In listening to tonight’s debate there was however a candidate that did capture my imagination.  When Chris Matthews asked former Senator Mike Gravel where he has been for ten years; he stated “hiding under a rock” in shame of how this government operates.  Did he just tap into the apathetic base that normally does not show up to vote who also feel this way?  I think so.  While he may not go onto become the nominee, those that would not normally vote or care can send a message to the other candidates asking; why are you not sounding like Mike?

Even those of us that do care and do show up to the polls but feel something is lacking can still say the same to the other declared candidates.

I would have loved to have heard more from him.  Gravel even chided MSNBC’s, Brian Williams stating, “I feel like a potted plant up here,” To be honest, not enough questions were posed to this candidate, but to the other well known candidates.  Again, it is a case of the media selecting who our candidate will be.  It should be the people who decide.

It was his idea of turning this war into a felony that had me sit up in which MSNBC reported, “Gravel called on Congress to pass a law making it a felony to keep troops in Iraq, charging that “this war in Iraq was lost the second George W. Bush invaded Iraq under a fraudulent basis.”

Some will say this is impossible who live in the beltway environment, but as I have been looking at the Gravel’s campaign web site, the word leadership comes to mind as one reads, “In 1971, he waged a successful one-man filibuster for five months that forced the Nixon administration to cut a deal, effectively ending the draft in the United States. He is most prominently known for his release of the Pentagon Papers, the secret official study that revealed the lies and manipulations of successive U.S. administrations that misled the country into the Vietnam War.” When I hear of elected officials saying something is impossible or certain issues are off the table namely impeachment, they should be looking to Mike Gravel to show them the way.

As Americans look for leaders that do mirror them, I was surprised in reading that Mike Gravel has held many positions in life.  He “was a cab driver in New York City, a clerk on Wall Street and as a brakeman on the Alaska Railroad.” By going on to become a United States senator, he did become that Mr. Smith Goes to Washington persona.

Today a news story broke and one that I had hoped would be brought up in tonight’s debate.  It deals with Osama bin Laden.  Within this article it discusses who would look to execute bin Laden and those that would look to imprison him.  This is a prime example in which we could prosecute defendant, George W. Bush in his failure to capture Osama bin Laden “dead or alive” By not capturing him, he has aided and abetted the enemy.  This terrorist came after us and how dare this president not capture the monster and punish him to the fullest extent of our laws.

If you are one of those apathetic people out there; how dare you not hold Bush accountable on behalf of your fellow citizens?

While normally I am not for the death penalty, I can make an exception in this one case.  He is the monster whose life must be put to an end.  It irked me when Rosie O’Donnell had this to say of terrorists, "Well then, get away from the fear. Don't fear the terrorists. ... They're mothers and fathers." How could she choose to place a face of humanity on those who chose to dehumanize the victims of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks around the world? Don’t fear terrorists is saying, don’t fear rapists and murderers.

By making this war a felony with Bush the defendant, yet another heartbreaking story came out of Iraq today and prior to this debate in which bombers took the lives of 72 innocent Iraqi civilians. While they were not killed by American forces, with our presence in that country, and turning it into a civil war through sectarian violence, President Bush did take the lives of those innocent people.  If the war is illegal, then the taking of any life through such an illegal war is by definition a war crime.  It does not get plainer than that.

When Gravel mentioned the Iraqi death count as being in the hundreds of thousands, I was glad that he did.  We need to know what slaughter was done in our name and with the complicity of the United States Congress.  As I have stated in past articles, all of this will lead to the blow-back effect as innocent people have been murdered and displaced.  Should these blow-backs take place on Bush’s watch, again, he has aided and abetted the enemy in their hatred towards all of us.  Future blood must also be on his hands.

How can we lecture any nation such as Iran as one reads Gravel’s remarks at DNC winter meeting, “The decision to wage preemptive war in Iraq raises the specter of a much deeper problem facing the global community––nuclear proliferation. On this issue, we should first look at ourselves. The U.S. has more deliverable nuclear devices than the rest of the world combined. Just one Trident nuclear submarine can hold the entire world hostage. Yet we continue to build more nuclear devices. Who in the world are we prepared to nuke?” That should send a shiver up everyone’s spine.  Our citizens are going without jobs, going hungry, and no health care and yet; we continue to build more nuclear weapons?

The late president Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

But, I found these comments at that same meeting to be the most striking and fearful, “Most Americans are unaware that the Bush administration, under the cover of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been aggressively initiating a new arms race with Russia and China, whose defense budgets are a small fraction of our own. Our political leadership, controlled by military industrialists, insists on pursuing a Cold War strategy in a post-Cold War era.”  In fact in tonight’s debate, he boldly told the viewers that our defense budget is bigger than many other countries combined.

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