Why does it make you feel better to keep telling yourself everyone on this board is pretty much all the same person? Email me as well as the other folks on the board who you also think are me. The truth will emerge if you care to discover it.
i am sensitive to voices too, but
find no 'shriek' in SP's voice...just wondered how in the world you can do the MT job if HER voice 'bothers' you :)
"I hear your voices, and
What do you suppose he meant by that?
They obviously are hearing voices.....
their take on the President's speech last night had some pretty funky twists......
No is ybbil one of the voices in YOUR head. More like Sybil.
Shutting up voices of dissent...
have you not watched any of the major news outlets? I heard plenty of dissenting. I heard plenty of inneundo, like we do in every administration. The reason you heard about it when Clinton was in office was because he could not keep his hands off women, and when caught not being able to keep his hands off women, lied until the DNA on the black dress proved him to be a liar. Not even close to same thing. If Clinton had behaved himself there would have been nothing to talk about. He could have stopped it all had he just told the truth because his party would have protected him, but no, he lied until the DNA got him.
nope. its the voices in your head.
There's an old Jewish saying. TI
Prepare yourself with truth before you argue. You speak about debate, but I haven't seen any real debate here. A lot of hysteria. A lot of disinformation. No debate. Israel is not an ally because we haven't sent troops to Iraq. When I finished laughing about that, I had to be disturbed from the lack of real knowledge among you. You get all your facts from news sources, I am guessing most of them partisan. I am not only speaking to you but to other posters here. You give yourselves names like Liberal and Democrat and you speak from political points and not humanity. There is no humanity in your words. You have no idea what goes on in Israel. Unless you are there or have lived and breathed there, or know what the struggles are from minute to minute, you know only what you read. That is the truth. My Jooish friends and I won't bother to educate you. You already know everything and my time here is wasted. It's a big contest about who can paste here articles they find that say what they want. Whether they be true or no. Les enfants israeliens meurent aussi.
I didn't say because you were Jewish
I said it's not right to think that Christianity should be taken out of everything just because you don't agree.
And you did say that you are getting "Christian things shoved down your throat" everywhere. Usually when you say something is shoved down your throat it means you take offense to it.
I have a serious question to ask you though - do you not believe in Jesus? If not, what is the reasoning as far as you are concerned for getting into heaven? I mean what are the requirements from a Jewish point of view? I'm asking this in all honesty, not sarcastically or anything like that.
Not all Jewish grandparents think the way you do
@@
Republican Jewish Ad
What's with all this hating of the Jews, anyway? Sickening!
So, gt, are YOU the Jewish expert on this board. sm
So what are your thoughts on Gaza and it's historical and Biblical significance? Do you think Egypt will encroach upon the left bank? How about Hamas and their recent aggressive actions. Do you think they will rebuilt Gaza? What do you think about the relocation of the Gaza settlers? What is the significance of losing Gaza? Do you think the Arabs will uphold their part of the peace agreement, and if so, why? Don't you think Sharon is doomed as far as ever being reelected. Netinyahu is pretty steamed as are most Israeli. Do you think they should vote him back in? Tell us your thoughts.
try this Republican Jewish Coalition
Not sure why it didn't show up. When I clicked on it here, it worked.
Obama pressures Philly area synagogue to drop RJC Rrepresentative from a ... The RJC has launched a new series of ads raising critical issues for the Jewish... www.rjchq.org/ - 44k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
Replace Republican with Jewish and think...
Germany. Do you really hate a group of people that much? Really?? That you want to go down the marxist path of quashing or belitting any kind of dissent or disagreement? I thought liberals were all about the right to dissent! Oh...what on earth am I thinking? They are for THEIR right to dissent and dam* anyone who doesn't agree with them.
Does really need to be said that Israel is predominantly Jewish?
When I speak of Israel, I speak of the Jews.
You Said: "And yes, I did bring Hitler into the conversation. He systematically tied to wipe out a group of people, which is exactly what Israel is doing right now."
