[PAA-Discuss] FW: This article of most importance to Arabs & Muslims

[Lee Loe]

Very iimportant history. Lee L/Mom/Grandma Lee

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From: Ahmad Al-Sadoon [mailto:alsadoon44 at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2007 12:23 PM
To: Ahmad Al-Sadoon
Subject: This article of most importance to Arabs & Muslims


Assalamu aleikum,

Two months ago I wrote an article about Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) and why
Arabs, Muslims and right-thinking Americans should support him for President
of the United States.  No Arab or Muslim paid attention.  I then send the
article to the Muslim Observer but it took me over a month to have it
published.  They did not publish it until I made at least 6 or 7 phone calls
followed by several emails.  It finally appeared in the 24th issue of TMO on
June 7-14, 2007.  

Why is it so difficult to publish an article about a great man like Sen.
Mike Gravel but is so easy for amateur writers to publish worthless stories
to glorify people like Masrour Khan who has become a pariah in our
community?

I urge all Arabs and Muslims to support Sen. Mike Gravel for President and
not follow the charlatans in our community who often support wicked
candidates and they want Muslims to follow suit.  

It's wise for every one to read the following article by Amy Goodman of
Democracy Now about Daniel Ellsberg and Sen. Mike Gravel and how they
brought the Vietnam War to an end.  After the Pentagon papers were released,
it preoccupied the US Senate for over a year and it ended with President
Nixon resignation, which brought the Vietnam War to a close.  These are the
kind of people Americans need today - brave, patriotic and persistent but
most of all care about humanity.

Please read and ponder about this great chapter of the US history.  I
watched the whole thing unravel during the Nixon era in the early '70s.
When the Americans found the TRUTH they got bold against the Nixon
Administration, the VP and Secretary of Defense.  The public often drowned
public speeches by Nixon and his men.  In fact, the anti-war movement often
pelted the Vice-President Spiro Agnew's limousine with rotten eggs. It's
true Americans couldn't do that today because they have become complacent
but they need some rejuvenation. Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) is what America
needs today.

Note: you really need to listen to his debates with other presidential
candidates and how the senator mocks them all - Hillary, Obama, Biden and
the whole shebang.  Unlike all the yes men of washington, Senator Mike
Gravel has all qualifications of a great statesman.

Ahmad Al-Sadoon



Time Is Right for New Pentagon Papers

By Amy Goodman

06/30/07 " <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/> ICH" -- - Of the
Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Mike Gravel is probably the least
well recognized. His dark-horse candidacy may be the butt of jokes on the
late-night comedy shows, but that doesn't faze former Pentagon analyst
Daniel Ellsberg: "Here is a senator who was not afraid to look foolish. That
is the fear that keeps people in line all their lives." 

The famed whistle-blower joined Gravel this past weekend on a panel
commemorating the 35th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers
by the Beacon Press, a small, nonprofit publisher affiliated with the
Unitarian Universalist Association. It was this publisher that Gravel turned
to in 1971, after dozens of others had turned him down, to publish the 7,000
pages that Ellsberg had delivered to Gravel to put into the public record. 

The story of the leak of the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times is
famous, but how they got published as a book, with Gravel's face on the
jacket, reads like a John Grisham novel. 

Ellsberg was a military analyst working for the RAND Corp. in the 1960s when
he was asked to join an internal Pentagon group tasked with creating a
comprehensive, secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Ellsberg
photocopied thousands of documents and leaked them to The New York Times,
which published excerpts in June 1971. 

President Richard Nixon immediately got a restraining order, stopping the
newspaper from printing more. It was the first time in U.S. history that
presses were stopped by federal court order. The Times fought the
injunction, and won in the Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. United
States. Following that decision, The Washington Post also began running
excerpts. Ellsberg gave the Pentagon Papers to the Post on the condition
that one of its editors, Ben Bagdikian, deliver a copy to Gravel. 

Gravel recalled the exchange, which he set up at midnight outside the
storied Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.: "I used to work in
intelligence; I know how to do these things." Gravel pulled his car up to
Bagdikian's, the two opened their trunks and Gravel heaved the boxes
personally, worried that only he could claim senatorial immunity should they
get caught with the leaked documents. His staff aides were posted as
lookouts around the block. 

Thwarted in his attempt to read the Pentagon Papers into the public record
as a filibuster to block the renewal of the draft, Gravel called a
late-night meeting of the obscure Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds,
which he chaired, and began reading the papers aloud there. He broke down
crying while reading the details of Vietnamese civilian deaths. Because he
had begun the reading, he was legally able to enter all 7,000 pages of the
Pentagon Papers, once top-secret, into the public record. 

Though ridiculed by the press for his emotional display, Gravel was
undaunted. He wanted the Pentagon Papers published as a book so Americans
could read what had been done in their name. Only Beacon Press accepted the
challenge. 

Robert West, the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association at the
time, approved the publication. With that decision, he said, "We started
down a path that led through two and a half years of government
intimidation, harassment and threat of criminal punishment." As Beacon
weathered subpoenas, FBI investigations of its bank accounts and other
chilling probes, Gravel attempted to extend his senatorial immunity to the
publisher. The bid failed in the U.S Supreme Court (the first time that the
U.S. Senate appeared before the court), but not without a strongly worded
dissent from Justice William O. Douglas: "In light of the command of the
First Amendment we have no choice but to rule that here government, not the
press, is lawless." 

Which brings us to today. Sitting next to West and Gravel, Ellsberg repeated
the plea that he is making in speeches all over the United States: "The
equivalent of the Pentagon Papers exist in safes all over Washington, not
only in the Pentagon, but in the CIA, the State Department and elsewhere. My
message is to them: Take the risk, reveal the truth under the lies of your
own bosses and your superiors, obey your oath to the Constitution, which
every one of those officials took, not to the commander in chief, but to the
Constitution of the United States." 

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio
news hour airing on 500 stations in North America. 

C 2007 Amy Goodman. Distributed by King Features Syndicate 
This article was first published at http://www.truthdig.com/



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