SEVEN ARRESTED AT WHITE HOUSE PROTEST AGAINST IRAQ WAR

By Mike Ferner

Washington – Holding a banner that read, “GOD FORGIVE AMERICA,” seven peace activists were arrested yesterday in front of the White House, in a civil disobedience protest against the war in Iraq.

Arrested by U.S. Park Police were Brian Terrell, Ed Bloomer, and Elton Davis, all from Catholic Worker communities in the Des Moines, Iowa area, David Goodner, University of Iowa student, Eileen Hansen, a Catholic Worker from the Winona, Minnesota, Jeff Leys, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV), and Bernie Meyer, a retired social services worker from Olympia, Washington.

The seven were charged with the federal misdemeanor of demonstrating without a permit, fined seventy-five dollars, and released yesterday evening. The action was part of VCNV’s “Winter of our Discontent” demonstratons in the month leading up to the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 20.

Terrell organized the group of 15 from Iowa that included students from Loras College, a hospital worker, and a farmer from Missouri who drove 140 miles to Des Moines to join them.

“If not now, when?” Terrell replied when asked why they drove 20 hours overnight to get arrested in the nation’s capital. “Some people consider civil disobedience an extreme measure for extreme times. If these aren’t extreme times I don’t know what are.”

The Maloy, Iowa farmer and Catholic Worker added, “We came here to use two complimentary methods to protest this war. Some of our group are visiting members of Congress, and some are putting our bodies on the line.”

Goodner, the 25 year-old Iowa Hawkeye, said his reason was “a deep concern for the plight of the world. I worry where the world is heading when I think of global warming and war. I believe the capitalist model of globalization is the root cause of the institutional problems facing us, and governments aren’t going to solve those problems, individuals are.”

Bloomer, 58, an Army draftee who served from 1966-68, is also a member of Veterans For Peace. He said he became a Catholic Worker in 1983 when he was active in the Nuclear Freeze movement to stop the spread of atomic weapons, because he agreed with the Worker’s approach. “They say if you see something that ain’t right, fix it. I see half the world starving without a crust of bread while are resources are going to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the right thing to do and it’s good to show your colors.”

The entire group demonstrated on the sidewalk in front of the White House fence, walking slowly with placards and banners for about 30 minutes. The seven who were arrested took their signs to the portion of the fence ruled off-limits to protests where they stood, attracting the attention of Park Police who warned them they risked arrest.

When they refused to move, police called in a large team to make the arrests which included six officers on motorcycles, one on horseback, and over a dozen in patrol cars and unmarked vehicles including several command officers, with four Secret Service officers observing.

After police roped off a large, square area in front of the protesters, a lieutenant, speaking through a patrol car loudspeaker, warned the seven that “You must leave the enclosed portion of the White House sidewalk. All those not leaving will be arrested.” Three warnings later, officers approached the activists and began handcuffing and searching them one at a time. To cheers from supporters and under the eye of dozens of tourists, the arrestees were lead into a large police wagon and taken away. The whole operation took about 90 minutes.

Last night, Leys said they had been processed, fined, and released later in the day around 5:00 pm.

The former union representative from Milwaukee and three others are participating in a 34-day, liquids-only fast and vigil at the Capitol as part of the Winter of Our Discontent. He noted the fasters are observing the period between the February 15, 2003 when millions of people around the world protested the likely U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the date of the invasion, March 20. He added that VCNV plans additional protests in Washington and elsewhere in the country before March 20.

####

Ferner is a freelance writer from Ohio.

Take Control of the Vote! - Camp Casey and Germany by Cindy Sheehan

Watchdog Group Questions 2004 Fla. Vote

By Brian Skoloff / Associated Press

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - An examination of Palm Beach County's electronic voting machine records from the 2004 election found possible tampering and tens of thousands of malfunctions and errors, a watchdog group said Thursday.

Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, said the findings call into question the outcome of the presidential race. But county officials and the maker of the electronic voting machines strongly disputed that and took issue with the findings.

Voting problems would have had to have been widespread across the state to make a difference. President Bush won Florida — and its 27 electoral votes — by 381,000 votes in 2004. Overall, he defeated John Kerry by 286 to 252 electoral votes, with 270 needed for victory.

BlackBoxVoting.org, which describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizens group, said it found 70,000 instances in Palm Beach County of cards getting stuck in the paperless ATM-like machines and that the computers logged about 100,000 errors, including memory failures.

Also, the hard drives crashed on some of the machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, some machines apparently had to be rebooted over and over, and 1,475 re-calibrations were performed on Election Day on more than 4,300 units, Harris said. Re-calibrations are done when a machine is malfunctioning, she said.

"I actually think there's enough votes in play in Florida that it's anybody's guess who actually won the presidential race," Harris added. "But with that said, there's no way to tell who the votes should have gone to."

Palm Beach County and other parts of the country switched to electronic equipment after the turbulent 2000 presidential election, when the county's butterfly ballot confused some voters and led them to cast their votes for third-party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. The Supreme Court halted a recount after 36 days and handed a 537-vote victory to Bush.

Palm Beach County election officials said the BlackBoxVoting.com findings are flawed, and they blamed most of the errors on voters not following proper procedures.

"Their results are noteworthy for consideration, but in a majority of instances they can be explained," said Arthur Anderson, the county's elections supervisor. "All of these circumstances are valid reasons for concern, but they do not on face value substantiate that the machines are not reliable."

Sequoia spokeswoman Michelle Shafer disputed the findings, saying the company's machines worked properly. Sequoia's machines are used in five Florida counties and in 21 states.

"There was a fine election in November 2004," Shafer said.

She said many of the errors in the computer logs could have resulted from voters improperly inserting their user cards into the machines. The remaining errors would not affect the vote results because each unit has a backup system, she said.

Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State, which oversees elections, said she was not aware of the report and had no comment.

Harris said one machine showed that 112 votes were cast on Oct. 16, two days before the start of early voting, a possible sign of tampering. She said the group found evidence of tampering on more than 30 machines in the county.

However, Harris said it was impossible to determine what information was altered or if votes were shifted among candidates.

Camp Casey and Germany

By Cindy Sheehan

I have been invited to speak to the European Union Parliament in March in Strasberg, Germany . My message will be one of peace and non-violent unity against the out of control murderous and disastrous policies of the Bush Administration. I wrote extensively about meeting with other world leaders in my article, "Friends don't let Friends Commit War Crimes."

My message to the EU will focus on "we the people" forcing the leaders of all countries to work diplomatically and peacefully to solve problems. It is time we reach across artificial borders of lines drawn on a map to forge bonds of love and friendship with all members of humanity no matter what color, religion, language group or nationality that other person is. Killing other members of the human race is barbaric and abhorrent and should never be used to solve conflicts. This is so important with the current beating of the war drums against Iran, and we must not let off the President of Iran for his inflammatory and non-peaceful statements. The wonderful and innocent citizens of Iran don't deserve the fate that the undeserving citizens of Iraq received and are receiving on a daily basis still.