That statement is exactly what makes you anti-Semitic. The fact that you can compare Israel to Nazi Germany is obscene and anti-Semitic. You are using something horrific done to the Jews (who make up 75% or more of the Israeli population) and using it to illustrate what you perceive is going on in the Gaza Strip. Can you not find some other means to make your point other than conjuring up prejudice perpetrated by Hitler? Could you have maybe made your comparison to Kosovo/Bosnia? Nope, you chose the holocaust to illustrate your point. You intent was to shock and to be controversial. You wanted to provoke a reaction.
What exactly did you think using the name "Hitler" would provoke? You argument in and of itself is anti-Semitic.
By the way, I am a messianic Jew. I know a little bit about anti-Semitism. So before you continue to insult both my intelligence and my homeland, choose your words wisely.
‘I don’t take pride in hurting Mr. Gibson’ says officer, who is Jewish
MSNBC The Associated Press Updated: 7:56 p.m. PT July 31, 2006
Excerpt:
CALABASAS, Calif. - The deputy who arrested Mel Gibson on suspicion of drunken driving said Monday that he feels bad for damage to the star’s reputation but hopes Gibson thinks twice before drinking and getting behind the wheel.
James Mee, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, told the Associated Press that he considered it a routine arrest and didn’t take seriously any comments that Gibson made.
Gibson reportedly unleashed an anti-Semitic tirade and made other offensive comments when he was pulled over, initially for speeding, early Friday along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. He was then arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol.
Gibson has issued a public apology for his conduct without specifying what he said or did.
“I don’t take pride in hurting Mr. Gibson,” said Mee, a 17-year deputy who is Jewish. “What I had hoped out of this is that he would think twice before he gets behind the wheel of a car and was drinking. ... I don’t want to ruin his career. I don’t want to defame him in any way or hurt him.”
*snip*
TMZ reported that Gibson said, “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” and asked the arresting officer, “Are you a Jew?”
In the interview outside his home, Mee would not comment specifically on what Gibson said.
“That stuff is booze talking,” the deputy said. “There’s two things that booze does. It amplifies your basic personality. If you are a laid-back kind of person, just an easygoing kind of person, booze is going to amplify that and you’ll be just sitting around going how it’s a wonderful day.
I might be missing something here but I can't find posts by Kfir discussing her Jewish faith. It was all about the war. It was about the state of Israel not about the Jewish religion. Isn't that 2 different things?
Citing U.N. statistics, the IMC said more than 300 children were killed in Lebanon and 1,000 wounded while a further half million youngsters were displaced by battles between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry names eight Israeli children killed by Hizbollah rockets, including two 18-year olds. The total Israeli death toll is estimated at more than 150. It is unclear how many Israeli children were wounded.
The fetus has great value because it is potentially a human life. It gains "full human status at birth only." 2
Abortions are not permitted on the grounds of genetic imperfections of the fetus.
Abortions are permitted to save the mother's life or health.
With the exception of some Orthodox authorities, Judaism supports abortion access for women.
"...each case must be decided individually by a rabbi well-versed in Jewish law." 5
Historical Christianity has considered "ensoulment," the point at which the soul enters the body) as the time when abortions should normally be prohibited. Belief about the timing of this event has varied from the instant of fertilization of the ovum, to 90 days after conception, or later. There has been no consensus among historical Jewish sources about when ensoulment happens. It is regarded as "one of the 'secrets of God' that will be revealed only when the Messiah comes." Jewish family flees Delaware school district's aggressive Christianity
This is terrible. :-(
Jewish family flees Delaware school district's aggressive Christianity
by JewsOnFirst.org, June 28, 2006
Note: On July 11th, we posted two follow-up reports, which you can find here. And on August 23rd, we posted another update here.
Links to articles and documents cited in our report appear immediately below it
A large Delaware school district promoted Christianity so aggressively that a Jewish family felt it necessary to move to Wilmington, two hours away, because they feared retaliation for filing a lawsuit. The religion (if any) of a second family in the lawsuit is not known, because they're suing as Jane and John Doe; they also fear retaliation. Both families are asking relief from state-sponsored religion.
