imperfect democracy. We may be surrendering our power to change the national direction or demand that government be responsive to us. My fellow Americans, our voting machines don't work, at least not all the time. The mechanism of our democracy is in chaos, and almost everyone is going along with it.

Thanks to the allegedly well-intentioned, but disastrous, Help America Vote Act, the country is shifting, county by county, to electronic voting machines, which are not only glitch-prone on a spectacular scale (e.g., 100,000 phantom votes were recorded in Tarrant County, Texas, during the state's primary last week), but work, like God, in mysterious ways, which we're not supposed to question. The results they give us are all too often unverifiable.

It’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The only thing more depressing than watching the Democratic Party cower cluelessly in a corner while the country goes to hell in a hand-basket is reading the pathetic pleas of the liberal punditocracy exhorting their party to grab the reins and forge ahead.  I hate to be the one to break the news to you, folks, but your horse is dead.  Flogging it is unlikely to lead to its revival.

What will it take for you to understand this? 

How many golden opportunities can the Democrats blow before you get a clue?

If your party can’t make hay out of illegal wire-tapping and torture, the bloody mess in Iraq, the Abramoff scandal and Hurricane Katrina, then isn’t it time to consider an alternative? 

If you really care about your country and the future of the planet, consider your options.  But understand that trying to reform a stagnant, out-of-touch, corporatized culture from within isn’t one of them.

AUSTIN, Texas -- President Bush has once more undertaken to explain to us "Why We Fight," which is also the title of an excellent new documentary on Iraq. According to the president, "Our goal in Iraq is victory." I personally did not find that a helpful clarification.

According to the president, we are doomed to stay in Iraq until we "leave behind a democracy that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself." That's not exactly getting closer every day. But, the Prez sez, "A free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will make the American people more secure for generations to come."

So far, no good. After three years, tens of thousands of lives and $200 billion, we have achieved chaos. As Rep. John Murtha put it, "The only people who want us in Iraq are Iran and al-Qaida." Since the revisionist myth that we went to war to promote democracy keeps seeping into rational discussion, it is worth reminding ourselves that there never were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

As the country prepares for the third anniversary of the conflict in Iraq, scores of people poured into a town hall meeting in Charlottesville on Monday in protest of a war that polls show is losing the support of the American public.

“We must impeach [President] Bush, not because he is incompetent, but because he is a danger to the world,” said David Swanson, a Charlottesville resident who co-founded the After Downing Street anti-war coalition and serves on several anti-war committees.

Swanson was one of seven people who spoke to the packed audience at McLeod Auditorium in the University of Virginia School of Nursing as part of a panel sponsored by the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice.

Congressional candidate Al Weed, a veteran who staunchly opposes the war, was the first to address the crowd. “We have to understand that these soldiers are doing their job whether or not we approve of it,” Weed said. “It is we who failed in sending them there.”