Hero of what? Hero to Wright, Rezko, Ayers, and
Posted By: ACORN? Yeah, be proud to vote for him..not.nm on 2008-10-18
In Reply to: It was blue long ago and turning blue now thanks to OBAMA THE HERO - Christian without the hate
nm
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What about judgement? Wright, Rezko, Ayers,
nm
Worse is that you ignore Ayers, Wright, Rezko
nm
When your hero, Reagan,
he apparently made you blind. Remember this when more of our infrastructure (already started with levees in Louisiana) falls apart and you wonder why there are more pot holes and you can't afford basic necessities. Look around, it's already happening.
Poverty Increases as Incomes Decline Under Bush
September 21, 2005
By Gene C. Gerard
The day after Hurricane Katrina hit, exposing much of the public to the tragic conditions of poverty in America, the Census Bureau quietly released its annual report entitled, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States. In some respects, it provided a demonstrable backdrop to the pockets of poverty common to New Orleans and other cities. It also explained why, despite President Bush's assertion last month that, Americans have more money in their pockets, many people aren't faring as well as they once did.
The report indicates that in 2004 there was no increase in average annual household incomes for black, white, or Hispanic families. In fact, this marks the first time since the Census Bureau began keeping records that household incomes failed to increase for five consecutive years. Since President Bush took office, the average annual household family income has declined by $2,572, approximately 4.8 percent.
Black families had the lowest average income last year, at $30,134. By comparison, the average income for white families was $48,977. The average pretax family income for all racial groups combined was $44,389, which is the lowest it has been since 1997. The South had the lowest average family income in 2004.
Interestingly enough, as the Economic Policy Institute notes in their analysis of the Census Bureau's report, not all families did poorly last year. Although the portion of the total national income going to the bottom 60 percent of families did not increase last year, the portion going to the wealthiest five percent of families rose by 0.4 percent. And while the average inflation-adjusted family income of middle-class Americans declined by 0.7 percent in 2004, the wealthiest five percent of families enjoyed a 1.7 percent increase.
Earnings also declined last year. This is despite the fact that Americans are working harder. Since 2000, worker output per hour has increased by 15 percent. Yet for men working full-time, their annual incomes declined 2.3 percent in 2004, down to an average of $40,798. This decrease was the largest one-year decline in 14 years for men. Women saw their earnings decrease by 1 percent, with an average income of $31,223, the largest one-year decline for women in nine years.
Women earned only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men last year. Clearly, the gender gap remains real and pervasive. In all major industry sectors, women earned less than men. In the management of companies, women earned 54 cents for every dollar earned by men; 57 cents in finance and industry; and 60 cents in scientific and technical services.
Not surprisingly, the report revealed that poverty increased last year. There were 37 million (12.7 percent) people living in poverty, an increase of 1.1 million people since 2003. This was the fourth consecutive year in which poverty has increased. In fact, since President Bush took office, 5.4 million more people, including 1.4 million children, have found themselves living in poverty. There were 7.9 million families living below the poverty level in 2004, an increase of 300,000 families since 2003.
The average income last year for a poverty-stricken family of four was $19,307; for a family of three it was $15,067, and for a couple it was $12,334. The poverty rate increased for people 18 to 64 last year by 0.5 percent. The South experienced the highest poverty rate of all regions.
The Census Bureau report also demonstrated that health insurance coverage remains elusive for many Americans. Those covered by employer-sponsored health insurance declined from 60.4 percent in 2003 to 59.8 percent in 2004. Approximately 800,000 more workers found themselves without health insurance last year. The percentage of people covered by governmental health programs in 2004 rose to 27.2 percent, in part because as poverty increased, more Americans were forced to seek coverage through Medicaid. The percentage of the public with Medicaid coverage rose by 0.5 percent in 2004.
Last year was the fourth consecutive year in which employer-sponsored health insurance coverage declined. A total of 45.8 million Americans are now without health insurance. The uninsured rate in 2004 was 11.3 percent for whites, 19.7 percent for blacks, and 32.7 percent for Hispanics. Not surprisingly, the South had the highest portion of the uninsured population, at 18.3 percent.
Although we haven't heard President Bush say it much lately, he came into office as a self-professed compassionate conservative. But as the report by the Census Bureau suggests, which was sadly symbolized by the plight of many poor residents of New Orleans, the country hasn't seen much of that compassion in the last five years.
Many Americans are working harder, earning less, and without the benefit of health insurance. It's easy to understand why the report was released a day after the largest natural disaster in a century, when much of the country was distracted.
PK...You are my hero/shero! sm
Coming from another person who finds herself sitting in the middle of the road (seeming sometimes with no place to go :) you speak to the beat of my very heart where politics are concerned, and I'm glad you posted your story because I would have taken you as a hardline liberal. That just goes to show.
I only questioned the wire tapping because it has been an issue that I do not have a stance on. I can see the good in it and the bad that can come along with it, so versus reading an article I wanted to know in your own words what you guys felt about it. I definitely can see why checks and balances are in needed in this program, as with anythng in the justice system. It may take more work, but if there is legitimacy in the tapping then they should be required to get a warrant.
Thank you for sharing your views.
Even the hero of the RWNJ
Rush Limbaugh said Bill-O is the Ted Baxter of Fox news. Falafa, falafa, falafa.
Yes, a true hero (sm)
They gave him full immunity, because they counted on him flipping over on the the administration. So he gets full immunity, and then takes the all the blame unto himself, after shredding thousands of documents under the very noses of the investigators.
Not sure if this part is true, but I guess someone held up a piece of paper as evidence, and asked Oliver North what it was.
His response?
Damn, I must have forgotten to shred that one!!
MCCAIN: NO HERO
How does spending time in a prisoner of war camp make you a hero? You would really rather have had a man who is a "post-traumatic stress disorder" attack waiting to happen, with his hand on the big red button?
If being a POW is heroic, Guantanamo is the LAND OF HEROES.
On this first day of your new hero, you cant stop
nm
Personally, I never said that, but Wright, Rezko,
nm
Charles Ferguson is a hero!
