Yesterday, Jonathan spoke to the Democratic leaders of 41 upstate counties at a meeting of the Democratic Rural Conference in Ithaca. He was a virtual unknown to the group and his name did not even appear on the written straw ballot. To be able to address the conference, he needed to be nominated by a delegate, and receive a second from a different delegate. He was able to do so.

According to the conference organizers themselves, his five-minute speech (the maximum allowed for candidates) probably got the most reaction from the 150 people in the auditorium. It focused entirely on the Iraq war. And he got more votes than Tom Suozzi, the Nassau County Executive who is running for governor against Eliot Spitzer and has far more name recognition.

Our point this morning is what we have always believed: if the message is heard, if the campaign becomes about issues, people will respond.
Here’s a snippet from the fair coverage from the Albany Times Union (the rest of the article dealt with other races).

Jonathan Tasini will appear on tonight's Capitol Connection radio talk show at 8:30pm. WAMC in Albany will brodcast the show on 90.3 FM/1400 AM tonight, with a repeat airing at 1:30pm Saturday.

If you don't live in the area, listen live at:

http://www.wamc.org/listen.html

I've always felt that politicians who are very quick to repeat the slogan "support the troops" do so only as a political rhetorical ploy--not with any honest feeling behind the slogan or, certainly not with any intention of actually doing something to support them (read: give them the right armor to take into combat).

Now, a new poll of U.S. troops serving in Iraq shows that 29 percent of the troops think that we should pull out immediately. And 72 percent think we should be out within one year.

So, the message to pro-war politicians like Hillary Clinton, who refuse to call for an immediate end to the invasion or even contemplate a timetable for withdrawal, is clear: the troops are saying that if you want to support us, bring us home now.

Scores of people are now dead in Iraq. The New York Times calls the violence "the worst sectarian violence since the American invasion."

But, this should come as no surprise. Indeed, the strife in Iraq is the reality, not the pronouncements of progress in Iraq that we hear from the president. The U.S. invasion set the stage for this violence. War begets more war and more violence. The long-standing, generations-long tensions between the Sunnis and Shiites have been made worse by the U.S. occupation.

And it's the reason the occupation must end immediately. I can't predict what will happen once U.S. troops leave--the invasion has created a wound that will not easily heal.

Jonathan speaks on The Paul Berenson Show. Listen to him here.