Democracy for New Mexico

I've Donated, Have You? $275,000 and Counting

From CBS News:

In the past 24 hours, MoveOn, perhaps the most powerful liberal advocacy group in the country, has raised $275,000 for the United Services Organizations (USO) for calling cards for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The USO may be most associated with Bob Hope-type visits to troops overseas, but the non-partisan organization is clearly comfortable partnering with MoveOn if the cause helps soldiers stationed overseas during the holidays.

MoveOn.org emailed its 3.3 million members this week asking them to donate $15 for the USO's Operation Phone Home program, and the membership rapidly responded with the donations. MoveOn conducted a similar operation a few years ago around Christmas time when its members donated 16 million frequent flier miles to the troops.

Eli Pariser, the executive director of MoveOn.org's Civic Action program, says the group sees no inconsistency between its anti-war political message and its Christmas generosity for the troops.

"A lot of our members are veterans or military families, so the war affects them personally," Pariser said in a phone interview with Politico. "We wanted to do something that was very direct in terms of helping those in harms way. It's very clear for our members that you can support the troops and be against the war."

Give your $15 (or more) here for MoveOn's USO phone card project.

Dems Capitulate: Bowing, Scraping, Caving

I was going to write a post about the DC Democrats surrendering to Bush AGAIN, but why bother when Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald has already expressed what I want to say:

Democrats show Beltway "strength," avoid being depicted as weak (updated below)

In the world of the Beltway pundit, Bush Dog Representative, and Democratic strategist, this is how Democrats prove how "strong" and tough they are and avoid being demonized as "weak" and "soft"; this is all just from today:

From The Hill:

From The Washington Post:

From CNN:

From The Hill:

And this passage from the CNN article -- in which Democrats try to explain that they didn't completely capitulate in every single way possible -- is one of the most pity-inducing of the year, and there is a very healthy competition for that distinction:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Democratic lawmakers and staffers privately say they're closing in on a broad budget deal that would give President Bush as much as $70 billion in new war funding. The deal would lack a key provision Democrats had attached to previous funding bills calling for most U.S. troops to come home from Iraq by the end of 2008, which would be a significant legislative victory for Bush.

Still, Democrats are trying to sell $70 billion in new war funding as a partial victory for them. They point out that while the final numbers are still in flux during intense private negotiations, Bush is likely to get far less money than he originally requested.

"What is for sure is he will not get all $200 billion," said one senior Democratic lawmaker. "Whatever number it is, it is much less than what the president asked for. For the first time in this war, he has received less than his request."

But senior administration officials privately say they expect to be able to get at least of the rest of the president's $200 billion request passed through Congress next year.

For Congressional Democrats, the "victory" they are touting is that they are only giving Bush $70 billion for the war now, and they won't give him the other $130 billion he is demanding until they return in a few weeks. They really showed him.

Read the rest of Greenwald's post.

I'd love to require all the cowardly Dems taking this path to irrelevance to walk precincts and talk to potential Dem voters from now until at least the New Year. It would be fascinating, to say the least, to witness how they'd go about convincing ordinary people that they're doing anything at all to express the will of the people and stand up to Bush's eternal war machine. Maybe they'd wake up and get the big picture if they had to face the insults and door slamming that occurs so often these days when activists try to make a case for the Dem cause and candidates. They'd find out fast, as so many of us have, that there's next to nothing to "sell" people when we're trying to get folks excited about the Party.

Bush and his cronies played this one out perfectly. A while back Bush came right out and said that he intended to "fix" things so that the next President, regardless of who they were, would be forced to deal with Iraq on his terms, not theirs. Clearly the aim has been to saddle the next administration and the American people with a situation in Iraq that would make a timely exit next to impossible. And if and when an exit ever comes, you can guess who'll be blamed for the "failure."

Of course this tactic has the added benefit of further bankrupting government, thus making it next to impossible to do anything to effectively address our problems related to domestic spending of any kind. This, in turn, pretty much guarantees that government at every level will increasingly turn to "privatization" to perform what governments can no longer afford to do on their own. This inevitably leads to higher, not lower, costs to the taxpayers, but it does provide opportunities for the quick, if illusory, fixes of which politicos are so fond.

