An excellent report. I feel that Mr. K's capitulation on health care last year marred my high regard for him. This interview restores it.

Thank God that there are politicians that have reached and continue to reach out and touch the hearts of people!!!

This article makes me wish there were more people like Dennis Kucinich who had the courage to stand up for principles like this. The United States is so hell bent on war and war spending that it seems near impossible anymore for peace. Think about what our country could afford to do if we weren't spending billions and billions of dollars a year on war- improve our infrastructure, improve our schools, we could even insure each citizen with health care. Instead of improving our country, we spend billions a year blowing up other countries. This guy needs to be elected President.

Can the US voters get this man in a higher position of power please...oh wait.. silly me, killer K isn't subservient to the corporate hierarchy. Sorry Dennis your stuck role-playing the voice of rationale.

Everyone who says "This guy should be president"-where were you? I've voted for him twice in the primaries! In California 2008-even without all the ads, and being barred from the Vegas debate, he still got 20% of the vote! Imagine if he got coverage!?! If GE hadn't kept him out of the debate? (He had taken a stance against issues GE supported.0

His speech at the Democratic Convention in 08, was one of the-if not the best!

During and after the campaign, when the Change website first went up and we were all voting on things we wanted to see from the new Obama administration, Kucinich's Peace department was voted on with high results. (So much for that bit of "change".)

FR Tothus-I love Kucinich/Warren 2012! They've got my vote!

If we're looking at another presidential ticket, I'd like to see Kucinich run with Matt Gonzales (Nader's running mate in 2008). It would have to be as independents. It's time to bail from the Democratic Party. If you're not familiar with Gonzales, check him out.

Oh for god's sake. 7 billion dollars for peace is a sick joke. 1% of the US war budget is just plain wrong thinking Mr K. The war budget should be ZERO and the peach budget should be ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!!!!

PEACE IS EXPENSIVE AND WE WANT IT NOW!!!

A quick search found no Pentagon Office for Social Responsibility. Why not incorporate such a body into those pre-existing organizations that affect society? Incremental change and renovation tempers the core of our social foundation. Perhaps in another century, this place would be ready for something as wild as a fictional Twenty-Third Century's United Federation of Planets. Department of Peace? It would take a nuclear war to pacify survivors enough to support this. I respect Mr. Kucinich, but he is a dove that better inspires rather than actuates his philosophy. This World has a plenitude of aggressively righteous villains in lines of untraced successions that will never lay down arms for the good of another.

Generally I feel like we should vote out all incumbents but there has to be two exceptions: Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. These guys have been true to the people throughout, we desperately need more of them.

The one sane man in government and he doesn't have a snowflake's chance in Hades of gaining any real power to change things-because literally everyone else is crazy.

War, unfortunately, has become too much of a business. And once all those "defense" contracts have been signed, and the congress has returned their respective favors, it is very hard to stop. Why do you think JFK was done in?

Until all those little govt. kiddies put down their big play sticks and come to their senses it's never going to stop. Every action has an opposite reaction... we are all mirrors to each other. I am you and you are me and we are all just one big "it".

my problem with Kucinich is that all it takes is the threat of a well funded primary challenge for him make the "safe vote."

Dennis is a career politician whose primary goal is re-election. He will NEVER make a career threatening vote.

Solid interview. To elaborate a bit on DK's thought of America has this divisional "us versus them" attitude in the world, this same mentality is on our very soil as well in the form of the Tea Party, who does nothing but polarize polarize polarize. America is clearly all about fighting someone and hating, both here and abroad.

We say we are a Christian nation, what if we had reacted to 9/11 following the teachings of Christ. Matthew 5:39b "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek,turn to him the other also:'  and the rest of verses 38 to 48 depict a most unusual reaction to aggression. How many of us who profess to be Christians have followed this dictum? What if this had been our reaction to 9/11 starting out with a declaration that we would not return evil for evil and following up with diplomatic efforts to discover and alleviate the cause. Would not the whole world have been with us? Possibly we would have saved the lives of our soldiers who have died in greater numbers than people at the towers.  We would have avoided "collateral damage", the deaths of thousands of civilians killed which has produced more terrorists and suicide bombers.
 
In support of this idea that we would have won wide support, I quote  Rita Brock, Director of Faith Voices for Common Good whom I have heard at meetings of the United Church of Christ. She wrote this paragraph in, 'Remembering the Sacred Acts of 9/12/01" published in Huffington Post, 9/12/10.

 
"With so much anti-Muslim hate being spewed in the name of 9/11 right now, we must remember the sacred things that happened on September 12, 2001. On that day in Tehran, Iran, thousands of people gathered in the city's streets with candles, standing in silence and sorrow for the people of the U.S. They were not alone. Leaders of many predominantly Muslim countries condemned the attacks and offered aid. Palestinians gathered for a candlelight vigil in Jerusalem, and thousands of people at a World Cup qualifier match between Bahrain and Iran observed a moment of silence, as did all of Europe at noon on that day, September 12."
  
