A few recent news reports have offered solid grist for the peace mill:

• Ex-NFL star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman — who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, and whose death was initially the subject of pro-war propoaganda before reports recently emerged of a coverup — was survived by a brother who also enlisted in the Army in the immediate wake of 9-11, and who recently wrote a scatching article criticizing the war and our "elected leaders . . . subverting international law and humanity" that's been making waves.
• Separately, a team of researchers led by Gilbert Burnham, Co-Director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, recently published a study in the British academic journal Lancet concluding that (according to the Johns Hopkins Gazette) "[a]s many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions." While critics have assailed the study, alleging flaws in its methodology, outlets including The Washington Post  and The Guardian have allowed the authors a chance to respond in defense of their conclusions.
• Finally, this tremendous, assertive commentary by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann framing the Bush Administration's contemporary restrictions on civil liberties — most recently in the form of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 — in a historical context, concluding that our government has grown to become a greater threat to freedom than any threat it purports to battle on our behalf.

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