Category: Iraq

Tomorrow will be the 5th anniversary of the Bush regime’s Shock and Awe blitzkrieg against Iraq.  How dazzling the light and color explosions would have appeared on my TV screen if I had been able to disassociate myself from what was most certainly the experience of human beings on the ground.

Many of us knew at the time that the war was a travesty, that Iraq probably had no Weapons of Mass Destruction, was not an ally of bin Laden, had no role in 9/11, and was not a threat to the USA.  I watched in horror.  Not only did Saddam have no Weapons of Mass Destruction, he didn’t even have those other “WMD”s, Weapons of Minimal Defense.

Over this last weekend, I listened to the Winter Soldier II hearings in Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.  I thought back to the Winter Soldier I hearings in 1971 with veterans of the Vietnam travesty.  Will our country never learn?

But I heard something quite different today, in 2008.  I heard a very different quality, a different tone.  To read about this different tone, follow me across the leap in consciousness below the fold.

Sarasota Herald Tribune photo by Ed Pfueller

Justin Hall salutes and parents Kevin and Becky Hall embrace as the sound of a rifle salute fills a memorial service for their brother and son Marine Corps Veteran Eric Hall during at Faith Lutheran Church Thursday in Punta Gorda

The convergence of the 5th anniversary of “shock and awe” with Christian Holy Week and Iraq Moratorium #7 has sparked hundreds of antiwar actions across the country this week.

The Iraq Moratorium, a loosely-knit grassroots movement, is usually observed on the Third Friday of every month, but March events are spread throughout the week.

It began last weekend, when more than 500 people gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco for a rally, march and vigil.

Speakers included Daniel Ellsberg, State Sen. Carole Migden and former San Francisco Supervisor and current Green Party vice presidential candidate Matt Gonzalez.

Ellsberg invited the crowd at the church to join him in a “die in” Wednesday at noon outside the San Francisco office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. “We may be arrested for disturbing the peace,” he said. “But there is no peace.

Golden Gate XPress, the student newspaper at San Francisco State University, reports:

[Cindy]Sheehan,(right) a congressional candidate … concluded the event by reflecting on her personal loss. She told the story of her son who was killed in the third bloody mission into Sadr City, a mission forced upon him against his will.

“Today I have one dead son,” she said to a silent hall, using a tissue to dry a tear. “When your child is killed in a war, they always say ‘Your child volunteered. Your child was a hero,'” she said. “What makes him a hero if he was ordered to kill innocent Iraqis?”

Sheehan further acknowledged the Americans and Iraqis who lost their lives in the war and the politicians who put them there.

“It’s bullshit that we’re not impeaching,” she said.

Because the Moratorium, which encourages local grassroots action on the Third Friday of every month, coincides with the Christian observance of Good Friday, March 21, some actions will include a religious theme.

The Pike’s Peak Justice Coalition will take part in Pax Christi’s Way of the Cross/Way of Justice procession in downtown Colorado Springs.  

A Hartford, CT “Lamentation and Protest” will begin with an interfaith prayer service, followed by a silent procession to the federal building, where marchers will pile stones bearing the names of victims of the Iraq war.  Church bells will ring in a number of communities in Massachusetts to mark Moratorium observances.

In Cincinnati, candlelight vigils will be held in eight neighborhoods, and dozens of street corner vigils are planned across the country.  Most vigils take place every month, and some have been going since the war began.  

In a session called “Write Some Wrongs,” people in Cornwall, CT will meet at the public library to write their Congressman about “what is in your heart about the Iraq war and what you want him to do about it.”

The Iraq Moratorium encourage local organizers to “do their own thing” on the third Friday of the month – but to do something, whatever it is, to end the war.  It is all a loosely-knit national grassroots effort operating under the Iraq Moratorium umbrella.

Friday is the seventh monthly Moratorium, and more than 800 events have been listed on the group’s website, IraqMoratorium.org , which has a list of this month’s actions and reports, photos and videos from previous months.

As we approach the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, there is a movement building to end the war. The Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq is a growing coalition of congressional candidates and military leaders who are pushing a swift and responsible withdrawal plan. The coalition includes candidates like Darcy Burner WA-8 and Donna Edwards MD-4, Major General Paul Eaton who was the former Security Transition Commanding General in Iraq and Dr. Lawrence Korb who is the former Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration. The coalition to end the war just got gained another endorser, Oregon Senate candidate and current House Speaker Jeff Merkley.

“It’s good to be back in Iraq,” Cheney said…

Just a quick recap of the history of the 21st Century, for any of you who may have made the incredibly wise decision to spend this century under a rock.

An American President gets a blowjob, $40 million is spent to investigate said blowjob, said President impeached.

