Cindy Sheehan of Gold Star Families for Peace spoke in Seattle this past weekend and was the guest of honor at a fundraiser for Rep. Jim McDermott's legal fund Sunday, naming the congressman as one of her heroes and a man who was right on all the progressive issues. After the pleasantries, she sat down with everyone for a Q&A session with the congressman and the other guests.

In person, Cindy Sheehan hardly seems like someone who would have started a national media firestorm. Her presence is soothing, her voice is gentle no matter the topic and while she isn't shy, she doesn't act like someone who's trying to draw attention to herself. When she mentions that she was a Catholic youth minister for 8 years, no one is surprised.

She talks about what started her determination to speak out about the war, saying that one of the last straws was the president's declaration that the U.S. had to stay in Iraq to honor the sacrifice of the fallen, like her son Casey. "I don't know any mother who lost her child who would want another mother's child to die. Casey died saving his buddies, he wouldn't want anyone else to die," she said.

I'm happy because my post yesterday got at least one friend of mine to call Sen. Cantwell's office and express their disapproval over the egregiously named Iran Freedom Support Act, or as I've come to think of it, the 'Death to Iran' bill. But there the happy stops. I'm told that one of the first things out of the mouth of the Cantwell staffer, ready and waiting with a response after what it's safe to assume were earlier calls, was the defense that Sen. Boxer co-sponsored the bill, too. And dang if I haven't used that excuse with a straight face since I was a teen.

Tell me, Sen. Cantwell, if Sen. Boxer jumped off a bridge would you do it too?

I can barely steady my hands enough to type right now, I am indescribably furious and can only request leniency for the inevitable rhetorical excess to follow. I checked the Daily Kos this morning to see what new petty crime was brewing, only to discover that 58 senators have something worse in the waiting than scandal and corruption. Worse than bribery. Worse than deficits my grandchildren will be lucky to see the back of. Worse than standing by while that odious gang of thugs in the White House (and btw, Rep. Hoyer, you are a cowering toad) takes unto themselves the powers of a monarchy.

This morning, when I saw that Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) was one of the cosponsors of a crapulous pile of hypocritical legislative ooze pathetically wrapped in a nice, chocolate-covered title of the Iran Freedom Support Act, let me just say that I saw red. Red like the blood of men, women and children spilled in Iraq. Red like the fresh wounds of soldiers rushed to Walter Reed. Red like the eyes of family members who will ask themselves every day between this breath and their last why they outlived people they loved as much as their own lives.

 And here we begin yet another entry whose title was so very nearly something like, "How F*cking Stupid Are These CheeseF*cking, P*ssDrinking, GoatBl*wing Cretins!?" And I thought to myself, "Self, while it's true that the Bush administration's apparent plans to nuke Isfahan might even exceed in stupidity a target selection guided by a game of drunken pin-the-turban-on-the-mullah in the Oval Office played with a map of the Middle East, such a title might not properly clue readers in to the topic of the post. Further, I'm offended by the implied abuse of innocent goats and it's too long and unwieldy even to be (peace be upon Dave Barry) a good band name. While you're at it, don't forget to throw in some nice pictures." It was a fair point, so here we are.

 Though borders and rulers changed, many pockets of continuous Persian culture have persisted in what was once the Persian Empire, such as Isfahan, the former capital of the Safavid dynasty and "[t]he Persians called it Nisf-e-Jahan, half the world; meaning that to see it was to see half the world." (Ethnic map of Iran.)

The current plan for the Bush budget includes cutting, nay, obliterating the Environmental Protection Agency's library system. Not even the central catalog, the only record of the extensive collection of research and unique documents, would remain. The EPA would no longer know what information it had and that information would no longer be readily available to either the public or its own researchers.

A press release from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility outlines the scope of the cuts and includes links to fuller information about the services provided by the EPA library system. Excerpts and key legislative contacts on the flip.

Via the coalition casualty count, 14 American soldiers have so far been reported killed in action during the week starting August 14, 2005.

According to figures pulled from Reuters' Iraq report, at least 123 Iraqi deaths have been reported over the same week.

During the week of Sunday, July 24 to Saturday, July 30, 21 U.S. soldiers and two kidnapped Algerian diplomats were killed in Iraq. News agencies reported the deaths of at least 196 Iraqis in conflict related incidents over the same week.

The Iraqi death count is largely based on daily Reuters security incident reports as well as updates from other media outlets when death tolls are later revised upwards for certain incidents.

In the extended entry I've included the entirety of Gen. Frank Scoggins' prepared testimony before the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission. Gen. Scoggins is the Assistant Adjutant General for the Washington Air National Guard. As dry as that sounds, the content is nothing short of alarming if you happen to live in the northwest, or really, any of the western states.

The bombings today in London threw into sharp relief the fact that Al Qaida hasn't just packed up their toys and gone home. Kim Jong Il still has nuclear warheads and long-range missiles. And at any time, some portion of the seismically active west coast could be subject to a major natural disaster.

Yet if the BRAC sticks with the Pentagon recommendations, the governor of Washington State, along with governors of Idaho, Montana and Oregon will have no airlift capacity at their immediate disposal in case of emergency. At least 18 other states will be in a similar situation, but the entire continous northwest is out in the cold. And because Nevada and both of the Dakotas will also have no permanent airlift capacity, the airlift units in Wyoming, Utah and California will be the closest available to cover the whole region. And that's just the beginning of several moves that will leave the northwest less protected.

Is it any wonder that WA State's entire congressional delegation has signed a letter objecting to these changes? Head down to look at the maps for the full impact, and note that the page may load more slowly than usual as I've included all eight images that came with the testimony.

Have you heard of the Mujahideen-e Khalq? Possibly not, but they're a Marxist Islamist terrorist organization whose goal has been to seize power in Iran since the time of the Shah. They were involved in the 1979 revolution, and by involved I mean that they bombed civilian targets to seed unrest and instigated the hostage-taking at the US embassy. After failing to win power in the aftermath, they eventually relocated to Iraq where they joined the payroll of Saddam Hussein, working for him to target civilians inside Iran to aid Hussein's war effort, and later to help Hussein suppress the Shi'a and Kurdish uprisings. Their presence in northern Iraq was even used before the Iraq war as evidence of Hussein's support for terrorism.

Where are they now? According to the State Department's 2004 list of terror organizations, they're mostly in Iraq, under US protection.

"... Over 3,000 MEK members are currently confined to Camp Ashraf, the MEK's main compound north of Baghdad, where they remain under the Geneva Convention's "protected person" status and Coalition control. ..."

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