Anti-war US Senator Mike Gravel passes at 91
Former US Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska), an anti-war campaigner and a regular Press TV contributor, has died at the age of 91.
The Associated Press reported on Sunday that Gravel, who served in the Senate from 1968 until 1981, died in Seaside, California this weekend. He was suffering with a poor health.
Gravel also ran two unsuccessful campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and 2016.
He was excluded from Democratic debates during his 2008 campaign in 2007, prompting him to run as a Libertarian candidate, according to the Associated Press.
Gravel was known for his anti-war efforts in the 1970s. He spearheaded a one-man filibuster in opposition to the Vietnam-era draft, and read 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page document, known as the Pentagon Papers, into the Congressional Record, according to the AP.
The Pentagon Papers were the US military’s history of Washington’s early involvement in the Vietnam War.
Gravel was ‘voice for peace, sanity and demilitarization’
“Mike Gravel, bucked the Pentagon, the CIA and the military-industrial complex by reading the Pentagon Papers into the Senate record, thereby providing legal cover for their mass publication,” journalist Don DeBar told Press TV.
“For decades after his time in the Senate ended, he was a voice for peace, sanity and demilitarization,” added DeBar.
“If we could replace Schumer and McConnell with a pair of Mike Gravel's, it would have a major positive impact on the entire human race. This, unfortunately, indicates how big a loss we suffer with his passing,” he stated.
Gravel was also a regular contributor to Press TV.
On the eve of the 2020 US election, Gravel told Press TV that the foundation of the election system in the United States is based on bribery.
Gravel said that “politicians are corrupt and they’re basically cowards because we have a system that is set up where you give me money to help me get elected and when I’m elected, I will vote for your economic interest, that is bribery, and that’s the foundation of our system in this country.”
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