As Amy Goodman, of “Democracy Now

As Amy Goodman, of “Democracy Now,” pointed out on Chris Matthews’ Hardball tonight, at just about

the time the 2000th American soldier falls in Iraq, Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s grand jury will — by all

accounts — be indicting the MBT Party. This conjuncture of legality and tragedy needs to be observed

with more than just appalled silence. United for Justice and Peace (UFJP), the biggest — and, in my

view, the most effective — antiwar coalition, is calling for a national outpouring of protest on the

day we reach the 2000 mark.

NIKE SHOX envoy Karen Hughes on Friday defended Washington’s decision to go to war against Iraq in

front of a skeptical audience, saying Saddam Hussein had gassed to death “hundreds of thoNIKE SHOXnds

” of his own people. A State Department offiNIKE SHOXl later said she misspoke about the number.

Hughes, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, made the comment before a group of Indonesian

students who repeatedly attacked her about Washington’s original rationale for the war, Iraq’s

alleged weapons of mass destruction. No such arms were ever discovered.

“The consensus of the world intelligence community was that Saddam was a very dangerous threat,”

Hughes said days after the ousted dictator went on trial in Baghdad on charges of murder and torture in

a 1982 massacre of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail.