A week after 9/11, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) was the only member of Congress to vote against giving Bush the authority to go to war. "It was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events -- anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation's long- term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit. In granting these overly broad powers, the Congress failed its responsibility to understand the dimensions of its declaration. I could not support such a grant of war-making authority to the president; I believe it would put more innocent lives at risk."--(9/01 statement)

Barbara Lee spoke to the Sacramento Peace and Justice rally on March 15. "We've come together to say "NO"-- NO to wasting billions of dollars that could be spent on education, on housing the homeless, on caring for seniors. The real axis of evil is poverty, racism and war! Let the Democratic Convention know we support candidates for peace and oppose those who don't!"

Lee asked for co-sponsors for her recent Congressional Resolution disavowing the Bush "Doctrine of Preemption." This Bush foreign policy could be used to justify an unprovoked military first strike against any country.

"President Bush does not need to issue a doctrine proclaiming the right to genuine self defense — he already possesses every authority to protect the United States from imminent or actual attack. This doctrine threatens to set a dangerous precedent that might then be cited by other countries, including other nuclear powers, to justify preemptive first strikes against perceived future threats. That is not a world we want to live in and not an example we want to set." --(from press release/March 12).

"Take back this country, the Congress, and the Presidency-- In my daughter's name!" --Derrill Bodley of "September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows," a group who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Though he lost his daugher, Deora, on Flight 93, he has no wish for a retaliatory war, nor does he think a war would increase our national security.