A DAY FULL OF NO IRAN WAR ACTIVITY

Today I spent a couple of hours working at the voting polls here in Bath gathering signatures on a petition calling on the Maine congressional delegation to speak out now and forcefully against Bush's impending attack on Iran. We will have had volunteers there from morning til the polls close at 8:00 pm.

Our local group, PeaceWorks, is doing this in several towns in our MidCoast Maine region today.

The response from the public was better than I had expected. I had little trouble getting people to sign the petition or take the leaflet that we had prepared on the subject.

Earlier in the day we taped my public access cable TV show on the same subject - an Iran attack. We turned the tables and had one of our PeaceWorks leaders, Rosalie Tyler Paul, interview me. Usually I do the interviewing. Eric Herter produces my show, which is called This Issue, and is now editing it and putting maps of Iran and photos of everyday Iranian life into the final product.

The attack on Iran will likely be done with hundreds of cruise missiles fired from Aegis destroyers that are built right here in the town of Bath at the local shipyard. They cost about $1.2 million each and would hit thousands of targets that have already been identified by U.S. Navy and Israeli military personnel. We know this because last year a friendly Navy officer told us these meetings were underway at the time. This person knew about this because they had direct contact with a person in the meetings.

The Washington Post reported on November 1 that former Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld had earlier instructed administration officials to "keep elevating the threat" and "link Iraq to Iran" as a way to build support for an attack.

A really remarkable article in Esquire magazine (October 18 issue) called The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know is a must read. It clearly reveals how the Bush crew has been, one more time, preparing for war and demonizing Iran while refusing to negotiate with them in a serious way when they have offered to discuss key issues without any pre-conditions. The sources in the article are former right-wing Bush officials. Whistle blowers.

We all need to do more now to stop an illegal and immoral attack on Iran. People at the polls today understood the insanity of an attack but they feel desperate. I told people that U.S. citizens have to take responsibility for what is being done in our name. We can't be good Germans and act like nothing is happening.