The behavior of the Indian River School District board suggests the families' fears are hardly groundless.
The district spreads over a considerable portion of southern Delaware. The families' complaint, filed in federal court in February 2005, alleges that the district had created an environment of religious exclusion and unconstitutional state-sponsored religion.
Among numerous specific examples in the complaint was what happened at plaintiff Samantha Dobrich's graduation in 2004 from the district's high school. She was the only Jewish student in her graduating class. The complaint relates that local pastor, Jerry Fike, in his invocation, followed requests for our heavenly Father's guidance for the graduates with:
I also pray for one specific student, that You be with her and guide her in the path that You have for her. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name.
In addition to the ruined graduation experience, the Dobrich-Doe lawsuit alleges that:
The district's custom and practice of school-sponsored prayer was frequently imposed on impressionable non-Christian students, which violated their constitutional rights.
The district ignored the Supreme Court's 1992 Lee decision limiting prayer at graduation ceremonies -- even after a district employee complained about the prayer at her child's 2003 graduation..
District teachers and staff led Bible clubs at several schools. Club members got to go to the head of the lunch line.
While Bible clubs were widely available, student book clubs were rare and often canceled by the district.
When Jane Doe complained that her non-Christian son Jordan Doe was left alone when his classmates when to Bible club meetings, district staff insisted that Jordan should attend the club, regardless of his religion.
The district schools attended by Jordan and his sister Jamie Doe distributed Bibles to students in 2003, giving them time off from class to pick up the books.
Prayer --often sectarian -- is a routine part of district sports programs and social events
One of the district's middle schools gave students the choice of attending a special Bible Club if they did not want to attend a lesson on evolution.
A middle school teacher told students there was only one true religion and gave them pamphlets for his surfing ministry.
Samantha Dobrich's honors English teacher frequently discussed Christianity, but no other religion.
Students frequently made mandatory appearances at district board meetings -- where they were a captive audience for board members' prayers to Jesus.
The Dobriches said the prayers to Jesus' ruined the graduation experience for Samantha. Mona Dobrich, Samantha's mother, repeatedly called district officials to complain. A board member told her she would have to get the matter put on a meeting agenda -- then refused to put it on the agenda. The school superintendent slipped the topic onto the agenda and then told Mona Dobrich she would need to raise it during the public comment period.
School board unyielding The board opened the June 15, 2004 meeting at which Dobrich was prepared to speak with a prayer in Jesus' name. The board was not forthcoming to her request that official prayers be in God's name rather than in Jesus' name. The high school athletic director veered from his agenda topic to encourage the board to keep praying in Jesus' name.
Board member Donald Hattier followed Dobrich out and offered to compromise by keeping graduation free of prayers to Jesus. And, according to the complaint, he warned her not to hire a lawyer.
A large crowd turned out for the next board meeting and many people spoke in support of school prayer. Mona Dobrich spoke passionately of her own outsider experience as a student in Indian River District schools and of how hard she'd worked to make sure her children didn't also feel like outsiders.
Hattier again approached her after the meeting. This time, the complaint alleges, he told her he'd spoken with the Rutherford Institute, a religious right legal group.
Talk show calls out a mob The district board announced the formation of a committee to develop a religion policy. And the local talk radio station inflamed the issue.
On the evening in August 2004 when the board was to announce its new policy, hundreds of people turned out for the meetng. The Dobrich family and Jane Doe felt intimidated and asked a state trooper to escort them.
The complaint recounts that the raucous crowd applauded the board's opening prayer and then, when sixth-grader Alexander Dobrich stood up to read a statement, yelled at him: take your yarmulke off! His statement, read by Samantha, confided I feel bad when kids in my class call me Jew boy.
A state representative spoke in support of prayer and warned board members that the people would replace them if they faltered on the issue. Other representatives spoke against separating god and state.
A former board member suggested that Mona Dobrich might disappear like Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the atheist whose Supreme Court case resulted in ending organized school prayer. O'Hair disappeared in 1995 and her dismembered body was found six years later.
