The wages of Cindy
The American Prospect
by Terence Samuel

"It's hot in Texas these days, but judging by the guy who ran over Cindy Sheehan's crosses outside the Crawford White House or the guy who fired off his shotgun nearby, the thing to worry about is not the heat -- it's the stupidity. The president needs Sheehan like he needs another pretzel in his throat. If she comes back soon, the trouble she could cause him may be incalculable. There is simply no satisfactory response, either human or political, to a woman demanding to know exactly why her son had to die to advance the idea of freedom -- particularly when the original mission called for the scary and tangible task of saving the world by ridding it of a tyrant and his weapons of mass destruction. We have the tyrant, the weapons remain elusive, and Iraq is a mess. And no amount of political capital can compete with the moral gravitas of a grieving mother." (08/19/05)

http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=10151

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America should dodge reinstating the draft
Cato Institute
by Doug Bandow

"Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is again pushing legislation to reintroduce a draft. He first did so in 2003 to slow the Bush administration's rush to war. Now he says conscription is necessary to provide the bodies necessary for Iraq's occupation. Returning to a draft would ruin the world's dominant armed forces, filling its ranks with people who don't want to serve and turning military service into a divisive political issue. Yet Rangel's proposal reflects an ugly reality: The Bush administration's disastrous intervention in Iraq is weakening the U.S. military." (08/22/05)

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4247

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The fallout from one mom's voice
Boston Globe
by Ellen Goodman

"The headline this morning labels her 'peace mom.' It's a moniker that simultaneously personalizes and trivializes the lanky woman with the high-pitched voice who has been camping out in Crawford, Texas. It's a shorthand that both grants and diminishes her authority to speak out against the war, a moral authority won the hardest way possible, through the loss of her child. We are now ending Week Two at Camp Casey. ... If Week One was the Making of a Celebrity with dawn-to-dusk coverage, Week Two brought the backlash and the bloggers. Conservative cable kings like Bill O'Reilly proved that not even the death of a child grants you immunity from attack. Iconoclast Christopher Hitchens took her on with a glee he once reserved for Mother Teresa." (08/21/05)

http://tinyurl.com/dwytv