Exiled Allawi was responsible for 45-minute WMD claim, By Patrick Cockburn

A soldier broke into Kavira Muraulu's home late one night and raped her. The next day she went to lodge a complaint about him. He and his friends came back and beat her. Undaunted, she went on complaining.

Kavira is a farmer in her fifties who lives near a military camp in Mangangu, near the town of Beni, North-Kivu province, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. In this area, conflict between different armed forces has been raging for more than five years and many woman and girls have been raped, mutilated and killed with complete impunity.

The man who raped Kavira on May 16, 2003 was a soldier from the military camp. When she complained to his military commander, he ordered the soldier to pay her three US dollars in compensation, but took no action when the order was ignored. She took her complaint to the local district governor, who issued reassurances and told her to go home, but made no arrangements to ensure her safety.

The rapist and other soldiers then seized her in her fields, tied her up and beat her, knocking out a tooth and injuring her jaw. They only stopped when another woman threatened them with a gun. Kavira was later taken back to the governor's office where he tried, but failed, to persuade her to retract her accusation. The soldiers then attacked her again, this time bayoneting her in the stomach.

Despite continued official pressure and the risk to her life, Kavira is determined to obtain justice and compensation.

First he used his special Pentagon intelligence sources to tell us that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were an imminent threat and we had to go to war. Then he told us that his Pentagon planners were sure that the war would be fast and cheap. Now he is telling us that if those under him in the chain of command committed acts of torture, well, it's not his fault.

Dump Rumsfeld

 I have two concerns which move me to run for delegate to the Convention.  First, at the Jefferson County meeting, I raised the point – and had it written into the language of the platform in two places - that whether each of us has the right to vote is now in question. This is not just a platform point, to be written down and forgotten.  Democrats need to make this the foremost issue in every state before the election, to make sure that there is an honest election in the United States this time.  I would speak for this at the Convention. Bush was not elected the last time.  The Jeb Bush administration in Florida illegitimately eliminated 54, 000 people, mainly blacks, who had names like those of felons.  The Supreme Court ruled – by the vote of Justice Scalia, a Republican appointee – that the votes must not be counted.A more anti-democratic decision than this would be hard to find.  For the 2004 election, many states are substituting voting machines, made by Diebold, which leave no written record, for ordinary ballots.  Diebold is a contributor to the Bush campaign and met with Bush at the Crawford ranch.  If the machines are programmed honestly to begin with  (of  which there is no proof), it would probably not be hard for programmers – particularly in special operations at the Pentagon – to interfere, within a certain range, with the program.  And no record would exist to recount or check.  In effect, Bush could defeat Kerry in a close election, illegitimately.  The New York Times recently has had a series of good editorials on this.  But unless Democrats fight for electoral honesty, the odds are against another real election in the United States.  And that is what Bush stands for.

 Second, I have written about how international politics undercuts domestic liberty.  Even before the War in Iraq, the so-called USAPATRIOT act undercut civil liberties here dramatically.  We have seen what the Bush administration’s contempt for the rule of law has meant at Abu Ghraib, and at Guantanamo where prisoners are locked up indefinitely – and tortured – without the doors of an American court being open to review their cases.  This policy undercuts the “check and balance” that the judiciary poses to mere tyranny.  American citizens have similarly lost the right of habeas corpus – the cases are finally at the Supreme Court.  And the liberties of each of us are now in jeopardy.

America will not benefit by aggression to seize other people’s countries and resources.  The current war also bears no relation to fighting terrorists, as Richard Clarke testified.  But now the Bush administration’s occupation of Iraq has multiplied and inspired terrorism.  It wastes American lives.  Democracy and decency in America are in the balance.  As a delegate, I would speak to the formulation of the platform, and especially to policies which would preserve the right to vote, and the rights to speak and assemble of each of us.

Alan Gilbert, Professor at the Graduate School of  International Studies of the University of Denver

It's the most difficult part of going to work each day for most, if not all, working-class people.  I don't mean the physical act of transporting yourself, though that can be a pain in the ass too if circumstances are wrong.  I mean the emotional act of getting yourself ready to go to work.  

No one who's working class wants to go.  Why should you?  you're going to a job that, if you're lucky, you don't hate.  If you're lucky, you're boss doesn't treat you with a complete lack of respect.  If you're lucky, you can find things about your current job which aren't as bad as your last job.

By Eric Patton

HAYDER SABBAR ABD, abused at Abu Ghraib prison by American soldiers.

Wilson's Turn by Ambassador Joseph Wilson

Barbara Bush, Good Morning America" on March 18, 2003.

Gore Vidal