According to yesterday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, looks like Senator Maria Cantwell has not budged in her position on Iraq since the IWR.
Cantwell "has no regrets" P-I story
It spurred me to fire off a letter to the Editor, reproduced below. (Update: the letter was printed Tuesday, Jan 25th.)
The topic of Cantwell and her upcoming re-election provokes a storm of squabbling among WA Kossaks--everything from "She's the greatest" to "She's useless"--depending on how monumental the war issue is to us. If you could see into my head (it's messy in there) the IRAQ WAR would be in 60-point type, most other issues of the day would be in 20- or 30-point type.
Continued below:
My previous diary on our peace coalition's lobbying of her office is here:
Surprising Meeting! Lobbying Cantwell's office
At that time a sympathetic-seeming aide told us "don't hold your breath" waiting for her to change her mind.
My letter:
Sen. Maria Cantwell says she "has no regrets" over her vote to authorize invasion of Iraq.
That's a tragedy. Our senator won't acknowledge reality: the most disastrous and costly foreign policy mistake of our time, engineered by Republicans, enabled by most Democrats. She stubbornly maintains a huge blind spot, expecting that her constituents will consider "the totality of my record."
We can't sidestep that elephant in the living room.
The checklist of shame:
Republican-manipulated intelligence lies to provoke support for invasion
The condemnation of the world community
Billions of U.S. dollars mysteriously missing
U.S.-supported prisoner abuse, illegal detention, and torture, provoking
more terrorist recruits
18 thousand-plus U.S. troops killed and wounded
Uncounted thousands of killed and suffering Iraqi civilians, their country
in chaos, infrastructure in ruins
War profiteering on a massive scale for Bush cronies
"Free and fair elections" which are anything but
If Cantwell regrets ANY of these horrors, she's kept it to herself. That is unacceptable.
If these were ordinary times, Cantwell would be a fine senator. But our country has a constitutional crisis and foreign policy disaster that even hawkish Rep. John Murtha has now loudly opposed.
We desperately need reality-based, courageous Democratic leadership.
Dina XX, Seattle