by John Kerry

 
As President Bush commemorated Israel's 60th anniversary by attacking Barack Obama from overseas, here at home he found an all-too-frequent ally: John McCain.

When Bush accused "some" -- including Obama, Bush aides explained -- of "the false comfort of appeasement," McCain echoed this slander.

"What does he want to talk about with [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad?" McCain asked, fumbling to link Obama to the Iranian president's hateful words. Soon, a GOP talking point was born.

Lost in the rhetoric was the question America deserves to have answered: Why should we engage with Iran?

In short, not talking to Iran has failed. Miserably.

Bush engages in self-deception arguing that not engaging Iran has worked. In fact, Iran has grown stronger: continuing to master the nuclear fuel cycle; arming militias in Iraq and Lebanon; bolstering extremist anti-Israeli proxies. It has embraced Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and spends lavishly to rebuild Afghanistan, gaining influence across the region.

Instead of backing Bush's toxic rhetoric, McCain should have called George H.W. Bush's secretary of state, James Baker. After years of stonewalling, the administration grudgingly tested the Baker-Hamilton report's recommendation and opened talks with Iran -- albeit low-level dialogue restricted to the subject of Iraq. Is James Baker an appeaser, too?

While the president attacks political opponents from the Knesset, responsible members of his own administration meet face to face with Iranians. Yes, Ahmadinejad's words often are abhorrent, and often Iran has played a poisonous role in Middle East politics. But when our ambassador to Iraq meets with his Iranian counterpart, he isn't courting "the false comfort of appeasement" -- he is facing the reality that Iran exerts influence in Iraq.

That's why Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have called for engaging Iran. Appeasers all? Nonsense.

Direct negotiations may be the only means short of war that can persuade Iran to forgo its nuclear capability. Given that a nuclear Iran would menace Israel, drive oil prices up past today's record highs and possibly spark a regional arms race, shouldn't we be doing all we can to avoid that conflagration?

Opponents of dialogue often quip that talking isn't a strategy. Walking away isn't a strategy, either. McCain says that "there's only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option, that is, a nuclear-armed Iran." But for all his professed reluctance, when McCain disavows diplomacy, he is stacking the deck in favor of war.

What might we achieve by talking with Iran? Some say our engagement to date has not been productive -- but a less half-hearted and less conditional approach might well break the stalemate. We won't know until we try.

Dialogue helps us isolate Ahmadinejad rather than empowering him to isolate us. More important, even if we fail to reach an agreement, engaging Iran will spark three conversations likely to strengthen our position.

The first is between our leaders and Iran's. From nonproliferation to counterterrorism, frankly, Iran won't care for much of what we have to say -- but at the right moment, it is not unreasonable to think Tehran would cut a deal in exchange for economic incentives, energy assistance, diplomatic normalization or a non-invasion guarantee.

Second is the conversation America's president should be having with the Iranian people. We should seize the chance to tell some of the region's most pro-American people how their own president has isolated them, denying their great culture its place in the world and the region a constructive dialogue.

There's a reason the late Tom Lantos, Congress's only Holocaust survivor and a formidable diplomat, applied for a visa to enter Iran every year for the last decade of his life. What better way to puncture the petty lies of a demagogue than to force him to confront a man who has lived the very history he denies and trivializes?

Some have asserted that meeting with Iran's leaders would legitimize Ahmadinejad, who is neither Iran's supreme leader nor someone whom Obama specifically promised to meet. Curiously, many critics then hype Ahmadinejad as a threat of historic proportions, thereby granting the stature they seek to deny. Iranian elections in mid-2009 could yield a less objectionable president; engaging Iran makes that more likely.

The third conversation is with the world. By engaging Iran, we reclaim the moral high ground -- no small feat. If Iran refuses to budge, we have new leverage to expose it as a threat whose bad intentions cannot be explained away.

Those who say they take no option off the table should not put America in a straitjacket by denouncing diplomacy.

As Iran's centrifuges churn out enriched uranium, we're asking the wrong question. Instead of wondering why Barack Obama wants to talk with Iran, we should ask: "What are George Bush and John McCain waiting for?" 

This essay is also featured in the Washington Post.

by Rick Albertson

It's nothing short of scandalous just how much the Department of Defense has been able to get away with during George Bush's two terms as President. Without adequate oversight, the people running the Pentagon have been able to manipulate the system and break more rules than ever before.

