Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See You

[Vanni Fucci]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

Hypocrites and Liars -- by Cindy Sheehan

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

US anti-war movement gains strength as truth replaces lies




A protest against the war in Iraq outside President Bush's Texas ranch is gaining momentum

At the end of a long line of white crosses, each bearing a name of a soldier killed in Iraq, is a small, open tent set up like a shrine.

Inside the tent is a photograph of Casey Sheehan, surrounded by flowers and candles.

The 24-year-old died in Iraq last year, and two weeks ago his mother, Cindy, set up "Camp Casey" and caught the nation's imagination.

To begin with just a few people drifted along to join her - just a couple of miles down the road from where President George W Bush is spending his summer vacation.

Suddenly people started hearing about the woman who wants to meet the president face-to-face and to ask him why her son died, and that's when the television trucks started to arrive.

Hundreds have now come here, some Iraq veterans or families of those killed in the fighting, others just wanting to support her point of view.

'True patriots'

Cindy Sheehan is now probably the most talked about woman in America, leading the news bulletins over the last couple of days and reinvigorating the anti-war movement in the States which has been struggling to find a voice.

Those opposed to President Bush's policy in Iraq have been painted as unpatriotic, and criticised for "letting our boys down".

But the protestors here say they are the true patriots - it's an issue that's starting to polarise American opinion.

The one-woman show which has generated so much momentum is, however, in danger of running out of steam as Cindy Sheehan's mother had a stroke and she returned to California to be with her.

It was a tearful farewell to all those who had supported her from their small line of tents and shades and the promise was that she'd be back, as soon as possible, to continue the protest.

"She was the lightning rod for the media of course," said one of those left to keep the camp running.

"But we came here to support Cindy and that's just what we'll do. Everyone is staying because we owe it to her. I'm not leaving until she comes back."

As Cindy left, a large group of women walked as far as they could towards the Bush ranch and handed secret security men a pile of letters to pass on to the president.

All of them talk of a determination to keep the pressure on, but the longer Cindy is away the more the media hype will die down and the momentum could run out.

Divisive issue

But if it continues to grow, some say this could be a tipping point of public opinion and another bomb in Iraq killing a large number of Americans could fuel that further.

A few miles down the road in Crawford itself there's a "peace house" where bloggers work around the clock, a production line for meals and camp supplies is up and running and a small group of women cut, bolt and paint more white crosses to take up to Camp Casey.

And just across the road is the Coffee Station, a little restaurant which is busier than it has been for a long time.

Opinions there are divided as much as across America.

"They're a bunch of idiots," said one man. "If I had a front-end loader I'd get rid of them."

And on the next table support for a woman who has certainly touched the hearts of many.

"She's a grieving mother with a right to protest, and I think President Bush should talk to her."

If Cindy does come back here she could embarrass the president further and he will have to be very careful how he deals with the situation.

But whatever happens, she's already helped the anti-war voice to be heard louder than it was before.

sad to hear that her mom had a stroke. Trying to imagine the amount of grief, stress, this whole family is under......and yet she is taking time out to make an important statement.....one that many have become too lazy , compliant, or frightened to do .

Where did this nonsense start about it being "unpatriotic" to question the administration/presidency??? Gosh, If this is the hold that such thinking has over the US population.....little wonder they are so "brainwashed". Since when is blind "patriotism" the be all and end all??? Who is to dictate when one should be "patriotic" and when one can be free to express the truths??

What is interesting is that Cindy has already made her point, LOUD and CLEAR. ........just as bush has made his "point' " loud and clear (by dismissing her, ignoring her.-or trying to-.... while KNOWING she is there ). As long as she and like minded anti war groups stay on the premises.........bush is not able to truly have a peaceful holiday. (unless he is one cold hearted calculating sociopath, where stuff like this does not affect him. ) -----and a case can be made for that very easily. What "we" are "seeing" is the true character of the man. ( indifference, callousness, escapism, evasive tactics, avoidance behavior and pleasure principle oriented . )It is also a matter of timing.......and he has missed his timing to demonstrate effective leadership skills.

What makes him think he can start a war of choice, base it on a series of bilious lies, and go about using the fine military as HIS pawns in HIS "war"........and not feel a certain responsibility to be held to account for the deaths he has caused??? This is not really a US war.....as much as it is a BUSH WAR. .....but the US population followed along like good little sheeple. When did the US population stop thinking and start following so blindly??

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

The Answer to Cindy Sheehan’s Question
Jacob G. Hornberger



Cindy Sheehan has asked President Bush an important question: Exactly what “noble cause” did her son Casey die for in Iraq? It’s a question that some Ohio parents whose children were recently killed in Iraq are also asking. It’s a question that every American should be asking.

I couldn’t help but be somewhat mesmerized reading about the attitudes of the young Ohio Marines who recently died as well as the diverse reactions of their families to their deaths. The accounts brought to mind the deep range of thoughts and feelings that I experienced as a student at the Virginia Military Institute from 1968 to 1972, during the height of the Vietnam War. I would like to share some of my personal experiences at VMI during those tumultuous times.

VMI is a four-year military college in which every student is required to be a member of the corps of cadets. When I was there, everyone was also required to sign a commitment to serve in the military forces for at least two years. During my senior year at VMI (1971–1972), however, given that U.S. forces were withdrawing from Vietnam, the Army offered graduating seniors a 3-month active-duty, 8-year Reserve commitment in lieu of the 2-year active-duty commitment; it was an offer that I accepted without hesitation.

During my freshman year (1968–69), when I was 18 and 19 years old, I was a “gung-ho” supporter of U.S. intervention in Vietnam, much as is the case with many young soldiers today in Iraq. I was fully prepared to travel thousands of miles away to “fight for my country” and for “freedom” by killing “communists” in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia. I was innocent and naïve, never once thinking that federal officials would lie to the citizenry, especially not about something as serious as war.

