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

Obama and Afghanistan

WASHINGTON

MATTEO DELL'AIRA, via Simonetta Gola
Matteo dell'Aira is medical coordinator of the NGO Emergency's hospital in Lashkar Gah and has worked in Afghanistan for the past ten years.

NORMAN SOLOMON

Solomon just wrote the piece "A Bomber Jacket Doesn't Cover the Blood" about Obama's visit to Afghanistan.

He is author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

KAREN J. GREENBERG

Obama spoke to U.S. troops on Sunday at Bagram Air Base, which has a detention facility. Greenberg wrote the piece "Obama's Guantanamo? Bush's Living Legacy at Bagram Prison."

Greenberg is the executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. Her latest book is The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days.

See: "ACLU Demands Disclosure of Basic Facts About Bagram Detainees: Government Continues to Suppress Key Information About Hundreds Detained at Secretive Prison."

Bishop THOMAS GUMBLETON
Gumbleton is a Catholic Bishop from Detroit. He said Thursday: "Waging war and killing in Afghanistan will never bring peace to Afghanistan. ... I don't trust the motivations of our establishment. They talk of benevolence, but they seem to have designs over what they regard as 'our resources.'"

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.