The crowd booed an ACLU speaker and told her to go back up north.
In the days after the meeting the community poured venom on the Dobriches. Callers to the local radio station said the family they should convert or leave the area. Someone called them and said the Ku Klux Klan was nearby.
Killing Christ Classmates accused Alex Dobrich of killing Christ and he became fearful about wearing his yarmulke, the complaint recounts. He took it off whenever he saw a police officer, fearing that the officer might see it and pull over his mother's car. When the family went grocery shopping, the complaint says, Alexander would remove the pin holding his yarmulke on his head for fear that someone would grab it and rip out some of his hair.
The Dobriches refinanced their home so that Mona and Alexander could move to Wilmington, away from a situation that had become untenable, according to the complaint; Marco stayed behind because of his job, .
Ultimately, it continues, the expense of two households forced the Dobriches to sell their home. And Samantha was forced to withdraw from the joint program she attended at Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. She is being treated for depression.
The lawsuit states that the Doe family wants to remain anonymous in order to avoid the retaliation experienced by the Dobrich family. Jordan and Jane Doe are also suffering from depression related to their opposition with the Indian River School District's religion policy.
Elusive religion policy Even after Mona and Alexander Dobrich moved to Wilmington, the family and its lawyers continued to request the district's policy on religion in the schools and to ask for meetings with the board. Their requests were stonewalled, so in February 2005 they filed suit.
In a statement issued through her attorneys and quoted by the Delaware Wave, Mona Dobrichexplained why the families were suing: We are not trying to remove God from the schools or the public square. We simply don't think it is right for the district to impose a particular religious view on impressionable students.
The families seek to recover damages and to compel changes in the school district's policy.
That policy, however, remains elusive.
At the request of a board member soon after the infamous graduation, the Rutherford Institute, prepared a prayer policy for the school board, according to the complaint. In October 2004 the board reportedly adopted a new policy on religion in response to the Dobrich's complaint.
It is unclear if that policy is the one prepared by the Rutherford Institute -- because no one has seen it. The Dobrich's complaint states that the policy was unavailable and when the families requested it the district told them to file a freedom of information request.
This June, the board had a reading of a proposed change in the unseen policy. They said the policy and its changes would be posted on their website, (www.irsd.net) but on June 27th, it was nowhere to be found among several dozen policy documents.
The Rutherford Institute enters the fray At the boisterous August 2004 district board meeting, the head of the Rutherford Institute, John Whitehead, urged the board to set an example for other schools, according to the Daily Times, a local paper.
A Rutherford affiliated lawyer, Thomas Neuberger, came into the case representing one of the school board members. Before he left the case last August (because the judge dismissed the individual board members from the case), Neuberger was reportedly feuding with other lawyers.
While he was in the case, his client, Reginald L. Helms reportedly admitted one of the lawsuit's allegations: that school officials invited Pastor Fike to the 2004 graduation. That undermined the district's claim that students chose the speakers.
Neuberger was quoted by the Delaware Wave newspaper denying that the Dobrich's son Alex was taunted as a Jew by classmates. I seriously doubt that it ever occurred, he told the paper, contending that the plaintiffs were using the allegation used to defame the good citizens who serve on this school board.
In its response to the lawsuit, the district reportedly called some of the families' claims immaterial, impertinent and scandalous, and intended only to cast the district in a negative light.
Settlement rejected In February 2006, the board unanimously rejected a settlement offer that would have required renaming Christmas and Easter breaks to winter and spring, respectively, and to put a Dobrich child at the top of a waiting list for an arts school. It would have permitted board members to continue praying at their meetings. (US District Judge Joseph J. Farnan, Jr., who is hearing the case, ruled last year that the prayer was a historic tradition and could continue.)
In April the board's insurance company, which had been representing the district in the lawsuit, filed suit against it (and the individual board members) because they had, against its advice, rejected the settlement offer. The board then fired the attorneys that had been representing them and hired a new set. The insurance company is reportedly refusing to pay for the board's legal defense from the date the members rejected the settlement offer.