In my sophomore year (1969–70), the administration promoted me to corporal within the VMI cadet corps. During my junior year (1970–71), I was a member of VMI’s elite Ranger military unit, and the administration promoted me to sergeant. The next step would ordinarily have been promotion to officer status within the corps of cadets during my senior year.

Alas, it was not to be, for it was during my junior year that I – along with lots of other VMI cadets – broke through to the truth and realized what other college students around the nation were discovering – that the Vietnam War was based on U.S. government lies, falsehoods, and deceptions. It was during that year that many of us at VMI began asking the same question that Cindy Sheehan is asking: What were U.S. soldiers dying for?

Some of my most memorable experiences during my four years at VMI occurred periodically during supper in the mess hall, whenever a cadet officer would make a certain special announcement over the public address system. I don’t recall the exact words but they were something along the following lines, and they always caused an immediate hush of silence to sweep across the 1,000 students in the hall: “Attention to orders, October 28, 1969, Republic of Vietnam. [Pause, followed by complete silence across the mess hall.] Lt. John Smith, VMI Class of 1967, killed in action this day.”

By the time I finished my junior year, I knew the answer to the question that is now bedeviling Cindy Sheehan, and it’s not a painless one: Those VMI graduates, along with all the other soldiers who were dying in Vietnam, were dying for nothing.

As I reflect back on those years and on recent political events in this country, there is no doubt in my mind that people such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz had asked themselves the same question that Cindy Sheehan is asking today and that they had come up with the same answer that I and others had, which is precisely why they did whatever was necessary to avoid service in Vietnam. In retrospect, in my opinion they were the smart ones. Those who went, such as John McCain, John Kerry, and Max Cleland, who have suffered the insults, contempt, and scorn from those who did not go, were in my opinion the chumps.

An Ohio mother, Rosemary Palmer, whose son was recently killed in Iraq, observed that there are lots of parents who oppose the war but who “are afraid to speak out, believing their children will be punished by their commanders.”

Ms. Palmer has no idea how right she is. Permit me share a couple of examples, again from my experience as a young cadet at VMI.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that during the Vietnam War, the VMI administration, which was headed by a no-nonsense Marine general, strongly aligned itself with the federal government, especially the Pentagon, and thus supported Lyndon Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s war in Vietnam.

One day, a group of VMI cadets requested the school administration to grant them permission to attend an anti-war rally at Washington and Lee University, which is situated adjacent to VMI in Lexington. To everyone’s surprise, the administration granted the request, with the proviso that no cadet attending the rally could wear his VMI uniform. (Ordinarily, wearing civilian clothes in town was a violation of VMI regulations and entailed a severe penalty for breach.) The most probable reason the request was granted was that the administration, aware of the pressure-cooker environment that the war was engendering within the student body, figured that letting the anti-war crowd at VMI attend the rally would help to release some of that steam.

I didn’t attend the rally, but I can tell you what happened to the cadets who did. As they were returning to barracks, there was a VMI tactical officer waiting for them, who recorded each of their names and then imposed a ludicrous penalty on them for having “long hair.”

As for me, once my attitude toward the war and the military changed, my military career at VMI was over. Rather than promote me to officer status my senior year, the administration demoted me to private. But that actually turned out to be a rather minor thing, especially since any VMI cadet will tell you that being a private during one’s senior year at VMI is not such a bad experience. Unfortunately, that wasn’t all they did to me.

In 1979, almost eight years after graduation and near the end of my eight-year Army Reserve commitment, I happened to take a look at my “Army 201” personnel file and discovered that prior to graduation (1972) a VMI official had stuck a notation in my file stating that I was “unsuited for military life.” Now, I don’t deny that the official was justified in reaching that conclusion given the fact that I had lost my “gung-ho-ness” about the Vietnam War and even the military during my last two years at VMI. But I still consider what he did to be quite a nasty thing to do to someone who was just starting out in life and who had just survived four years at what is arguably the most rigid military college in the country, especially since he knew that my 201 file would follow me to every duty station I would be assigned to for the next eight years, including infantry school at Ft. Benning, Georgia. I still wonder what they inserted into the 201 files of those cadets who attended that antiwar rally at Washington and Lee.

The unfortunate truth is that that is all too often a characteristic of the military mindset. It is resentful of people who think independently – those who don’t toe the official line, don’t believe the official lies, and don’t fully support whatever one’s government does with respect to war. That’s why such people identify patriotism with support of the federal government. That’s why they never questioned the U.S. intervention in Vietnam – and still don’t! It’s why they question the patriotism of those of us who have challenged the U.S. intervention in Iraq. They simply cannot understand how or why someone thinks independently of how federal officials think, at least when it comes to war.

Ironically, it seems that some things haven’t changed much since I graduated from VMI more than 30 years ago. About a year before the torture-and-sex-abuse revelations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, I wrote an article entitled “Obedience to Orders,” which focused on and opposed torture by U.S. troops at the Pentagon’s base at Guantanamo Bay. I suggested that it was the duty of an officer not only to refrain from participating in such misconduct but also to do whatever was necessary to put an immediate halt to it, regardless of orders from his superior officers.

Despite the fact that my article praised VMI for producing higher caliber officers than West Point because of VMI’s emphasis on educating and training citizen-soldiers, who tend to be independent-minded, rather than blind-obedience, sycophantic professional soldiers that the military academies tend to produce, my torture article generated an unfortunate nasty email from the executive vice president of the VMI Alumni Association, one Paul Maini, to officials at West Point that “apologized” for my article, which, again, was both anti-torture and pro-VMI.

