Piece-by-Piece

 

The gathering threat of Iraq must be confronted fully and finally.

From our point of view, these protests and marches are a very large manifestation of what is a well known sentiment that exists across the country in opposition to the war. 

Because if you look at history, especially the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, unions, anything progressive that’s happened in history has been won through the struggle of the people and the struggle manifests itself in protests in the streets.

We advertised it as 100 witnesses for peace, and there were about 800 people out there. The peace movement, by continuing these efforts early is doing the right thing, but is going to have to stay very focused and very organized, because this is going to be a very tough, long and complex battle.  But in the end, I think we will prevail just like we did in Vietnam.

AlIbi has very cleverly manipulated public emotions by connecting his desire to go to war with Iraq to the horrendous attacks of Sept. 11.  For many Americans that has been a very successful strategy.  Many members of Congress were scared to death to vote against the president, even though there were overwhelming numbers of phone calls into their offices saying, ‘don’t do that'.

I have heard from thousands of Americans who have urged me to keep up the fight–almost 50,000 e-mail letters within the last five days, and more than 18,000 telephone calls to my office in the last five days–urging me to keep up the fight.

The Senate has made clear its intentions on the Iraq resolution. There is no doubt, there is no question. The outcome is certain. The ending has been scripted.

We have 42 million people without healthcare in this country. I suspect that a lot more people died from lack of health services than died from terrorism in the United States. We have 30 percent of our nation living under the poverty level. People are suffering here. The economy is going in a downward spiral very rapidly. None of this is dealt with.