Thanks for the Info

Max Obuszewski wrote a post to After Downing Street about a trial beginning tomorrow in Alexandria. Protesters will be tried for interrupting Agency business at the Pentagon when they breached a barricade blocking their approach to the building where they sought a meeting with the Secretary of Defense, don Rumsfeld.

It is leadership like yours that casts a light on the encouraging power of our Constitutional rights and the flawed special interest that so easily corrupts established power structures.

That imperfect exercise of power you will be attacking lawfully, in the Alexandria court, is a glaring example of the "best military in the world" malfunctioning and trampling on the very rights of the people it is ostensibly created to protect!

Clearly, the Pentagon itself is becoming the protector of forces threatening to our rights as Americans, instead of protecting our rights--its sole purpose.

Today I heard Dennis Hastert talking about how we went to war in Iraq after the September 11th attacks threatened our freedom and our way of life.

That kind of no-think, unreasonable hypocrisy is too prevalent among our government leaders and military personnel. The attacks did not threaten our freedom and our way of life. On the contrary, they provided us with a perfect opportunity to draw a clear contrast between a peaceful, strong, free society and an aggressive, destructive, wasteful band of terrorists.

The rest of the world stood with us then, believing our nature to be peace-loving and progressive in the cause of expanding individual liberty in the name of world-wide freedom and peace.

But we are failing the test. Our leaders have ducked for cover--in terror--behind their bombs, planes, tanks, guns and Congressional podiums. The barricade you breached at the Pentagon is the barricade of fear erected by our military and political leaders to protect them from the reality of responsibility for upholding liberty and the requisite courage to allow others the freedom to express it.

Peace be with you.