Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel has been described as one of the longest of the long shots in the race for the Democratic nomination for President, but that hasn't stopped him from blasting his primary opponents on everything from immigration to Iraq.

He is least of all apologetic to his fellow Democrats also seeking the nomination, declaring that Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama and Joseph Biden are not doing enough to end the war in Iraq.

Gravel, 77, said that if he were still in the Senate, he'd introduce a vote every day to end the war until he had enough votes to override a presidential veto. He has considered himself an anti-war activist since the Vietnam era and earned a claim to fame as the man who released the Pentagon Papers during the Nixon era.

He has declared in interviews that his presidential rivals "frighten me" for their willingness to keep all options on the table when it comes to dealing with Iran and its nuclear ambitions.

Gravel has over the years wanted to end the military draft and once filibustered from the floor of the U.S. Senate, in 1971, for five months forcing the Nixon administration to cut a deal on the draft.

More recently, he has charged President Bush with "trying to rekindle an arms race" with Russia and China.

Of Russia, he said: "We accuse them of not being so cooperative right now, but who started this? Who started the arms race in space? The U.S. did."

Political analysts have said Gravel has virtually no chance of winning the presidency, and some have treated his role in televised debates as providing comic relief among a field of softer-spoken, more diplomatic candidates.

But Gravel insisted he is in the race "to win," and said that if he does not, "I do not think anyone who voted for the war is morally qualified to be President of the United States."

Gravel was born not far from New Hampshire in Springfield, Mass., attending French-speaking Catholic schools and as a teenager, volunteering in Springfield politics.

He studied for one year at American International College in Springfield, then enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1951 and was a special adjutant in the Communication Intelligence Services and a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps.

After receiving a B.S. in economics from Columbia University in New York City in 1956, he moved to Alaska. He soon became a real estate developer, which became a major part of how he earned his living over the years. He also did a stint as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad.

He tried his hand at politics in the late fifties, unsuccessfully at first. He was defeated in a run for the territorial legislature in 1958 and for the Anchorage City Council in 1960. He and his first wife, Rita, whom he had married in 1959, had two children, Martin Anthony and Lynne Denise, born in 1960 and 1962. Martin now lives in Colorado, and Lynne lives in California.

He was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives in 1962 and served from 1963-66. He was speaker from 1965-66. He did not run for reelection in 1966 and instead ran for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing to the four-term incumbent.

He returned to the real-estate business in Anchorage and in 1968 campaigned against the 81-year-old incumbent Democratic Sen. Ernest Gruening for his seat. In part due to Gruening's Vietnam war votes, specifically voting against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, Gruening lost the primary to Gravel, who went on to win the general election.

He then represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate for two terms from 1969-81. While in the Senate, he was influential in efforts to develop the Alaska pipeline.

His fame over the Pentagon Papers developed after Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg had excerpts printed in the New York Times and Washington Post. The papers detailed U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the Nixon administration asked for an injunction. Just as the Supreme Court was supposedly set to decide, Gravel released the papers himself. From the floor of the senate, Gravel read 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page document into the Senate record. After seeking a publisher to print the full papers, Gravel finally found one called Beacon Press, allied with the Unitarian Universalist Church. The Justice Department brought legal action against Beacon Press and Gravel's editor.

Gravel tried to use his authority as a senator to shield the publisher and editor, but the Supreme Court ruled against him, saying he did not have the right and responsibility to share official documents with his constituents. Soon, Watergate intervened and took the Justice Department's attention to other matters, and Gravel was not prosecuted.

In 1980 Gravel became the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress when he lost the primary in his bid for a third term. He was challenged for the party's nomination by Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel defeated for the seat 12 years earlier. Gruening, however, lost in the general election.

In his presidential campaign, Gravel advocates an immediate and orderly withdrawal of all U.S. troops that will have them home from Iraq within 120 days. Aside from his anti-war stand, he also believes that global climate change is a matter of national security and survivability of the planet. He suggests legislation to tax carbon at the source and cap carbon emissions. He also wants to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and the income tax and replace it with a national sales tax on new products and services.

He also advocates a universal health-care system that provides equal medical services to all citizens, paid for by a retail sales tax.

During the 1980s, Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska. He was divorced and remarried during this time. In 1989, he founded The Democracy Foundation and led an effort to get a constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives.

Gravel now lives with his second wife, Whitney, in Arlington County, Va.

He campaigned almost full time in New Hampshire after he announced his candidacy in April 2006. However, he has raised little money for his campaign, and he barely registers in the polls. A May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats.

Background for this story is from the Rocky Mountain News via Scripps Howard News Service and the candidate's Web site.