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In a lively and insightful roundtable discussion, Ralph hosts former Marine company commander, Matthew Hoh, who when not deployed also worked in the Pentagon and the State Department and independent and unembedded Iraq war correspondent, Dahr Jamail. They mark the twentieth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and discuss the consequences of that misbegotten and illegal war. Plus, we hear a clip from Ralph\u2019s and Patti Smith\u2019s antiwar concert tour conducted in 2005.

Dahr Jamail is the author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, as well as The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption. He is co-editor (with Stan Rushworth) of We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth.

It\u2019s hard to even articulate the level of suffering (in Iraq). And this is the country that exists today, that I got to leave, the military got to leave\u2014 at least for the most part. But the Iraqi people can\u2019t leave. And this is what they have to live with today.

Dahr Jamail

Matthew Hoh is a Senior Fellow with the Center for International Policy. Mr. Hoh took part in the American occupation of Iraq, first with a State Department reconstruction and governance team and then as a Marine Corps company commander. When not deployed, he worked on Afghanistan and Iraq war policy and operations issues at the Pentagon and State Department. In 2009, he resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan with the State Department over the American escalation of the war.

This consistent line of violence directed against the Iraqi people to achieve American political aims had been established for decades. And I went into it thinking that somehow we were different\u2026 \u201cIf I go into this war, I can affect the people around me because I am going to be good and I am going to be moral and I am not going to do bad things.\u201d And that\u2019s a complete fallacy. That\u2019s an incredible mistake.

Matthew Hoh

We have to go into this history because it\u2019s going to happen again and again and again. The warmongers are active again on the Ukraine War now. More and more, we\u2019re moving toward a conflict with Russia...Who knows what will happen, because there\u2019s no break on our government. It\u2019s as if it was a dictatorship when it comes to foreign policy.

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven\u2019t Heard1. From Jewish Currents: Last May, amid rising antisemitic attacks by the far-right, Anti-Defamation League president Jonathan Greenblatt announced that the organization would devote more energy to combating anti-Zionism and described Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) as \u201cextremist\u201d and the \u201cphoto inverse of the extreme right.\u201d Within the group, staffers dissented to this rhetoric. Greenblatt called a special meeting over Zoom to address this dissent, ending by stating \u201c[if] you...can\u2019t square the fact that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, then maybe this isn\u2019t the place for you.\u201d

2. The Congressional Workers Union continues along its long road. The union reports 100% of staffers for Senator Ed Markey voted to unionize; once recognized, this will be the first ever unionized Senate office. Additionally, while the Republican majority in the House has sought to arrest unionization efforts, a new report from Demand Progress\u2019 Kevin Mulshine (a former counsel at the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights) contends that they can continue their efforts under the Congressional Accountability Act.

5. In Georgia, judges denied bail to 22 of 23 citizens engaged in peaceful protest against the Cop City project. These protesters are charged with \u201cdomestic terrorism,\u201d according to NPR. Many prominent civil liberties organizations signed a letter objecting to this decision, including Amnesty International, the National Lawyers Guild, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, Palestine Legal, the American Friends Service Committee, and CODEPINK. Additionally, an independent autopsy published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggests that \u2013 contrary to the police\u2019s statement at the time \u2013 murdered protester Manuel \u201cTortuguita\u201d Ter\xe1n was in a cross-legged, seated position with their hands raised when they were shot to death by Georgia police.

6. From The Hill: Following a two-year battle, Gigi Sohn has requested that President Biden withdraw her nomination for the Federal Communications Commission. This follows three confirmation hearings and a nasty media campaign against Ms. Sohn, who confounded \u201cPublic Knowledge\u201d alongside Laurie Racine and David Bollier. The opposition to her nomination came primarily from Republicans, but Democrats caving on this nomination is just another in a long pattern. The FCC is now left with a 2-2 partisan deadlock.

8. Editors for Saturday Night Live will strike if they can\u2019t reach a deal on their contract by the end of the month, the LA Times reports. According to the Motion Picture Editors Guild, editors are \u201cpaid far below industry standards.\u201d

10. From the Guardian: In Kingston, New York \u2013 a post-industrial town where the median per-capita income hovers around $32,000, and nearly one in five residents live below the federal poverty line \u2013 rents have skyrocketed up to 30% in the last three years. Now, using emergency rent control measures a board of tenants is seeking an unprecedented citywide rent reduction. Amid fierce resistance from the landlord lobby, this issue is now winding its way through the courts.