Meanwhile the DC Dems keep bragging about their "new direction" and touting their extraordinary achievements since we helped them take back the Congress. Can you remember what they are? Well, they did manage to raise the minimum wage to a level it should have been a decade or so ago. They keep passing SCHIP legislation and resubmitting it to Bush for his veto, something they're unaccountably afraid to do with other bills like those on Pentagon and war funding, energy, FISA and torture. They keep investigating scandals and issuing subpoenas, but nothing tangible ever seems to result from these efforts. I guess they think the publicity is enough.

I'm very tired of all the sound and fury signifying nothing, aren't you? All form, no substance. All rhetoric, no action. All bluster, no follow through. Most of all, no courage of their convictions -- if they have any left after so many years of putting their reelection and fundraising goals before the needs of the nation.

Veteran's Day War Stories

Editor's Note: This is a rather long story about my memories of veterans in my family that was originally posted here on Veteran's Day 2005 and has been updated. If you have any memories you'd like to share on this Veteran's Day, post them in the comments section below.

As I was having my coffee this Veteran's Day morning, memories of family members who served in the military came bubbling up. Many of the men in my family served in the U.S Navy.

My grandfather, Max, was a Navy diver during World War I. He wore one of those unwieldy metal helmets and a bulky dive suit of the era, and ended up with a severe case of the bends from arising from the depths too quickly. According to doctors, this shortened his life considerably, and he died at 45 from liver and kidney problems. I never knew him, but always heard that he never spoke much about his service. By all accounts he returned from the war a changed man, prone to a world-weary wildness during the Roaring Twenties and beyond in a speakeasy-filled Chicago that slid into the brutal throes of the Great Depression.

My Uncle Bob served as a radar man on a Navy destroyer escort at the tail end of the Korean War. Although he saw some heated shelling and combat on the seas, most of his service consisted of traveling around the globe on post-war good will tours to foreign ports. He would show up back in the old immigrant neighborhood in Chicago in uniform, on leave, when I was very young. I thought he was the most handsome man in the world in his Navy whites. He never spoke much about the war itself, but was full of yarns about exotic ports of call, characters he had met around the world and rowdy Navy traditions that accompanied nautical events like crossing the equator for the first time. When the winter windows would frost up, he would show off his radar man skill of writing backwards, like radar techs used to do on glass to communicate with those on the other side. He made us giggle and imagine, to lust for travel, for history, for adventure.

My Uncle Vito was a Navy cook during WW II, which instilled in him a lifelong love of cooking. The only problem was he always prepared massive quantities, in huge pots, as he had in the service. This irked my Aunt Esther no end. After all, she was the one left to handle the mess cleanup detail. Uncle Vito's specialities included huge pots of Italian delicacies like snails and clams and dandelion greens and spaghetti sauce made with pigs' feet or chicken necks. I never heard any battle stories out of him. He, too, died young. Of a heart attack, while tending his garden, with his tiny grandson toddling nearby. Just like Brando's Godfather in the movie.

My uncle Artie served in the WW II Army infantry in Italy. He had some fingers blown off when he grabbed a live grenade and tossed it away from himself and his fellow soldiers, no doubt saving lives. He had little feeling in that hand and was always suffering unexpected cuts and burns on it during his factory work. Looking at the mashed results of the grenade always scared me. He'd just laugh and say, "oh, it's nothing. I'm alive!"

Iwo Jima beachhead

I know the most about the military service of my late father, Bill, who joined the Navy during World War II and was quickly attached to the Marines as a medical corpsman. He was 21 years old. After a short course of rushed medical training, he eventually ended up in the truly horrific beach landing and battle for Iwo Jima in the Pacific. He, too, was very reticent to talk about his service, but over the years I managed to piece together some facts about it. Most of his fellow corpsmen didn't make it out alive. The Japanese forces had a strategy of wounding Marines in order to draw out the medics to come to their rescue. Then they'd proceed to kill the medics.

At Thanksgiving, the smell of the turkey being prepared somehow reminded my dad of the smell of flesh during the Marine's long "mop-up" of the labyrinth of caves and underground tunnels on Iwo, using flame throwers and explosives to destroy the Japanese military survivors who wouldn't surrender. He always got slightly sick with memories for a time on this day and could never stay in the kitchen for long.

