Many people showed up at Heritage Park over the past couple days for the International Day of Peace festivities. It was quite a celebration. There was music, conversations with different peace groups and activists from various locations including Afghanistan, Israel, and Palestine, a planet Earth ball, the major continental land masses were outlined in a huge map on the lawn, and there were many banners with the word peace written on them in different languages.

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For some reason I have been thinking about the famous episode when Colin Powell appeared at the United Nations with a vial filled with a white powdery substance intended to portray the biological toxin, anthrax. It was quite a while ago, back before the U.S. invaded Iraq. The anthrax was used as a justification for invasion. Powell painted a picture of an Iraq that possessed significant quantities of the stuff, enough to make huge numbers of people sick —an Iraq bent, also, on attacking the U.S. and or her allies.

It's interesting to remember how our government and military were driven into the war. Were Powell's assertions credible? I seem to remember that the war planners' assertions about chemical weapons in Iraq were traced to a single source from Germany, code-named "Curveball." Hmm. makes me wonder.

Anyway, although this may already be a known quantity, as an exercise in humor, I was wondering about what was in that vial. If you already know what was in the vial that Powell held up in front of the UN security council, then please pretend like you don't, and don't give it away for the rest of us (at least wait a while and give people a chance to guess.)

If you care to weigh in or wager a guess as to what white powdery substance inhabited that seemingly inconspicuous vial - then please proceed to the poll page.

On the eve of the Iraq War, retired Army Colonel Ann Wright resigned from the State Department, telling then-Sec. of State Colin Powell that without UN authorization the invasion and occupation would be a disaster. She was one of dozens of government insiders and active-duty military personnel who spoke out, leaked documents, resigned, or refused to deploy in protest of illegal government actions.

Col. Wright is one of the country's most prominent critics of the Iraq War and Bush's foreign policy. In her new book, Dissent: Voices of Conscience, Col. Wright and Susan Dixon tell the stories of these men and women. Peace Action is sponsoring her Puget Sound tour:

Col. Wright's Western Washington appearances: