On April 17th of this year, John McCain's chief foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, took $200,000 from the Republic of Georgia. That same day, John McCain talked on the phone with Mikheil Saakashvili (transliterations vary) and issued a statement condemning the Russians and vowing US support for the Georgian Republic.

George often reminded me of connections between family and friends. My parents were political animals. Mom was a wobbly; Dad was a New Deal Democrat. Mom put on a fantastic table.  I remember one she did as a fund raiser for Patrick Lucey in 1970. Patrick won. Dad was a story teller and held court in the local pubs. Between them they contributed to the emergence of the Democratic Party in Adams County, Wisconsin.

You, you're not aware
That we're aware
Of your despair
Don't show your tears
To your oppressor
Don't show your tears

CHORUS:
Try not to cry little one
You're not alone
I'll stand by you
Try not to cry little one
My heart is your stone
I'll throw with you

Isam:
'Ayn Jalut where David slew Goliath
This very same place that we be at
Passing through the sands of times
This land's been the victim of countless crimes
From Crusaders and Mongols
to the present aggression
Then the Franks, now even a crueller oppression
If these walls could speak,
imagine what would they say

For me in this path that I walk on
there's only one way
Bullets may kill, bones may break
Still I throw stones like David before me and I say

I was born in the early days of World War II. My father came home from the Pacific 6' 1" tall and 109 pounds. His brother came home from too many missions over Germany and never quite became whole. My wife's father did not return from France. One of my neighbors left his jaw in Europe.

I do not believe in the utility of force nor a just war. I do believe that we must remain connected to those deployed so far from home for they are a part of us and we must make every effort to remain "whole".

I will spend Memorial Day with friends, friends on the path to understanding, and reread the words of a high school student from Sierra Leone, Amanda Bradley, who knows the horror of war and the yearning for peace more intimately than I.

Explaining subtlety is an admission of failure. My blog on Jimmy Carter contained nine references, eight of which were examples of newspeak. One, AlJazeera, was an appeal to understanding and a rejection of categorical imperatives. The fault lies not in Jimmy Carter, but in the way we talk about and understand the "War on Terror".

I am going to make it easy this time, Osama bin Laden is the quintessential example of a "terrorist". The call to kill civilians in the fatwas of 1996 and 1999 fit the definition of terrorism. And so what does that imply?

In the current mindset, the solution is simple - kill him. And if you can't do that,  kill everyone who espouses him, kill everyone who shelters him, and if all else fails kill everything he says.

Mortimer Zuckerman writing in the US News and World Report said "Former President Jimmy Carter, acting out his stubborn, self-righteous moralism and his stunning vanity, persists in legitimizing terrorism." Aljazeera says "Give Peace and Jimmy Carter a Chance". Michael Craft, a former senior adviser in the State Department added "Mr. Carter's well-publicized meeting plans amount to rewarding terrorists..." Congressman Eric Cantor said "It is shocking that a former president of the United States would sit down and speak with a terrorist kingpin like Khaled Mashal.This type of meeting will only be misconstrued in the region as a sign of legitimacy for Hamas terrorism,".

While the Administration through its mouthpieces David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker make relative security in Iraq a function of the "surge", recent events suggest levels of violence are more dependent on the actions of one man than 40,000 US troops.

That man is Muqtada al-Sadr. al-Sadr had reason to celebrate the fall of Saddam. His grandfather was executed by the Saddam regime and his father and two of his family were murdered in 1999. al-Sadr's stronghold, popularly referred to as Sadr City, is home to perhaps two million Shia discriminated against by the Bathists and not faring all that well under Maliki. Plausibly as a matter of self defense, the Sadr organization formed several large militias, some in other localities including Basra. In desperate straights, the al-Sadr organization provides health, education and social services to an equally desperate population.

In an obvious payback to would be theocrats, the United States Agency for International Development, convinced administrators at Johns Hopkins University to modify the search software at the largest index of population information - "Popline" - to censor searches on the keyword "abortion". They succeeded.

I visited Popline today - http://db.jhuccp.org/ics-wpd/popweb/ - and type in a few terms related to but not using the forbidden word "abortion".

Evacuation  is one method of abortion in which the fetus is literally sucked out of the womb. Dilation and curettage is a mechanical method where the cervix is dilated and the womb is scraped. Mefepristone is a drug which induces premature delivery.

It is important to put a face on the terrorists. If we are going to spend $3,000,000,000,000, potentially destroying the US Economy, making us safe from these individuals we ought to get to know a few.

One of them is a guest of the State of Virginia in the Northern Neck Regional Jail - Sami Al Arian. Upon his arrest in 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a major victory in the "war against terrorism". After a prosecution costing $50,000,000 resulting in zero convictions, the Department of Justice secured a plea bargain agreement which would result in Sami's deportation.

He is still here.

Anti immigrations forces have agreed upon a strategy that works. Make life bad enough for a class of people so that they will leave. The immediate benefit of such a strategy is that you can blame your problems on largely defenseless populations and deflect criticism of those who created and benefited in the first place.

The first principle of the global economy (and all large scale economy) is the exploitation of cheap labor. In Galax, textile and furniture production in China is an obvious example. Migrants are mere commodities in the corporate toolbox.

The second principle is power. If corporations can get nations to go to war, how much easier is it to keep the workforce compliant either by the threat of arrest and deportation or competition from a segment who cannot complain about workplace conditions and will shut up, work hard and never - never complain.