What many VMI officials such as Maini don’t understand is that while many in the VMI administration would like nothing more than to produce the types of officers that the professional academies tend to produce, by and large VMI fails in that mission. But in that failure lies the very success of the school and it’s what makes the school different, in a positive way, from the professional military academies. That is, that while VMI does produce some of the “Blindly obey orders and please your superiors” types of military officers that the professional academies tend to produce, that is normally the exception. The vast majority of VMI graduates are the independent-thinking types who will refuse to sacrifice personal integrity and right conduct for the sake of pleasing their superiors or blindly obeying their orders. My hunch is that that is a prime reason why non-commissioned officers (NCOs) usually prefer to serve under a VMI officer than a West Point officer.

The interesting “problem, ” however, is that the VMI administration – that is, the officials charged with setting and enforcing policy at the school – inevitably seems to attract an overwhelming abundance of officials with the standard military mindset, including both graduates of the professional academies and of VMI itself. This sets up an interesting dynamic, which I believe provides a key as to why the school is so much more successful than the professional military academies. Permit me to share with you an example of how things work inside VMI, especially compared to the professional military academies.

When I was at VMI, every room in barracks had a fat book called the Blue Book, which contained hundreds of rules and regulations governing the conduct of VMI cadets. Every cadet was supposed to read the Blue Book and be fully knowledgeable of its contents. More important, cadets were expected to fully follow all the rules and regulations whether they agreed with them or not.

It didn’t take long, however, especially in conversations with VMI upperclassmen, for VMI cadets to realize that at least 97 percent of the rules and regulations in the Blue Book were ludicrous and, therefore, deserved to be broken. Thus, the last three years at VMI were essentially a cat-and-mouse game between the cadet corps and the administration, with the cadets breaking the ridiculous rules and regulations and the administration’s officers trying to catch them and, when successful, imposing harsh penalties on them. I myself returned my junior year with a penalty of 10-2-and-10, which meant 10 demerits, 2 weeks of confinement, and 10 one-hour penalty tours for getting caught committing the grievous offense of wearing civilian clothes in barracks during finals weekend the previous spring. (Fortunately, the VMI official who caught me didn’t see me wearing them when I walked into barracks because, as previously noted, that would have entailed a much more severe penalty than the one that was imposed on me for wearing the clothes inside barracks.) Now, is that ridiculous or what?

(Note: All this applies only to the administration’s Blue Book and not to VMI’s student-run and student-enforced Honor Code, which is the most stringent and stringently enforced in the nation.)

Now that’s the difference between VMI and West Point. The West Point officer would never understand or countenance such rebelliousness, especially because it violates the cardinal principle of “please your superiors if you want to get rewarded or promoted.” In most cases, the VMI officer, because of the spirit of independent-thinking combined with a high sense of honor engendered at the school, will examine a rule or a policy or an order and will be willing and able to reach a quick decision on its propriety – and willing to break it or violate it if it is ludicrous, invalid, or illegal and willing to suffer the consequences for doing so. That’s why it would not surprise me to learn that West Point officers riddle the chain of command with respect to the torture, rape, sex abuse, and murder scandal at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib – and the subsequent whitewashes and cover-ups. I could be proven wrong, but I’d be very surprised if VMI officers are in that chain of command.

Rosemary Palmer is right. Generally speaking (there are always exceptions), the military mindset does not like or countenance people who think independently – people who question or criticize official U.S. government policy, even when it involves illegally and immorally invading and occupying foreign countries or violating constitutional provisions (such as the declaration of war requirement) or the Geneva Convention. And those who spend their lives toeing the official line will oftentimes do bad and nasty things to people who don’t. Just ask former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. Or Sgt. Kevin Benderman, who was court-martialed and sentenced to serve 15 months in jail for following his conscience and refusing to return for a second tour in Iraq. Or Sgt. Carlos Mejia, who they sent to the jail for the same reason. Or even Cindy Sheehan, who is now the victim of a conservative and neo-conservative smear campaign.

But criticize and condemn federal wrongdoing we must when our government is deserving of such criticism and condemnation. That is the moral and political duty of every citizen. After all, if we fail to do so because we fear retribution or retaliation from government officials or even fellow citizens, then how can we consider ourselves different from people in foreign lands who have failed to speak out against wrongdoing by their governments?

If people want lies and deception about the Iraq War, then they should continue listening to the words that are spoken by federal politicians and bureaucrats, including those in the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Congress. They have trained themselves to lie, and they are very good at it.

If people instead want the truth about U.S. foreign policy, including the Iraq War, then they should read such writers as James Glaser (a Marine Vietnam veteran), Chalmers Johnson, Laurence M. Vance, Lew Rockwell, Robert Higgs, Karen Kwiatkowski, Ivan Eland, Congressman Ron Paul, Anthony Gregory, Charley Reese, Pat Buchanan, Eric Margolis, Paul Craig Roberts, Doug Bandow (also found here), Ted Galen Carpenter, Justin Raimondo, Sheldon Richman, and James Bovard, and regularly visit such websites as LewRockwell.com, The Cato Institute, The Independent Institute, Antiwar.com, and The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The plain truth is that Iraq never attacked the United States and never even threatened to do so. Neither the Iraqi people nor their government had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. Therefore, the U.S. government had no moral or legal right to invade Iraq and kill and maim the Iraqi people. That makes the United States the aggressor nation in this conflict. It is the invader. It is the conqueror. Don’t forget that aggressive war was punished as a war crime at Nuremberg and that it is barred by the UN Charter, to which the United States is a signatory. Don’t forget also that Bush invaded Iraq without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war, making the war illegal under our own form of government.

And it was never about democracy, freedom, or the liberation of the Iraqi people. After all, if democracy was so important, would U.S. officials be embracing the military dictator of Pakistan as well as authoritarian dictators all over the Middle East? And if the freedom and well-being of the Iraqi people were so important, would U.S. officials have continued maintaining the sanctions against Iraq year after brutal year, despite the ever-growing number of deaths of Iraqi children?