In the frenzy and excitement of my trip to Germany, some well meaning pacifists in the area have scheduled me to set up a Camp Casey outside of Landstuhl, Germany, in front of the military hospital. I won't agree to do that.

The Camp Casey movement is pro-peace and pro-soldier. We love our troops so much that we want them to come home alive from the fiasco in the Middle East.

Camp Caseys have been set up all over the USA and the world and they are set up in front of the seats of power. The politicians and the war machine got us into this war, our soldiers are trying to protect each other and do the best that they can do under horrifically difficult circumstances.

The Camp Casey in Germany could be moved to a place where people with decision making power can see it. The soldiers have very little to say in their fates after they enlist (which is an entirely different subject) but especially the ones who have already been wounded in the service of their country...no matter how evil and greed-serving the phony mission is.

Let's set up Camp Caseys in front of recruiter's offices to stop our children from even enlisting to wear a uniform for the war profiteers. Let's set up Camp Caseys in front of the Pentagon...Congress...Congressional offices...embassies...the White House...propaganda media centers...war profiteers...President's vacation homes...Karl Rove's DC home...the list for valid protest locations is endless...but not in front of our troops.

Our struggle is with the industrial military complex and the people who put our soldiers in harm's way in the first place for no valid reason and who are keeping them in harm's way despite all evidence that this war is a nightmare and a mistake.

Let's leave our soldiers out of our protests. They have been put through so much by their commander in chief and his callous cronies already.

                                                 

Speak for Yourself

Speak for Yourself

...a message from Cindy Sheehan

While we were camping out in hot and humid Crawford, Texas last August, trying to meet with George Bush and trying to end the war, a right-wing organization called Move America Forward (to oblivion?) started a bus tour called: Cindy, You Don't Speak for Me.

Move America Forward does some nice things, like sending coffee to our troops. It is unfortunate for the families of the almost 2,300 killed troops that the organization doesn't send non-defective body armor, GPS devices, or IED jammers to save the lives of the troops that have been put in harm's way for the politicians' lies and cowardice and corporate greed. I think these things would be a little more useful than coffee.

Move America Forward has every right to exist and to express their views. However, the organization claims to be "...a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization committed to supporting America's efforts to defeat terrorism and supporting the brave men and women of our Armed Forces." When in all actuality MAF supports George Bush's war of terror against the world and against America. And if Move America Forward is non-partisan, then I am the darling of the White House.

I truly don't believe that sending coffee to our troops and putting yellow "Support our Troops" magnets on cars is supporting the troops.

Coffee is good, I love coffee myself. I just don't understand how sending our young and brave people off to die in a war that has been proven over and over again to be based on lies is supporting the troops. I don't understand how cutting the VA budget and closing VA hospitals is supporting our veterans. I don't understand how exposing our brave young people to depleted uranium, white phosphorous and enhanced napalm is supporting them. I don't understand how forcing our troops to use WMD's (and also conventional weapons) against innocent fellow members of the human race is supporting our troops.

Deborah Johns is a member of Move America Forward and as a mom who has a son in the Marines, is a vocal critic of mine and has been telling everyone that I don't speak for her for months. She, in fact, is planning a new "Cindy doesn't speak for me" event in San Diego where I will be speaking on February 27th at the Thomas Jefferson Law School.

I have news for Deborah and for the rest of America and the world: I never said I spoke for Deborah, or anyone else.

I speak for Cindy Sheehan. Only Cindy Sheehan.

I expect everyone else to speak for themselves. That is each and every one of our duties and responsibilities as Americans and human beings. I wish someone would show me anywhere that I said I ever spoke for anyone but myself.

Whether Deborah likes it or not, I don't want her son to die in this illegal and immoral war. With all my heart and soul, I do not want her to become a Gold Star Mom: Whether one supports the murder and mayhem (on both sides), or not, it is not a good thing. As a matter of fact, it is an indescribably awful and disordered thing to bury a child. I don't want anymore Gold Star Moms to be made by and for the chickenhawks who cower behind their desks and send other people's children off to fight their imaginary battles.

Deborah Johns blames "al Qaeda" for our military deaths (including Casey Sheehan's) in Iraq! http://www.tjslGOP.org Please, trust me, if I did speak for Ms. Johns her opinions would be more informed.

Casey was killed on April 04, 2004 by Shi'ite militia loyal to Moqtada al Sadr in Sadr City, Baghdad. Even George Bush says that most of the killing in Iraq is done by "Saddamists and rejectionists" and the terrorists are the "smallest" group: (Speech given by George Bush in December, 2005 in Philadelphia). There was no al-Qaeda operating in Iraq before the 2003 invasion by American forces. Saddam had no ties to al-Qaeda. As a matter of fact, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose somewhere.

However, Moqtada al-Sadr is another story. He fomented the rebellions in Fallujah and Baghdad in April of 2004 that killed many of our troops, including Casey and 11 others on the 4th. He is a Shi'a cleric who is an Iraqi by birth and citizenship. He is the leader of the Mahdi Army who killed Casey and so many other American soldiers. He is one of the 82% of Iraqi citizens who want the US out of Iraq and apparently one of the 49% who think that it is okay to kill Americans (Recent British Military poll). I don't think it is okay to kill Americans, for God's sake, Casey was killed. But I also don't think that it's okay to kill Iraqis, either. The killing is continuing because George Bush and his band of criminals invaded a country that was no threat to the United States of America. Now the war profiteering, warmongers are forcing our children to occupy a country that is now (thanks to BushCo) in the middle of a very bloody civil war. When is it going to stop?

I believe, along with thousands of members of such organizations as Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Gold Star Families for Peace, that supporting the troops means bringing them out of this mess alive, whole and healthy.

We peace groups are struggling so hard and so tirelessly so that our brave young men and women walk off of the airplanes bringing them home to their families and not be unloaded from the cargo area in a cardboard box as Casey and so many others have been. Our brave troops that have been killed meaninglessly and senselessly were human beings who deserved to have wonderful, long, and productive lives: not baggage, or cannon fodder for our homicidal, out of control, misleaders.

Accusing the members of our peace organizations of not supporting the troops is patently manipulative and ridiculously false: we are the troops; we have children, spouses, and other relatives that are troops. We love the troops. We support them as we are calling for their immediate and safe withdrawal.

I encourage Deborah Johns and the others who have their own opinions and their own voices to speak for themselves...and not advertise who doesn't speak for them. I could list thousands...even millions of people who don't speak for me, and whom I don't speak for, but that is counter-productive.

Please speak for yourselves.

In these days of the stealing of our freedoms while telling us it keeps us safe, please speak for yourself. In this dark hour of the suppression of our civil rights, please speak for yourself. In these inconceivable and horrifying times of our leaders committing crimes against humanity and inhumane torture, please speak for yourself.

If you speak for peace and justice, please speak louder and more often.