There's always been a revolving-door problem in Washington, where government officials turn around and go to work for the same people they're supposed to be regulating. But under the Bush administration, the problem has grown exponentially. This is especially true in the defense industry these days, thanks to its ever-increasing reliance on outside contractors to do the heavy lifting. Defense officials quit their government jobs, go to work for defense contractors, then go back to work as hired guns for the government again.

There's always been a problem with inefficiency, waste, and downright corruption in military purchasing and logistics management. But here, again, the problem has grown exponentially while George Bush has been in office. Not only have hundreds of billions of dollars been wasted during the Iraq war, where despite all the outlay there's still a persistent shortage of the right equipment in the right places at the right time, but tens of billions of dollars in cash and assets have simply disappeared. Gone missing, off the books, vanished. That's an awful lot of money that the Pentagon just can't account for.

There's always been a problem with the government trying to spin the facts and massage the message, something the Bush administration has perfected all the way across the board. This especially applies to military matters in times of war, from the deliberately inflated body counts in Vietnam to the carefully-controlled reporting from Iraq. The Pentagon has always known how to use propaganda to advance its aims. But never before has it had so many people on its payroll applying propaganda directly to its own citizens at home.

But now, finally, the official oversight system in Washington is starting to do something about it. The Government Accountability Office is now taking on the Department of Defense in several key areas of concern:

-- They're addressing the DoD Pipeline problem, in which thousands of former DoD officials have resigned in the last few years and gone right to work for the defense contractors they were originally overseeing. (In fact, GAO reports show that 65% of those thousands of officials work for just the seven largest contractors in the system.)

-- They're pushing the DoD to retool its logistics and supply-chain tracking systems to reduce waste, fraud, and mismanagement. Those systems have been hopelessly out of date for years, and are not adequate to handle the size and complexity of our current military operations.

-- They're investigating the Boeing/Northrop dispute over the Air Force's recent decision to buy a new fleet of air refueling tankers, along with a rapidly growing number of other contested contracts.

-- They're digging into the Pentagon's recently-exposed propaganda pundits program. And now so is the DoD's own inspector general's office, thanks to angry House Democrats who pushed through an amendment to the appropriations bill demanding an investigation into the government's use of paid shills to push propaganda to its own citizens.

The GAO investigations and rulings can only accomplish so much, of course. As a non-partisan Congressional investigative arm, its focus is on contracting procedures and administrative issues. It can't enact legislative reforms or alter the system of checks and balances by which our government is supposed to operate. (Only Congress can do that.) But it certainly can do a lot just by enforcing the rules and making sure the system works. And it's good to see that the General Accountability Office is finally starting to hold the Department of Defense accountable again. 

by Rick Albertson

As we head into the Memorial Day weekend, a lot of attention is being focused on ways in which we can remember our brave service members who are no longer with us. Less attention is being focused on how we can help take care of the ones who are still with us.

The Bush Administration and its Roadblock Republican cohorts are doing their best to block passage of the new G.I. Bill, which would extend to our current crop of returning veterans the same educational benefits their forebears from the Greatest Generation had. They're still blocking VA and SSI and SSDI benefits for many of our returning veterans.

As Senator Kerry has often and aggressively stated, that is just all kinds of wrong and we can -- we must -- do better by those who have put their lives on the line for all of us here at home. We're doing the best we can to make that happen in Washington, but that's not enough sometimes. That selfish, shameful lack of support for our veterans on the part of those in the White House and their minions on the Hill has left it to private groups and charities to fill in the gaps and take up the slack instead.

There are many such groups today, some of them excellent, some of them not so much, some are somewhere in between. Some are apolitical, some are politicized, but that's not the point -- however and wherever they are doing what they can to support those who serve in uniform, then that is a laudable goal. And as Americans we all can appreciate and support their collective efforts on behalf of our serving troops and our returning veterans.

With that in mind, and without taking anything away from any of the many other groups doing everything they can to support our service members, here's a cross-post of a special request from Storm Williams, artist/activist and author of the online political comic strip Town Called Dobson, in the service of a very worthy cause indeed. (And, by the way, I can vouch for the fact that those who volunteer for BFS are as grassroots as it gets and are everything Storm says they are.)

---

As some of you may know, I founded Books For Soldiers, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that sends books, DVDs and other care package items to any US Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine -- for free of course.

Some of those books are college text books. Some soldiers want to work on their college education while deployed to the Middle East but some of them can’t get access to their education benefits while deployed. So BFS steps up and donates the textbooks for their classes.

