Democrat Jim Webb is running against Allen. Let's talk about him.

What does Jim Webb stand for as a candidate? First and foremost, Jim Webb's stand on National Security and the current war in Iraq: He has put out a position paper clearly stating his goal to end our occupation of Iraq and to stop the Bush Neocon Machine from building the permanent bases and the "Fortress Baghdad" Embassy I have written about on Salon.

Other things I personally like about Webb is that he was an advocate for better treatment of our nation's veterans. Bush is creating a legion of disabled veterans who will require a lifetime of care when and if they finally return from that hell hole that Bush threw them in.

Webb's been in combat. Marine. Vietnam. Grunt. Rifle platoon leader. Officer. Decorations for valor.

But there are those who say just because he served in combat doesn't mean he's going to keep his promises once he's in Congress.

Indeed, you only have to look at John McCain to find a heroic war veteran who rolled over on his back and peed on himself like a bitch dog on behalf of the Republican Party.

What Jim Webb has working for him in Virginia's largest cities and towns that he is sincere and intelligent. It remains to be seen if those qualities will hold any value in the backward world of Allen's "real" Virginia among the minority of tobacco chewing hillbillies who fly the flag of treason on their pickup trucks and would rather vote their prejudices than make Virginia go forward instead of backward.

Anbar province was abandoned by Rummy so as to concentrate more Marines in Baghdad to keep a lid on a simmering civil war about to boil over.

Now Anbar is pretty much Haji country. Marine patrols out there don't go out of their way to mix it up with beefed up Sunni militiamen and the ficticious "Al Qaeda terrorists" Bush believes we are fighting

To turn the tables on one of the attorneys for the defense of some of the soldiers who were said to commit atrocities on civilians at Haditha, "Joining the Marine Corp is not a suicide pact."

Indeed it isn't. While befuddled old Rummy fiddles with his maps and wipes his glasses, real young American troops are out there in the heat and dust and black of night, still under-equipped, under-manned, and completely ignored by all but their families back home.

By 1971 in Vietnam, there wasn't a soldier or Marine in Vietnam who didn't know that Nixon and Kissinger were playing politics with our young lives. But like our troops today, we couldn't say anything because nobody can hear you from "out there" and besides, there is something called esprit d' corp, and no matter how bad things get, you suck it up and drive on. You're not fighting for anything but yourselves at that point. You will not break and you will not let your comrades down.

God bless our men and women over there. It's hard for me not to break down and cry sometimes when I see pictures of them because I am so goddamned proud of them.

Bush is saying they will stay there and die and be crippled until he leaves office.

He's always been by turns a coward, a bully, and a fool.

America deserves better.

We don't have to dip our index fingers in purple ink.

Yet.