Dear Freepress,

I want to let Fitrakis and Wasserman know that I applaud their intelligently written article and many useful references.

I have been dismayed by the reception of this film by moderate and even liberal critics.

During these perilous times, I have become something of a news junkie out of self defense. I had the same response when I read their disclaimers; don't these people read?

The body of evidence supporting the oil pipeline "connections" and the Bush/Saudi allegations is substantial as they have written. Where's the outrage? What are these people being threatened with that they aim their guns at their own?

The audience are expressing themselves with their wallets and obviously disagree with the pundits. Hopefully some of them will Google these issues and some will be journalists who will dig even deeper.

I was also struck by journalists who criticized the film for being entertaining and followed with a list of mind numbing statistics and boring information, inadvertently revealing their complete lack of understanding of the film media and perhaps a bit of envy.

If we, the citizens of this nation, prevent the Bush Administration and its apologists from placing their blood-stained hands upon our ears, turn away from the voices of caution rising in chorus from the Establishment and simply listen to the sounds of chaos emanating from Iraq, we will hear the infamous, unmistakable echo of Vietnam attempting to tell us the terrible truth: this war, too, is sound and fury signifying nothing.

Nothing but pointless and tragic death and destruction. Nothing but the systematic dehumanization of our soldiers and of the people of Iraq. Nothing but the absolute futility of a nation attempting to impose its imperial power upon a people who refuse to accept it.

Those who still support the war deny they hear the echo. They insist that this war is different than Vietnam. And in a sense, they are right; this war is different in many respects--from its circumstances, to the nature and intensity of its combat, to its lower casualty counts on both sides. But the echo of Vietnam emanates not from the exact qualitative nature of this war or the quantitative measures of its death and destruction; it

"On this night I would like to depart from the usual speech demanded on such occasions when, every four years, we celebrate the process of democracy. On this night, ladies and gentlemen, I would instead like to speak about America's children.

While our nation has dutifully kept its gaze fixed on approaching catastrophes, we have become blind to the catastrophes already upon us. In this the most economically developed nation in the world, at least nine million children are uninsured and receive little or no preventive medical or dental care. This is to say nothing of the millions more undocumented children in our midst.

Millions of our children live in substandard housing. Millions are suffering mental and physical malnutrition from chronic hunger and chronic neglect and abuse. Our infant mortality rate ranks an abysmal 28th internationally. An astounding one-third of American three year-olds have not received their complete immunizations. Over the past few years of difficult economic times, all of these numbers have been growing.

And while our nation obsesses over threats from abroad, every day here at

At convention time, in years gone by, pundits would decry with patronizing chuckles the supposed proclivity of the Democratic Party to "tear itself apart." Auto-rupture is actually a good thing. As Hegel once said, "a political party only truly exists when it is divided against itself." In Hegel's sense, the Democratic Party has ceased to exist. The pundits have had their wish. The party is united, in the peace of death.

        Let's start with the obvious. The central political issue in this first decade of the 21st century is the decay of the American political system and of the two prime parties that share the spoils. Wherever one looks, at the gerrymandered districts, the balloting methods, the fundraising, corruption fumes like vapors from a vast swamp. In the House of Representatives today, only some 35 seats are in serious contention. The rest have been gerrymandered into permanent incumbencies.