We have been doing this for five years now and it is a national disgrace that charities are needed to supply college materials to our men and women in uniform. We have also picked up the slack in other areas like body armor, land mine resistance boots (thanks Wellco) and even tube socks.

Here is how it works:

Troops can go to BooksForSoldiers.com and fill out the form and one of our volunteers will see if they have the book on their shelf and they will then pack it up and ship it off to the soldier.

I got the idea back during the first Gulf war when friends of mine from college were sent off to Saudi Arabia. After the 4 day war, most were stuck in the desert for months on end with nothing to do. I rounded up all my sci-fi books that were collecting dust and then raided my civilian friend’s book collections and sent them to an Army hospital in Riyadh where my military pals were stationed. They then handed out the books to the soldiers on the base. I was receiving letters from strangers a year later, thanking me for the books. They were a good break from the boredom.

When the War On Terror started, I figured our troops would be home in a matter of weeks after Baghdad fell. I erroneously thought the Pentagon had an exit strategy and Books For Soldiers would be a nice six week project then on to something else. I knew I had to reach more people than I did during the first Gulf War -- I just couldn’t do it all myself. So I put together a self-serve website and BFS was born.

Due to the quagmire now known as Iraq, BFS celebrated our 5th year anniversary this past spring.

The economy has been rough this year for charities. Local food banks are reducing services, women’s shelters are closing -- those 1000 Points Of Light that Bush Sr. proudly yapped about are being hit hard by the crushing economy. Financial contributions to BFS this year disappeared almost completely. I think the reason is partially because of the economy and the other part is the lack of MSM coverage of the war in Iraq. I can track rises and falls of traffic on BFS directly to the amount of coverage the war gets. When the statue of Saddam fell, traffic started to tank. By the next day we lost 90% of out traffic and it took almost a year to build back up to the initial level.

Starting at the first of this year, BFS started a robust fundraising campaign here in North Carolina. We contacted small companies and some large companies you probably have heard of. To date, we have received a stack of letters that begin with “we deeply regret not being able to donate this year.” From our corporate donation campaign we have received a tad under thirty dollars from a philanthropy grants group in Winston Salem, NC. That was it, nothing else.

The BFS Board of Directors have discussed this problem for some time and have decided to have another go at fundraising. The Board set a goal of $70,000 to raise by November 1st of this year. If that amount is not raised, the site will close on December 31st, 2008.

If we cannot make the fundraising target, the Board will seek to sell the site to another qualified 501(c)(3) or close. We would also stop accepting new books requests from soldiers on December 1st, 2008.

Below are some ways of how you can help.

1) Office party fundraiser -- Coordinate a “Save BFS Day” at work and urge, beg, cajole your co-workers into coughing up something for BFS.

2) Have your company cough up some cash. We will send your company a formal donation request, just send us the company name, contact name and address and we will get it out right away. Send these requests to me personally: storm@booksforsoldiers.com.

3) Have your place of worship pass the plate (hat, kippah, whatever) for BFS. Consult with your church’s leader about holding a “Save BFS Offering” one day this month. Checks should be made out to “Books For Soldiers.” If they have any questions or concerns, please contact me directly to set up a call.

4) Visit our donation page and give what you can:

http://booksforsoldiers.com/donate.php

or by check:

Books For Soldiers
2008 Fund Drive
353 Jonestown Rd #123
Winston Salem, NC 27104


Thank you so much for supporting our troops,
Storm Bear Williams



And for a heart-warming, first-hand account of what becoming involved in the Books For Soldiers program really means to both the troops and to those who support them, check out this Daily Kos diary from someone who knows: The Story of a Flag

 

by Terri Buchman

by Terri Buchman

The New York Times has an excellent blog called Dot Earth that is dedicated to discussing issues related to the environment, energy policy, endangered species and habitats, and global warming. The blog, written by Andrew C. Revkin, reported on the decision yesterday by the Interior Department, under Secretary Dick Kempthorne, to place the polar bears on this list of threatened species:

Three years after environmental groups sued to force the Interior Department to consider protecting polar bears under the Endangered Species Act, the Bush administration today listed the species as threatened — on track to be endangered by midcentury because of shrinking summer sea ice in a warming Arctic.

But the administration shaped its decision in a way that does not force restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, even though scientists have said the building greenhouse effect is the main influence driving up global temperatures. Administration officials added that existing protections of the bear, under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, were stringent and sufficient. And they also made clear that oil and gas exploration and extraction showed no evidence of harming the bears and would not be hindered by the decision.

Senator Kerry has been a long-time advocate in the Senate on this issue . He advocated for adding the polar bears to the list of threatened species, wrote a letter that was signed by ten other US Senators to delay a 30 million-acre oil and gas lease sale in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, and wrote to Secretary Kempthorne to urge action to add the polar bears to the list of threatened species before the deadline for doing so expired.

Senator Kerry added a comment to the Dot Earth blog yesterday commenting on the Interior Department decision:

Today’s announcement was one big step towards confronting the reality of what climate change is doing to some of the world’s most endangered creatures living in some of our most fragile ecosystems. The polar bear has become the mascot of all we could lose to climate change and it is critical that we fight to save this species even as we wage a larger battle against global warming. Between one-sixth and one-fifth of the world’s polar bears live on the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Last summer, government scientists predicted that, as a result of climate change, polar bears may disappear from the U.S. and its waters entirely by 2050 – and that estimate doesn’t even take into account potential effects from new oil and gas activities.

So the question is – where do we go next? The clock is ticking. The next step is to secure the long-term survival of the species by ensuring that the polar bear habitat in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas is protected from the threat of oil and gas drilling. Here’s where the rubber hits the road: even while the Interior Department was slowly taking steps to give these bears ESA protection, the Bush Administration opened almost 30 million acres of polar bear habitat to oil and gas exploration, a move that by their own admission threaten polar bears. Again, don’t take my word for it: MMS itself acknowledged in its Final Environmental Impact Statement on Lease Sale 193 that oil and gas development will harass and ultimately even kill polar bears. Already, massive amounts of seismic activity are being planned for this summer in both the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

Yes, today was a victory – but it’s up to all of us and some good old fashioned activism to make sure it’s not a pyrrhic one. I will fight hard to pass legislation I introduced early earlier this year in the Senate, which would halt all exploration activity in the Beaufort and Chukcki Seas at least until we better understand the full impact of drilling on the polar bear and other imperiled species.

- Posted by Senator John Kerry

by Terri Buchman

American families are struggling in the Bush economy. Many American workers are finding it harder and harder to get the family budget to stretch far enough to cover monthly costs in housing, student loans, food and energy prices. Energy costs, especially the price of a tank of gasoline, is difficult for working families to budget around. The soaring price of gas is squeezing up the price of nearly everything else.

The Republicans are trotting out their old standby that somehow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will magically ease the energy problems America is facing. An amendment to open ANWR to drilling is once again on the floor of the US Senate. Recently USA Today wrote about the claims by the Bush Administrators that if ANWR had been opened to drilling in 2002 that the price of oil would somehow be far less today.

“Even if oil was flowing, it would be too small amount to reduce the price” of crude or gasoline, said Daniel Weiss, energy expert at the Center for American Progress, a think tank in Washington.

“President Bush’s claim ignores the primary causes behind record high oil prices: a cheap dollar, high demand from China and India, and speculators driving the price up. Drilling and sullying the Arctic would not address any of these causes of high oil prices,” said Weiss.

Pretending that ANWR is some sort of magical solution to high gas prices is misleading at best. America needs a consistent and practical energy policy that invests in real and sustainable solutions. Sen. Kerry wrote about the ANWR debate in 2005 and his answer is as relevant to today’s debate as it was when ANWR came up for a vote then.

This fight is as critical as it is symbolic. Roads, pipelines, and other developments would irreversibly damage this national treasure. President Bush and pro-drilling forces cite special-interest junk science to argue that they can limit the damage by drilling in only 2,000 acres. But oil is scattered throughout the refuge, so drilling in 2,000 acres could mean 40 separate 50-acre footprints. Even they know the line they’re selling is bunk.

We can counter this by telling the truth about our energy future. We import 2.5 million barrels of oil from the politically toxic Middle East every day, and our consumption of foreign oil has risen to 55 percent. I don’t want fragile and often unfriendly regimes to hold America’s energy security in their hands, but we need to remind a country weary of conflict in the Middle East that drilling in the Arctic won’t make a dent in our oil dependence. The U.S. Geological Survey has concluded that there are only 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil in ANWR. That amounts to just a six-month supply for the U.S. Irreversibly damaging a truly wild place is an unacceptable price to pay for such a small payoff.