I finally had time to sit down and watch the movie No End in Sight. Finally! The truth is coming out. I encourage everyone to watch it, and considering I read a recent poll that 40% of Americans think that Sadam was behind 911 and that is why we invaded Iraq, tell everyone you know to watch it too.
Like Whorn, I was riveted. It angers me. President Bush, his administration, and Congress should be held accountable for allowing this nightmare to happen and to continue. President Bush in particular is complicit in destroying Iraq and should be brought out to answer a few questions to say the least. This is all at his feet due to ineptness to lead and putting the wrong people in charge of things they had no business being in charge of and not listening to the advice of those who knew best simply because he didn't want to hear it. I am rather surprised that there are not more protests marching on Washington. I think there may be before he exits the White House.
The most important thing for me is it solidified my belief that we need to pull out of Iraq posthaste. I was on the fence about pulling our troops out. I am no longer on that fence.
I could go on and on, it's a passionate subject. It is predicted that this venture will cost 1.5 trillion dollars. That should shoot the conservatives right up the wazoo. How could anyone possibly justify that? Who the heck is going to pay for it? Think our taxes will go up? I'd bet on it. Oh, probably not, they'll budget cut to cover the blunder and leave more of our children poorly educated. Over 3000 Americans dead, well over a half a million dead Iraqi's, the government won't disclose how many Iraqi are currently being detained. I could scream.
You've got to watch it.
Your hero Hillary's husband had ONLY...
executive experience when he went into the white house. Are you saying he did not function well as president?? As long as you watch the regular media McCain is going to be absent because they are card carrying members of the vote Democrat or die party before everything say whatever youhave to say even if that changes daily crowd.
And if you don't know the Clintons by now your head is further in the sand that mine ever thought about being, and all this yada yada democratic party line mantra....
and as far as her calling hillary a whiner...let me search the internet. I don't think she is the first. Let me also search the internet for what an MSNBC commentator called her during the primaries...didn't see you posting his name here.
Yep, we do agree....sweeetttttt. I am still excited. And will be until its over, and all this hard line party mantra mumbo jumbo is not going to dampen it. And if the ticket loses, I STILL SAY that Hillary Clinton can't carry Sarah Palin's water. Palin has more integrity in her little finger than the Clintons have in their whole bodies. I don't think she has ever committed felony perjury. Wanna talk about travelgate, whitewater...?
Geez. lol. sweeettttt.
hero does not equal presidential - nm
x
Oh, that was classy... not!. McCain was the hero
nm
There are more than one kind of hero in this world,
.
I was just saying to follow the lead of your hero
he lost but he is moving past it, unlike the RRs on this board
You said it - they are the true hero's of the country
Not any message really, just wanted to say the Navy Seals are true hero's. Willing to go into danger and even die saving other people they don't know. Navy Seals, Police, Fire, etc. People who selflessly lay down their lives to protect and rescue the innocent are the true hero's and I hope they are commended for this. - Okay, so I guess I did have a message. :-)
Yeah, Rev Wright does not matter, Rezko does not
nm
Why do Wright, Rezko, Khalidi, Odinga, etc. not
nm
Another RICO suit from 911 hero/survivor.sm
William Rodriguez was the last known person out of the North Tower alive, and helped rescue people out of the tower.
Here is his story:
http://www.911forthetruth.com/pages/Rodriguez.htm
Here is the link to the RICO
suit:
http://www.911forthetruth.com/pages/RodriguezComplaint.htm
Ollie North, the 'true hero' - whatever....
Yeah-a real American Hero
He was on The View and he stated he lives in Mexico 9 months out of the year. He loves Mexico. He's against waterboarding and his answers to questions they asked him were way out there as if he hates the country.
He's a real patriot, isn't he...NOT!
Respectable? Like his friends Wright, Rezko, Ayres
nm
Draft Dodger Cheney attacks War Hero
The words President Murtha are sounding pretty good!
DERRICK Z. JACKSON
White House plays chicken with a war hero
By Derrick Z. Jackson | November 19, 2005
THE WHITE House is so deluded, it actually believes it can turn a soaring hawk into a scrounging chicken. Stung by the call by US Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania to pull out of Iraq, Scott McClellan, President Bush's press secretary, said this week, ''It is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
Talk about playing the chicken-hawk card. A White House where most of the architects of war avoided combat in their own lives dared to associate two people who are worlds apart in world views. Moore made the anti-Bush ''Fahrenheit 9/11, which infuriated the right wing by breaking box office records for a documentary film. Moore was booed at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
Murtha is the 73-year-old recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for combat duty in Vietnam. He is a Democrat whose three decades in office are marked by support of President Reagan's policies in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Murtha was a top Democratic supporter of the 1991 Gulf War. He wants a constitutional ban on burning the American flag.
In a 2002 press briefing, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz termed the support of politicians like Murtha for the Pentagon as ''wonderful. In the 2004 vice presidential debate, incumbent Dick Cheney said, ''One of my strongest allies in Congress when I was secretary of defense was Jack Murtha.
For all those shows of patriotism, Murtha was skeptical about the rush to invade Iraq in 2003 of Iraq even though he voted to give President Bush the authorization to go to war. He publicly said Bush beat the war drums before building an international coalition. Murtha said he had not seen anything in intelligence reports that indicated an imminent threat. Murtha said Bush ''has put the country in such a box. He can say, 'You'll undercut me if you don't vote for this resolution.'
One month after the invasion, when no weapons of mass destruction had yet been found, Murtha warned that American credibility was at risk. By the September, the absence of weapons of mass destruction made him join the much more liberal House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, in calling for Bush to fire the planners of the invasion. Despite the proclamation that ''we achieved a marvelous military victory, Murtha became increasingly frustrated with the chaos of the occupation. This summer, Murtha said administration officials were ''not honest in their assessment that they were winning the ongoing battle.
Finally, this week, Murtha unleased a scathing attack on Bush's Iraq policy. He called it ''a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. He said he believed military officials when he visited Kuwait just before the war and they showed him where American forces would be attacked by weapons of mass destruction when they approach Baghdad. But now, with no end to the killing in sight, he said, ''The US cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It's time to bring the troops home. . .They have become the enemy.