According to the Coastal Point, the insurance company's complaint is sealed, as is the district's response. The district's taxpayers, who will pay the bill if the insurer prevails, cannot know the details of the case.
Attorney Thomas Allingham, who represents the Dobrich family in their case against the school district, says the board's behavior suggests it was not negotiating in good faith. Allingham told JewsOnFirst that several board members attended the settlement negotiations, which were under the auspices of a federal mediator. He said the members approved the settlement during those negotiations. But, when the board voted on the offer, they rejected it unanimously.
Allingham said the plaintiffs remained open to the possibility that the case could be settled. But the case is set for trial in June 2007 in Wilmington.
Board prayer allowed with settlement
By Jonathan Starkey, Coastal Point (Sussex County, Delaware), June 16, 2006
A settlement offered by the plaintiffs in the Dobrich/Doe prayer suit and denied unanimously by the Indian River School board on Feb. 27 would have allowed board members to continue opening monthly meetings with a prayer, a board member and two other sources close to the case told the Coastal Point. Click here for the report (a PDF file).
School board to discuss religion policy
By Jonathan Starkey, Coastal Point (Sussex County, Delaware), June 23, 2006
The policies regarding prayer at graduations and religion in school that were adopted by the Indian River School Board on Oct. 19, 2004, after they heard complaints from a Jewish family, might be amended next week.
The board held a first reading on the amended ordinances Tuesday but deferred a vote until after an executive session on Tuesday, June 27. Board members and district Superintendent Lois Hobbs wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the proposed amendments. Click here for the report (a PDF file).
School prayer lawsuit filed against district
By Sean O'Sullivan, Gannett News Service, Delaware Wave, March 2, 2005
Two sets of parents filed a federal lawsuit in Wilmington on Monday that seeks to bar the Indian River School District from promoting religion at school functions.
The parents, who also are seeking damages, claim in the lawsuit that their rights to free speech and to be free from state-sponsored religion have been violated.
We didn't want a lawsuit, but at this point we feel like we don't have any other choice, said Mona Dobrich, one of the parents, in a statement provided by attorney Thomas J. Allingham. We are not trying to remove God from the schools or the public square. We simply don't think it is right for the district to impose a particular religious view on impressionable students. Continue
School district disputes lawsuit
By Sean O'Sullivan, Gannett News Service, Delaware Wave, May 4, 2005
WILMINGTON -- Indian River school officials have filed papers in federal court denying virtually every claim in a Jewish family's lawsuit over school-sponsored Christian prayer.
John Balaguer, attorney for the school district, also asked a U.S. District judge to strike large sections of the complaint as immaterial, impertinent and scandalous.
Balaguer said the items were included solely to cast the district in a negative light. Continue
ACLU Sues to Stop School Board Prayer: Dobrich v. Walls
Rutherford Institute website entry on the Dobrich case.
JOF note: the ACLU is not involved in the case!
Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware to dismiss a lawsuit recently filed by the ACLU against Reginald Helms in his official capacity as a member of the Indian River School District Board of Education. The lawsuit, which was filed by the ACLU in February 2005 against school board members in their personal and professional capacities, alleges that school- sponsored prayer “has pervaded the life of teachers and students” in the Indian River District schools. In their motion to have the case dismissed, Institute attorneys argue that as a school board member, Helms should have immunity from liability claims under the established doctrine of absolute legislative immunity.