Cindy Sheehan is the proud mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was 24 when he was KIA in Sadr City, Iraq on 04/04/04. She is also the author of Not One More Mother's Child available at www.koabooks.com. Cindy is the founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace. Cindy is above all the very proud mother of Carly, Andy, and Janey Sheehan who hold down the fort in California.

 

Many Events leading to One Result MONEY

Osama, Saddam and the Ports
    By Paul Krugman
    The New York Times

    Friday 24 February 2006

    The storm of protest over the planned takeover of some U.S. port operations by Dubai Ports World doesn't make sense viewed in isolation. The Bush administration clearly made no serious effort to ensure that the deal didn't endanger national security. But that's nothing new - the administration has spent the past four and a half years refusing to do anything serious about protecting the nation's ports.

    So why did this latest case of sloppiness and indifference finally catch the public's attention? Because this time the administration has become a victim of its own campaign of fearmongering and insinuation.

    Let's go back to the beginning. At 2:40 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld gave military commanders their marching orders. "Judge whether good enough hit S. H. [Saddam Hussein] @ same time - not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]," read an aide's handwritten notes about his instructions. The notes were recently released after a Freedom of Information Act request. "Hard to get a good case," the notes acknowledge. Nonetheless, they say: "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

    So it literally began on Day 1. When terrorists attacked the United States, the Bush administration immediately looked for ways it could exploit the atrocity to pursue unrelated goals - especially, but not exclusively, a war with Iraq.

    But to exploit the atrocity, President Bush had to do two things. First, he had to create a climate of fear: Al Qaeda, a real but limited threat, metamorphosed into a vast, imaginary axis of evil threatening America. Second, he had to blur the distinctions between nasty people who actually attacked us and nasty people who didn't.

    The administration successfully linked Iraq and 9/11 in public perceptions through a campaign of constant insinuation and occasional outright lies. In the process, it also created a state of mind in which all Arabs were lumped together in the camp of evildoers.Osama, Saddam - what's the difference?

    Now comes the port deal. Mr. Bush assures us that "people don't need to worry about security." But after all those declarations that we're engaged in a global war on terrorism, after all the terror alerts declared whenever the national political debate seemed to be shifting to questions of cronyism, corruption and incompetence, the administration can't suddenly change its theme song to "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

    The administration also tells us not to worry about having Arabs control port operations. "I want those who are questioning it," Mr. Bush said, "to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company."

    He was being evasive, of course. This isn't just a Middle Eastern company; it's a company controlled by the monarchy in Dubai, which is part of the authoritarian United Arab Emirates, one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan.

    But more to the point, after years of systematically suggesting that Arabs who didn't attack us are the same as Arabs who did, the administration can't suddenly turn around and say, "But these are good Arabs."

    Finally, the ports affair plays in a subliminal way into the public's awareness - vague but widespread - that Mr. Bush, the self-proclaimed deliverer of democracy to the Middle East, and his family have close personal and financial ties to Middle Eastern rulers. Mr. Bush was photographed holding hands with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (now King Abdullah), not the emir of Dubai. But an administration that has spent years ridiculing people who try to make such distinctions isn't going to have an easy time explaining the difference.

    Mr. Bush shouldn't really be losing his credibility as a terrorism fighter over the ports deal, which, after careful examination (which hasn't happened yet), may turn out to be O.K. Instead, Mr. Bush should have lost his credibility long ago over his diversion of U.S. resources away from the pursuit of Al Qaeda and into an unnecessary war in Iraq, his bungling of that war, and his adoption of a wrongful imprisonment and torture policy that has blackened America's reputation.

    But there is, nonetheless, a kind of rough justice inMr. Bush's current predicament. After 9/11, the American people granted him a degree of trust rarely, if ever, bestowed on our leaders. He abused that trust, and now he is facing a storm of skepticism about his actions - a storm that sweeps up everything, things related and not.

*****************************************************************

 

White House 'Discovers' 250 Emails Related to Plame Leak
    By Jason Leopold
    t r u t h o u t | Report

    Friday 24 February 2006

    The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court hearing Friday.

    The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.

    Sources close to the probe said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife’s undercover status to reporters.

    Cheney was not under oath when he was interviewed. He told investigators how the White House came to rely on Niger documents that purportedly showed that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country.

    Cheney said he had received an intelligence briefing on the allegations in late December 2003, or early January 2004, and had asked the CIA for more information about the issue.

    Cheney said he was unaware that Ambassador Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to look into the uranium claims, and that he never saw a report Wilson had given a CIA analyst upon his return which stated that the Niger claims were untrue. He said the CIA never told him about Wilson's trip.

    However, the emails say otherwise, and will show that the vice president spearheaded an effort in March 2003 to attack Wilson’s credibility and used the CIA to dig up information on the former ambassador that could be used against him, sources said.

    Some of the emails that were turned over to Fitzgerald contained references to Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status, and developments related to the inability of ground forces to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the start of the war in March 2003.

    According to sources, the emails also contained suggestions by senior officials in Cheney’s office, and at the National Security Council, on how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.

    Last month, Fitzgerald disclosed in court documents that he discovered from witnesses in the case that some emails related to Wilson and his wife, written by senior aides in Cheney’s office and sent to other officials at the National Security Council, had not been turned over to investigators by the White House.

    “In an abundance of caution,” Fitzgerald's January 23 letter to Libby's defense team states, “we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.”

    Sources close to the case said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales withheld numerous emails from Fitzgerald’s probe citing “executive privilege” and “national security” concerns. These sources said that as of Friday there are still some emails that have not been turned over to Fitzgerald because they contain classified information in addition to references about the Wilsons.

    Attorneys representing Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators related to his role in the leak, were in court Friday arguing that Fitzgerald should be required to turn over classified material, including highly sensitive Presidential Daily Briefs, to Libby’s defense team.

    The defense hopes that the classified materials will establish that Libby was dealing with more pressing matters facing the White House and that he simply did not intend to mislead the grand jury when he testified that he did not disclose Plame Wilson’s name to reporters.

    In another development in the leak case Friday, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said another administration official, who does not work at the White House, also spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson. This individual, according to sources close to the case, works at the National Security Council.

    Walton said that Libby’s defense team was not entitled to be told of the individual’s identity because the person is not charged with a crime in the leak. However, the person is said to be one of several people in the administration who is cooperating with the probe.

OUT OF IRAQ NOW!

My Poem:

9/11/04
What I feel in my Heart

I see what I see every day,
All kinds of people acting different ways.
They say we are not for the Red, White and Blue,
It's all because we don't think like you.

I hear in the background the whispers of others,
They think we are doing good for all our brothers.
I fear the hate that they breed,
in my children's future they will bleed.

What happened to the peaceful souls?
Have we forgotten how peace grows?
It's not with the killing of other humans,
But with love all around, looming.

They come and take what is ours away,
And they say it is all OK.
Our jobs, our health care, our freedom are going
While we sit in Iraq and do more killing.

