RT June 28 reported that it has received a “flood” of tributes to former Sen. Mike Gravel, who passed away on June 26 at his California home. RT quotes messages from several bloggers and anti-war groups recalling Gravel’s courage in opposing “forever wars” as seen in his 1971 reading of the Pentagon Papers on the floor of the Senate. One commentator called him “a true American hero.” Glenn Greenwald described him as “unique and heroic, working to end the draft that fed the Vietnam War.” RT provides a short clip of that reading and Gravel’s own comments on what he was feeling at the time, recounting that he was overcome with emotion as he read, “not because of patriotism but because something that you love dearly has gone astray.”
Also included is a clip from the famous presidential debate of 2007 in which Sen. Gravel stood on the stage with the “top tier” of candidates — Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton —and proclaimed “they frighten me,” because they were all prepared to go to war with Iran using nuclear weapons. If I’m elected President, he said, “there will be no preemptive war with nuclear devices. To my mind it’s immoral, and it’s been immoral for the last fifty years as part of American foreign policy.”