Murtha talked about soldier after soldier he has visited in hospitals, wounded and maimed by the invasion. Yet, there's more terrorism now than there ever was and it's because of what? Is it because of our policy? I would say it's a big part.
In perhaps the most humble admission of his press conference, Murtha said, ''The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress.
This came the day after Cheney threw mud in the direction of critics who gave Bush his war authorization. Cheney accused them of making ''irresponsible comments. He accused them issuing ''cynical and pernicious falsehoods to make ''a play for political advantage.
He said, ''The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory -- or their backbone.
This was the same Cheney who gave us some of the greatest falsehoods of this generation with ''There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction . . . We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons, and that we would be ''welcomed as liberators.
Murtha clobbered Cheney's words the next day, saying, ''I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.
This hawk still soars, above the scrounging chicken hawks.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com. ![src=http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/File-Based_Image_Resource/dingbat_story_end_icon.gif]()
War Hero Murtha wouldn't join military now
US Rep. Murtha says he wouldn't join military now
03 Jan 2006 01:00:32 GMT
Source: Reuters
|
WASHINGTON, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Rep. John Murtha, a key Democratic voice who favors pulling U.S. troops from Iraq, said in remarks airing on Monday that he would not join the U.S. military today.
A decorated Vietnam combat veteran who retired as a colonel after 37 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Murtha told ABC News' Nightline program that Iraq absolutely was a wrong war for President George W. Bush to have launched.
Would you join (the military) today?, he was asked in an interview taped on Friday.
No, replied Murtha of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees defense spending and one of his party's leading spokesmen on military issues.
And I think you're saying the average guy out there who's considering recruitment is justified in saying 'I don't want to serve', the interviewer continued.
Exactly right, said Murtha, who drew White House ire in November after becoming the first ranking Democrat to push for a pullout of U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as it could be done safely.
At the time, White House spokesman Scott McClellan equated Murtha's position with surrendering to terrorists.
Since then, Bush has decried the defeatism of some of his political rivals. In an unusually direct appeal, he urged Americans on Dec. 18 not to give in to despair over Iraq, insisting that we are winning despite a tougher-than-expected fight.
Murtha did not respond directly when asked whether a lack of combat experience might have affected the decision-making of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their former top deputies.
Let me tell you, war is a nasty business. It sears the soul, he said, choking up. And it made a difference. The shadow of those killings stay with you the rest of your life.
Asked for comment, a Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col. John Skinner, said: We have an all-volunteer military. People are free to choose whether they serve or not.
Our freedom of speech in this country allows all of us the opportunity to voice an opinion. It's one of our great strengths as a nation, he added in an e-mailed reply.
The White House had no immediate comment.
![src=http://www.alertnet.org/images/spacer.gif]()
Unbiased opion? Oh, gourdpainter, you're my new hero.
I mean, I thought that Macaque Obama was full of sh it. But, lady, YOU take the cake. I mean, YOU make Macaque look downright HONEST by comparison.
Maybe you could work for his campaign. I hear he pays REAL well. (You don't mind changing your name to Chicago Joe's Kid Kamp or Chi-Town Youth Enrichment or something, do you? 'Cuz then he could throw you HEAPS of money and no one would ever figure it out.
FYI. Paul Newman died today. What a guy! A hero of mine. God Bless! nm
.
Like Ayers and Wright and ACORN?
xx
Who Obama listens to.........Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers,
Bernadine Dohrn publicly approved of the Charles Manson murders. And she thought it was great!
These are the people who helped him start his career, such as it is. Now in 2007, not when Obama was 8 years old, but 2007, Ayers hosted Obama's first fundraiser and his good 'ole pal Bernadine Dohrn was sitting there with him. Now, those are the kind of people who he LOVES to spend time with.
You gotta do better than that. You really just do not want to know the truth.
It was blue long ago and turning blue now thanks to OBAMA THE HERO
nm
Rezko Reality
Summary
On the defensive over the extent of multiple McCain homes, the GOP candidate strikes back. But his TV spot gives an oversimplified and misleading account of how Obama bought his own $1.6 million house in Chicago.
The ad says Chicago power broker Tony Rezko got "political favors" including "$14 million from taxpayers." But there's no evidence of any connection to the Obama home purchase. The $14 million was to build apartments for low-income seniors. Obama wrote a letter supporting the "worthy" project, but both men say Rezko didn't ask for the letter.
It says Rezko "purchased part of the property [Obama] couldn't afford." Rezko's wife did buy an adjoining tract but later sold the land at a profit. Obama paid market price for his home.
McCain launched the attack after Obama ran one capitalizing on McCain's inability to recall for an interviewer how many homes the McCains own. Obama's ad says it's seven. The best tally we've seen puts the figure at eight, counting all the apartments and homes owned by McCain's wife, Cindy, and various family trusts, for themselves and their children.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/154782
Obama - Rezko
http://www.newsmax.com/smith/barack_obama_tony_rezko/2008/09/02/126890.html
Ever heard of Tony Rezko
Do your research.
Biden also has ties to Tony Rezko...
http://mpinkeyes.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/joe-biden-has-ties-to-tony-rezko/
Fitzgerald renews interest in Rezko-Obama deal...
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/?pageId=83760
Rev. Wright
He was in the news yesterday. Oh yeah. It won't be on the "drive-by" stations. Let the libs do their own research.
He won't be forgotten, Sam. Trust me.
Let's hear it for the party of "women." They can't have it both ways with all their so-called working mothers. It's the ole' rope theory. They'll hang themselves.
If she's such a nobody, why do they waste their time?
How about Fred Thompson last PM? Wow!
So you would consider Rev. Wright A LOT OFF
nm
I wouldn't think Rev Wright ......(sm)
is expecting anything after the publicity he's had. Of course, ya never know....he might...LOL
video - ann wright - former US diplomat
Dont know if any of you have already seen this video, if so, I apologize for posting it, however, if you havent, check it out.