They fight the terror that happened this day
But I do not see it their way.
It is not the ones we kill in this war
it is others that will come back and give us more.

I feel in my heart that we will see the light
Just a question of doing wrong from right.
We all are humans, we all live here together
Just let your love shine and we will be here forever.

   

REM lead singer Michael Stipe appears at a party during Fashion Week Feb. 5, 2006, in New York. A stellar line-up including Stipe, Rufus Wainwright, and Bright Eyes will join leading peace activist Cindy Sheehan for a New York City concert marking the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on March 20, concert organizers announced Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006. They'll headline the 'Bring 'Em Home Now!' concert. (AP Photo/Stuart Ramson)  

   

An Iraqi child holds a weapon as Shi'ites take to the streets during a protest in Baghdad's Sad'r city February 22, 2006. A dawn bomb attack wrecked a major Shi'ite Muslim shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra on Wednesday, sparking street protests and forcing the government to issue an urgent appeal to avert sectarian reprisals. REUTERS/Kareem Raheem    

   

 Iraqi Shi'ites take to the streets during a protest in the city of Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, February 22, 2006. About 2,000 Shi'ite protesters in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf called for revenge after a bombing shattered a sacred Shi'ite shrine, a Reuters witness said. REUTERS/Ali Abu Shish    

   

Iraqi Shi'ites chant slogans during a protest in reaction to the Samarra explosion in Baghdad February 22, 2006. A dawn bomb attack wrecked a major Shi'ite Muslim shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra on Wednesday, sparking protests, some of them violent, and forcing an urgent government appeal to avoid sectarian reprisals. REUTERS/Namir Noor-Eldeen    

 

Iraqis rally at the ruins of a Shrine in Samarra, 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006. A large explosion Wednesday heavily damaged the golden dome of one of Iraq's most famous Shiite religious shrines, sending protesters pouring into the streets. It was the third major attack against Shiite targets in as many days. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)    

     

 Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn United States and Israeli flags to condemn the bombing on the Golden Mosque, one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest sites in the Iraqi city of Samarra, at a rally in Karachi, Pakistan on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)

       

 Iraqi women take part in a protest against the bombing of Samarra's al-Hadi Shi'ite shrine, in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad February 22, 2006. A dawn bomb attack wrecked a major Shi'ite Muslim shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra on Wednesday, sparking protests, some of them violent, and forcing an urgent government appeal to avoid sectarian reprisals. REUTERS/Muhtaq Muhammad    

South Florida Peace Movement Events

                                  

TO MY FRIENDS IN THE MOVEMENT FOR PEACE & JUSTICE:

I would ask that each of you please take the time to
read this.  I have no other way to convey the
importance of this appeal other than by being somewhat
"personal" here despite my use of the very impersonal
tool of a mass mailing on large email lists.

We have some extremely important events and campaigns
coming up that can truly have an impact
nationally--and even internationally—but the success
of this work is in no way guaranteed ahead of time. 

Before I get to describe what I’m talking about, for
those of you who prefer to cut to the chase, let me
get right away to what I'm asking.  Bluntly put:  we
need your participation and your money.  If you can’t
participate, we need your money.  Here’s what’s going
on. 

This Monday, February 27, at Cinema Paradiso in Fort
Lauderdale at 7:30pm, we’re hosting a fundraiser
featuring three amazing and well-known leaders of Iraq
Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace:  Stan
Goff, Camilo Mejia, and Kelly Dougherty.  We’re also
premiering an incredibly inspiring and moving
half-hour film entitled "Soldiers Speak Out."  I had
the privilege of previewing it last night and it is a
MUST SEE, an excellent organizing tool in its own
right, and together with our three speakers, this
event Monday night is one that you don’t want to miss.
This is the program you really want to get your
friends, co-workers, and family to.  The ones you
can’t get to go to a protest, or maybe even the ones
who are still on the fence about the war.  The cost is
just $10 to get in.  There’s a similar event the next
night, Tuesday the 28th at Tap Tap Haitian Restaurant
in Miami Beach (819 5th St.) &  starting at 7:00pm,
asking $20 for a buffet or donate what you can.  More
info on these events at the end of this message.

If you want to skip to “where do I send the check?”
and forget reading the rest, I’ll make it easy for
you. Here’s what to do.  Make checks payable to
Veterans for Peace and send directly to Camilo who has
laid out a lot of money himself to make these events a
success:


Camilo E. Mejia
201 178th Dr. #323
Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160

We know that Miami’s own Camilo Mejia put himself on
the frontline for the movement by spending eight
months in military prison for his refusal to kill in
Iraq.  We can’t make that time up for him, but please
help make sure that our treasured comrade and friend
at least doesn’t lose any money!  But beyond making up
expenses (which I am genuinely concerned about),
Camilo and several of us have laid out a lot of money
including money for renting the theater.  But beyond
NOT losing money, we really  need to raise a TON of
money for the historic March to New Orleans next month
that many of you are aware and which I’ll explain
below.  The expenses for that could exceed $100,000.
Please give generously by making out a check to
“Veterans for Peace” and Camilo has asked if folks can
mail it directly to him at the above address. 

Please do this one thing and if you could, let me know
with a quick note to me (Paul Lefrak) at
ftlpaul@yahoo.com.

For those who haven’t heard about it, there will be a
historic March next month along the Gulf Coast
composed of veterans and Katrina survivors calling for
justice and an end to the war.  Declaring that “every
bomb dropped in Iraq explodes over New Orleans” this
event, “Marching to New Orleans: Veterans and
Survivors March for Peace and Justice” begins Tuesday,
March 14, 2006 in  Mobile, Alabama and ends Sunday,
March 19, 2006 with a rally in New Orleans, Louisiana.


For more info, please go to:  http://vetgulfmarch.org
or to http://ivaw.net.

Making stops along the way to directly aid Gulf Coast,
this March—in the spirit of previous historic Southern
marches like the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March--will
draw national and international attention to the
connections that need to be made.  Connections between
the never-ending  slaughter of war and occupation in
Iraq, the obscene Pentagon budget, and the racist and
classist disregard for the lives of people before,
during, and continuing NOW after Katrina.  We’re
seeing how survivors--especially if they’re poor and
Black--are being treated as essentially a domestic
enemy, a threat.  And of course, that gets to the
question of who else the government and military
consider to be a domestic enemy or a threat.  As we
know from recent disclosures--undoubtedly just the tip
of the iceberg--the Pentagon and the entire “national
security” apparatus considers people like us opposing
the insane slaughter in Iraq or Afghanistan to be the
real threat. 

