The First Amendment states that the people have a right to peaceably assemble and petition their representatives for a redress of grievances, and since the Bonus Army in 1932, the Washington Mall has been the place to do it. I'm here today at Camp Democracy, where the talk of the moment is how four veterans were detained at the Pentagon for passing out fliers against depleted Uranium.

The other topic making people testy today is the new verb that has entered the political lexicon in the last week. Richard Nixon's administration gave us the word "ratf***ing", and now ABC has given us "mousef***ing" - where a bipartisan comission report is used as a vehicle for partisan slander by the Republicans. The crocumentary in question is nothing less than a $60 million dollar campaign contribution to the Kean campaign in the New Jersey Senate race.

It seems strange to live in a country where it is illegal to tell the truth, and legal put outright defamation on national television. By now we should be used to bad faith politics from the Republican Party, but mousef***ing represents a new low, in that it doesn't just break faith with ordinary people, but it breaks faith with the deals that make politics possible in Washington DC. A bi-partisan commission is supposed to provide cover for incumbents of both parties after some major snafu. It allows politicians to touch radioactive topics like cutting Social Security benefits. The unstated agreement is that the dirt is swept beneath the carpet, and everyone gets the story straight, and then sticks too it.

In a world where brawling partisanship has been the rule of the day for far too long - Jack Danforth admits that the no rules attack on Anita Hill was "the worst thing he has ever done" - this sets a new low. And it is part of a larger strategy of Republican poisonous partisanship.

With both Lehman and Kean going guns blazing in misstating the contents of the report, and backing a program that simply makes up details, it shows that this time honoured way of deflecting the blame is now dead. I was told that Micheal Moore was the equivalent, but I've watched Fahrenheit 9/11 several times, and I don't see the part about where it is based on the 9/11 comission report and that the Democratic members signed off on it as accurate. Perhaps Mssrs. Lehman and Kean can tell me where that is. Otherwise, I'm going to have to count it as another lie they are telling the American public.

Another place where faith has been broken is with the men and women who are serving in the US military. The constant rerotation of units into Iraq, the "stop loss" orders and use of the Inactive Ready Reserve as a back door draft are becoming part of popular culture and every day life.

In war secrecy is often of the essence, but when even the definition of "civil war" is classified the question of what is being hidden from whom begins to assert itself.

Depleted Uranium is a case in point. DU is more than just important, it is essential to the way American wages war. Naturally, it is a topic that makes the military testy. Is it harmful? Perhaps. But until recently we didn't even have a reliable test upon which to base studies. The World Health Organization says not to take any chances and, at the very least, Uranium is a heavy metal like lead. That a report on the health effects was suppressed should be cause enough for concern.

Even if DU is not the cause of multi-symptom Gulf War Syndrome, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses December 2005 meeting noted:

These studies had demonstrated that DU had similarities in uptake and kinetic properties to other heavy metals and was potentially associated with brain and behavioral effects. Drs. Golomb and Steele agreed that more data were needed.

The promise we make veterans is that while they will be in harm's way to defend our nation, that once the war is over, it is over. The research on DU does not support the kind of blanket denials that have been issued by the State Department, nor the blanket closing of the door on DU as the source of long term health effects which has been issued from political appointees.

The corrosive mendacity which has been seen high and low in the current government, becomes a part of the problem. When any statement needs to be parsed and suspected, every statement becomes suspect. As I sit here on a hazy day on the Washington Mall, the world seems ordinary - a dragon fly flutters searching for prey, people stroll along looking for war monuments, food and gatherings. It is a very late summer day within sight of the Capitol Dome. It seems quiet, far from the turmoil of Baghdad or ground war in Afghanistan.

But a country where even a Fox News poll shows that nearly a third of the public believes that Bush should be impeached and removed - is not one where the ambling pace of its citizens can be used as proof that all is quiet beneath the surface. Faith, once broken, is hard to repair, and even harder to replace. It is also not an unlimited quantity, cheap in the way television images and bullets are, to be sprayed into the air hoping that some will land effectively.