Clarification and a challenge from a Stanford Progressive Activist
I received this email yesterday, along with a group of other people (it was sent to a listserve). I'm going to keep the poster of the email anonymous on this website unless he/she emails me permission to post their identity. The sender has raised a touchy point, and one I will respond to shortly.

Elliot- i don't usually respond to your emails, though i appreciate that you put me on your list (i suppose from my posts to the republicans-chat list), but i wanted to say a coupla things on this issue, even though you retracted it later (which i appreciated) when you realized you'd been taken in and it was a joke:

1. i'd like you to know as a longtime progressive activist, i do not support, and *never* have supported attacks against innocent civilians to further *ANY* cause. and i venture to say the *vast* majority of activists fall into my camp on this one. just so you know.

2. further, please do a Google search on "p2og" and read a bit of what comes up on the first page. the fact is -- even though it was a "joke" by that radio personality -- Rumsfeld has quite seriously wanted to form a group within the DoD to coordinate the instigation of such attacks against US international and domestic targets for a long time. had you ever heard of this? ever since i learned of this, i've thought that besides being unethical, kind of nuts, and power-hungry, it seems perhaps traitorous, to me. but of course, since the Sec'y of Defense called for it vs. some liberal talk show host, i suppose it's fundamentally different?

if Wheeler (or any other non-hawk) had actually called for those attacks -- maybe you could explain to me the precise difs between what these two viewpoints of Wheeler and Rumsfeld would have been..?

i know there are some, but i'm a little confused as to how they differ in practical outcome.