An official with the Indian River School District Board of Education contacted The Rutherford Institute for help in August 2004, after the Wilmington, Del., branch of the ACLU demanded that IRSD board members stop opening their monthly business meetings with a prayer. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute agreed to represent Reginald Helms, vice president of the IRSD Board of Education, in his individual capacity should the Delaware school district’s practice of opening meetings with a brief prayer be challenged. Despite pressure from the Wilmington chapter of the ACLU to cease issuing prayers at public events, officials with the IRSD opened a school board meeting on Aug. 24, 2004, with a brief invocation. Several hundred members of the community gathered at Frankford Elementary School for the monthly business meeting broke into applause after Board President Harvey Walls asked board member Dr. Donald G. Hattier to lead the board in a word of prayer. Hattier read a prayer given by George Washington during the Revolutionary War. During the business meeting, the board also issued a first reading of a policy concerning school prayer at baccalaureate and commencement ceremonies, which states that student-initiated, student-delivered, voluntary messages may be permitted during graduation ceremonies. Thomas Neuberger, a Rutherford affiliate attorney with the Neuberger Firm, which is based in Wilmington, Del., is defending school board member Reginald Helms against the ACLU’s lawsuit. (link)
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Peace
Several people have told me I am wrong? About what? Jews and socialism/communism? Guess those posts didnt come through on my computer. Other things? If you mean disagreeing, we all do on this board, so what. I didnt think you kept track of who agrees with who. That is what is meant by debate, disagreeing and agreeing and getting heated up and calming down and, shock..ending the debate with a hand shake and maybe a cup of coffee or cola afterwards. Peace!
Not only will we not leave them with peace,
deficit in American history, caused by WHAT?
And I just love how anyone who doesn't agree with them is labeled as having no values.
What kind of values does someone have to take a healthy surplus upon entering office and not only SQUANDERING it but then going on to create the biggest deficit in American history?
What kind of values does someone have to send our children to an unnecessary war to die and/or be injured while neglecting to give them inadequate supplies?
What kind of values does someone have to send our children off to a foreign land to die for his own personal bogus war, when he was too much of a coward to serve in combat duty himself?
What kind of values does someone have to take the blood of 9/11 victims and the fear of all other Americans and USE it to wage a bogus war against Iraq when that was his goal before he was even elected President?
What kind of values does someone have to not care enough about securing or borders or our ports or protecting our airspace and chemical/nuclear plants and decreases the budget for rail and subway security?
What kind of values does someone have to have to neglect to develop enough smallpox vaccines FOUR YEARS after the worst attack in American history, when bio attacks using smallpox was felt to be a threat?
What kind of values does someone have to have to make sure that his huge war budget includes FREE comprehensive medical benefits for all Iraqi citizens while he presides over a country where many of his own citizens who work 40 hours or more a week can't even afford health insurance?
What kind of values does someone have to have to deny American scientists the opportunity to study stem cell research, using the argument that he wants to "protect life" when he presides over a country where our children are being routinely molested and MURDERED by animals who the government refuses to keep in jail?
Out of all the talk on these boards about life being "precious" as it regards stem cell research, I have yet to see ONE SINGLE POST about the multitude of children that have been abducted, sexually abused and murdered in this country in the last six months. What kind of values does someone have to have to care more about cells in a petrie dish than the children who are already here?
Those examples aren't values. Those examples do nothing but reflect the values that are ABSENT in an egotistical moron of a president who, at his very BEST, is nothing but DANGEROUS.
No problem. Peace to you. NM
...
I hope for peace
Well, Im gonna post more than I would normally about myself..sigh..Im Jewish (though not practicing)..so that kind of makes my heart, mind and soul a bit concerned and tied up with all this, however, I am an American first and foremost and what happens in Israel and Palestine, that is their concern. I do not live there. I see what is happening and frankly I agree with Sharon's decision. It pains me cause I cannot believe how it would feel giving up a home after 30+ years or so..where are these people going to relocate..My heart truly is heavy for them. I dont like Sharon, never have and I think his political life is quite over. I think the land has to be shared by both Palestine and Israel. Whatever decisions their leaders make, I as an American truly have no say. Quite a few in Israel are fanatics, totally Orthodox. My family, my friends, my ex, my boyfriend, we all look upon the Orthodox as kind of radical as can be. If you dont agree, I invite you to visit New City in upstate NY or Borough Park in Brooklyn (many other areas too, of course, but these two areas are my *home areas*). You will find extremely fanatical Jews who if you are not Orthodox Jew wouldnt even look your way or give you the time of day. I think the situation between Israel and Palestine is quite complex, longstanding, for sure, and something we as Americans really dont understand. A childhood friend of mine went to Israel after high school to join the Army. She was an American citizen and did not have to. She and I have had long discussions, believe me. This is too complex a situation that has been going on for eons. When Sadat and Begin signed a peace accord, my heart was full of joy, I cried my eyes out. My father was more leery. The Middle East is a complex land and we as Americans really cannot understand all the turmoil, passion, pain, etc., that has occurred and is still occurring. Sure, to debate it is fine but to make an absolute decision about how you feel. Please keep an open mind. All I hope for is peace in the Middle East and peace in America.