On rare occasions my dad would allow us to examine some of the souvenirs he brought home from the war. Wrinkled Japanese paper money and darkened coins, an ornate Japanese comb, his medals, photos from bootcamp and of servicemen playing volleyball on Hawaiian beaches and standing outside their tents on Okinawa, a Marine yearbook, a small Rising Sun flag, a thick piece of window glass from a downed plane made into a heart with a piece of metal down the center that created a rainbow effect when held up to the light. As a child these things always smelled ancient to me, with a strong undertone of ruin and mystery. My father always handled them with sad reverence rather than joy or pride. Melancholy would seem to overwhelm him, and he'd quickly put away the memorabilia and become silent.

When I was older, I'd sometimes question him about his war experiences, and once in a great while he'd speak about them quietly. About the feelings of extreme helplessness when he had been unable to do much when Marines he knew were dying in incredible pain in his arms. Of the intestines erupting from live bodies and missing, bleeding limbs and atrocious head injuries and other serious wounds he had to try and patch with only a yeoman's level of medical experience and knowledge. Of the strange fungi that latched onto Marines on Iwo, eating their flesh during the 36-day battle on hot, ashy, lava soil, with no chance to wash or change your clothes or socks. Sometimes Marines endured holes caused by fungus that went right through their torsos. My dad had a permanent case of fungus on his feet from the battle. I can still see him soaking his feet every night in a basin of hot water and epsom salts.

The only time I heard any happy war stories from him was when we once paid a visit to one of his fellow corpsmen from Iwo Jima who lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Corpsman Wright was more than 6 feet tall and kept his Jack Daniels in the Frigerator and his bad memories at bay. When the adults had a few whiskey highballs on our first night there, funny stories about youthful escapades in the Marines tumbled out one after another. We were fascinated with tales of my dad being rowdy and risque, a sharp contrast to the straightlaced and responsible father we knew, loved and sometimes even feared. I remember clearly how my father blushed during the retellings.

As the night wore on, however, both my father and his Marine buddy became more and more morose and depressed. After that first night, no more war stories were shared. It became so powerfully clear to me, as a 14-year old, how many intense and conflicting emotions were connected to their war experiences. I'm sure many veterans are in the throes of similar emotional knots on any given Veteran's Day, including this one. As are their families and loved ones.

This conflict about what war is, what it means and what it does to its participants came to a head for many during the Viet Nam War. I remember so many angry and volatile discussions between my brother and I and my dad about Viet Nam and what true patriotism demanded from Americans. So much division in the nation and in its families. Yet, as the war progressed, my father changed his mind. I thought it showed alot of courage. He and my mom ended up traveling to Washington to participate in one of the huge antiwar marches in the late 60s. My father carried one of his medals when he marched. And a large American flag.

Luckily, my brother managed to escape the ravishes of Nam -- he ended up with a high draft number in the national lottery. Many of his friends, however, returned home with broken spirits or broken bodies or both. Several died in the jungle. One came home with Viet Cong ears preserved in a jar and eventually collapsed into an enduring fugue of mental illness.

My dad's friend, Corpsman Wright, ended up dying young at 56 from liver damage from chronic alcoholism. My dad died at 55 from stomach cancer. I can't help but think that their painful and profound war experiences were a primary cause of their early deaths, and of their often uncomfortable emotional lives. As my father grew closer to death, he insisted that only one person he knew would be right for the task of conducting a service when he passed. He was one of his surviving friends from the medical corps -- a man who was unable or unwilling to deal with the rough and tumble of the business world after Iwo, and who had become a missionary of sorts after the war.

The reverend and his wife served in various missions built to minister to street people, the poor, alcoholics and vets down on their luck. My father wasn't a religious man, though his spiritual and humanist tendencies were strong. He wanted his old comrade to conduct the memorial service, not because of the minister's religious standing, but because -- even after all the intervening years -- he felt closest to those who had intimately shared his service and suffering during the war.

The reverend did conduct the memorial service, and gave quite an eloquent speech about what the medics had witnessed and the confusing emotional aftermath that unfolded afterwards. It was held in one of those well-used missions filled with stories of woe and redemption. My brother and his musician friends performed George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord' after the speech. My dad's old friends sang the Marine Hymn. Like the convoluted feelings of vets and their families, like the coexisting pain and pride of service caused by war, like the continuing conflicting views about using force or not, the memorial service was a juxtaposition of opposing elements. A jumble of contrasting traditions. A metaphor for another Veteran's Day mired in another grinding war and rememberances of the wounds gone unhealed from the ones that came before. War is over if you want it. Peace.