But maybe they’re right.  In one sense, we need to be
the “threat” that they’re worried about.  After Iraq
and Katrina, Guantanamo, Abu Gharib—the list goes on
and on—all the world can see how their power is
corrupt, wrong, and in fact, illegitimate. I’m sorry,
but I just can’t accept that any group or “special
interest” has any right to jeopardize the continued
existence of all humanity and life on this planet.  I
believe strongly that we’re at a real historic
juncture here, at this very time and place here in the
belly of the beast in 2006. I think we need to be a
threat to those who hold the real reins of political
and economic power; those who are getting filthy rich
from their endless wars for oil and empire.  Those
interests who are profiting from the continued
devastation in their “rebuilding” i.e., their ethnic
cleansing USA-style taking place right now in New
Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast—and in
neighborhoods throughout the U.S.   And forcing people
to choose between prescription medicine and food is
nothing less than a form of violence and domestic
terrorism against poor people and all working people.


There are the two Achille’s Heels for those in power:
the wars abroad  and the wars at home.  That’s
exemplified so clearly before the entire world by Iraq
(and soon, Iran?) and Katrina.   Making these
connections is VITAL if the antiwar movement is to
broaden and gain the active support of much broader
layers of working people, particularly people of
color, that this movement needs in order to make real
advances.  Connecting the “gulf” between the
devastation taking place in both Gulfs: the Persian
and the U.S. Gulf Coast.  Only by doing so, can we
make real advances in our struggles for peace and for
economic, social, and political justice here and
abroad. 

I thank you for taking the time to read this (and
forwarding to others who might be interested), AND for
giving as generously as you possibly can to help with
this with your attendance and your financial help.
Below I will append the detailed info on the events
next week to support the March.


In solidarity,
Paul Lefrak
Broward AntiWar Coalition, South Florida Peace &
Justice Network

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


From the Producers of “The Panama Deception” &
“Coverup: Behind the Iran Contra Affair”...

"SOLDIERS SPEAK OUT"

Please join our three Special Guests, all featured

in the film:

***Stan Goff – Activist writer, Veterans For Peace

***Kelly Dougherty – Leading female GI antiwar

voice,
Iraq Veterans Against the War

***Camilo Mejia – Former Amnesty International
Prisoner of Conscience, Iraq Veterans Against the War

Monday, February 27th:
7:30 PM doors & refreshment stand open.
8:00 PM screening followed by discussion with

Special Guests.

Cinema Paradiso
503 SE 6th Street
Fort Lauderdale

For a Fundraiser and Release Screening of Empowerment
Project’s new documentary.

"This powerful film serves a loudspeaker to the
courageous anti-war and anti-occupation movement
within the military and their families. This half-hour
documentary will serve as a counter-recruitment and
organizing tool for activists, schools, and
organizations. It provides a sober view of the war in
Iraq and an important counterpoint to the
‘stay-the-course’ rhetoric of the Bush
administration."

Cinema Paradiso is located just east of the Broward
County Courthouse and 1 block west of Federal
Hwy/US-1, downtown Ft. Laud, south of the New River.
I-95: between Davie Blvd. & Broward Blvd. exits, head
East. Call 954-525-3456 for more directions.

Tickets $10 - All donations will support the "Marching
to New Orleans: Veterans and Survivors
March to New Orleans" taking place March 14-19, 2006.

Miami VFP March Events - I'm MOVING MY BLOG

 

Dear Friends,    

The following are some antiwar activities that Veterans For Peace (Chapter 032) will be involved in during the month of March.

1. Sunday, March 5th -"And Then She Moved the Chairs" 2pm at the Publick Theatre in Fort Lauderdale, a play about domestic violence in the military, followed by a "talk-back" where the audience talks with the actors, producers and Veterans For Peace.

2. Tuesday, March 7th - "Sir, No Sir", a film about the GI resistance in Vietnam, shows at 5:30 pm, followed by a panel discussion with Garrett Reppenhagen (DC) who is a former sniper and current member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and Patrick McCann  (VFP) chapter president. Playing at Cosford Hall (U. Miami); part of the Miami Film Festival (http://www.miamifilmfestival.com/)

3. Saturday, March 11th - VFP monthly meeting at American Legion Post #29 (6445 NE 7th Street, Miami) 1-3pm

4. Sunday, March 12th (1 - 8 pm)  - Antiwar Film Festival at the Wallflower Gallery (10 NE 3rd Street, Miami) to kick off South Florida protests around the 3rd anniversary of the war in Iraq.

5. Monday, March 20th (6 - 10 pm) - Also at the Wallflower Gallery. Report from the Veterans March from Mobile to New Orleans. This will be a chance to sum-up our week of antiwar activities, plan new initiatives, and say goodbye to Patrick, who is moving back to Maryland.

    ****************************************************************

   I'm moving this blog to blogspot. As soon as I get my family setup using other systems I will be DUMPING AOL! I can no longer give them money for their actions of giving all of my information to the government and charging MoveOn.org to send me emails I wish to receive.  

 I will post both places until I can get up and running on the other site.  

COME VISIT ME: http://momfromhlwdflorida.blogspot.com/  

PEACE TO ALL! ENJOY YOUR MOMENTS BEFORE THEY ARE DESTROYED

                        

VOTING - DO SOMETHING

Please take action and forward to your contacts.

This has national implications.  For the first time ever, we have the
opportunity to subpoena key voting industry witnesses to get them
under oath in front of a senate hearing to investigate what the Sam Hill
they were doing when they created and recommended tamper-friendly
voting systems.

We're sure by now you're aware that Calif. did  an about face and
certified Diebold's entire line of products -- hackable touch screens,
hackable optical scanners, and extremely hackable GEMS tabulators
-- despite 100% public opposition and numerous attacks proving the
sytems' fatal flaws and insecurities.

But this isn't just California. Get these people under oath in California,
and you get them questioned for the whole nation.

Everything is at stake. 

We are putting some very important phone numbers and emails here
along with simple instructions for what we all need to do.

We have everything to lose if we don't all take a few simple steps
immediately.  EVERY STATE is experiencing issues with secret, privatized
voting equipment examined by mysterious private contractors who won't
answer any questions at all about what they do.

Here is the most efficient, easiest strategy to counteract shoving illegal
and insecure systems that we never asked for down our throats. This
action is the culmination of years of hard-core work by Black Box Voting
and others. JUST DO IT. 

Here are the simple, painless suggestions. See below for why they are
so important. 

This comes down to only FIVE emails, FIVE faxes, FIVE calls.

Do you have one good excuse for not being able to make five contacts? 
On second thought-- don't think one up. Just do it, please.

Remember; your tax dollars are paying not only for this equipment,
but for the voting machine examiners who refused to answer any
questions in last week's Calif. Senate Elections Committee hearing.

WHAT'S DIFFERENT ABOUT THIS CALL TO ACTION:

1) All we need is three out of five senators.
2) All five are interested and willing to listen
3) This is the FIRST time Black Box Voting has issued a call to action.

We believe grass roots calls to action lose their punch when overused.
We have waited until now because, like the Black Box Voting Hursti
project, we know THIS effort is highly strategic and can create real
change, quickly.

WHO TO CONTACT:

California Senate Rules Committee. Only they have the power to
authorize subpoenas.

WHY DO WE NEED SUBPOENAS?

