Even while we gather in the name of hope, this nation has been led, on the strength of false and manufactured evidence, into a cockup of catastrophic proportions.

You have to wonder what Paul Wolfowitz is thinking. "How dare France and Germany and the Security Council disagree with our brilliant war plan?" Brilliant. "We know just where the WMDs are hidden." Brilliant. "We can pay for it with the revenues from the oilfields." Brilliant.

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On September 12, 2001, my favorite newspaper — founded, I'm proud to say, by Unitarians — The Guardian of London — said this in an editorial:

The hurt that all Americans must feel today cannot be underestimated. Two immediate dangers arise. One is that, wounded, bewildered, and convinced that the world is its enemy, America will draw back into itself. Too often in recent months, the US has seemed at odds with its friends and partners on a range of issues, big and small. But an even greater unilateralism, even a growing siege mentality, is to be avoided at all costs. It would be a victory for the terrorists.

Likewise, American over-reaction, especially of the military variety, must be guarded against. The temptation right now is to make somebody pay. And pay... and pay... and pay. Take a deep breath, America. Keep cool.

Well, America didn't keep cool.

And now it is unnervingly obvious: those who so long dreamed of this war, and planned it, — didn't know what they were doing!

Now they turn to the very nations, at which they so recently sneered, which so recently they bullied and bypassed — to rescue them.

No, I won't miss Saddam Hussein. But since when was a Bush troubled by a brutal dictator, at least so long as they were seen to further American interests? His savagery to his own people was not the reason Bush told us we had to go to war, and go to war right away.

And where have our press and news media been? On February 5, we saw Secretary Powell's presentation to the Security Council. When has CBS or ABC or the New York Times measured Mr. Powell's claims against reality and pointed out that, point after point, there was no truth to them? When have we seen Mr. Bush's arguments before the war compared with his arguments afterwards?

The press has been afraid to report the truth about this administration — from the stealing of the election to the deception about the reasons for the war in Iraq. In the aftermath of the 2000 election I was living in Scotland, and I saw the BBC 2 Panorama documentary, the investigative work of Greg Palast, showing how Bush's brother's buddies in Florida paid a company called DBT Choicepoint a fee of $4 million to remove over 50,000 likely Democratic voters, mostly African American, from the voting rolls. I was astonished, and I thought: Wait til this story hits the United States! But it never hit the United States because ABC and the New York Times and everybody else were afraid to touch it.

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Does it not matter that our leaders mislead us and lie to us, and take us into war on the basis of untruths? Does it matter whether or not we may trust our government to tell the truth?

Did you know that well more than half the American public actually believes that Iraq had something to do with the attack on the World Trade Center? You can thank the Bush propaganda machine for that.

At least in Britain there's an inquiry into the official deception. But we need an investigation — to determine the real reasons for the war.

But there have been plenty of hints. Early this past June, the deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told an audience in Singapore, where a questioner was curious why the U.S. went after Iraq rather than the more serious threat North Korea: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

We gather while decades of progress is being reversed: the gutting of the Clean Air Act and the undoing of the Montreal Protocol of 1987 protecting the ozone layer. Where is the outrage about the new Bush-Cheney-Enron Energy Policy, which is in fact a dreary compendium of subsidies and tax breaks to the coal, oil and gas industries that do nothing to address the problems of global warming or the country's dependence on oil? And now there are Bush's special buddies at FirstEnergy Corp., that gave us the recent blackout. Brilliant.

No, the message is consume, consume, consume, burn the oil, buy a behemoth SUV.

They're cashing in bigtime. Now we learn that one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to commercial contractors like Halliburton.

Meanwhile there are the handouts to the rich — while one and a third million Americans slid below the poverty line last year, and 600,000 more children live in poverty.

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We could become very, very discouraged.

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And so it is important to remember what it means that you are here.

It is essential that America and the world be reminded of what they will not learn by watching Fox News: that beside the complacent acceptance of the official line, that there is dissent; and it is essential that the dissent be heard.

And more than that, it is essential that we remember what it is that brings us here:

Not despair. Not resignation. Not cynicism.

No, what brings you here is vision, and hope, and love.

It is the vision of the America that might be, an open arena for the highest human possibilities to unfold.

It is that hope that is not so much an estimation of what is likely to happen, but a force, a factor, that has the strength to make things happen.

It is a love of life, and of this earth, and of this human family, and of the inestimable possibilities held within us.

You are the hope today, and all those who dare to lift their voices on behalf of the a fairer, a more just, a fully conscious human community.

We don't know how much of the human journey lies before us. Honestly, we don't, anymore than we know how much of our individual journeys lie ahead of us. We may blow this place up yet, or poison it beyond recovery. But the possibility of a magnificent human journey lies ahead of us, this human race — and we must think and dream of what that might be:

— a world without war?

— nations without nationalism?

— a society without privilege and contempt?

— you and me without greed, resentment, or fear?

Those love their country best who dare call it to its highest promise. Who dare, even in the face of overwhelming popular sentiment to the contrary, to come here today and bear witness.

Though change is slow in coming

Through the thick smog of apathy

There must be people of hope and vision

Let there be vision

Let our hearts be strong

Let hope, and not despair, guide us.