Protesters stood in front of the Dispatch for the third week in a row, demanding an apology regarding a cartoon of Bill Moss printed two days after he passed away.

Monday August 22 at noon, protesters stood outside of the Dispatch offices chanting "Dispatch. Disgrace" in anger to what they perceived as disrespect to the memory of local social crusader Bill Moss. Two days after he unexpectedly passed away, the Dispatch ran a cartoon caricature of him beating a shoe demanding to get into heaven. There has been an uproar in the Columbus over what was perceived to be a very disrespectful and unfair portrayal in death of a former school board member and community leader.

Barry Edney of the Ordinary People's Movement said "This was payback for Bill Moss's telling the truth. The Dispatch spent thousands trying to get him off of School Board and the decision to run the cartoon involved Mike Curtin, an editor and the cartoonist." When he was asked what he thought about the comment on the radio by Mike Curtin that Bill Moss would have laughed at the cartoon, he said "Yeah but it would be more of a chuckle at their ignorance."

The Bush administration may ratchet up the Iraq war.

That might seem unlikely, even farfetched. After all, the president is facing an upsurge of domestic opposition to the war. Under such circumstances, why would he escalate it?

A big ongoing factor is that George W. Bush and his top aides seem to believe in red-white-and-blue violence with a fervor akin to religiosity. For them, the Pentagon’s capacity to destroy is some kind of sacrament. And even if more troops aren’t readily available for duty in Iraq, huge supplies of aircraft and missiles are available to step up the killing from the air.

Back in the USA, while the growth of antiwar sentiment is apparent, much of the criticism -- especially what’s spotlighted in news media -- is based on distress that American casualties are continuing without any semblance of victory. In effect, many commentators see the problem as a grievous failure to kill enough of the bad guys in Iraq and sufficiently intimidate the rest.

(Bypassing the euphemisms preferred by many liberal pundits, George Will wrote in a Washington Post column on April 7, 2004, that “every

Tom Hayden is an anti-war activist who most recently was the lead author of “The Peoples Petition for Iraqi Peace.” He was a leader of the student, civil rights and anti-war movements in the Sixties, and the environmental and anti-nuclear movements in the Seventies. He served in the California Assembly from 1982-1992. He is currently a professor at Occidental College and social science adviser for Animo public schools: Venice, Inglewood, Lennox, South Central and Boyle Heights, California. He is the author of nine books, including “The Lost Gospel of the Earth,” “The Whole World Was Watching” and “Irish Hunger.” The New York Times cited his 1988 book, “Reunion,” as one of the best 200 of the year.

The day after Wednesday night’s nationwide vigils, the big headline at the top of the MoveOn.org home page said: “Support Cindy Sheehan.” But MoveOn does not support Cindy Sheehan’s call for swift withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Many groups were important to the success of the Aug. 17 vigils, but the online powerhouse MoveOn was the largest and most prominent. After a long stretch of virtual absence from Iraq war issues, the organization deserves credit for getting re-involved in recent months. But the disconnects between MoveOn and much of the grassroots antiwar movement are disturbing.

Part of the problem is MoveOn’s routine fuzziness about the war -- and the way that the group is inclined to water down the messages of antiwar activism, much of which is not connected to the organization.

Consider how the MoveOn website summarized the vigils: “Last night, tens of thousands of supporters gathered at 1,625 vigils to acknowledge the sacrifices made by Cindy Sheehan, her son Casey and the more than 1,800 brave American men and women who have given their lives in Iraq --