It just doesn’t add up, does it? And the reason it doesn’t is that it’s all a lie – just as the supposed North Vietnamese attack at the Gulf of Tonkin, which President Lyndon Johnson and the U.S. Congress used as an excuse to expand the Vietnam War, which ended up killing 58,000 American soldiers and wounding countless more, was a lie.

To answer Cindy Sheehan’s question plainly and directly: Her son died for nothing. Or if she would prefer a diplomatic, polite answer, her son died not for a noble cause, as both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney have recently stated, but instead for an ignoble cause – regime change – hard-ball politics at the international level – the ouster and replacement of a foreign politician, Saddam Hussein, who fell out of grace with U.S. officials.

With all due respect, regime change, while important to U.S. politicians and bureaucrats, is nothing worth dying for and, for that matter, it’s nothing worth killing for.

We can all express our deepest condolences to Ms. Sheehan and the other families who have lost loved ones in Iraq. But only the truth, no matter how painful, will ultimately set them and the rest of us free of the lies and deceptions that underlie U.S. foreign policy. Only the truth will enable us move our nation away from the grip of empire and militarism and toward the principles of a limited-government republic that guided our Founding Fathers.

Did bush not explicitly say , that he was "not into regime change"??? (LIER !!) Is not regime change in another nation , by will ful intent , and invasion ILLEGAL?? ( forget what bush's quip was to that one. but something along the lines of : no such thing as international law. ( unless it applies to other nations......the uspoken part).


Then Americans as a people have the naivite to ask ......"why" they as a nation are resented so much now. Sheesh. Any anger, resentment and even hatred at the US i s a direct result of the US actions and attitude. (which is ignored ....as in many of their minds.......they can do no wrong..... :roll: :roll: :roll:

 

[jimmoyer]

RE: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

You know this board is just as similar to American hyperbole as you can get.

To paint Americans with the broad brush this board uses, perhaps a similar impressionistic self portrait of this board should be made as well, especially when you consider America itself is divided pretty evenly and if analysis of those votes show that at least 1/3 of either side was not a deep loyal vote then whatever broad brush cartoon like conclusions this board satisfies itself with would do better to admit a hypocrisy unexclusive to Americans alone but which really the special preserve of humanity in all its self-righteous glory.

Your vote is no less informed or dumb or smarter or wiser or less hypocritical or shallow in any other country once you research the details of each nations speciality of hypocrisy.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9894.htm

no time for fence sitters. Support the insanity in Iraq?? get your sorry butt over there and put your life where your mouth is. Don't support it??? Speak out/ up and be heard plain and clear.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to S

You know this board is just as similar to American hyperbole as you can get.

To paint Americans with the broad brush this board uses, perhaps a similar impressionistic self portrait of this board should be made as well, especially when you consider America itself is divided pretty evenly and if analysis of those votes show that at least 1/3 of either side was not a deep loyal vote then whatever broad brush cartoon like conclusions this board satisfies itself with would do better to admit a hypocrisy unexclusive to Americans alone but which really the special preserve of humanity in all its self-righteous glory.

Your vote is no less informed or dumb or smarter or wiser or less hypocritical or shallow in any other country once you research the details of each nations speciality of hypocrisy.

off topic. Wanna analyse this board, the process/content etc.??... there is another area for such arbitrary discussion....

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

Can We Do Something Else to Help?

Two years after the march from Selma to Montgomery Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took the pulpit at Riverside Church in New York City and gave a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence." Today we can substitute "Iraq" for "Vietnam." Dr. King spoke clearly:

"Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam."

Ignore. That's what the vast majority of Germans did in the 1930s as Hitler curtailed civil liberties and launched aggressive wars. I was born in August 1939, a week before Hitler sent German tanks into Poland to start World War II. I have studied that crucial time in some detail. And during the five years I served in Germany I had occasion to ask all manner of people how it could possibly be that, highly educated and cultured as they were, the Germans for the most part could simply ignore. Why was it that the institutional churches, Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran, could not find their voice? Why was it that so few spoke out?

A few did...and they provide good example for us today. Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke out, plotted against Hitler, and was executed. Also executed was a more obscure but equally courageous professor from the University of Berlin, Albrecht Haushofer.

Like Bonhoeffer, Haushofer was arrested for speaking out. The SS prison guards were required to extract a confession from prisoners before they were hanged or shot, but Haushofer refused. When they removed his body, though, a paper fell out of his pocket. It was his admission of guilt written in the form of a sonnet:

Schuld

...schuldig bin ich
Anders als Ihr denkt.
Ich musste früher meine Pflicht erkennen;
Ich musste schärfer Unheil Unheil nennen;
Mein Urteil habe ich zu lang gelenkt...

Ich habe gewarnt,
Aber nicht genug, und klar;
Und heute weiß ich, was ich schuldig war.

Guilt

I am guilty,
But not in the way you think.
I should have earlier recognized my duty;
I should have more sharply called evil evil;
I reined in my judgment too long.

I did warn,
But not enough, and clear;
And today I know what I was guilty of.

At Riverside Church 22 years later, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began by quoting a statement by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." Dr. King added, "That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam."

And that time has come for us in relation to Iraq. But where are the Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Iraq? Where are the successors to Dr. King, to Bonhoeffer, to Professor Haushofer? "There is only us," says Annie Dillard, and she is right of course. We are the ones we've been waiting for.

Dr. King was typically direct: "We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak....there is such a thing as being too late....Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity....Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late."

An Example to Follow

I believe Cindy Sheehan provides prophetic example for us all. She let herself be guided by the spirit within. President George W. Bush had said that the sacrifice of our dead soldiers, including Casey, was "worth it." And earlier this month he added that it was all in a "noble cause." Cindy, while giving a talk at a conference in Dallas, spontaneously asked if someone would come with her to Crawford, because she needed to ask the president what it was that he was describing as a "noble cause." You know the first chapter of the rest of the story. The point I would make here is simply that she was open to the spirit within, decided to follow its prompting, and did not hesitate to claim the help she needed.