Iraq Military Casulaties by Time Period

Period	US	UK	Other*	Total	Avg	Days
6	774	41	9	824	2.9	284
5	933	32	20	985	2.39	412
4	715	13	18	746	2.35	318
3	580	25	27	632	2.93	216
2	718	27	59	804	1.9	424
1	140	33		173	4.02	43
Total	3860	171	133	4164	2.45	1697

Iraq War Casualties, New Mexico: 31

		Albuquerque	Ramos, Christopher	Private 1st Cl.	05-Apr-2004
		Albuquerque	Adlesperger, Christopher	Private 1st Cl.	09-Dec-2004
		Albuquerque	Christensen, Jeremy E.	Specialist	27-Nov-2004
		Albuquerque	Merville, Christopher A.	Specialist	12-Oct-2004
		Albuquerque	Vizcaino, Eric	Specialist	21-Nov-2006
		Albuquerque	Spohn III,, Clifford A.	Specialist	09-Apr-2007
		Albuquerque	Zembiec, Douglas	Major	10-May-2007
		Albuquerque	Akin, James C.	Sergeant	03-Jun-2007
		Clovis	Segura Jr., Leroy	Sergeant	04-Aug-2006
		Farmington	Todacheene, Lee Duane	Sergeant	06-Apr-2004
		Farmington	Westbrook, Marshall A.	Sergeant	01-Oct-2005
		Fruitland	Yazzie, Clifton J.	Sergeant	20-Jan-2006
		Hondo	Chavez, Steven M.	Lance Corporal	14-Mar-2007
		La Mesa	Pirtle, James H.	Specialist	03-Oct-2003
		Las Cruces	Rodriguez, Joseph E.	Staff Sergeant	28-Jan-2005
		Las Cruces	Reyes, Mario A.	Private 1st Cl.	07-Nov-2005
		Las Cruces	Zamora, Jesse M.	Corporal	03-Feb-2006
		Las Cruces	Apuan, Matthew S.	Sergeant	18-Feb-2007
		Las Vegas	Harris, Shane P.	Lance Corporal	03-Sep-2006
		Los Lunas	Dahl, Joel A.	Sergeant	23-Jun-2007
		Not reported	Gutierrez, Marshall A.	Lieutenant Col.	04-Sep-2006
		Roswell	Salas Jr., Ricky	Private 1st Cl.	07-Mar-2006
		Roswell	Gray, Tommy L.	Sergeant	03-Aug-2004
		Roswell	Rocha, Moses Daniel	Sergeant	05-Aug-2004
		Sandia Park	Lewis, Joel W.	Sergeant	06-May-2007
		Santa Ana Pueblo	Sanchez, Emilian D.	Lance Corporal	21-Jan-2007
		Santa Fe	Grant, Jonathan Walter	Lance Corporal	11-May-2005
		Shiprock	Cambridge, Lyle J.	Corporal	05-Jul-2005
		Springer	Hildebrandt, Chad R.	Lance Corporal	17-Oct-2005
		Sunland Park	Zamora, Jose	Corporal	06-Aug-2006
		Veguita	Byrd III, Henry G.	Private 1st Cl.	24-Jun-2007

Data above from Iraq Coalition CasualtiesIraq Coalition Casualty Count.

Support Our Troops and Veterans:

• Iraq Veterans Against the War
• Veterans for Peace
• Military Families Speak Out
• Gold Star Families for Peace
• Any Soldier Care Packages
• Armed Forces Relief Trust
• Books for Soldiers
• Fisher House: Helping Military Families
• Help Our Troops Call Home
• Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
• Disabled American Veterans
• Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society
• Army Emergency Relief
• National Coalition for Homeless Veterans
• New Mexico VA Volunteer Opportunities
• New Mexico VA Patient Needs List
• New Mexico Veterans Integration Center

Just Another Chill: John Dean on Mukasey

From . Dean's piece ends with this:

Since Judge Mukasey’s situation is not unlike that facing Elliot Richardson when he was appointed Attorney General during Watergate, why should not the Senate Judiciary Committee similarly make it a quid pro quo for his confirmation that he appoint a special prosecutor to investigate war crimes? Richardson was only confirmed when he agreed to appoint a special prosecutor, which, of course, he did. And when Nixon fired that prosecutor, Archibald Cox, it lead to his impeachment.

