AfterDowningStreet.org

By Allen L Roland
The battle for the hearts and minds of Iraq has not only been lost in Iraq ~ but it has also been lost in the hearts and minds of Americans : Allen L Roland
Here are the ten reasons * why we must leave Iraq and leave soon ~ before our moral integrity hits rock bottom.

Our Representatives must act on behalf of "we the people".
By Carol Wolman, http://www.opednews.com
Impeachment is a legal process similar to arraignment, whereby a public official is charged with criminal conduct. In the case of the president and vice president, the House of Representatives acts as the prosecuting attorney, for the people. Its job is to investigate allegations of wrongdoing and, if warranted, to bring formal charges. The case then goes to the Senate, which acts as judge to find the official guilty or not guilty.

Hot topic: The discussion comes after U.N. criticism of U.S. practices at Gitmo
By Rosemary Winters, The Salt Lake Tribune
About 130 Salt Lake City residents attended a panel discussion on Sunday about the United States' treatment of detainees in Iraq, Cuba and Afghanistan.

By Dean Lawrence R. Velvel
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/velvel5.html
James Risen is one of The New York Times’ major writers on intelligence matters and related subjects. His new book on such topics is State of War: The Secret History Of The CIA And The Bush Administration (Free Press, 2006). There are those who think the impending publication of the book, in which Risen extensively discusses the NSA’s electronic surveillance of Americans, is what caused The Times, after sitting on the story for about a year, to finally disclose this surveillance in late 2005. The Times, some think, did not want to get scooped by a book written by one of its own reporters, and realized that, because of the impending publication, the story would no longer remain secret anyway.

The "Direct Proposition To Impeach," A Way For Any One Congressman Or Delegate To Bring Bush Impeachment To The Floor Of The House
by-passing all Committees, and impossible to stop
by Rev. Bill McGinnis

Italian National Assembly of the Anti-war Movement
By Stephanie Westbrook
Under a large banner reading "Stop the War – Set Peace Free" and with the slogan, "Security will only come with peace", the Italian National Assembly of the Anti-War Movement got underway in Florence, on Saturday, February 11, 2006. Around 200 people filled the hall of the Architecture Faculty for the two-day event focused on the national demonstration in Rome on March 18 as well as the recent World Social Forums, Europe's role in the plan for permanent war, demilitarization and disarmament, migrants and refugees and the occupation of Palestine.

By Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON - The George W. Bush administration went well beyond refusing to negotiate with terrorists in its handling of the threat by freelance journalist Jill Carroll's abductors to kill her if all female detainees were not released from U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.

Here they are on a map with details:
http://www.fcnl.org/iraq/bases.htm
Here's a bill you can ask your Congress Member to cosponsor banning permanent US bases:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5011

STATEMENT OF CONGRESSMAN JOHN CONYERS, JR.
I urge my colleagues to support my resolution of inquiry, which has been cosponsored by 44 individuals, including every single Democrat on this Committee,

By Scott Ritter, AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/story/32213
I pulled myself away from the television set recently, enthralled as I was by the ongoing Winter Olympics, and took the time to wade through the massive quantities of information building up in my in box (electronic and otherwise) about the world we live in outside of the sports arena.

[Read what the right-wingers are worried about...]
By Paul M. Weyrich, http://www.nationalledger.com
John Gizzi, veteran Political Editor of the conservative weekly 'Human Events,' normally is an optimist. Over the years I have watched him find the one possible thread to explain the rationale for the election of a conservative Republican.

By BradBlog
'Birdshot lodged in heart' of Cheney Shooting Victim...
OCCURRED 'EARLY TUESDAY' -- BUT NOT MENTIONED BY MCCLELLAN IN WHITE HOUSE PRESS BRIEFING!
Just breaking from AP:
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - The 78-year-old lawyer who was shot by Vice President Dick Cheney in a hunting accident has some birdshot lodged in his heart and he had a "minor heart attack," a hospital official said Tuesday.

Nonviolent Peaceful Demonstrations In Front of Congress Members' Homes Every Weekend
Democrats.com, Progressive Democrats of America, After Downing Street, Gold Star Families for Peace, Hip Hop Caucus, Democracy Rising, and Velvet Revolution, are working to organize grassroots teams in all 435 Congressional Districts plus 5 Delegate Districts (DC, PR, VI, GU, and AS) and to hold nonviolent peaceful demonstrations every weekend in front of the homes of congress members.

Filmmaker Mark Manning Bravely Journeyed to the Epicenter of Hell to Film his Documentary
"Caught in the Crossfire, the Untold Story of Falluja"
Los Angeles -- Falluja will go down in history as a cauldron of chaos. On March 31st, 2004, four American contractors were killed and dragged from their cars near the bridge spanning the Euphrates River. The assembled crowd then burned their bodies and hacked them to pieces hoisting their blackened body parts into the air for the world to see.

By Patrick Doherty, www.tompaine.com
So the polls have sunk in and now senators from both parties are moving to cut their losses on Iraq. Interestingly, the leaders in this round are not presidential contenders. On the Dem side, there are Reid, Durbin and Levin. On the GOP side there are Graham of South Carolina and Warner of Virginia.

By Jamin B. Raskin, www.tompaine.com
Jamin B. Raskin ([email protected] ) is a professor of Constitutional Law at American University and Director of its Program on Law and Government. He is also a Democratic candidate for the Maryland State Senate in the 2006 elections.

IN THIS NEWSLETTER:
1) DEFEND THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY
2) JOHN PILGER: IRAN - THE NEXT WAR
3) REALITY AND SPIN IN IRAQ
4) IRAQ OCCUPATION INCREASES POVERTY
5) US SOLDIERS MAIMED AND TRAUMATISED

Bush Administration Spends Billions on PR to Manipulate American Public
WASHINGTON — House Democrats today released a Government Accountability Office report chronicling more than $1.6 billion spent by the Bush administration since 2003 on public relations and advertising.

By Dana Olsen - www.dailynexus.com
One of UCSB's newest student organizations wants to impeach President George W. Bush for ordering, without judicial warrants, the placement of wiretaps on the phones of American citizens.

Believed Shooting Victim Was Zawahiri, Veep Says
By Andy Borowitz
Vice President Dick Cheney revealed today that he shot a fellow hunter while on a quail hunting trip over the weekend because he believed the man was the fugitive terror mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Mr. Cheney acknowledged that the man he sprayed with pellets on Saturday was not al-Zawahiri but rather Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old millionaire lawyer from Austin, blaming the mix-up on "faulty intelligence."
"I believed I had credible intelligence that al-Zawahiri had infiltrated my hunting party in disguise with the intent of spraying me with pellets," Mr. Cheney told reporters. "Only after I shot Harry in the face and he shouted 'Cheney, you bastard' did I realize that this intelligence was faulty."