Cindy used her conference speech to speak out clearly, as she has been doing for these past several months, and then she acted.

Is it not time for us-each of us-to be open to such prompting. Is it not time for us, amid the carnage in Iraq, amid a presidentially promulgated policy permitting torture "consistent with military necessity," amid growing signs of an attack by Israel and/or the U.S. on Iran-is it not high time for us to speak...and to act. How, in God's name, can we not act?

Creative Protest

Dr. King enjoined his listeners at Riverside Church to "seek out every creative means of protest possible," in matching actions with our words.

Not all of us can join the march to Selma...I mean Crawford. So let's be creative.

I wear a t-shirt with a representation of Arlington West on the front. At 7:30 AM every Sunday, Veterans for Peace in the area of Los Angeles bring white crosses, stars of David, and crescents, down to Santa Monica beach as a poignant reminder of those troops killed in Iraq. The crosses, stars, and crescents are arrayed respectfully in lines as hauntingly straight as those here in our own Arlington Cemetery.

When a few months ago I had the privilege of helping my veteran colleagues set up Arlington West, there were 1,600 crosses, stars, crescents, and it took three hours to set them in place. We are fast approaching 1,900; I don't know how long it takes to emplace them now. When the veterans of Arlington West heard of Cindy Sheehan's courageous witness in Crawford, they packed up 800 and drove all night to ensure that a large slice of Arlington West could be emplaced in newly created Arlington Crawford at Camp Casey.

That's creative, no?

Here we already have "Arlington East" to honor the dead. But what about the thousands and thousands of wounded? Can we be imaginative enough to discern visually creative ways to witness to and honor our wounded? And what about all the Iraqi civilians-"collateral damage," in military parlance-who, absent the war, would be alive today? The number of civilian dead was put as high as 100,000 a year ago. Our government does not consider Iraqi casualties worth counting. Is this a way of saying that, in our country's view, Iraqis don't count? Have we become so callous as to ignore, and thus acquiesce in that?

These are some spontaneous thoughts...the only suggestions that occur to me this evening regarding things we might consider doing to walk the talk. No doubt, you will have more imaginative, more creative ideas. Don't wait. Remember: there is such a thing as being too late.

The fire ants were not the only pests in Crawford. There were a few unfriendly folks who kept telling us to go to hell. That brought to mind the dictum of the 18th century English statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of crisis, remain neutral."

Let's not oblige the pests; I understand that hell is even hotter than Crawford.

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC, and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. On Wednesday, he arrived home in Arlington, VA, after five days in Crawford, and shared these remarks with 300 neighbors at the close of a candlelight observance in honor of Cindy Sheehan. He can be reached at: RRMcGovern@aol.com

Creative protests....... (hmm. like that. Explore new ways of getting the message across.)


who can argue her question. What "noble cause" is he talking about ??? Who's "noble cause" is this?? What is "noble " about invasions and wars in this current era??? Wars are a throwback to another era......and humanity should have evolved beyond that level of primal aggression and leaned how to deal with issues more constructively. humanely. The only people who START wars now......are _________??? ( mentally insane, or challenged )

 

[Karlin]

Re: Mr. Bush on Vacation from vacation

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/08/con05300.html

 

[Jo Canadian]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

"Smear Central" indeed !!

(aka Bushcon gov't ) :wink:

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

Camp Casey puts Bush on the run
Archive Recent Editions 2005 Editions Aug 27, 2005
Author: Matt Parker
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 08/25/05 16:03


Ignites nationwide movement to bring the troops home

Haga clic aquí para texto español.

CRAWFORD, Texas — Just two months ago, people in this quiet, rural town, population 705, lived their lives in relative anonymity. But thanks to the lies of an infamous neighbor, the townsfolk have had to adjust to a daily barrage of photographers, reporters, television cameras and, most of all, protesters.

That infamous neighbor is none other than President George W. Bush. Cindy Sheehan’s courageous vigil outside his ranch has forced Americans all over the country to stand up and ask Bush, “For what noble cause?”

As Sheehan’s supporters streamed to Crawford, Bush interrupted his ranch vacation to address the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Salt Lake City on Aug. 22, and his backers launched a public relations offensive including a cross-country caravan supporting Bush’s war policy.

However, the president is being met with protests wherever he goes. In Salt Lake City, Mayor Rocky Anderson told thousands of demonstrators, “Those who take a

stand … who stand up to deceit by our government … are true patriots.”

Although Sheehan flew home to care for her ill mother, she was due to return to Crawford this week. Meanwhile, members of Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans for Peace continue the fight with the support of courageous volunteers.

The Crawford Peace House has become a center of organization and activity, its property literally overflowing with volunteers, food donations and tents.

Volunteers were busy refurbishing the small white crosses erected in memory of the soldiers fallen in Iraq — desecrated Aug. 15 when a Crawford resident purposefully ran over them — and building new ones.

“We hope to erect all 1,800 crosses, one for each soldier killed in Iraq,” Houston resident Ken Keeling told us as he began repainting a cross smudged by tire treads.

Our driver on the shuttle to Camp Casey II, the encampment’s new site, was Ralph Hutchins, a Republican from Austin. “Cindy’s fight goes beyond party divisions,” Ralph said. As we wound down one-lane roads, past cow pastures, barbed-wire fences and churches, he said he felt a moral imperative to help out with Cindy’s struggle: “I don’t support Bush or the war in Iraq.”