We can’t drill our way to energy independence. We have to invent our way there, by harnessing the entrepreneurial spirit that made our country great. We can conserve energy and make our cars run farther on a gallon of gas. We can increase our investment in clean-energy products and create hundreds of thousands of jobs along the way. What we can’t do is buy into the myth that America’s energy future lies under the snow of ANWR.

UPDATE: The US Senate voted NOT to pass an amendment put up by Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to allow drilling in ANWR. The May 13, 2008 vote against the amendment was 42-56.

by Rick Albertson

Teresa Heinz Kerry posted a special Mother's Day message this morning as a Daily Kos diary that included this YouTube video. The DKos diary comments thread that follows is rich and evocative, and she encourages all of us to participate and contribute our ideas, as noted in this transcript of her video message there:


Hello, I am Teresa Heinz, I’m married to John Kerry, and I want to wish you a very happy Mothers Day.

I want to share with you a concern and a hope which I share with my husband John Kerry, which is the economic wellbeing of women and their retirement. It’s not a sexy issue, when you think of it, but it is a very basic issue.

Now, there are a lot of statistics about women in quote the Golden Years. Having two-thirds of the face of poverty, be a poverty of women in the Golden Years. They’re not so Golden!

Women, because they are caregivers, have babies, take care of sick parents, etc., have a cumulative loss of about $650,000 in their lifetimes. Young people have an awful lot of expenses. And no one ever talks to them or emphasizes the value of savings.

Now we’re focusing a lot also on young women, and young men for that matter, anybody, this works for anybody, to make them understand the value of savings, and that if you save $10 a month, or $20 a month, or whatever it is you can save, it really matters. Compound interest does work.

And savings aren’t there, so you have all these people living just on Social Security, it’s not enough, $11,000, $12,000, that’s crazy. And then you hear about people eating catfood.

So the campaign really showed me that what we were dealing with was life in America as it is today for the reasons that it is. And so what you and I have to do, is to figure out, send me at teresa@heinzoffice.org., send me any ideas or any questions that you have that you think might be valuable to share with others, to put in our e-book.

And I’d love to invite you to look at our e-book at womensretirement.org.

I invite you to think of your contribution to Mothers Day as truly thoughtful, beyond the pretty, which unfortunately like everything else, gets very commercialized. But think about this, share maybe the little booklet or the e-book with your mother or with your sisters, with your co-workers, with your women workers, with your daughters.

Being thoughtful.

Preparing.

I mean that’s what women do best so I think we have to help them do that well.

Now we have Mothers Day coming up on Sunday. I might see my husband for part of the day because he’s got to campaign, he’s up for re-election in Massachusetts. What is it that I would like to be able to have and to have other women have which is, calmness, a feeling of security, that they’re not going to have to eat catfood, that they’re going to be able to take preventative medicine for heart disease.

Just normal life quality, humanity, that’s all we want.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this chat, and I’ll be back to talk about other issues that affect women primarily.

Happy Mothers Day.  

One of my oldest friends in the progressive movement always had a saying to describe how he took stock of people: he said it wasn't whether you were liberal or conservative, it's whether you were a "stand-up person." He meant that it mattered what you did when the chips were down, the positions you took not when it was easy, but when it was really hard.

Now, a true stand-up guy -- my colleague Senator Frank Lautenberg -- is facing a primary challenge for re-election. Let me tell you -- I'll do everything in my power to help re-elect Frank Lautenberg because he's a true progressive who has been with us when the chips were down.

Frank Lautenberg always shows up for the fight and he speaks his mind. In 2004, when a lot of people were having a hard time separating fact from fiction about the military service of politicians, Frank stood on the floor of the Senate and said, "We know who the chicken hawks are. They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others. When it was their turn to serve where were they? AWOL, that's where they were."

Well, when it's been Frank's turn to show up and fight, he's always been there -- and I mean he's been there in difficult times. Back in June of 2006, it seemed like no one wanted to come within a mile of legislation Russ Feingold and I introduced to set a deadline to bring our combat troops home from Iraq. Only eleven brave Democrats stood with us and voted for an end to the Bush Iraq policy.

Frank Lautenberg was one of them.

It's not the only time. When I led that filibuster against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Frank signed on -- and spoke out on the Senate floor.

When Ted Kennedy and I filibustered Judge Alito's nomination for the Supreme Court, Frank didn't take a pass just because Alito was from New Jersey -- he stood up to that pressure to stick with a home state nominee -- and he did what was right -- filibustering Alito.

Frank Lautenberg is, in short, one of the very best progressive Senators we have. And he needs our help. Frank is locked in a primary battle and he's fighting his heart out -- fighting the only way he knows how.