Ann Wright - Former US Diplomat
08.23.05
QuickTime
DSL | 56K
Windows Media
DSL | 56K
RealMedia
DSL | 56K
Ann Wright, a Felon for Peace
Ann Wright: A Felon for Peace
Tomdispatch Interview with Ann Wright
Friday 11 November 2005
She's just off the plane from Tulsa, Oklahoma, the cheapest route back from a reunion in the little Arkansas town where she grew up in the 1950s. For thirty years, she and her childhood friends have climbed to the top of Penitentiary Mountain, where the local persimmon trees grow, for a persimmon-spitting contest. (All in the great spirit of just having fun and being crazy.) She holds out her hands and says, I probably still have persimmon goop on me!
We seat ourselves at a table in my dining room, two small tape recorders between us. She's dressed all in black with a bright green over-shirt, a middle-aged blond woman wearing gold earrings and a thin gold necklace. As she settles in, her sleeves pull back, revealing the jewelry she'd rather talk about. On her right wrist is a pink, plastic band. This one was to be a volunteer in the Astrodome for Hurricane Katrina. I did two days work there, then three days in Covington, Louisiana, the first week after. On her left wrist, next to a watch from another age, are two blue plastic bands: And this one, she says with growing animation, fingering the nearest of them, was my very first arrest of my whole life on September 26th in front of the White House with 400 of my closest friends. This is the bus number I was on and this is the arrest number they gave me and then, later on, I had to date it because now I have two. She fingers the second band. Last week 26 of us were arrested after a die-in right in front of the White House in commemoration of the two thousandth American and maybe one hundred thousandth Iraqi who died in this war. So now, she announces, chuckling heartily, I'm a felon for peace.
When she speaks - and in the final g's she drops from words (It's freezin' in Mongolia!) - you can catch just a hint of the drawl of that long-gone child from Bentonville, Arkansas. In her blunt, straightforward manner, you can catch something of her 29 years in the Army; and in her ease perhaps, the 16 years she spent as a State Department diplomat. Animated, amused by her foibles (and those of her interviewer), articulate and thoughtful, she's just the sort of person you would want to defend - and then represent - your country, a task she continues to perform, after her own fashion, as one of the more out-of-the-ordinary antiwar activists of our moment.
Last August, she had a large hand in running Camp Casey for Cindy Sheehan at the President's doorstep in Crawford, Texas; then again, that wasn't such a feat, given that in 1997 she had overseen the evacuation of 2,500 foreigners from the war zone that was then Sierra Leone, a harrowing experience for which she was given the State Department's Award for Heroism. That's why I joined the Foreign Service, she comments, her voice still filled with some residual excitement from those years. I wanted to go to places you wouldn't visit on vacation. In fact, the retired colonel opened and closed embassies from Africa to Uzbekistan and took some of the roughest diplomatic assignments on Earth, including the reopening of the American embassy in Kabul in December 2001.
On March 19, 2003, the day before the first Cruise missiles were launched against Baghdad, she resigned from the Foreign Service in an open letter sent from the U.S. embassy in Mongolia (where she was then Deputy Chief of Mission) to Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it she wrote, in part:
This is the only time in my many years serving America that I have felt I cannot represent the policies of an Administration of the United States. I disagree with the Administration's policies on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, North Korea and curtailment of civil liberties in the U.S. itself. I believe the Administration's policies are making the world a more dangerous, not a safer, place. I feel obligated morally and professionally to set out my very deep and firm concerns on these policies and to resign from government service as I cannot defend or implement them.
Once used to delivering official U.S. statements to other governments, she now says things like: Everyone should have to be handcuffed with the flexi-cuffs they use now and feel just how unflexible they are, just how they cut, and then imagine Iraqis, Afghans, and other people we pick up in them 24 hours a day. She relaxes, sits back, awaits the first question, and responds with gusto.
Tomdispatch: I thought we'd start by talking about two important but quite different moments in your life. The first was not so long ago. Let me quote from a New York Times article on a recent Condoleezza Rice appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was a day that echoed the anguish, anger and skepticism that opinion polls show have begun to dominate the thinking of Americans. The hearing was punctuated by a heckler who called for an end to the war, only to be hustled out. Now, I believe this was you.
Ann Wright: [She chuckles.] Yes! Not a heckler, I was a protester.
TD: Tell me about it.
AW: It was as much a protest against the Senators as against Condoleezza Rice, because they were not holding our Secretary of State responsible. I picked up the Washington Post that morning and noticed that Condoleezza was going to testify on Iraq, and I thought, well, I'm free until noon. When I walked in, I was not planning on doing anything.
But I sat there for two hours and Senators were saying: We've heard the administration is discussing a military option in Syria and perhaps Iran. The committee needs to be brought in on this, because we've only given you authorization for military action in Iraq. In an almost rude, dismissive tone, the Secretary of State essentially replied: We'll talk to you when we want to; all options are on the table; and thank you very much. Then the senators just kind of sat there. It was like: Come on, guys talk! Pin that woman down! We, the people, want to know. I want to know. And then they just started off on something else. It was like: No! Come back to this question. We don't want to go to war in Syria or Iran...
TD: And did you stand up?
AW: So I stood up. I was back in the peanut gallery. I've never done anything like it before in my whole life. I took a deep breath and went, Stop the killing! Stop the war! Hold this woman accountable! You, the Senate, were bamboozled by the administration on Iraq and you cannot be bamboozled again! Stop this woman from killing!
At that point, I ran out of things to say because I hadn't really planned it. [She laughs.] I was looking around. There was only one police officer and he was just ambling toward me. It was like he enjoyed what I was saying. I thought, until he gets here I've got to say something more, so I went: You failed us in Iraq, you can't fail us on Syria! The police office finally said, Uh, ma'am, you've got to come with me. This is the first time - somebody told me later - anyone's ever seen a protester put her arm around a police officer. [She laughs.]
TD: So you weren't hustled out?
AW: Noooooo. It was a slow walk and there was silence in the room, so I thought: Well, I can't let this go by and I started another little rant on the way out. That part wasn't mentioned in the news reports.
