Thursday morning the war in Iraq came crashing home for the staffers and former staffers of Air America Radio. We learned that a wonderful friend and much loved colleague, Andi Parhamovich, was killed in Baghdad.
She was 28 years old, whip smart, funny and beautiful inside and out. Until a few months ago she was a spokeswoman for Air America, a challenging and often thankless job that she did with great skill and good humor.
I was lucky enough to work with her for more than a year, but I had no idea how gutsy and determined she was until she announced her plan to go to Iraq.
As her closest colleague and dear friend Jaime Horn put it, "Andi had a fierce spirit and determination to change the world around her. It led her to a job in politics, and then to work at Air America Radio, but it wasn't enough. She felt a calling. She wanted to be an advocate for democracy, and that calling led her to Iraq."
Andi worked for the International Republican Institute in Iraq before joining the National Democratic Institute, a nonprofit whose mission is "to build political and civic organizations, safeguard elections, and to promote citizen participation, openness and accountability in government" in all parts of the world. NDI advises local politicians and activists on the mechanics of democratic practices and institutions. Its chair is Madeleine Albright.
Andi and three security guards were killed in Baghdad when their convoy was ambushed and attacked in a mostly Sunni neighborhood. She had just completed a workshop on democracy for local Sunni political activists. You can read the terrible details here.
Andi Parhamovich's death is a story that has been told more than three thousand times across America since this horrific war began. That doesn't make it any less painful; it makes it worse.
I can't help but believe, now more than ever, that Barbara Boxer's question to Condi Rice last week was not only not impertinent, it was the single most pertinent question to ask. Who pays the price for the war makers' decisions? Not the war makers, that's for sure. They won't be grieving for loved ones killed in Iraq because they have none there. They will never personally pay the price for their recklessness. Will they ever know when the price is too great for those who do pay it?
The price is too great. It has been too great since the first bomb fell.
Andi Parhamovich led her life fearlessly. She was doing the real work of trying to nurture democracy-- which could not be done on a computer in her living room, or from an undisclosed location in Washington, nor from a radio or television studio. Now is the time to honor her contributions, and send our deepest sympathies to her family.
Peace, Andi.

Other articles on andi:
Activist slain in Iraq 'was an idealist' LA Times
Engagement trip was ahead Chicago Tribune
American Killed in Iraq Was Set to Marry Washington Post
Fianc é will bring body home from Iraq Cleveland Plains Dealer

Hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces have described President Bush’s decision to escalate the Iraq war as a “Hail Mary pass.”
But that’s the wrong metaphor.
Mr. Bush isn’t Roger Staubach, trying to pull out a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He’s Charles Keating, using other people’s money to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut down — and squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars, along the way.
The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, people like Mr. Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial success. Mr. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success.
The “surge” is just another stalling tactic, designed to buy more time.
Oh, and one of the favorite techniques used by the owners of savings and loan associations to generate phony profits — it involved making high-interest loans to crooked or flaky real estate developers — came to be known as the “Texas strategy.”
 

Friday, January 19, 2007 - Updated: 07:16 AM EST
DALLAS - A group of Methodist ministers from across the nation launched an online petition drive Thursday urging Southern Methodist University to stop trying to land George W. Bush’s presidential library.
The petition, on a new Web site, http://www.prote ctsmu.org, says that ”as United Methodists, we believe that the linking of his presidency with a university bearing the Methodist name is utterly inappropriate.”
”Methodists have a long history of social conscience, so questions about the conduct of this president are very concerning,” said one of the petition’s organizers, the Rev. Andrew J. Weaver of New York, who graduated from SMU’s Perkins School of Theology.
Brad Cheves, SMU’s vice president for external affairs and development, said Thursday that the Methodist church is diverse in its membership and opinions and that those involved with the petition reflect only one view.
 

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY The exchange was billed as the ultimate cable news vs. fake news smackdown: Stephen Colbert, who pretends to be a Bill O’Reilly-esque television pundit on his comedy show, “The Colbert Report,” was a guest on Mr. O’Reilly’s show on Fox News last night, and Mr. O’Reilly appeared on Mr. Colbert’s mock talk show on Comedy Central. And Mr. O’Reilly deserves credit for being a good sport, because his was the thankless role. The imitation was a lot funnier — and sharper-edged — than the real thing. When a few members of Stephen Colbert’s studio audience booed Mr. O’Reilly as he walked on to the set, Mr. O’Reilly joked that they must be plants sent by his tormentor on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart. Mr. Colbert, in character as a media-elite-hating archconservative, dismissed Mr. Stewart as a “sexual predator.” He paused for a beat, then said to his guest, “You have no idea what that’s like.” It could have been an innocuous joke, of course, but it sounded like an oblique reference to the sexual harassment suit that a former producer on “The O’Reilly Factor” filed against her boss in 2004 and settled out of court.

Colbert says to Bill " ...if you are an act then what am I ?" Keith Olbermanns take on it

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The Bush library ..