Kucinich Defies Expectations
PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY VANGUARD
by Matt Petrie
http://www.dailyvanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/05/20/40ac5033f3884

On The Spot: Rallying Girl Power
ALTERNET
by Darci Andresen
http://alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18751



'US Soldiers Started To Shoot Us, One By One'
GUARDIAN/UK
by Rory McCarthy in Ramadi
"The bombing started at 3am," she said yesterday from her bed in the emergency ward at Ramadi general hospital, 60 miles west of Baghdad. "We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one," she said. She ran with her youngest child in her arms and her two young boys, Ali and Hamza, close behind. As she crossed the fields a shell exploded close to her, fracturing her legs and knocking her to the ground. She lay there and a second round hit her on the right arm. By then her two boys lay dead. "I left them because they were dead," she said. One, she saw, had been decapitated by a shell. "I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me. My youngest child was alive next to me." Mrs Shibab's description, backed by other witnesses, of an attack on a sleeping village is at odds with the American claim that they came under fire while targeting a suspected foreign fighter safe house. She described how in the hours before dawn she watched as American troops destroyed the Rakat villa and the house next door, reducing the buildings to rubble. Another relative carried Mrs Shihab and her surviving child to hospital. There she was told her husband Mohammed, the eldest of the Rakat sons, had also died. For rest of story, click on the following link: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0521-01.htm

The Diseases Of A Troubled Nation
THE AGE/AUSTRALIA
by Julian Ninio
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0520-12.htm

Important Message From NARAL Pro-Choice - Three Of Bush's Nominees Stopped, But The Worst Is Yet To Come

Senate leaders stood up to President Bush's court packing scheme, winning a victory for the pro-choice movement by securing a promise that Bush will not appoint more judicial nominees while the Senate is in recess. The Senate's agreement effectively closes a chapter on several of Bush's most radical nominees: Carolyn Kuhl, Priscilla Owen, and Janice Rogers Brown. The deal means that Bush will not sneak these nominees onto the federal bench during a Senate recess - a trick that Bush has used twice in recent months. Thank you to the CAN activists who wrote 236,123 letters to Senators about Kuhl, Owen, and Brown! You helped convince pro-choice Senators to stand strong against Bush's attempt to take over the federal courts. We could not have won this fight without you!

There is still one nominee to watch - and he's one of the worst of Bush's bunch. James Leon Holmes has written that the role of "the wife is to subordinate herself to her husband." He has compared pro-choice activists to "Nazis," said that rape victims don't get pregnant, and compared abortion to slavery. We must stop this out-of-step nominee from winning a lifetime appointment that will give him the power to make decisions about women's rights for the rest of his life. Help us reach our goal of sending 50,000 letters to the Senate this week by taking action today - click here: http://prochoiceaction.org/campaign/holmes_sen_052004/b7e33u4fjdn5kb

The fight against Holmes may be a dress rehearsal for a bigger fight looming on the horizon: the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Rehnquist has been dropping hints about retiring. Send a signal to President Bush now that pro-choice activists will not let him appoint another anti-choice ideologue to our nation's top court.

Important Message From Peter Schurman & MoveOn.Org About Getting Rid Of Rumsfeld

It's time to raise the stakes in our demand that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld be fired. We need your help today to put a powerful new TV ad on the air. We now know Rumsfeld personally approved a policy that "encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners," violating their fundamental human rights under the Geneva convention. Our new ad will help make sure everyone in the country knows about Rumsfeld’s direct responsibility for the prisoner debacle, but to air it we need your help. Here's the script:

The screen pans slowly up the Statue of Liberty, ultimately revealing that her head is hooded. The narrator says:

"They said we were going to Iraq to bring American values: democracy, liberty, justice. But something has gone terribly wrong." "It's been reported that Donald Rumsfeld initiated a plan that encouraged the physical coercion and sexual humiliation of prisoners, violations of international law. Rumsfeld has placed the men under his command in even more danger." "Why hasn't George Bush fired this man?"

Click here to help us put this ad on the air:

https://www.moveon.org/hooded/

New evidence of Rumsfeld's responsibility for the torture at Abu Ghraib prison is surfacing daily, and on Tuesday his top deputy admitted seriously miscalculating the Iraqis' willingness to put up with the American occupation. Yet President Bush still refuses to remove Rumsfeld from his post. Although Bush has apologized to the world for the torture, every day Rumsfeld keeps his job sends the opposite message -- that Americans don't mind all that much. Every day Rumsfeld stays, Iraq grows more volatile, increasing the danger to our troops. Every day he stays, Iraqis who work with us are killed, recently including the president of the Iraqi Governing Council. And every day Rumsfeld stays, potential terrorists harden in their anger toward America. Yet, in the face of this snowballing disaster, Bush's posture boils down to an arrogant "so what?".

It's time to make our demand for accountability impossible for Bush to ignore. We're taking our campaign to the next level, beginning with this TV ad. We'll also run radio and print ads soon, and next week we'll hold constituent meetings with dozens of key Senate and House offices, calling for Rumsfeld's ouster. Michael Berg, whose son Nicholas was recently beheaded in Iraq, said: "I can't stand even more than those murderers who took my son's life, those who sit and make policies to end lives and break the lives of the still living." We need your help today to jump-start our campaign to fire Rumsfeld. Every time we ask for your help, you step up. Thank you, more than we can say.