TD: At least some papers like the Washington Post mentioned you by name. The Times merely called you a heckler.
AW: Well, how rude! I wasn't heckling anyway. I was speaking on behalf of the people of America.
TD: This obviously takes you a long way from your professional life, because you were in the Foreign Service for...
AW: Sixteen years...
TD: ... and in all those years this would have been rather inconceivable.
AW: Having testified at congressional hearings as a Foreign Service officer, particularly on Somalia issues back in '93 and '94, I was always humbled to go into those rooms as a government employee. I always found it interesting when people in the audience stood up to say something. You know, I learned later that most protestors do it in the first ten minutes because that's when the cameras and all the reporters are sure to be there.
As it happened, the chairman of the committee declined to have me arrested. The police officer said, Well, if you're disappointed, I can arrest you. I replied, If you don't mind, I'll just run on over to my lunch appointment. I was actually on my way to a presentation by Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, where he would describe the secrecy of the administration and the way the State Department was isolated by the White House and the National Security Council.
TD: Another moment of protest, one I'm sure you thought about very carefully, took place the day before the shock-and-awe campaign against Iraq began. That day you sent a letter of public resignation to Colin Powell which began - and not many people could have written such a sentence - When I last saw you in Kabul in 2002...
AW: Indeed I had volunteered to go to Kabul, Afghanistan in December 2001 to be part of a small team that reopened the U.S. embassy. It had been closed for twelve years. I have a background in opening and closing embassies. I helped open an embassy in Uzbekistan, closed and reopened an embassy in Sierra Leone. I've been evacuated from Somalia and Sierra Leone. And with my military background, I've worked in a lot in combat environments.
I volunteered because I felt the United States needed to respond to the events of 9/11, and the logical place to go after al-Qaeda was where they trained, knowing full well that you probably weren't going to get a lot of people. The al-Qaeda group is very smart and few of them, in my estimation, would have been hanging out where we were most likely to go after them in Afghanistan. Actually, I was amazed the administration went in physically. I thought, like the Clinton administration, they would send in cruise missiles. Considering the severity of September 11, I guess the military finally said: Well, it looks like we're going into that hell-hole where the Russians got their butts whipped. Everybody knew it was going to be tough.
TD: You've commented elsewhere that a crucial moment for you was watching the President's Axis of Evil State of the Union address from a bunker in Kabul.
AW: A bunker outside the chancellery building meant to protect against the rockets the mujahedeen were sending against each other after they defeated the Soviets. We had taken [then interim leader] Hamid Karzai, who had been invited to the State of the Union, to Bagram Air Base and sent him off three days before. We told him, You've got to start getting together some detailed plans for economic development funds because the attention of the United States doesn't stay on any country for long; so, get your little fledgling cabinet moving fast. Well, the President started talking about other interests that the United States had after 9/11 and these interests were Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Just as he said that, the cameras focused on Karzai and you could almost see him going: Hmmmm [she mugs a wince], now I know what they were telling me at the embassy. And we were sitting there thinking, Oh my God...
TD: You had a functioning TV?
AW: Barely. We had a satellite dish made of pounded-out coke cans - these were being sold down in Kabul - and a computer chip sent in from Islamabad, because we wanted to hear from Washington what was going to happen with Afghanistan. When, instead of talking much about Afghanistan, the President started in on this axis-of-evil stuff we were stunned. We were thinking: Hell's bells, we're here in a very dangerous place without enough military. So for the President to start talking about this axis of evil... everyone in the bunker just went: Oh Christ, here we go! No wonder we're not getting the economic development specialists in here yet. If the American government was going after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and clearing out the Taliban and preparing to help the people of Afghanistan, why the hell was it taking so long? Well, that statement said it all.
TD: Did you at that moment suspect a future invasion of Iraq?
AW: I'm a little naïve sometimes. I really never, ever suspected we would go to war in Iraq. There was no attempt at that moment to tie 9/11 to Iraq, so it didn't even dawn on me.
Anyway, that was the preface to my letter of resignation. I wanted to emphasize that I had seen Colin Powell on his first trip to Kabul. I wanted to show that this was a person who had lots of experience.
TD: In the whole Vietnam era, few, if any, government officials offered public resignations of protest, but before the invasion of Iraq even began, three diplomats - Brady Kiesling, John Brown, and yourself - resigned in a most public fashion. It must have been a wrenching decision.
AW: I had been concerned since September 2002 when I read in the papers that we had something like 100,000 troops already in the Middle East, many left behind after the Bright Star [military] exercise we have every two years in Egypt. I thought: Uh-oh, the administration is doing some sneaky-Pete stuff on us. They were claiming they wanted UN inspectors to go back into Iraq, when a military build-up was already underway. It's one thing to put troops in the region for pressure, but if you're leaving that many behind, you're going to be using them. Then, as the mushroom-cloud rhetoric started getting stronger, it was like: Good God! These guys mean to go to war, no matter what the evidence is.
By November, I was having trouble sleeping. I would wake up at three, four in the morning - this was in Mongolia where it was freezing cold - wrap up in blankets, go to the kitchen table, and just start pouring my soul out. By the time I finally sent that resignation letter in, I had a stack of drafts like this. [She lifts her hand a couple of feet off the table.] I did know two others had resigned, but quite honestly I hadn't read their letters and I didn't know them.
TD: You were ending your life in a way, life as you had known it...
AW: Thirty-five years in the government between my military service and the State Department, under seven administrations. It was hard. I liked representing America.
TD: Was there a moment when you knew you couldn't represent this government anymore?
AW: I kept hoping the administration would go back to the Security Council for its authorization to go to war. That's why I held off until virtually the bombs were being dropped. I was hoping against hope that our government would not go into what really is an illegal war of aggression that meets no criteria of international law. When it was finally evident we were going to do so, I said to myself: It ain't going to be on my watch.
TD: Was it like crossing a border into a different world?
AW: It was a great relief. During the lead-up to war, I had begun showing symptoms of an impending heart attack. The State Department put me on a medivac flight to Singapore for heart tests. The doctors said, Lady, you're as strong as a horse. Are you just under some kind of stress? Yes, I am! The moment I sent in that letter, it was like a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At least I had made my stand and joined the other two who had resigned.
