The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster... Our unfortunate troops, British and Indian, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad.

Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

"I particularly condemn the way our political leaders supplied the manpower for that (the Vietnam) war. The policies – determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live – were an antidemocratic disgrace. I can never forgive a leadership that said, in effect: These young men – poorer, less educated, less privileged – are expendable (someone described them as "economic cannon fodder"), but the rest are too good to risk. I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well placed and many professional athletes (who were probably healthier than any of us) managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to our country."

Al Franken and others are launching a major new progressive radio network this week (2 Apr 2004). If you're in LA, Portland, New York, or Chicago, you'll be able to hear Air America programming starting this minute. Air America's got big plans for expansion, but for now if you're not in one of those areas, you can listen in on the web. One of the big aims of this new radio network is to counter the claims of right-wing politicians and media figures. When a major right-wing figure says something misleading or something so full of holes it can only be described as dumb, Al Franken and other Air America hosts will call them out on it.