San Francisco State University student James Lee learned of the escalating Shiite-on-Shiite violence in Basra while embedded with Marines in Afghanistan. As a photographer documenting the day-to-day happenings in the war-torn region, he decided the Iraqi city would be his next stop.

The top news item in Sunday’s New York Times could prove to be the defining story of our time. According to a lengthy investigative report by David Barstow, military analysts at every major television news network have been providing glowing reports of the Iraq war - with less than honest intentions.

With the Iraq war in its fifth year, technological developments have been key to American military strategy. But while many engineering undergraduates and graduate students express a distaste for direct involvement in weapons design, development of technologies with joint civilian and military applications seems much more palatable.

“Radical protesting just isn’t what used to be,” a friend remarked to me on Voorhees Mall as the Student Walk out began last Thursday. Something just didn’t seem right about the Walk out Against the Iraq War. Walking out of classes, gathering at the Vietnam War memorial, chanting anti-war slogans, then marching around campus one day a year echoes a romantic view of protest culture.

Unless you are willing to give for your country, why should you expect to receive anything from your country?

Students from five colleges - Pitt, Carnegie Mellon, Chatham, Point Park and the Community College of Allegheny County - along with local high school students, attended the pre-march student rally at the Union. Student organizers, including leaders from various clubs, fired up the crowd in preparation for the march.