AN OPEN LETTER TO PAUL WELLSTONE

[max sg]

An Open Letter to Paul Wellstone
By Max Gordon

Senator Wellstone: I will not go on about the curious timing of your death. People are very impatient with conspiracy theories these days, even when past theories have revealed conspiracies. Still, I read with weary cynicism that you spoke to a meeting of war veterans in Willmar, Minnesota in October 2002 and told them that Dick Cheney said to you, "If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush Administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota." Days later, you were dead.

You voted against Bush’s unilateral attack on Iraq, against Bush’s Homeland Security Department and in favor of an independent 9-11 investigation over Bush's and Cheney’s objections. Your wife, who shared your courage and persuasiveness and would have continued your legacy, was dead also, preventing a repeat of John Ashcroft’s defeat by the wife of deceased air-crash victim Mel Carnahan. I am still working through my anger at you and your wife. (It’s always easier to be angry at the dead ones.) Why didn’t you understand the danger you were in? After a threat like that, couldn’t you two have flown economy class on the biggest commercial airline you could find?

Senator, you were not a whore and you did not have a price. Feeling disillusioned after the election of 2000, I desperately needed a politician to have faith in; and as a powerful voice of dissent against the war, you were asking serious questions about America, obviously deadly ones. After you died, I waited for you to become a martyr. Instead, the media said, "Oh well, shit happens," and I never heard your name mentioned on television again.

I am writing this to you because I am hoping it will help me to understand what is happening to us. I feel the country is falling apart. Our democracy and constitution are threatened, our civil liberties may soon disappear, and I don’t know what the hell to do about it.

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http://lettertowellstone.blogspot.com)