A suggestion for enhanced credibility:
Speak ... and speak legitimately ... to the issue of the administration's series of evolving lies to get to Iraq. I see lots of messenger-attacking but no denial or acknowledgement of the lies. Until the lies are acknowledged and addressed continued editorial aspertions on the character or motive of anti-war critics bounces off as partisan politics.
Gut feelings are what you're trying to overcome - not the presence of traitorous anti-American thought.
I live and work in a small, thinly populated and economically depressed county on the Washington Coast. Rural as any rural country can be, we are not so removed in the tules to be ignorant of manipulative broadcasting and politicial disingenuity. Despite it's similarity to rural red-state America which includes a respectable number of churches, the county is solidly blue.
We're the folks you need to impress first before attempting to convince us that the emperor and his party's new clothes are real.
We're connected to national reality even if it must be thru satellite dishes and dial-up. We can read everything blown or regurgitated our way. We can think. We can ask questions and wear bullshit protectors on our eyes and ears.
This below in my morning email from just one website where speaking out is considered patriotic:
From the ONLINE JOURNAL
August 23, 2005--On the MoveOn.org website, I accessed an interactive map showing participation by American citizens in the national vigil called for by Cindy Sheehan on 17 August 2005. The most touching thing about this exercise was clicking on counties and viewing this count: one person in a county in Maine, two in a county in Texas, one person in a county in Colorado. It must take guts to do that--to show up with a candle, alone.
These are the people whom you can trust to stand up in a room full of polite, scared, or obedient people to say, "No, I will not go along. It is wrong."
In praise of disobedience
by Luciana Bohne
*
August 23, 2005--Every year, right around the anniversary of 9/11 the Bush administration spins the public about the reasons 1,864 American soldiers have died fighting for a lie in Iraq. And every year, it's just as crucial that the media tell the public the truth about the reasons the war was started.
Bush knows the true reasons he started a war in Iraq, but he's not going to tell
By Jason Leopold
*
August 23, 2005--Living in America these days is akin to riding in the back seat of a car being driven by a learner who is attempting to convince
the passengers that he knows what he is doing, and knows where he is going.
Do you know where we are going, America?
By Nolan K. Anderson
*
August 26, 2005--On Wednesday, August 17, I rode from Austin to Crawford, Texas, with two beautiful women who happen to share my belief that George W.
Bush is a deceitful and treacherous jackass who deserves to be run out of office as soon as possible because he has betrayed the trust of the
American people.
Standing with Cindy Sheehan (and learning why Jesus wept)
By Duncan Burch
*
August 26, 2005--Cindy Sheehan is exactly what we needed. Following the 2004 elections the antiwar movement was left in shambles, unable to recover
from the malfunctions of the Democratic Party. MoveOn.org had capitulated its antiwar position by supporting John pro-war Kerry. United for Peace and Justice did not organize a single rally against the Iraq occupation.
Indeed, the "Anybody but Bush" epidemic had crushed whatever movement there was to begin with.
The Democrats and Cindy Sheehan
By Joshua Frank