Quoting from Wikipedia's article on "Project for the New American Century"
  
"On January 16, 1998, following perceived Iraqi unwillingness to co-operate with UN weapons inspections, members of the PNAC, including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Robert Zoellick drafted an open letter to President Bill Clinton, posted on its website, urging President Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein from power using U.S. diplomatic, political, and military power. The signers argue that Saddam would pose a threat to the United States, its Middle East allies, and oil resources in the region, if he succeeded in maintaining what they asserted was a stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction. "
 
Clinton was not moved by the letter but G. W. Bush could be influenced and 9/11 released the torrent of lies that lead to two wars.
   
I do not think that we are going to see terrorism or war disappear until we are sincere and honest in our search for and use of better ways of solving conflict. It has been my hope since I first hear of the League of Nations that it would be used to mediate conflict but the UN, to which it gave birth, has only been able to do part of the job. All nations need to give the United Nations more support.

"Dept of Peace" answer is simplistic. Focus instead on supporting and learning from the US Institute of Peace (http://www.usip.org/), which has existed for decades and does important work. When Kucinich closes a discussion with the Dept of Peace as an answer, I doubt his seriousness.

Dennis Kucinich is right - you should vote for progressives who support a progressive agenda.

In Florida District 24, on Nov.2nd - vote for Nicholas Ruiz III - Green Party write-in candidate for U.S. Representative:

http://intertheory.org/nriiiforcongress2010.html

Email this to everybody you know, then print it and post it to President Obama.

I love Dennis. I wish voting for third party candidates wouldn't absolutely always cause Republicans to win. i wish the GOP would split into GOP and Tea Party, so that there were four parties to choose from. Then real voices would be heard and Americans would be able to choose their consciences. And GOP and Blue Dogs would have to listen to their constituents.

Dennis has made the most powerful statement at the end of his interview "to carefully analyze our own worldview". Our world reality is but a reflection of our collective and individual inner realities, our beliefs, decisions about ourselves and others, etc.

J. Krishnamurti once said in response to a question of how to end war by saying "take the war out of your own personality". How many times do you beat yourself up each day for mistakes you make, etc. making yourself feel bad and not OK? This simply justifies doing it to others. How much do each of us believe we are really separate (all the rhetoric aside), living in a hostile world in which there is not enough for everyone? These are the types of fundamental beliefs that shape our actions and therefore our world.

Of course we should do everything we can on a physical level, elect the right people, blow the whistle on corruption, support initiatives for a sustainable, socially just world, but everyday we can work on changing our beliefs and this in the end is where it all starts, where the reality we want begins, with us.

Start by telling the absolute true to yourself about what your beliefs and prejudices are - we all have them, they just happened to be part of the ongoing conversation into which we were born, they are not our fault that we have them, however, they are our responsibility to change if they are not creating what we want.

This is the work each of us can do - to know thyself and then change ourselves and thus our world.

There speaks a true statesman! Why is it impossible for the American voter to recognize real Presidential quality in a candidate? Are you all truly becoming dumber and dumber?
Like Naom Chomsky and Ralph Nader, DK is a true patriot, and a voice in the wilderness, a prophet without honour in his own land. Imagine how much better things would be if he'd won the Presidency instead of the current wuss occupying the White House.
But, as someone here pointed out, the MSM culled him from the candidacy. I seem to recall some right wingnut media asshole actually calling him a dwarf!!!
It's as though you are all determined to elect the worst possible candidate every time.
I do agree, he should sever his connections with the DemoCraps. Ideally, he should lead the U,S, Green party - the only relevant, valid political option in the 21st century.

this man should be president... nuff said

While voting Dennis Kucinich into higher office isn't possible this year, one thing Ohio voters CAN do that may affect his political future is ensure that the legislature has a democratic majority during this coming session. Redistricting will be one of the most important orders of business & since the state will be losing a seat or two, preservation of Kucinich's district is vital.

Dear Sally: Department of Peace was always Dennis's thing; Obama knew that if he even hinted about establishing a DoP, with a Cabinet-Level Sec'ty., his entire 8 years would be taken up refereeing a tug-o-war between it and Defense. It's better to have Dennis in the House; it is the Peoples' body of representatives (the Senate being the monarchist throwback). He can do much good work there. You're right about Rahm; I wish he'd leave now so Obama could name Howard Dean WH CoS. Wouldn't THAT be interesting!

Erich, you are such a liar! Never has a post from you evinced anything even remotely Kucinich-like. You just get off to thinking about a xenophobe like Paul being "in charge" so you can forget all about real Constitutional democracy and get back to cherishing your whiteness in safety . . . so you think.