Key voting industry witnesses, including all federal testing lab personnel,
chickened out of Calif. Senate Election Committee's Feb. 16 hearing on how
this stuff got certified in the first place. They don't want to answer questions.

Subpoenas will legally compel them to show up so they can be questioned
under oath. Black Box Voting believes that perjury will follow. A plan is
in the wings for what to do if/when key witnesses perjure themselves.

By the way, documents can also be subpoenad - like the NONDISCLOSURE
AGREEMENTS signed by voting system examiners, which reportedly have
prevented them from telling what they know. And like the documents
requested under Calif. public record law by the Senate Elections Committee
which the current secretary of state -- in violation of the law -- has failed
to answer or provide.

HERE IS THE CONTACT LIST FOR THE FIVE RULES COMMITTEE MEMBERS:

Urge support for subpoenas of election industry and certification insiders.
(Among those who chickened out of testimony on Feb. 16: Diebold, ES&S,
Sequoia and Hart Intercivic; Ciber labs, Wyle labs, and voting system
examiners).

IT'S ONLY 5 EMAILS/FAXES/CALLS. MAKE THEM ALL.

Senator Don Perata (Chair) D
(916) 651-4009 
District office (510) 286-1333
Senator.Perata@sen.ca.gov
Fax (510) 286-3885 Perata

Senator Jim Battin (Vice-Chair) R
(916) 651-4037
Jim.Battin@sen.ca.gov
Fax: (951) 653-9524 Battin

Senator Roy Ashburn R
(916) 651-4018
senator.ashburn@sen.ca.gov
Fax: (661) 323-0446 Ashburn

Senator Debra Bowen D - She is on the rules committee and
is also the chairperson of the Senate Elections Committee.
EMAIL ONLY
Debra@debrabowen.com -
(Ms. Bowen is mounting this case and will be busy preparing,
emails are welcomed-- See below*)
Fax (310) 318-6733 Bowen

Senator Gilbert Cedillo D
(916) 651-4022
Fax (916) 327-8817 Cedillo

This is about volume of calls logged, emails sent. 
Make the contacts and make sure this goes out to your list.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WHAT TO SAY:

Be concise, be polite, be professional. Here's your message:

You want Rules Committeesupport for subpoenas of election
industry and certification insiders to answer the Elections Committee's
questions about voting machine programming, examination and certification.

A sample letter is provided below in this email.

That's it. Short and simple. Polite, professional, firm. Short clear message.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WHO ARE THE KEY WITNESSES?

Diebold head programmers, federal testing labs (Ciber, Wyle) that
repeatedly certified flawed systems, voting system examiners who
took taxpayer money, spent hours on  so-called "security exams" on
systems a 12-year old can hack, repeatedly recommending for
certification.

BACKGROUND

The Calif. Secretary of State's office decided to certify Diebold -- again --
despite the new UC Berkeley report.

QUOTES FROM THE LATEST REPORT, COMMISSIONED BY THE STATE
OF CALIFORNIA:

"Harri Hursti's attack does work: Mr. Hursti's attack on the AV-OS
(Optical scanner)is definitely real. He was indeed able to change the
election results by doing nothing more than modifying the contents of a
memory card.  He needed no passwords, no cryptographic keys, and no
access to any other part of the voting system, including the GEMS election
management server."

-- (Comment from Black Box Voting: Note that Diebold has lied repeatedly
to election officials and secretaries of state about this. We have videotape
and documents from Diebold documenting this posted at our Web site) --

...and:

"Interpreted code is contrary to standards: Interpreted code in general is
prohibited by the 2002 FEC Voluntary Voting System Standards, and also
by the successor standard, the EAC's Voluntary Voting System Guidelines
due to take effect in two years. In order for the Diebold software architecture
to be in compliance, it would appear that either the AccuBasic language and
interpreter have to be removed, or the standard will have to be changed."

-- (Comment from Black Box Voting: Note that California can only run software
certified by the Federal ITA process, by state law. The "Berkeley team" is saying
flat-out that such certification was not done correctly. It follows that the entire
Diebold product line should be illegal under state law.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT KEY WITNESSES CHICKENING OUT?

The Feb. 16 California Senate Elections Committee hearing on certification
was hit with no-shows by ALL FOUR major vendors (Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and
Hart Intercivic). Representatives from Wyle and Ciber testing labs also declined
to appear.   The Secretary of State's office is now "legally late" on a series of
public records requests made by California Elections Committee Chairperson
Debra Bowen. 

Sen. Bowen has to get permission from the California Senate Rules Committee to
have subpoenas issued.

Only three of the Rules Committee Senators are needed to invoke port subpoenas.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SAMPLE LETTER

Senator ____,
California Senate Election Committee

Dear Senator ____,

I urge you to take a courageous stand to issue port subpeonas to
key representatives and officials from Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and Hart
Intercivic, as well as Wyle and Ciber Testing Labs and state voting system
examiners who fail to appear for your hearings on this matter.

I also urge you to subpoena documents as needed, including the non-
disclosure agreements signed between examiners and vendors, and
all other documents needed to assess the integrity of the certification
process.

Voters must be able to ensure that voting systems are secure from tampering,
either by outsiders or by insiders. If the citizenry cannot see for itself that
elections are secure, that our votes are being counted as we cast them, it is
only a matter of time before the very fabric of our nation is torn to pieces.

Flawed, hackable systems have been approved that violate FEC guidelines.
Some of these systems are so deeply flawed that they defy common sense.
It is imperative that the elections industry insiders who were party to the design,
examination and recommendation of these systems appear before California's
Senate Election Committee in open hearings under oath to answer questions
and address these serious concerns.

Sincerely,

[name]


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FROM CALIF. SENATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON BOWEN:

"We are going to need an enormous amount of people power in the next
couple of weeks.   Together we can change this whole pathetic mess.
Let's stand up for our democracy RIGHT NOW."

"Email is great because it is easy for us to log and report -- and we can
actually prove how many emails we've received!"

"Please email me in support of issuing subpoenas rather than calling 
you will save my staff a great deal of time logging calls, and you know
what kind work we have to do right now.  You can always call and
fax later!"

Debra Bowen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THANKS EVERYONE, IN ADVANCE, FOR MAKING FIVE EXTREMELY
IMPORTANT CONTACTS FOR DEMOCRACY.

Thanks to M.S. English for collaborating with Black Box Voting to craft
this message quickly and effectively. Her Web site is recommended for
those who want to get up to speed on the history of the voting machine issue:

http://www.whoscounting.net

Recommend the Chapters on "Technology" and "The Companies" as a Primer.

For more information, see the free online chapters of Black Box Voting:
Available in .pdf format on the home page at http://www.blackboxvoting.org
(scroll down, look in right hand column)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HERE ARE MORE LINKS YOU MAY FIND OF INTEREST:

Here is a copy of the Diebold GEMS program. Thirty million votes will be
counted on GEMS in the brutal battle for control of congress in 2006.
Be your own "federal testing lab" -- see for yourself:

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/10519.html

(Is this not ridiculous? You could teach a pigeon to hack the audit
log. Your 12-year-old sister and all her giggly friends can change
administrative passwords and election results.)