The land for the camp, donated by local rancher Fred Mattlage, flanked President Bush’s ranch. State troopers, Texas Rangers and Secret Service agents guarded the road into the ranch. A giant white tent donated by an Italian company housed a stage and several hundred demonstrators. Peace organizations tabled, sheltered from the sun and the brutal 101-degree heat; hundreds of white crosses bearing the names of fallen soldiers paralleled the tent.

These were not seasoned protesters. Most were ordinary Americans. Many had not been politically active until now.

“I’d never been to a protest in my life until the candlelight vigil in my community last Wednesday,” Johnnie Johnson, an African American from Austin, told me. At the gathering Johnson and others from her community decided to drive to Crawford. “I’m here to support the mothers and families of the fallen and to support the movement to bring the troops home,” she said.

Riding back to the Peace House, I spoke with Vietnam veteran and Veterans for Peace member Carl Risingmoore, who heads Camp Casey’s security team. “Our side has had wonderful relations with the police,” he said. “They’ve arrested several pro-Bush counter-demonstrators that have forced their way into our camps and verbally harassed us.”

Although most were from Texas, many supporters came from other parts of the U.S.

Bill McNulty, from Setauket, N.Y., arrived Aug. 20, and was filling in wherever needed. A member of Veterans For Peace and Pax Christi, Long Island, McNulty said, “Cindy has forced everyone in America to ask the question: ‘For what noble cause?’ Regardless of political or religious beliefs, this question resonates deeply,” he added.

“My church claims to subscribe to the ‘Just War Doctrine,’” McNulty said, “but although none of the seven conditions of that doctrine have been met by the war in Iraq, the Catholic Church does not actively condemn it.”

“Hip-hop music speaks to the youth in American today, and that’s why it’s so important to get this music behind the antiwar movement,” said antiwar hip-hop artist and Gulf War veteran King Flipp. “There aren’t enough hip-hop artists taking a stand against the war in Iraq.”

Flipp, shooting a music video for his next album, “Wake Up!” said “the love Cindy has for her son” convinced him to shoot the video in Crawford. He and Joan Baez were the two scheduled performers that night at Camp Casey.

United for Peace and Justice said this week that Sheehan will speak at the massive Sept. 24 antiwar rally in Washington, D.C. The rally “will bring the protest to the very doorstep of the White House,” said UFPJ Vice Chairperson Judith Le Blanc.

Last weekend, the biggest celebrities were the volunteers, supporters, and demonstrators. This was a time of ordinary Americans remembering the courageous men and women forced to die for a lie and supporting the families left behind, vowing “Never again!”

someone should write a song......"Bush on the Run". :wink:

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

Crawford, Texas, diary
‘Welcome to Camp Casey, the beginning of the end of the war’
Workers World


August 25, 2005



I arrived in Crawford, Texas, on Aug. 17. As I got off the shuttle bus I was greeted with, “Welcome to Camp Casey, the beginning of the end of the war!”



Annie Spell from New Orleans and
Eddie Boyd from Baltimore.
WW photos: Dustin Langley
As I settled in at the camp, I was overwhelmed by an almost tangible feeling of optimism.

Eleven days earlier Cindy Sheehan—whose son, GI Casey Sheehan, was killed in Baghdad in April 2004—had arrived in Crawford to confront President George W. Bush. By doing so, she had reached out and touched people who had not been reached before.

People have come here from all over Texas and all over the United States. They have also come from as far away as Australia, Turkey and South Korea.

All to camp out in a ditch beside a single-lane road. When I ask why they’ve come, almost everyone says, “I felt I had to be here.”

Dave Jensen, a veteran who drove from Tyler, Texas, says: “I saw this and just knew this was something I had to go to. The best way to put it is that I felt like this could be the little snowball going down the mountain that’s going to turn into something and change something.”



Iraq Veterans Against the War
standing security.
As I settle into camp, pitching my tent at the side of the road, I survey the vista: cars and tents stretched as far as I could see down the road. Some people sleep inside or on top of their cars. Others sleep in tents, or just in sleeping bags in the open air.

Tammara Rosenleaf’s husband is about to be deployed to Iraq. She joined the encampment in its first few days. She says: “When my husband got ready to deploy, the Army gave me a book, called ‘Sur viving Deployment.’ There’s a lot of things in it, lists of all sorts of things I should have.

“It says I should write down the numbers of the electrician and plumber. You know what? I am 47 years old. I know that if my toilet is clogged up, I should call a plumber. What I’d like to know, at 4:00 in the morning when I wake up scared to death that my husband is dead or injured, who do I call? And it’s not in that book.”

Sense of community

The next day I meet with Cindy Sheehan briefly. I tell her about the solidarity rally in Union Square and the ongoing presence we had at Camp Casey in New York City.

Sheehan has to leave later in the day when she hears that her mother has suffered a stroke. But those left at Camp Casey are determined to continue building the movement here.

A sense of community and enthusiasm permeates the roadside encampment. People just seem to show up, and immediately begin chipping in.

A group of young activists from Ithaca, N.Y., staffs a kitchen at Crawford Peace House, making sure the camp has fresh coffee in the morning and three hot meals each day.

Others stand out in the blazing Texas heat for hours, directing traffic and keeping an eye out for pro-war troublemakers.

The veterans’ tent

There is a veterans’ tent, staffed by representatives from Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War. Inside, I talk with Cody Camacho, an Iraq War veteran from Chicago.

Camacho tells me he’s here because it helps in “dealing with the things I saw and the things I did over there, dealing with the guilt and things.

“You’ve just got to find a real ‘noble cause.’ The only way to keep your sanity is to do what is obviously right.

“All of a sudden, there’s clarity after you go through that. That’s the reason I’m here, to get my buddies home,” Camacho said.

On the night of Aug. 20, the anti-war campers hold a powerful rally at the new campsite—located within view of the Bush estate. Speakers include military families, veterans, and anti-war activists from across the country.