Before the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee completely cave-in to Bush, at minimum they should demand that Judge Mukasey appoint a special prosecutor to investigate if war crimes have been committed. If Mukasey refuses he should be rejected. This, indeed, should be a pre-condition to anyone filling the post of Attorney General under Bush.

If the Democrats in the Senate refuse to demand any such requirement, it will be act that should send chills down the spine of every thinking American.

Ortiz y Pino Guest Blog on Blackwater: The Visigoths

This is a guest blog by NM State Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino (right), a Democrat who represents Senate District 12 in Albuquerque. This piece was originally published in Santa Fe Sun News:

When the full accounting of the worst excesses of the Bush (Junior version) administration is at last tallied by historians, I will not be surprised to find heading the pathetic inventory the inglorious adventures of that uniquely American institution, the Blackwater Company. In a way that is exquisitely appropriate, Blackwater may well become recognized as the perfect example of the Bush-Cheney administration in microcosm, W's ideal and exemplary "MINI-ME"; a band of clumsy mercenaries wreaking havoc everywhere they tread (even while making quite a bundle of money in the process).

They are our Visigoths, the armored warriors who've swept in mindlessly and knocked down the last props holding up the American Empire, the very Empire our hapless President was apparently attempting to deputize them to protect. If it were a soccer match, Blackwater would have just managed to score an "own goal"... one for the other side. Recognize, too, that Blackwater is not an aberration, an unfortunate mistake, one noteworthy precisely because it is so different from all else that is going on. Oh no! These guys are no glitch; they are actually the vision! They are what Cheney and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and the rest of that "New American Generation" crew had in mind when they talked about market forces and the "opportunity for regime change" and when they driveled-on about spreading American entrepreneurial capitalism across the globe. They saw the future and the future was ... Blackwater: another in the endless stream of governmental functions to be privatized; the endless chain of thefts from the public treasury for private gain; you know, the hallmark of all that Bush stands for! It's been so simple, really, to reverse the pumps.

It used to be Washington's task to bring money into the Government. No more. By the time they finally stagger away from their time at the trough, Dubya and his guys will have pretty well emptied out the Federal Government's cash reservoirs and filled their own and their buddies' up to the brim. What with Halliburton sopping up billions through creative bookkeeping of its non-activity in Iraq and dozens of corporations evading all tax liability by the simple expedient of listing their headquarters address off-shore in some businessman's tropic paradise; with Defense contractors, oil companies, major pharmaceuticals and money lenders all gorged just about to capacity from sucking up Federal largesse, it now turns out that (surprise!) there isn't much left in the accounts to actually run governmental services with. So there are plenty of villains to point at these days, no end to the larcenies being committed at public expense. Yet even among the ranks of all the many rogues with the foresight to cozy up to Republican elected officials and the willingness to exchange ethics for no-bid contracts, Blackwater stands out.

They all stink, of course; they all invite outrage, and they all should be made to pay the money back. But there is a clinging to this particular Virginia-based enterprise, this armed-muscle-for-hire company, an especially repugnant aroma that does set it apart even among the other opportunists and jackals that avidly fatten themselves at the expense of the miserable. You see, these guys are not just hired guns, mercenaries willing to serve whoever signs their pay vouchers. They fancy themselves as being our privatized Armed Forces: the ultimate in out-sourcing of essential governmental functions. And unfortunately, the President seems to agree with them.

Thus, when thugs in the employ of Blackwater commit murder, assault, mayhem and similarly impolite other forms of behavior during their stay in Iraq, as described so numbingly by Reporter Jeremy Scahill in his just-published book on the company called, simply, Blackwater, it is not the corporate investors in the company who will feel the heat of Iraqi outrage, it is the American people who will be blamed.

This is what the Romans learned the hard way over sixteen hundred years ago.

