U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, Democrat from Vancouver, Washington is a heroic maverick who visited the Palestinian Gaza Strip and is brutally honest when he tells what he saw immediately after the Gaza-Israeli War.

Danny Westneat in his article in the February 25 Seattle Times explains how Rep. Brian Baird's trip touched off foreign policy furor when he was one of the first officials in almost four years to visit the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

As the Gaza-Israeli War raged, strategically timed during the dying days of the George W. Bush administration, it was interesting to note how silent George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice were, refusing to utter a word.  Then President Elect Obama only said that if rockets were threatening his two daughters, he would do something.

Voices from the United Nations loudly objected to a UN ambulance being demolished.  Human rights organizations throughout the world held marches, insisting that Israel with war planes bombing civilian centers was clearly disproportionate to the rocket response to the blockading of borders and the continued building of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.