We have been down this road before. U.S. troops sent to war half a world away. American foreign policy controlled by an arrogant elite, bent on projecting military power around the globe. A public misled into supporting an unconstitutional war founded on deceit and fabrications. As the death toll mounts, we hear claims that the war is nearly won, that victory is just around the corner. But victory never arrives. As the public loses confidence in the government, the government questions the patriotism of any who express doubt about the war. When a presidential election arrives, both the Democrat and Republican nominees embrace the policy of continued war. The military draft comes to dominate the lives of America's young, and vast numbers who believe the war to be a senseless blunder are faced with fighting a war they do not believe in, or facing exile or prison. The year was 1968. Because voters had no choice that November, the Vietnam War continued for another six years. Hundreds of thousands of Americans like you died, were maimed, or suffered from diseases like malaria. A far greater number of Vietnamese died. Today, the war is in the quicksands and alleys of Iraq. Once again, under the pressure of a determined resistance, we see an American war policy being slowly torn apart at the seams, while the candidates urge us to "stay the course" in this tragic misadventure. Today's Presidential candidates are not Nixon and Humphrey, they are now Bush and Kerry. Once again, there is one overriding truth: If war is the only choice in this election, then war we will have. Today enlistments in the Reserves and National Guard are declining. The Pentagon is quietly recruiting new members to fill local draft boards, as the machinery for drafting a new generation of young Americans is being quietly put into place. Young Americans need to know that a train is coming, and it could run over their generation in the same way that the Vietnam War devastated the lives of those who came of age in the sixties. I am running for President, and have been against this war from the beginning. We must not waste lives in order to control and waste more oil. Stand with us and we may yet salvage your future and Americas' future from this looming disaster. Sincerely, Ralph Nader HTTP://WWW.VOTENADER.ORG -- after the Maoists intensified their program of violence, 408 people were killed - nearly an elevenfold increase in the number of deaths over the previous year. Ever since, the death toll has been on the rise. By late 2000 the death toll has risen to over 2,100. As of August 2002, nearly 5,000 lives have been lost to the insurgency " Shining Path sent congratulations to RIM for its first anniversary in May of 1985. The Central Committee wrote, "...the people's war in our country continues to blaze defiantly, expanding, spreading its roots and preparing for newer and higher tasks, guided always by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, battling for the emancipation of our people for the purpose of and at the service of the world revolution. Thus we are contributing and will contribute to the tasks of the RIM, more and more willing and able to aid in every possible way our glorious common cause: the emancipation of the proletariat and communism prevailing though out the earth. "Comrades, the Communist Party of Peru is part of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and feels honored to be so, honored to serve in such a far-reaching and historic vanguard battle, as well as to have the comrades in arms found in our Movement's ranks; and furthermore, the Party feels fortified and augmented by the repeated expressions of support, of proletarian internationalism, which it receives from the very outstanding f