TD: And what of those you left behind?
AW: In the first couple of days, while I was still in Mongolia, I received over 400 emails from colleagues in the State Department saying: We're so sad you're not going to be with us, but we're so proud of the three of you who resigned because we think this going-to-war is just so horrible; then each one would describe how anti-American feeling was growing in the country where they were serving. It was so poignant, all those emails.
TD: Why don't you think more people in the government - and in the military where there's clearly been opposition to Iraq at a very high level - quit and speak out?
AW: There were a few. [General] Eric Shinseki talked about the shortchanging of the [Iraq] operations plan by a couple of hundred thousand people. He was forced out. But see, in the military, in the Foreign Service, you're not supposed to be speaking your own mind. Your job is to implement the policies of an administration elected by the people of America. If you don't want to, your only option is to resign. I understood that and that's one of the reasons I resigned - to give myself the freedom to talk out.
There are a lot of people still in government service speaking out, but you've got to read between the lines. The senior military leaders in Iraq, what they've been saying is very different from what Donald Rumsfeld and the gang in Washington say. These guys are being honest and truthful about the lack of Iraqi battalions really ready for military work, the dangers the troops are under, the days when the military doesn't go out on the streets. They're signaling to America: We're up a creek on this one, guys, and you, the people of America, are going to have to help us out.
TD: ...Let's talk about [Colin Powell's chief of staff] Larry Wilkerson as an example. He assumedly left after the election when Colin Powell did, so almost a year has passed. He saw what he believed was a secret cabal running the government and it took him that long after he was gone to tell us about it. I'm glad he spoke out. But I wonder why there isn't a more urgent impulse to do so?
AW: If you look at Dick Clarke [the President's former chief adviser on terrorism on the National Security Council], he had all the secrets from the very beginning and he retired in January 2003. Yet he didn't say anything for over a year and a half, until he published that book [Against All Enemies] in 2004. If he had gone public before the war started, that man could have told us those same secrets right then. So could [the National Security Council's senior director for combating terrorism] Randy Beers. I worked with both of them on Somalia, on Sierra Leone. I know these guys personally and it's like: Guys, why didn't you come forward then?
As you probably know, on the key issues of the first four years of the Bush administration, the State Department was essentially iced out. I mean, look at the Iraq War. Colin Powell and the State Department were just shoved aside and all State's functions put into the Department of Defense. Tragically, Colin Powell, who was trying to counsel Donald Rumsfeld behind the scenes that there weren't enough troops in Iraq, never stood up to say, Hold it, guys, I'll resign if we don't get this under control so that logical functions go in logical organizations and you, the Defense Department, don't do post-combat civil reconstruction stuff. That's ours. He just didn't do it. To me, he was more loyal to the Bush family than he was to the country. His resignation was possibly the one thing that could have deterred the war. Then the people of America would really have looked closely at what was going on. But tragically he decided loyalty to the administration was more valuable than loyalty to the country. I mean, it breaks my heart to say that, but it's what really happened.
TD: So what is it that actually holds people back?
AW: I think the higher up you go, the more common it is for people to retire, or maybe even resign, and not say what the reasons are, because they may hope to get back into government in a different administration. Dick Clarke had served every administration since George Washington and maybe he was looking toward being called back as a political appointee again. Sometimes such people don't speak out because they feel loyalty to the person who appointed them. Nobody appointed me to nothin', except the American people. I'm a career foreign service officer and I serve the American people. When an administration wasn't serving the best interests of the American people, I felt I had to stand up.
TD: And are you now pretty much a full-time antiwar activist?
AW: [She laughs.] That's the way it's turned out.
TD: What, if anything, do you think your military career, your State Department career, and this... well, I can't call it a career... have in common?
AW: Service to America. It's all just a continuation of a real concern I have about my country.
TD: And what would you say to your former compatriots still in the military and the State Department?
AW: Many of the emails I received from Foreign Service officers said, I wish I could resign right now, but I've got kids in college, I've got mortgages, and I'm going to try really hard, by staying, to ameliorate the intensity of these policies. All I can say is that they must be in agony about not being able to affect policy. There have been plenty of early retirements by people who finally realized they couldn't moderate the policies of the Bush administration.
TD: What message would you send to the person you once were from the person you are now?
AW: You trained me well.
TD: If in this room you had the thirty-five year-old woman about to go into Grenada, as you did back in 1983, what would you want her to mull over.
AW: I would say: You were a good Army officer and Foreign Service officer. You weren't blind to the faults of America. In many jobs, you tried to rectify things that were going badly and you succeeded a couple of times. My resignation wasn't the first time I spoke out. For instance, I was loaned, or seconded, from the State Department to the staff of the United Nations operation in Somalia and ended up writing a memo concerning the military operations the UN was conducting to kill a warlord named Addid. They started taking helicopters, standing off, and just blowing up buildings where they had intelligence indicating perhaps he was there. Well, tragically he never was, and here we were blowing up all these Somali families. Of course the Somalis were outraged and that outrage ultimately led to Blackhawk Down.
I wrote a legal opinion to the special representative of the Secretary General, saying the UN operations were illegal and had to stop. It was leaked to the Washington Post and I got in a bit of hot water initially, but ultimately my analysis proved correct. I was also a bit of a rabble-rouser on the utilization of women in the military back in the eighties, part of a small group of women who took on the Army when it was trying to reduce the career potentials of women. I ended up getting right in the thick of some major problems which ultimately cost the Army millions of dollars in the reassessment of units that had been given incorrect direct-combat probability codings. I was also part of a team which discovered that some of our troops had been looting private homes in Grenada. The Army court-martialed a lot of our soldiers for this violation of the law of land warfare. We used their example in rewriting how you teach the code of conduct and, actually, the Geneva Convention on the responsibility of occupiers.
TD: You know a good deal about the obligations of an occupying power to protect public and private property, partially because in the 1980s you were doing planning on the Middle East, right?
