Arizona Borderlands Democrats

Dear friend,

The US occupation in Iraq has left American soldiers unprepared and
vulnerable, the country degenerating into chaos, and the Iraqi people
embittered and hostile. Now, the President is asking Congress for a
staggering $87 billion blank check to fund more of the same. Until
he takes strong steps to correct this failure, I don't think Congress
should give him a cent.

President Bush needs to fire the team responsible, starting with
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and transfer authority
to the United Nations.

Please join me in telling Congress to hold on to our money until
President Bush changes his team and changes his course in Iraq.
You can send an email to your Member of Congress and sign the
MoveOn.org petition at:

http://www.moveon.org/firerumsfeld/

Thanks.

I have been frustrated with the lack of apparent organization and support for local groups from the AZ democratic organization. I reminded, reading Joy Harjo's site posted by Karen S., that these are "details" and what I care about it is changing the leadership of this country from reckless to thoughtful and caring. The following is from Slate's Today's Papers, a great daily summary of what's in the major papers. I want to share the "sham" reported...
Vista

The WSJ notes that Air Force intel reports, kept on the down-low by the White House, had cast serious doubt on President Bush's scary painting of Iraqi drones even while he was making the case last fall. As Bush cited drones in his kick-off-the-war-effort speech last October--"We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of usin g these UAVs for missions targeting the U.S.," said the president--the Air Force had concluded that the drone program, theoretically capable of delivering chemical or biological weapons, was kaput. "We were pretty sure this thing was dead," one named Air Force analyst told the Journal. As the WSJ notes, much of this was reported by AP last month--though, for some reason, there hasn't been much followup coverage.

While the media snoozed for nearly a year, it was pretty easy to see that president's allegations about the drones were sketchy. How easy? One lazy guy lounging in Brooklyn mentioned it just a few hours after the speech. (Speaking of which, Slate contributor David Greenberg has a helpful piece in the Columbia Journalism Review explaining why the press are often such scaredy-pants and shy away from calling out government officials on their lies.)

Native American (Muscogee) poet Joy Harjo has posted 2 new poems on her blog. Visit her site to read another form of political commentary.