One of the speakers is Andrea Hackett from the Michigan Emergency Com mit tee Against War & Injustice. Her daughter is currently in Iraq. She asks: “Now, why is it that the president can’t come out and answer her question, okay? Us mothers want to know this, okay? We want him to act like an executive officer that he is supposed to be.

“He [Bush] represents the whole of the United States. He represents all of those troops that are laying their life down for this country and die for what they thought was the good cause. I think it’s just a moral sin against them to have them fighting a war and not know exactly what they’re fighting for, because you lied to them.

“Since we don’t have the power to go over there and really end this war, we’re just going to bring the issue right here to him, right to his house. Right into his neighborhood, right to his backyard. Let’s keep coming, okay?

“Let’s make this a big huge movement that he’s going to have to either answer to or go back to the White House and hide, okay? Hide back in the White House.

“We’ll meet him there, though, on Sept. 24.”

Returning veterans face trauma

Eddie Boyd, a Navy veteran and an activist with the Troops Out Now Coalition in Baltimore, speaks of the trauma returning veterans face. He says: “There are a lot of folks that are coming back home, and a lot of folks that are feeling the same way. And all our government has to do is say, ‘Suck it up, drink a beer and keep moving.’

“I say no. We have to love our troops, and we love our kids. And we love our kids so much that we would do anything and everything in our power to keep them away from putting on them uniforms.”

SCLC’s Lowery speaks

One of the highlights of the rally is a speech by the Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder of Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lowery says: “The war is over, now it is time for Bush to come to that understanding and bring the troops home.

“Even though Cindy had gone, her presence remained, and the presence of all of those parents and supporters and sympathizers who came from across this country—Black, white, brown—to send a message to this administration, it was a tremendous spiritual experience.

“And when I go back home, I want to share it with a woman who has given her life for peace and justice, Coretta Scott King, who is struggling now with courage and dignity, the kind of courage and dignity she has displayed throughout her life. I want to share it with her the first chance I get, that there is a balm in Gilead, and that there is a movement brewing in the land. And it’s time, it’s time to bring the troops home.”

Taps at Camp Casey

“By far, the most incredible part of my stay,” says Eddie Boyd, “was at dusk on Saturday, at Camp 2, where a plot of land had been measured to place crosses for the dead who had come from Texas. Jeff, a Marine veteran, began playing TAPS in honor of the dead. The camp was silent.

“After TAPS were played, a lady that had lost a family member sang a song that didn’t leave a dry eye at the campsite. Later that night I begin to think of the importance of being here, of voicing my displeasure of this president and administration’s policy, where this country is headed.”

Annie Spell and Buddy Spell, lawyers from outside New Orleans, had driven to Crawford to help out with legal issues and security. Buddy Spell describes his time at Camp Casey as “the most unique and inspiring action that I’ve ever been involved in. I have a lot of hope for the future.

“Now we’re in a position for a national movement. People from all over the country are organizing and preparing for future resistance against the war.”

Many at the camp echo this sentiment. As I leave Camp Casey on Aug. 21, participants are preparing to take this new spirit of struggle and grassroots action to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 24 and beyond. Everyone I say goodbye to says, “See you next month in Washington!”

Langley is a Navy Veteran and organizer with No Draft No Way (www.NoDraftNoWay.org)

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

http://www.topplebush.com/oped2131.shtml


Bush CAN'T answer Cindy's question. There is no nobility in HIS invasion and her son did NOT die for a "noble cause".....


(except perhaps in bush's fragmented/insane mind)

 

[GL Schmitt]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

NYPD Unplugs Cindy Sheehan
City’s Finest pulls move even Bush wouldn’t have tried
by Sarah Ferguson
September 19th, 2005


Cindy Sheehan may be the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement. But that didn't stop members of the New York Police Department from marching into the crowd of about 150 people gathered in Union Square Monday to hear her speak and yanking away the microphone.

The NYPD pulled the plug just as Sheehan was calling on the audience not to lose heart in the fight to end the war in Iraq.

"We get up every morning, and every morning we see this enormous mountain in front of us," said Sheehan, speaking on behalf of the other parents and family members of fallen soldiers who have taken up the crusade to bring the troops home.

"We can't go through it, we can't go under it, so we have to go over it," she continued, just as the cops rushed the makeshift podium.

Police dragged away Paul Zulkowitz, a.k.a. Zool, an organizer with “Camp Casey NYC,” the small encampment that he and other activists set up a month ago in Union Square in solidarity with Sheehan’s vigil outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. The New York branch existed much to the ire of the city’s Parks Department. Today, Zulkowitz was arrested for failing to obtain a sound permit—a charge that normally warrants no more than a summons.

Moments earlier, Zulkowitz had been chastising Parks officials for refusing to grant a permit to the encampment, and accusing the police of trying to harass the antiwar protest away. Contrasting the liberal Big Apple with the hostile environs Sheehan faced in Crawford, Zulkowitz told the crowd: "You would think that here in New York City, at Union Square—our Hyde Park—you would think that we would little difficulty having a 24-hour vigil to oppose the war. In fact, we've had two arrests and eight summonses and endless harassment from the police for doing what we do."

As the activists hustled away Sheehan and the other family members on the Bring Them Home Now tour, an enraged crowd of about 50 people stormed after the police, chanting, "Shame! Shame!" Meanwhile Iraq war veteran and now peace activist Jeff Key played "God Bless America" on his trumpet.

"Since when can't you talk out here in Union Square?" demanded an Upper West Side social worker who identified herself as Quha, who said she'd taken her lunch break to hear Sheehan because she has a 20-year-old son who is considering enlisting. "I've seen everyone and their mother come out and speak nonsense out here in this park, and for them to shut down Cindy Sheehan is just not right."