AW: Yes, from 1982 to 1984, I was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina when the Army was planning for potential operations using the Rapid Deployment Force - what ultimately became the Central Command. One of the first forces used in rapid deployment operations was the 82 Airborne at Fort Bragg. I was in the special operations end of it with civil affairs. Those are the people who write up the annexes to operations plans about how you interact with the civilian population, how you protect the facilities - sewage, water, electrical grids, libraries. We were doing it for the whole Middle East. I mean, we have operations plans on the shelf for every country in the world, or virtually. So we did one on Iraq; we did one on Syria; on Jordan, Egypt. All of them.
We would, for instance, take the UNESCO list of treasures of the world and go through it. Okay, any in Iraq? Yep. Okay, mark 'em, circle 'em on a map, put 'em in the op-plan. Whatever you do, don't bomb this. Make sure we've got enough troops to protect this. It's our obligation under the law of land warfare. We'd be circling all the electrical grids, all the oil grids, all the museums. So for us to go into Iraq and let all that looting happen. Well, Rumsfeld wanted a light, mobile force, and screw the obligations of treaties. Typical of this administration on any treaty thing. Forget 'em.
So everything was Katy-bar-the-door. Anybody could go in and rip up anything. Many of the explosives now being used to kill our troops come from the ammo dumps we did not secure. It was a total violation of every principle we had for planning military operations and their aftermath. People in the civil affairs units, they were just shaking their heads, wondering how in the hell this could have happened. We've been doing these operations plans forever, so I can only imagine the bitchin' and moanin' about - how come we don't have this civilian/military annex? It's in every other op-plan. And where are the troops, where are the MPs?
TD: If back in the early eighties you were planning to save the antiquities of every country in the Middle East, then obviously the Pentagon was also planning for a range of possible invasions in the region. Do you look back now and ask: What kind of a country has contingency plans to invade any country you can imagine?
AW: One of the things you are likely to do at a certain point in your military career is operations plans. It did not then seem abnormal to me at all that we had contingency plans for the Middle East, or for countries in the Caribbean or South America. At that stage, I was not looking at the imperialism of the United States. I just didn't equate those contingency plans with empire-building goals. However, depending on how those plans are used, they certainly can be just that. Remember as well that this was in the days of the Cold War and, by God, that camouflaged a lot of stuff. You could always say: You never can tell what those Soviets are going to do, so you better be prepared anywhere in the world to defeat them.
TD: And we're still prepared anywhere in the world...
AW: Well, we are and now, let's see, where are the Russians? [She laughs heartily.]
TD: Tell me briefly the story of your life.
AW: I grew up in Arkansas, just a normal childhood. I think the Girl Scouts was a formative organization for me. It had a plan to it, opportunity to travel outside Arkansas, good goals - working on those little badges. Early State Department. Early military too. It's kind of interesting, the militarization of our society, how we don't really think of some things, and yet when I look back, there I was a little Girl Scout in my green uniform, and so putting on an Army uniform after college wasn't that big a deal. I'd been in a uniform before and I knew how to salute, three fingers. [She demonstrates.]
If you look, we now have junior ROTC in the high schools. We have child soldiers in America. We're good at getting kids used to those uniforms. And then there's the militarization of industries and corporations, the necessity every ten years to have a war because we need a new generation of weaponry. Corporations in the military-industrial complex are making lots of money off of new types of weaponry and vehicles.
TD: While you were in the military, did you have any sense that these wars were actually living weapons labs?
AW: Particularly seeing the privatization after Gulf War I, going into Somalia. All of a sudden, as fast as military troops were arriving, you had Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown, and Root in Somalia. They started saying, You need mess halls, oh, we'll do the mess halls for you. And it turned out they had staged a lot of their equipment in the Middle East after the Gulf War. So it was in Somalia lickety-split. The privatization of military functions is now so pervasive that the military can no longer function by itself, without the contractors and corporations. These contractors, these mercenaries really, are now fundamentally critical to the operations of the U.S. military.
TD: So a Girl Scout and...
AW: In my junior year at the University of Arkansas, a recruiter came through town with the film, Join the Army, See the World. I had been an education major for three years. Nurse, teacher, those were the careers for women. I didn't want any of it. So, in the middle of the Vietnam War, I signed up to go to a three-week Army training program, just to see if I liked it. And I found it challenging. Even though there were protests going on all over America, I divorced myself from what the military actually did versus what opportunities it offered me. I hated all these people getting killed in Vietnam, but I said to myself: I'm not going to kill anyone and I'm taking the place of somebody who will be able to go do something else. All these arguments that... now you look at it and go: Oh my God, what did you do?
TD: Don't you think this happens now?
AW: Absolutely! I sympathize with the people in the military right now. The majority didn't sign up to kill anybody. You always prayed that, whatever administration it was, it didn't go off on some wild goose chase that got you into a war you personally thought was really stupid.
TD: Would you counsel a young woman now to go into the military?
AW: I think we will always have a military and I think the military is honorable service as long as the civilian leadership uses it in appropriate ways and is very cautious about sending us to war. And yes, I would encourage people to look at a military career, but I would also tell them that, if they're sent to do something they think is wrong, they don't have to stay in, though they may have to take some consequences for saying, Thank you very much but I'm not going to kill anybody.
In fact, if I were recalled to active duty, which is possible... I put myself purposely at the Retired Ready Reserve so that, if there was ever an emergency and my country needed me, I could be recalled, and in fact there are people my age, 59, who are agreeing to be recalled. The ultimate irony would be resigning from my career in the diplomatic corps and then having the Bush administration recall me, because my specialty, civil affairs, reconstruction, is in really short supply. I'm a colonel. I know how to run battalions and brigades. I can do this stuff. But I would have to tell them, sorry, I refuse to be placed on active duty. And if they push hard enough, then I'd just have to be court-martialed and I'd go to Leavenworth. I will not serve this administration in the Iraq war which I firmly believe is an illegal war of aggression.