Americans, shocked!, jerk their knees at this sexual horror and vote for an incompetent, corrupt, lying idiot in great enough numbers to allow the Republican dirty tricks machine and old boy network to steal the election. Whom, it also turns out….shockingly enough given the Republicans record on this sort of thing…is a War Monger and ultimately, a War Criminal.

A bunch of Saudis based in Afghanistan kill 3000 Americans, AND destroy valuable private property! Americans, under a War Mongering Republican President and a batshit insane paranoiac, Machiavellian, Vice President who had obviously closely studied the history of Fascism and taken it to heart…..respond to the Saudi/Afghan attack by ……..invading Iraq. It is PURE coincidence that these two oil men happen to preemptively invade a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with the attacks on Americans but that just happens to be the weakest nation that has the largest oil reserves. Pure coincidence, really. The fact that they manufactured and twisted every shred of evidence they used to justify this blatant War of Aggression (War Crime) has nothing to do with it. Pay no attention to the elephant behind the curtain.

A fitting exclamation point to a weekend that brought us the opening of Hearts and Minds at Winter Soldier II.

The anniversary of the Murder of Rachel Corrie.

And the 40th anniversary of My Lai

Cheney Five Years Ago: ‘We Will, In Fact, Be Greeted As Liberators’

And so from the spectre of the summer soldier who shrinks from the hard truths and his country’s crises, comes the Winter Soldier who will not look away.

Visit War Comes Home to Replay previous testimony, opening statements, transcripts and much more.

Visit IVAW – Iraq Veterans Against The War to Watch, online, and get further information.

Broadcast of todays testimonies, 3-16-08, begin at 10am ET

John “100-Years-War” McCain, on his way to Iraq, worries that Al Qaeda will do something this fall to hurt his candidacy for president.

Why would Al Qaeda do that?  Because the Democrats are weaklings who offer aid and comfort to the enemy, of course. What would be more natural that for Osama to endorse Obama?  

McCain didn’t go that far, but he went far enough. Reuters reports:

SPRINGFIELD, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Friday he fears that al Qaeda or another extremist group might attempt spectacular attacks in Iraq to try to tilt the U.S. election against him.

McCain, at a town hall meeting in this Philadelphia suburb, was asked if he had concerns that anti-American militants in Iraq might ratchet up their activities in Iraq to try to increase casualties in September or October and tip the November election against him.

Yes, I worry about it,” McCain said. “And I know they pay attention because of the intercepts we have of their communications …

In fact, my worries have been the opposite — that Still President George W. Bush will engineer some kind of wag the dog crisis in hopes that the American people will rally around him and his tougher-than-nails, would-be successor, John McCain.

It would not, of course, be the first time Republicans have used real or imagined threats from abroad to help themselves at election time, as others have pointed out.

But to suggest that Al Qaeda would launch attacks to try to help his opponent — presumably Obama, but either Democrat — is very much like saying that Democrats who want to end the war are aiding the enemy.  Al Qaeda would simply be repaying them for their help, apparently.

The worst new is that this claim didn’t spark any controvery, and McCain wasn’t asked to explain himself.  The media were all too busy running and re-running video clips of Obama’s pastor, and even with 24-hour news channels it is clear they can only cover one story at a time.

McCain also continued to plant the seeds of the need to “Bomb, Bomb Iran,” which could be Bush’s October surprise.   AP reports:

McCain told reporters later that al-Qaida remains smart and adaptable despite an increase of U.S. troops in Iraq.

“We have had great success with the surge, but to think they’re not capable of orchestrating really strong attacks … I think is an underestimation of the enemy,” McCain said.

“We still have the most lethal explosive devices coming across the border from Iran into Iraq,” he said. “We still have suicide bombers landing at the airport in Damascus and coming into Iraq as we speak.

“So I would not be surprised if they make an attempt. I believe that we can counter most of it, as we are countering. But there will still be spikes and difficulties and challenges associated with this conflict. Otherwise, I’d be advocating that they come home,” he said.

If only.  Instead, he’s prepared to leave them there for 100 years.  

I’ve just returned home from the World Against War demo today in London. It was a fantastic event, with an excellent turnout (between 10-40,000, according to the BBC) and a great atmosphere. The march was called to mark five years since the invasion of Iraq, although Israel’s recent crimes in Gaza were definitely on everyone’s mind – which is excellent, of course. The march was convened by the Stop the War Coalition around three basic demands: troops out from Afghanistan and Iraq, no attack on Iran and an end to the siege of Gaza. On all three, as Tony Benn was sure to remind us, the marchers spoke for the majority of British and world public opinion.

And so from the spectre of the summer soldier who shrinks from the hard truths and his country’s crises, comes the Winter Soldier who will not look away.  

Thomas Paine

These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

-Published on 23 December 1776