I was troubled to hear Howard Dean's interview with Rachel Maddow on Air America last evening. Regarding impeachment, he stated:
(1) the American people want healing more than the satisfaction of justice via impeachment and should not be put through it;
(2) there are more important things for Congress to pursue than focusing attention on just the two top officers of this administration and it would take up all the remaining time;
(3) if Congress pursues impeachment we will lose the Dem majority in 2008 because the Clinton impeachment gave the process a bad name;
(4) justice can be pursued against Bush etal "if we still want to" under a Dem president and legitimate Attorney General.

Regarding ending the war, he stated:
(1) Bush will not do it;
(2) the American people will not tolerate cutting off funding as it leaves the troops "high and dry";
(3) it is logistically impossible to bring the troops home quickly;
(4) if we bring the troops home we risk Iraqis converting to al-Quaeda enmass;
(5) we need to "clean up the big mess we have made over there" before leaving.

I am disappointed in Dean's views. It might sound like a safe, reasonable set of positions in a shallow sense at first, but it does not deal with realities of the polls, or with the noose tightening around our Democracy and the Constitution as ominous Executive Orders continue to flow out of the White House, filling in the remaining chinks in laws passed over the last several years which create totalitarian regime upon the president's orders.

The Congressional hearings are encouraging, but I don't know if they will result in major corrections before the administration gets us into another war and/or suspends the Constitution entirely based on a supposed domestic or international emergency. Kucinich's strategies are sounding better and better, as are those of Progressive Democrats of America.

Howard Dean says he is not holding our troops over a barrel for political security, but I'm not sure that they are not the collateral damage, so to speak, of Dean, Reid and Pelosi's strategy to win and maintain power with the belief that a long period of power is necessary to correct the devastation of the Republican Congresses and presidencies.

While politicians compute probabilities, I think about the mounting injuries and deaths of many peoples, the growing hatred, hunger, impoverishment, migration, and environmental destruction, in addition to the destruction of our military.

Citizens have a right to expect that their elected official's central goal is the common good and not their personal enrichment or expedient influence. But the reality is to effect change they must gain and remain in office, and as campaign finance stands, that is most easily paid for by big corporate money.

Unfortunately, corporations have gone global. And so, the common good of any particular people is no longer important as long as someone in the world can produce the product and someone else can buy it. I think the way out of this corrupt, war-mongering jungle has to be bold and new. That is not what Howard Dean or the Dem leadership are proposing.