Those darned mercenaries are more trouble than they are worth. Not only can they prove difficult to control, but you have to bear the weight of all the errors they make. They are not independent of those who hire them. The illusion is that it is easier to pay big bucks for contractors to do the dirty work than to recruit, train and supervise your own troops. That is the illusion to which the current occupant of the White House has fallen prey. That is why we now have more private contract manpower in Iraq than we have troops (200,000 versus 170,000), even if we don't keep close tabs on their deaths -- must be a clause in their employment contract or something, a kind of "you don't have to mark my passing" authorization. But it is starting to look like even the Iraqi government (whose puppet strings we routinely jerk just to remind them who's boss) has finally tired of the arrogance and blood-letting of the contractors. The general populace did so long ago, of course. But then the general populace tired of all of us long ago, so it's no use asking them.

The government, though, now wants Blackwater gone; removed; their contract ended. They will soon be forced out of Iraq, I assume. But that will end neither the Bush entanglement with mercenaries in Iraq nor the profitability of Blackwater. Some other company of soldiers of fortune will fill their shoes, with little or no change in how badly we are served by using unaccountable and uncontrollable troops like that. Blackwater itself will scoop up some other juicy contract for work somewhere else in the world: Afghanistan, Mississippi (yes, they were there during Katrina), Darfur -- wherever there's a buck to be made and a code of ethics to be ignored. Blackwater is the Bush doctrine: private gain squeezed from public coffers. Now it is up to us, the American people, to decide if we are going to tolerate what it represents. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Blackwater are three very smelly pieces of inheritance to pass on to our children.

They don't deserve it. We must turn away the Visigoths.

This is a guest blog by Democratic NM State Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino. Guest blogs provide readers with an opportunity to express their views on relevant issues and may or many not reflect our views. If you'd like to submit a piece for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand corner of the page.

GI Rights & Iraq War Featured on Indy Media TV Tonight

From Indy Media TV:
Friday, September 21, 7-8 PM, Comcast Cable Channel 27 and at quote-unquote.org: GI Rights and the Iraq War. Indy Media TV welcomes Reber Boult, an attorney who has worked with GI war resisters since the Vietnam war; Jackie Thomason, from the National GI Rights Hotline; and Bruce Clark, Marine Veteran and father of a marine stationed 20 KM outside of Baghdad right now. Tune in and call in live: 346-1633.

Visuals: Iraq Summer 'Take a Stand' in Albuquerque

I haven't had a chance to report on the moving and well-attended Take a Stand Town Hall organized in Albuquerque by the Iraq Summer campaign and others. The August 28th event at the UNM Continuing Education Auditorium attracted more than 300 people to hear Albuquerque City Counselor Martin Heinrich; ex-Marine Bruce Clark (videos above), the parent of two sons in the military, one of whom is stationed north of Baghdad right now; Major General Mel Montano, US Air National Guard, Retired, and former Adjunct General of New Mexico; Judy Pratt, activist, former NM State Senator and 1984 U.S. Senate candidate against Pete Domenici; and Greg Richardson of the Iraq Summer campaign.

Both Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson were invited to participate, but refused the invitation to speak with their constituents about what they plan to do to end the carnage in Iraq.

I've compiled images from the Albuquerque event in this photo album for you to check out.

City Councilor Martin Heinrich speaks to crowd

The videos at the top of this post are excerpts of Bruce Clark's extremely emotional and passionate speech. They're of rather poor quality, taken with our little digital camera, but I hope you'll listen to Bruce's words about the real intent of Bush, his cronies and his supporters like Domenici and Wilson. If everyone in New Mexico could hear Bruce speak, I know that most of them would have a clear picture of what's truly at stake here. The other speakers were also excellent, and I'll cover more of what they had to say later. For now, please listen to Mr. Clark and do what you can to convince Domenici and Wilson to do what's right for the country, not what's right for the GOP or the Bush administration.

The event was moderated by Carter Bundy of AFSCME, who did a bang up job, and began with what seemed like an eternity of total silence as we watched a slideshow with the faces and names of members of the military from New Mexico who have died in the war. Lives are at stake. Time is of the essence. And still Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson won't vote to stop the deadly and damaging occupation.

By the way, Iraq Summer, MoveOn, True Majority and others helped organize similar events in many other states around the nation that day. Click to see a slide show of photos from other states.

Help Elect Replacements for Wilson and Domenici
The Beat Back Bush New Mexico page was created at Act Blue to counteract Bush's recent visit to Albuquerque to raise money for Pete Domenici. It's designed to raise donations from New Mexico's progressive netroots-grassroots for candidates who will run against the Republicans here. If you haven't donated yet, there's still time. Contrbute a few bucks to Martin Heinrich and Don Wiviot -- candidates who want to get rid of Heather Wilson and Pete Domenici once and for all in November 2008.

Click to read our previous posts about Beat Back Bush New Mexico.

Register Now: GI Rights and Veteran Support Training for New Mexicans

From Maria Santelli: Saturday, September 22, 1-5 PM: GI Rights and Veteran Support Training for New Mexicans! Four and a half years into the war and occupation of Iraq, New Mexico is home to 24,000 Iraq Veterans and tens of thousands of active duty service members -- many of whom have been left behind by the US Government and want to work through their trauma by working for peace. (Remember the importance of GI resistance in ending the Vietnam War.) Let's strengthen our local support network and link New Mexico into the national GI Hotline so we can serve our local community directly and effectively. 

This can be intense but critically important work, so we are asking you to please register by calling Maria at 247-9694, by Wednesday, September 19. Extended two-day training option if there is enough interest. (PLEASE CALL TO REGISTER AND FOR LOCATION).

Guest Blog: Senator Domenici-How In Good Conscience Can You Do This To Our Men And Women In Uniform?

This is a guest blog from Bobby Muller, founder of Veterans for America:

Sen. Pete Domenici: I have a fundamental question for you -– a really simple basic question. One that every American should be asking themselves right now as you –- and the rest of our Senators –- get ready to return from your month-long break.

When the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that our troops were at their breaking point, when the Department of Defense reported that our current deployment policies are compounding the wounds of war, causing mental health problems among our troops to skyrocket, and that one of the primary causes was our current policy of deploying troops back to Iraq and Afghanistan without adequate dwell time at home, why didn't you do something about it?

How can you not support a policy where soldiers are deployed for 15 months in Iraq and then receive at least equal time stationed stateside to rest, train, and then fight again?  (And at least three times that much at home if they are from the Guard or Reserve.)

Well guess what? You aren't alone. Back in July before you took your summer break, a lot of United States Senators voted against this fundamental act of fairness by voting against the Webb-Hagel Amendment. (Click here to see a press conference where I spoke up for this bill before the vote.)

What's shocking to me is that this amendment was sponsored by two veterans, one Democrat and one Republican, and it was a bill that unlike many in D.C. is incredibly simple and –- more importantly -- fair to our troops: At least one month stationed stateside for every month served in Iraq or Afghanistan.  It doesn't get any more basic or any more fair than that.

Here is the exact wording of the amendment in case you didn't carefully read it before you voted against it, and our troops.

July 11, 2007, Senate Roll Call Vote 241, HR 1585
The Webb amendment would mandate minimum intervals between deployments for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would require active duty forces to be guaranteed as much time at home as they served while deployed. National Guard and reservists would be guaranteed three years at home between deployments.

Now if you're in New Mexico, and you're reading this -- I frankly don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, blue or red. I'm asking you, American to American:

How in good conscience can you do this to our men and women in uniform?

Because when your Senators vote against our troops like this, you vote against them too.

But you get another chance.

So next week, when Senator Domenici and all of our elected officials return to Washington, guess what? There's going to be another dwell time bill waiting for them; this one has already passed in the House of Representatives.

This bill, the Tauscher bill (HR 3159), like the Webb-Hagel Amendment, offers our troops a fair deployment policy. I hope every single United States Senator votes for this bill. Shame on you, Senators, if you don't.

Editor's Notes:

This is a guest blog by Bobby Muller of Veterans for America. Veterans for America (VFA), formerly the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, is uniting a new generation of veterans with those from past wars to address the causes, conduct and consequences of war. Together, veterans offer a crucial perspective when addressing public and political concerns about war in the 21st century. Click here to read more about the mission of VFA.

In the U.S. House, Rep. Heather Wilson (NM-01) voted against the Tauscher bill, as did Rep. Steve Pearce (NM-02). Rep. Tom Udall (NM-03) voted for it. In the U.S. Senate, Sen. Pete Domenici voted against the Webb-Hagel Amendment while Sen. Jeff Bingaman voted for it. To contact them about their votes click here.

Guest blogs provide readers with an opportunity to express themselves on relevant political issues and may or may not represent our views. If you'd like to submit a post for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand corner of the page.