Al Weed, Congressional candidate
I'm in Kansas for a couple of days, doing something urgent and personal...
Back home in Virginia, meanwhile, I see that Al Weed, the Democratic challenger for our local US Congressional seat, has been getting some some potentially supportive attention in various places. (Here and here.)
I've known Al for a few years now. He's a former Special Ops officer who's served in numerous overseas places, from Vietnam to Bosnia (the latter, while in the reserves). He's been cultivating a vineyard not far from Charlottesville for many years now . Crucially, from my point of view, he has been quite clear on the question of the war against Iraq, and quite clearly opposed to it, from the very beginning.
On his website now, he writes:
- If the new Iraqi government and the people of Iraq want our troops to stay and help rebuild their country, we should oblige. If they want us to leave, we should oblige that wish as well. We must encourage the Iraqi people to forge their own future.
As Americans, we must understand the potential costs of a long term presence in Iraq...
Our men and women in uniform deserve to return to their families. To stay indefinitely puts us at risk of being dragged into a guerilla war without a foreseeable end and cost us dearly in lives and resources. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, I speak from experience when I say that this is a possibility that we must carefully avoid.
- (1) The solid good sense of his position on Iraq has become much more evident to all the American people-- including, no doubt, to the voters in Virginia's 5th Congressional District.
(2) Virgil Goode has become badly ensnared in the Wade-Cunningham-MZM corruption scandal.
(3) Al, and the 5th district Democratic Committee have all worked hard and effectively to rebuild the Democratic apparatus in the district. You see, Goode had originally been elected from the district as a Democrat. Then he left the party and ran once as an independent. Then in the next election he ran as a Republican. Those switches left the Democratic Party apparatus in tatters, and it has been a long hard slog to rebuild it.
It's a little hard to blog from here as the folks I'm staying with have no broadband and just one landline phone. So as I'm posting this now over their phone line, I'm completely blocking them from using it!