Can we keep the peace and also debate, please?
Here we go..how many days was there peace over here on the liberal board..three? Five? Oh geez..I did not generalize..I most certainly have seen many anti choice people screaming out against a womans right to choose about her body..all I was stating is I sure hope they are screaming also for the children who are lost in the system, living in horrible homes or group homes. From what I can see, there are so many children waiting for adoption, in foster care. Lets help them FIRST..
I am sad you feel that way. Peace will sm
only come with justice. This is still very much an open wound for America, half of us that is.
It amazes me that Americans were gung-ho to spend 30 million investigating Clinton's famous BJ, yet do not question why only 1/4 of that amount was spent investigating 911 - a blow job was more important to America than 3,000 of its citizens murdered. In the long run it has everything to do with peace
As it disrupts the global economy and the ability of this planet to feed its population it will have very much to do with peace. Power struggles, especially over oil/food/usable land = wars, historically.
The peace party......
and what ultimately might get us into a nuclear confrontation.
Peace offering up above.
We all love our country. Let's focus on that. No matter who wins, there is a lot of work to be done.
G'night.
Peace back at ya. Peace? And Unity?
If peace and unity is what obama supporters are touting, well then heaven forbid anyone disagree or have different opinions. That has been shown on these very boards today. Peace and unity indeed.
and you can smoke your reefer in peace Bush peace prize, LOL
I dont think any leader would try to invade America..unless, like what they are trying to do in Europe..create a European Union, band together as one. Then one day..probably many years off, they just might be stronger than America or equal to America's strength. I think things in the world would be much more stable with a fairer playing field..you know, countries just as strong as America who could keep a watch on our administrations who are too over-zealous. Kind of makes me a little ashamed that our president was not nominated, that a *dictator revoluntary* got nominated..not that I would ever think Bush or his ilk would be nominated..The Noble Peace Prize does not nominate warmonger/chickenhawks..and I question the brainwashing of Americans that Chavez is so bad, such a *dictator, revoluntary*. Maybe America needs a *revoluntary*, in ideology, of course (I am not suggesting strong arm tactics) to get this country turned around on the right track. However, the way America describes Chavez, I wonder if it is true..Gotta do some checking. I know one of my *heros* was Che Guevara (even named one of my cats after him..smile)..and when you read the history of Che Guevara..He was a privileged person who became a doctor, saw the poverty and injustice and inequality in the world and became a revoluntary..and, of course, America had a hand in his assassination.
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?
Someone asked me awhile back about the peace symbol and where it came from. In the event that you do not know this story, it is quite interesting especially in light of the **nuclear** problems we are having 49 years after the symbol's creation. Altho there are those who swear it is the reincarnation of some ancient rune of an evil, Anton LeBay, devil-worsipping, anti-Christ **secret** society, they are referring to the V (for victory sign) that Churchill and Nixon and others have used over the years. The V being evil has something to do with Masons and **secrets** the rest of us are not privy to. Anyway, when Gerald Holtom designed the peace sign as we know it some far-far-far right and fundamental religious groups spread the notion that the symbol was an outgrowth of the **V** and a Satanic Communist symbol.
The real story, especially the semaphores, which I did not know much about before researching this a few years ago, is pretty cool.
And Sarah, pretty as she is (the news net works have her picture all over my screen as if she is a super model), would be a nightmare of a VP - and it has nothing to do with her stand on reproductive rights.
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More like Sybil.