Details: The true scariness of the Herbert Thompson GEMS hack:
With Visual Basic script, a one-minute access by anyone -- even
years ahead of time -- can implant a trojan horse. Thompson's
script demonstrated May 2 in Leon County, Florida was able to
make "intelligent guesses" to find names and ballot questions and
then manipulate them.

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/19304.html?1140298038#POST17506

Article: Key Witnesses chickening out on hearing:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/10519.html

More extensive article on Calif. certification issues:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/19353.html

Voting system examiners blocked from telling what they know:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/17717.html

Electronic voting machines: Who cooked this turkey?
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/14337.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

IF YOU WANT TO DO MORE:

Now comes gathering evidence in the form of public records. 

Black Box Voting will work with any who volunteer to send customized
public records request letters. We will help you learn the ropes, will
suggest strategic records to start collecting NOW to protect Election 2006.

This year, it is all about mentoring individuals to regain their power as
citizens. It takes no more effort to write a public records letter than to
write your congressman -- but when you write for public records, you
end up with something tangible: Evidence.

To participate in the 2006 Election Cleanup Crew, email
crew@blackboxvoting.org. Please allow a few days to respond, due to
our heavy schedules -- this is a one-on-one, personalized project, and
we are so very proud of the many citizens who are stepping up to the
plate.

We are quietly developing leaders in "cells" throughout the country,
helping citizens learn the skills to oversee their own government.

Event in SoFlo "Soldiers Speak Out"

From the Producers of “The Panama Deception” &
“Coverup: Behind the Iran Contra Affair”…

"SOLDIERS SPEAK OUT"

Please join our three Special Guests, all featured in
the film:
***Stan Goff – Activist writer, Veterans For Peace
***Kelly Dougherty – Leading female GI antiwar voice,
Iraq Veterans Against the War
***Camilo Mejia – Former Amnesty International
Prisoner of Conscience, Iraq Veterans Against the War

For a Fundraiser and Release Screening of Empowerment
Project’s new documentary.

“This powerful film serves a loudspeaker to the
courageous anti-war and anti-occupation movement
within the military and their families. This half-hour
documentary will serve as a counter-recruitment and
organizing tool for activists, schools, and
organizations. It provides a sober view of the war in
Iraq and an important counterpoint to the
‘stay-the-course’ rhetoric of the Bush
administration.”

Monday, February 27th
7:30 PM doors & refreshment stand open
8:00 PM screening followed by discussion with Special
Guests

Cinema Paradiso
503 SE 6th Street, Fort Lauderdale (just east of the
Broward County Courthouse)

Tickets $10 - All donations will support the “Marchin’
to New Orleans: Veterans and Survivors March to New
Orleans” taking place March 14-19, 2006.

For more information, visit www.vetgulfmarch.org &
EmpowermentProject.org / Sponsored by:
MiamiforPeace.net + AntiWarBroward.org +
EmergeMiami.com + Greenpeace Miami
(www.greenpeace.org) + Veterans For Peace Chap. 032
(www.veteransforpeace.org) + Iraq Veterans Against the
War (www.ivaw.net)

This film has been made possible through the support
of:  TopangaPeaceAlliance.org + FriendsOfFilm.com +
Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions +
CaliforniaPeaceAction.org + Global Exchange Supporters
of Ventura County + VeteransForPeace.org + AMOR
alternative2military.tripod.com + Iraq Veterans
Against the War IVAW.net + AddictedToWar.com +
NoMoreVictims.org + CAMS Coalition Against Militarism
in Our Schools + Gold Star Families for Peace gsfp.org
+ ArlingtonWestFilm.com + OfficeoftheAmericas.org +
FromTheHeartProductions.com + TopangaGreens.org +
Another World View Is Possible + USLAW
USLaborAgainstWar.org + United Teachers Los Angeles
UTLA.net + PDSMM Progressive Democrats of the Santa
Monica Mountains + ANSWER Ventura Co
answervc@riseup.net + Palisadians for Peace
PalForPeace@aol.com

****************************************************************

My Brief Interview With Cindy Sheehan That I Was Going To Publish Somewhere Else A Couple Of Weeks Ago But Didn't

Here's the first thing you need to know about Cindy Sheehan, she's not crazy. It's true that she referred to Iraqi insurgents as "freedom fighters" and eleven days after Katrina she talked about "liberating New Orleans." And the pundits have had a field day with her. Bill O'Reilly has swift-boated Cindy Sheehan to death. I had heard so many bad things about Cindy Sheehan that by the time I met her I thought she must be crazy, but she isn't.

She's tall with a heavy face and broad shoulders. She stands upright and speaks directly. She's not an academic. She takes things at face value. And when someone tells her the government is lying about something she tends to believe them because the government lied to her once and her son, Casey Sheehan, died as a result.

Casey died in the uprising in Sadr City in an ambush set by the followers of Moktada al-Sadr. Many point to this uprising as the beginning of the insurgency.

Cindy wears her grief in her eyes and her cheeks but they don't hide her basic decency. She's a mom first. She's your friend's mom and you go over to your friend's house and she's happy to see you and maybe she makes you sandwiches and then she leaves you alone. She's a good mom, you can tell. Firm, no-nonsense, but with a sense of humor. She's not polished, she's not a politician, she doesn't weigh her words. When she talks she makes sense and you know where she's coming from, even if you don't agree with her.

I meet Cindy at A Clean Well Lighted Place For Books in San Francisco. There are two hundred others in attendance. It's an older crowd from way out there on the left coast. I came to the bookstore to interview Cindy and hear her read from her new book, Not One More Mother's Child. I might have gone somewhere else, if there was a protest, some more mainstream opposition to the war. But Cindy Sheehan has emerged as the only celebrity in the anti-war movement, the only game in town. And the fundamentals and simplicity of her argument have come to appeal to more mainstream liberals like myself: It's time to pull our troops out of Iraq.

**

Me: So you have this book out, Not One More Mother's Child How's your book tour going?

Cindy: I haven't really been on book tour. I'm still working for peace, and that's a full time job. The war's not over yet. I'm very busy still doing that stuff, protesting, working to end the war in Iraq, so it's hard to arrange things like readings. My publisher wants me to do more readings but it's hard to find the extra time. I'm doing a reading at Book Passage tomorrow then I'm off to Italy to join a peace coalition there. The Italians want to get out of Iraq. I'm also going to address the European parliament. Then I fly to Venezuela, and D.C. Then I'm going back to Crawford again to start Camp Casey back up.

Me: Do you have help?

Cindy: Gold Star Families for Peace has only one staff member, my sister. She tries to help with my traveling and scheduling. We don't have the funds. I don't get paid for this.

Me: You do all this traveling alone?