TD: You know, if someone had said to me back in the 1960s that a Vice President of the United States might go to Congress to lobby for a torture exemption for the CIA the way Dick Cheney has done, I would have said: This couldn't happen. Never in American history. I'm staggered by this.
AW: Me, too. The other thing that's quite interesting is the number of women who are involved in it. There were something like eighty women I've identified, ranging from high officers to CIA contractors being used as interrogators in Guantanamo. Talking about things that will come back to bite us big time, this is it. And we are complicit, all of us, because, quite honestly, we're not standing out in front of the White House every single day, and every time that Vice President leaves throwing our bodies in front of his car, throwing blood on it. We need to get tough with these guys. They're not listening to us. They think we're a bunch of wimps. We've got to get tougher and tougher with them to show them we're not going to put up with this stuff.
TD: You've quoted Teddy Roosevelt as saying: To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. I was particularly struck by that word servile. Do you want to talk about dissent for a moment?
AW: Well, we shouldn't be hesitant about voicing our opinions, even in the most difficult of times which generally is when your nation is going to war and you're standing up to say, this isn't right. That's tough and, in fact, the first couple of months after I resigned, oh man, all that TV and nothing on but the war, and very few people wanted to hear me. It probably was a good four months before anybody even asked me to come speak about why I had dissented, and that was a little lonely. [She chuckles.]
TD: Any final thoughts?
AW: We now have a two-and-a-half-year track record of being a very brutal country. We are the cause of the violence in Iraq. That violence will continue as long as we're there, and the administration maintains that we will be there until we win. That means to me that this administration is planning for a long-term siege in Iraq. It means that young men and women in America should be prepared for the draft because the military right now cannot support what this administration wants. In fact, yesterday I was talking to about ninety high school seniors in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a very Republican part of the United States. I said: Your parents may support this war, but how strongly do you feel about it? If it drags on for years and there's a draft, how many of you will willingly go? Only three put up their hands.
We are continuing down a very dangerous road. The United States and its citizenry are held in disdain in world opinion for not being able to stop this war machine. So one of the things I'm doing is ratcheting up my own level of response. A dear friend, Joe Palambo, a Vietnam veteran in Veterans for Peace who went to hear the President in Norfolk when he talked about terrorism, was recently cited in the newspapers this way: There was one protestor in the second row of the audience who stood up and railed against the President, saying: You're the terrorist! This war is a war of terrorism! Joe called me right after that happened and said, Hey, Ann, I heard what you did in the Senate and I thought, I'm going to go do the same thing to the President.
I mean, we're going to dog these guys all over the country. Our Secretary of State, our Secretary of Defense, our Vice President, our President, our National Security Adviser, the head of the CIA, any of these people who are the warmongers, who are the murderers in the name of our country, wherever they go, the people of America need to stand up to them to say, No! Stop! Stop this war. Stop this killing. Get us out of this mess. Because that's the only time they hear it, when we stand up in these venues. They don't come out to the street in front of the White House to see the hundreds of thousands of people who are protesting. They ignore that. But for those fifteen seconds, if you can stand up so that everybody in that audience sees that there's one person, or maybe even two or three... Who knows?
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Obama and Reverend Wright.
You know what really amazes me is that some news anchormen on MS NBC seem to defend Jeremy Wright's statements. They say that the older generation is sometimes politically incorrect and have relatives in their own families (white people), who have made really awful statements and racist remarks. One I believe was Keith Oberman (sp?) on MS NBC who claimed that his grandfather did not like a black baseball player (Willie Mayes I think) just because of his color. He seemed to justify Wright's racist type sermons. I really don't understand this kind of logic, but that is what they are saying on MS NBC. Even Matthews who really surprised me seemed to make light of Wright's sermon. Are we to just make light of this and say, well they are from the older generation and they don't know any better. I think not!!!!! This to me is very alarming to justify these racist remarks. What if a White Supremacist went on air and said the same thing about their race -- I seriously doubt that anyone would say, "Well, that is OK they they didn't mean it"
Am I way off base in my thinking or does anyone out there agree with me? I am just shocked by some people's opinions and ideas.
Suzanne
Rev. Wright has been Obama's friend!
and close, like an "uncle" as state by Obama. They had been friends and Obama stated he looked to Rev. Wright as his spiritual advisor. I don't remember if those were the EXACT words, but pretty darn close. How could he have remained so close to him for many years and not know all the racist and hateful feelings Rev. Wright had toward America? How could you look to someone like that as your spiritual advisor..... and how could you NOT know that your advisor was basically racist and a divisive character, not a uniter, which makes me wonder how Obama really feels too. If you are going to look to someone for guidance, admire them, wouldn't you tend to AGREE with their vision of things?!
The only "hatred" was coming from Rev. Wright,
nm
No, he was not her pastor at the time like wright...
was obama's for 20 years. Witches, racists...who's on first?
Then we agree that Obama and Rev Wright are
@
I never heard Rev. Wright say those things (nm)
x
You mean like listening to Rev Wright for 20 years...
and never hearing the sermons. hmmm
You mean like listening to Rev Wright for 20 years...
hmmm
Been reviewing Rev. Wright's sermons?
xx
I'm sure Wright has been preaching similar sentiments
for the 20 years Obama has belonged to the church, implying IMO he agrees.
The political image/persona he's tried to build for himself (all politicians do it) has just been shot full of holes.
Knowing Wright's rhetoric why does he stay a member to this day??
If you've listened and watched the full sermon it is very disturbing, and I don't see any "cherry picking" in the media I so love to hate. That remark on Obama's part could be taken as his defending the diatribe.
I hope this bombshell doesn't go away - people need to know where Obama is really coming from.
britney spears rev wright william
ayers. Rinse and repeat. britney spears rev wright william ayers. Rinse and repeat.
The copout was saying because no one responded to your post about Wright...
that there must be nothing to it. THAT is a copout. I didn't say anything about any of the other stuff you posted here. As to being tortured for 7 years, electing to stay when you could have been released and not have to endure years more...simply because you felt other men deserved to be released before you? That is the strength of character and devotion to country the Presidency has not seen in YEARS and is SORELY needed. I would have thought YOU would have appreciated that.
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