Today marks the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech at the Riverside Church in New York City.

Entangled by complex and dangerous times, attentive clergy and concerned citizens alike listened as Dr. King called upon Americans to save the soul of their country.

The United States of America in 1967 was characterized by heated racial tensions simmering to a boil- scalding black and white Americans in red and blue states alike. The United States faced sweeping class disparities, observing concentrated prosperity and widespread poverty within the borders of the world's wealthiest nation. The futures of America's heroes were unnecessarily slaughtered in the endless death toll of young soldiers in Vietnam.

The struggle for civil rights, children growing up in poverty and American armed forces strained by an open-ended occupation of a foreign land- demons that haunted Martin Luther King and his fellow Americans in 1967; demons that haunt Americans and citizens of the world today.



AP Exclusive: Kissinger says military victory not possible in Iraq

The following is an excerpt of a very revealing and disturbing article ("The Kissinger Presidency") penned by Robert Dallek:

Using language that has a painfully contemporary echo, Kissinger and Nixon very quickly came to private conclusions about Vietnam that they never revealed publicly and denied entertaining. "In Saigon the tendency is to fight the war to victory," Nixon told Kissinger, according to the transcript of a 1969 phone conversation. "But you and I know it won't happen-it is impossible." Even so, according to Haldeman's unpublished diaries, Nixon later urged that Democratic critics making this same point should be labeled "the party of surrender."

The article will be published in the May 2007 issue of Vanity Fair.

"The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."
- William Faulkner