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A project of Common Dreams

For Immediate Release
Contact: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Assessing McChrystal and Afghanistan

WASHINGTON

ANN WRIGHT
Wright, a
former State Department diplomat and retired Army colonel, is going to
Afghanistan with a delegation on Friday. Among her numerous
assignments, Wright helped re-open the U.S. embassy in Kabul in 2001.
She resigned from the State Department in protest of the Iraq invasion
in March of 2003.

GARETH PORTER
Porter recently wrote the piece "U.S. Afghan Campaign Plan Says Key Groups Back Taliban."
He is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy and author of the book Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.

RAY McGOVERN
McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years and is on the Steering Group of
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He recently wrote the
piece "Afghanistan for Dummies."
McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.

NORMAN SOLOMON
Executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Solomon -- recently back from Kabul -- is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.