"They came in like gangbusters. It was really ridiculous," said Margaret Rapp, a retired teacher from Inwood who added that she planned to file a complaint after an officer forcibly shoved her in the chest. A mother of a 19-year-old, she said she'd come to hear Sheehan because she lost her fiancee during the Vietnam War. "This is very close to home. There is a chord that Cindy hits among people that have lost people in this war and other wars, or who have draft age children like me. We're scared to death.”

Inspector Michael McEnroy, commander of the 13th Precinct, insisted the shutdown order had nothing to do with the content of Sheehan’s speech, but was instead about the "provocation" caused by Zulkowitz. “This has been going on for much longer than today,” McEnroy said, adding of Sheehan, “I don’t even know the woman.” That last part prompted one pissed-off onlooker to shoot back: “Haven’t you watched the news or read a paper in the last three months? ”

Sheehan has been touring the country for the last month with members of Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak out, and Iraq Veterans Against the War. They will be speaking tonight at 6:30 at St. John the Divine (Amsterdam Avenue at 112th Street), part of the lead up to Saturday’s big anti-war march in Washington, D.C.

Yet for all their fussing over sound permits, the police evidently weren’t troubled the young folkie who set up his own mic and portable amp shortly after Sheehan and her entourage had left, then launched into a round of Dylanesque protest songs.

Sheehan’s mic wasn’t that much louder, leaving one to wonder whether the cops’ hasty halt to the speakout was perhaps motivated more by the crowd she drew and the radical posturing voiced by some of the speakers leading up to her—including Dustin Langley of the Troops Out Nowcoalition, who urged the anti-warriors milling in the bright sun to "open a new front of resistance right here. Bring Falluja to New York and shut it down!”

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: Mr. Bush, There's Someone Waiting, and Waiting, to See Y

Published on Thursday, September 22, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times
American Mother Has Iraqi Audience
by Borzou Daragahi

BAGHDAD — Khalda Khalaf feels Cindy Sheehan's pain. She's been there, too.

Her 28-year-old son, Majid Khalid Kabi, died in 2004 fighting on the opposite side in the same months-long stretch of clashes between Shiite militiamen and U.S. soldiers in which Spc. Casey Sheehan perished.

"Of course, she's a mother and just like our people are hurting, she's hurting too," says Khalaf, a 52-year-old resident of Sadr City, the east Baghdad slum where Sheehan's son died in April 2004. "Just as she wants America out of Iraq, so do we."

Sheehan, the antiwar mom who is due to lead thousands of demonstrators converging on Washington on Saturday to protest the U.S.-led war, has become a minor celebrity in Iraq as well. The same satellite channels that bring quick, often gruesome coverage of the violence in Iraq to the nation's TV screens also gave regular updates on Sheehan's lengthy vigil outside President Bush's Texas ranch.

Forty years ago, during the Vietnam War, Ho Chi Minh and his top deputies kept a close eye on U.S. public opinion and the antiwar movement. Now on the streets of Baghdad, Najaf and Mosul, even ordinary Iraqis have heard of Cindy Sheehan and formed opinions about her and her movement.

"I sympathize with her and her cause, but I don't think that the American administration will be affected by such a thing," said Hassan Hashim Mahmoud, a 32-year-old government employee in Najaf.

Television and newspapers have reported the upcoming marches. And footage of her speaking before previous rallies, aired on television channels such as Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and Al Sharqiya, has made Iraqis aware of the antiwar movement in the United States.

Even poor families such as Khalaf's know about Sheehan via "news" videos distributed by political parties, such as the radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr's movement, for whom Kabi died in August 2004 in Najaf.

To some Iraqis, Sheehan's stand at Bush's ranch and her continuing opposition to the war make her a hero.

"The president doesn't have the credibility to face the mother of the U.S. soldier who was killed in a war that many in the U.S. say was a fatal mistake," columnist Muthana Tabaqchali wrote in the Iraqi daily Azzaman, which the U.S. Embassy considers hostile to the American mission in Iraq.

"Sheehan was a lady who stood like a lioness with her lofty staff in front of the president," he wrote. "She collected all her strength and motherhood to face the strongest president in the world to tell him enough!"

Others, however, view her with cynicism.

"This might be a part of a political game, like when pictures of prisoners' abuses in Abu Ghraib prison were published, just to harm President Bush's reputation," said Hameed Shabak, 35, a Mosul resident.

In front of the Faqma ice cream shop in Baghdad's Karada district, Fathel Saad, a silver-haired professor of philosophy and theology at Babel College south of Baghdad, debated a friend about Sheehan while finishing up an ice cream cone.

"I think she is misguided," Saad said. "What the Americans have given Iraq is the greatest gift: the freedom to think."

His friend, schoolteacher Fares Mukhlis, disagreed. "This is a brave woman standing up for her principles that are correct," he said.

Nabeal Mohammed Younis, a professor of political science at Baghdad University, recalled seeing Sheehan's image on Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel, while having lunch at a Baghdad hotel with colleagues.

"We said that this woman is not very different from the women in Iraq who've lost their sons," Younis recalled. "We started talking about Cindy Sheehan and started to distinguish between how the women are affected by the war and how the men are affected."

With thousands of Iraqis killed in violence since the March 2003 invasion and with the legacy of Saddam Hussein's tyranny still haunting them, Iraqis are inclined to sympathize with a grieving mother, regardless of their political views, Younis said.

"Most of them are with her and share her misery for losing her son," he said.

Sheehan's plight, as well as the news of thousands of Americans voicing concern about the troubles in Iraq, helped Haqqi Fathulla, a 33-year-old Mosul resident, feel personally connected to Americans.

"The stand of this woman emphasizes the fact that there are no hostilities between Iraqi and American people," he said.

Sept 24 is almost here. Supposed to be the GRAND PROTEST in Washington. Rita should be hitting around that day too. Bush might have a busy time of it......