Vulgar and Over-Caffeinated

I had 20 minutes of excerpts from Col. Ann Wright's Jan. 24 speech to the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, but the Flip Video erased itself when a button stuck. That sucks. I'll just have to tell you that Wright related a story of being tossed out and permanently barred from the Washington Press Club on Jan. 23, when Rep. Mitch McConnell denounced her organization, Code Pink, as "vulgar and over-caffeinated."

Wright is hardly vulgar. She is an Army warrant officer and former State Department diplomat who has served everywhere from Micronesia to Mongolia, including stints heading up the diplomatic side of the invasion of Grenada. She was in charge of reopening the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan in 2001, but resigned from the State Department 18 months later over the invasion of Iraq.

Wright urged the audience to pay close attention to "embedded" military recruitment that uses school appearances and arcade games to get high-schoolers to practice for standoff warfare jobs, such as piloting UAV drones. She talked about the courage of working for peace organizations in cities dominated by the military. And she expressed concern about Obama being able to handle the Pakistan-Afghanistan quagmire without getting more civilians killed in the process. Wright said she was willing to give the Karzai plan for involving some Taliban elements in government a chance, but added that the Afghanistan-Taliban-Pakistan-ISI mess may be permanently intractable.

Wish you could have seen the humorous excerpts from her funny speeches, but you'll just have to go and see her for yourself!