In the remaining months, we should focus on achieving more robust international involvement in training of Iraqi soldiers, police officers, judges, teachers, and doctors - all key elements needed to end the sectarian and civil conflict and build Iraq's future.

The military's own report says that one-third of deaths and casualties could have been avoided if proper body armor and vehicle armor had been provided from the start of the war.

The conduct of President Bush's war of choice has been plagued with incompetent civilian leadership decisions that have cost many lives and rendered the war on and occupation of Iraq a strategic policy disaster for the United States.

So a truthful assessment of how America is doing in the war on terror as a result of President Bush's war on Iraq is that we have been set back by decades.

War is murder. And the military preparations now being made for a potential major confrontation are aimed at collective murder. In a nuclear age the victims would be numbered by the millions. This naked truth must be faced.

I'm at peace with myself. The main thing is not letting people dictate what I do or what I am.

When I was a youngster growing up in South Dakota, we never referred to the national debt, it was always referred to as the war debt because it stemmed from World War I.

In 1961, an official U.S. commission oversaw thousands of events to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the American Civil War. All 50 states joined in, but not surprisingly, the biggest events took place in the 11 southern states that made up the defeated Confederacy.