Thought you might be interested in these two items:

*  The ombudsman at National Public Radio has written a piece that’s partly a response to a recent column I wrote about media attacks on Rep. Jim McDermott for going to Baghdad and questioning the veracity of President Bush. The NPR ombudsman’s piece is at: www.npr.org/yourturn/ombudsman/2003/030730.html

*  I was in a live debate on CNN today that included a discussion of the California recall and Iraq-related events. The transcript is posted at: www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/08/nfcnn.04.html

Best wishes,
Norman Solomon

As the Bush administration's deception about Iraq's potential nuclear capacity has come to light, the administration and Congress have begun to quietly re-ignite the nuclear arms race.

  a. They are preparing to build new nuclear weapons and resume nuclear testing.
  b. The administration's official nuclear plan lowers the threshold for using nuclear weapons and calls for developing "more usable" nuclear weapons for "certain battlefield situations."
  c. The administration is threatening non-nuclear countries with nuclear weapons. These are some of the most dangerous developments in two decades. They could decimate international efforts to control, and ultimately abolish these weapons.

We are launching ads nationwide as part of our Campaign for a New Foreign Policy in order to challenge these hypocrisies.

With your help, we are going to run ads just like this one across the county:

You can make this ad campaign happen. Just go to: www.peace-action.org/forms/WMDads.php

Dribbling, Droning, Cloning, Consumers!
Get a grip.
Put Down your Nintendo joysticks and step out of your vehicles.
I and I have arrived at a cusp.

The human species
dependence addiction
to consumables
is altering the global biosphere upon which 2 million species depend.

Thousands already,
Committed to extinction,
The light of their stars,
Extinguish,
with blatant disregard.
I throw a flag on that foul.
This ain’t no game,
It might go by many names,
But it’s all suicide.

Foolish indeed
Our lust and our greed,
For disposability.
That desire is sold to us everyday in everyway,
Convenience is our culture.


Temptation of cheap transportation
Has HUMAN bounding across a sky that might look clear,
But I swear,
From here,
From here airplanes drop sound bombs on my ears every 15 minutes,
the numbing roar punctuates the low drone that is another rush hour.
My Peoples
Pounding out a combustible rhythm,
That is a constant reminder,
I live under the devil of petrotyranny.

CAMDEN, Maine -- Let us stop to observe a few mileposts on the downward path to the utter degradation of political discourse in this country.

            A recent newspaper advertising campaign by "independent" groups supporting President Bush shows a closed courtroom door with the sign, "Catholics Need Not Apply," hanging on it. The ad argues that William Pryor Jr., attorney general of Alabama and a right-wing anti-abortion nominee to the federal appeals court, is under attack for his "deeply held" Catholic beliefs.

            Actually, Pryor is under attack because he's a hopeless dipstick. That he also happens to be Catholic and anti-abortion has nothing to do with his unfitness for the federal bench. The only person I know who believes one's closely held religious and moral convictions should make one ineligible for the federal bench is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia argued last year that any judge who is opposed to the death penalty should resign, on account of it is the law.

            By that reasoning, any judge who is opposed to abortion out of deep moral conviction should also resign. Even though that would include

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the main architects for the war in Iraq, admitted for the first time that Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks, contradicting public statements made by senior White House and Pentagon officials whose attempt to link Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda was cited by the Bush administration as one of the main reasons for launching a preemptive strike in March against Iraq.  

In an interview with conservative radio personality Laura Ingraham, Wolfowitz was asked when he first came to believe that Iraq was behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks.  

"I'm not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it," Wolfowitz said in the interview, aired Friday, a transcript of which can be found at www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030801-depsecdef0526.html