Born in Paterson, NJ to parents who immigrated through Ellis Island, Frank has had to fight every step of the way -- working nights and weekends in high school to help his family make ends meet, serving our country in World War II, building a business, and coming to the Senate to be a voice for people, not the big powerful interests that already have plenty of "representation."

The Senate needs progressive warriors like Frank Lautenberg. People who show up when it counts and fight 'til the bell rings.

So please do what you can to keep him in the Senate:

http://www.actblue.com/page/jkforlautenberg

If we work hard, we can build a real working progressive majority in the Senate for 2009. But we need to keep our great progressive Senators in there in order to bring the real change we need to our country.

Thanks,
John Kerry

One of my oldest friends in the progressive movement always had a saying to describe how he took stock of people: he said it wasn't whether you were liberal or conservative, it's whether you were a "stand-up person." He meant that it mattered what you did when the chips were down, the positions you took not when it was easy, but when it was really hard.

Now, a true stand-up guy -- my colleague Senator Frank Lautenberg -- is facing a primary challenge for re-election. Let me tell you -- I'll do everything in my power to help re-elect Frank Lautenberg because he's a true progressive who has been with us when the chips were down.

Frank Lautenberg always shows up for the fight and he speaks his mind. In 2004, when a lot of people were having a hard time separating fact from fiction about the military service of politicians, Frank stood on the floor of the Senate and said, "We know who the chicken hawks are. They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others. When it was their turn to serve where were they? AWOL, that's where they were."

Well, when it's been Frank's turn to show up and fight, he's always been there -- and I mean he's been there in difficult times. Back in June of 2006, it seemed like no one wanted to come within a mile of legislation Russ Feingold and I introduced to set a deadline to bring our combat troops home from Iraq. Only eleven brave Democrats stood with us and voted for an end to the Bush Iraq policy.

Frank Lautenberg was one of them.

It's not the only time. When I led that filibuster against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Frank signed on -- and spoke out on the Senate floor.

When Ted Kennedy and I filibustered Judge Alito's nomination for the Supreme Court, Frank didn't take a pass just because Alito was from New Jersey -- he stood up to that pressure to stick with a home state nominee -- and he did what was right -- filibustering Alito.

Frank Lautenberg is, in short, one of the very best progressive Senators we have. And he needs our help. Frank is locked in a primary battle and he's fighting his heart out -- fighting the only way he knows how.

Born in Paterson, NJ to parents who immigrated through Ellis Island, Frank has had to fight every step of the way -- working nights and weekends in high school to help his family make ends meet, serving our country in World War II, building a business, and coming to the Senate to be a voice for people, not the big powerful interests that already have plenty of "representation."

The Senate needs progressive warriors like Frank Lautenberg. People who show up when it counts and fight 'til the bell rings.

So please do what you can to keep him in the Senate:

http://www.actblue.com/page/jkforlautenberg

If we work hard, we can build a real working progressive majority in the Senate for 2009. But we need to keep our great progressive Senators in there in order to bring the real change we need to our country.

Thanks,
John Kerry

Over a week ago, the New York Times published a major investigative article detailing a secret Pentagon program the Times said was designed to recruit and cultivate the "military analysts" you see on the major news networks in an attempt to create coverage favorable to the Bush Administration’s policy in Iraq.

The Times described an extensive program, with dozens of television analysts involved, some of whom had extensive business ties to the Defense Department -- in fact they called it "an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse -- an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks."

Since that story ran, there's been a virtual news blackout, and we haven't gotten any closer to finding out the real story.

You can change that. I sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office requesting an investigation, and I'd like you to show your support by virtually “co-signing” the letter with me. Only with an overwhelming display of grassroots energy can we put this story in the spotlight and press for answers.

The Pentagon quickly issued a statement that they’ve ended the program, but I still believe that we need to have a complete accounting of exactly what was happening, who was involved, and what it accomplished. I don’t think that’s too much to ask -- do you?

If you believe, as I do, that we as citizens have a right to know the real story, please co-sign the letter demanding answers:

http://www.johnkerry.com/pentagonpundits

We know the life-or-death consequences of policy decisions in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and we know that these policies should be debated and defended without secret programs designed to tailor the news for the Administration's goals. This is too important to brush aside.

We must demand answers.


Thank you,
John Kerry


P.S. -- If you'd like to read the original New York Times article for more information on the Pentagon pundits program, click here.