Cindy: I like traveling alone.

Me: How do you finance all your travel?

Cindy: Usually the people who invite me to speak pay for my expenses. And then, about every six weeks, I do a paid speaking engagement, which more than covers my personal expenses. Before Camp Casey I used thousands of my own money, which was Casey's insurance money, to pay my travel and bills.

Me: What was the genesis of your book?

Cindy: The book is mostly things I had already written. There were all my blogs from Camp Casey. Arnie, the publisher, put them together with some speeches and interviews I'd given. Then I wrote the final chapter and some of my friends wrote forwards and introductions. (Forwards and introduction were written by Congressman John Conyers, Tom Hartmann, and Jodie Evans I'm writing another book right now. It's going to be called Peace Mom, One Mom's Journey From Apathy to Activism. Cindy Sheehan, the untold story (laughs). The purpose is to show people that if everybody just did one thing everyday who knows the kind of changes we could make?

Me: You've gotten a lot of flak for your protests. It seems like you've been given the Swift Boat treatment in spades.

Cindy: They still are swift boating me. They still persist with the thing claiming that I said that all the terrorists are freedom fighters. It's not true but once people hear something like that it's hard to get it out of their mind.

Me: You were especially hammered regarding your comments on New Orleans when the military was sent in there after Hurricane Katrina.

Cindy: I went down to New Orleans about ten days after the hurricane and it was a military occupation and I wrote an article and I said that we had to end the military occupation of New Orleans and Iraq. It was like they were training for martial law. I know some order needed to be restored but a lot of the time the military in New Orleans were used to prevent people from getting aid to other people. When I was down there they had their weapons drawn and there were machine gun nests and it was frightening.

Me (putting words in Cindy's mouth): You don't care if they're Democrat or Republican, if they're pro-war they've got to go.

Cindy (Letting me get away with it): That's right. We have a Camp Casey in Los Angeles outside of Dianne Feinstein's office because she's pro-war. There should be a Camp Casey outside her office her in San Francisco. The leading dispensable Democrat who needs to go is Joe Lieberman. We have to work for Senate candidates who for peace. Someone needs to run against Hillary Clinton.

Me: How about you?

Cindy: Not me.

Me: What are your demands?

Cindy: U.S. out of Iraq, that's the immediate goal. We need to remove all of our military presence from the Middle East. But we also have to make sure that the people of Iraq aren't abandoned. We need to help them peacefully once we take our troops out. We have to realize that all the children of the world, the Sudanese, the Iraqis, they are all our children. The anti-war movement is going to become a peace movement. We're going to change this country's paradigm. We have huge goals and we're going to need a cast of thousands. I mean millions. I'm going to work for peace for the rest of my life.

The Blog | Stephen Elliott: My Brief Interview With Cindy Sheehan That I Was Going To Publish Somewhere Else A Couple Of Week...

The Human Cost of War

The Human Cost of War

By Cindy Sheehan and Sam Bostaph

The whole world is watching a human drama that is both tragedy and travesty. As if the lessons of Vietnam had been presented to dull students and needed repeating, Americans and peoples of all nations watch as President George W. Bush's preemptive and unconstitutional war in Iraq continues. The cradle of civilization is being turned into its grave by a president whose undefined "noble cause" has thus far cost the lives of almost 3,000 American soldiers, wounded and maimed almost 20,000 more, and killed tens of thousands of Iraqis. The land that nourished the first written language and the roots of civilized political order has become a charnel house.

The defeated Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein is no longer the enemy in George Bush's unjust war; its place has been taken by insurgent forces, as well as by al Qaeda and other groups who use the country as a battlefield and guerrilla training ground for their own troops. Added to the tragedy in Iraq is the travesty of Bush's "War on Terror" -- a formless justification for the growth of federal government power and the steady erosion of our Bill of Rights through warrantless searches, illegal spying, kidnapping and torture, and imprisonment without either trial or conviction.

American soldiers -- courageous, dedicated and trained to fight to preserve our freedoms, and raised to believe in the importance of a virtuous life -- are fighting under Rules of Engagement that permit the use of such destructive retaliatory force that they cannot avoid the commission of atrocities against helpless civilians. American Marines -- always prepared to be "the first to fight" and whose motto is "semper fidelis" -- are being used for immoral ends by an administration that has proven faithless to the people of the country it pretends to represent.

And what has this corruption of the best of our youth in an immoral military debacle cost? In trying to answer this question, we submit that the least significant costs are those that can be quantified. The most recent and most general attempt to estimate both the direct and indirect costs of George Bush's war is that of economists Linda Bilmes and Joe Stiglitz, who summarized their estimate in a paper presented at the January 2006 meetings in Boston of the American Economic Association.

Bilmes and Stiglitz present a "moderate" estimate of $1.3 trillion for past and expected federal budget outlays related to this unnecessary war. This includes military operations, reconstruction, foreign aid and enhanced base security for the military bases in Iraq. Currently, the monthly average cost of military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan is $7.1 billion -- enough in one year of expenditure to rebuild the city of New Orleans, including levees that would withstand category 5 hurricanes.

In calculating their estimate of the total of direct and indirect costs of the war, Bilmes and Stiglitz include an estimate of the economic value of American soldiers killed and wounded, and the estimated future costs of caring for those wounded, while excluding any calculations of similar costs for other countries, including Iraqi soldiers, civilians and insurgents killed or wounded. They include the direct and indirect costs of the American military arms and equipment used and destroyed, but not that of the destruction to the land and economy of the Iraqis. They include the increased costs of providing greater security for military bases, but not the costs of increased counter-intelligence activities by the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Bilmes and Stiglitz admit that they were unable to include most of the economic costs associated with Bush's war; for instance, they omit the damage to international trade and the standard of living in the world as a consequence of the increased trade barriers imposed in the "War on Terror". They omit the economic damage caused by higher prices for oil because of decreased production in the Middle East, and the consequent lower production of other goods and services as energy expenditures replace others in budgeting. They omit the loss of investment expenditures in the American economy as military spending replaces domestic spending and interest payments on debt from deficit spending on the war crowd out business borrowing.

If all economic costs could be included, Bilmes and Stiglitz speculate that their estimate of the Iraq war costs would rise to $2.2 trillion. We submit that this is still too low because it fails to allow for the fact that military expenditures are expenditures for destruction, not for the creation of value and increases in the standard of living. Resources wasted in the destruction of human life and property, are resources that cannot be used for building houses or feeding the hungry. It also fails to allow for the demoralization and destruction of the whole American military establishment that is one of the seldom-mentioned results of fighting this immoral, pointless and savage war.

To reach their cost estimates, Bilmes and Stiglitz had to make a number of restrictive assumptions, a change in any one of which would greatly change the results of their calculations. The only unimpeachable fact and undeniably true statement in their entire paper is a concluding remark that "the most important things in life -- like life itself -- are priceless." And what do they recommend for the future? Like a slap in the face of all that is moral and good in humankind and its potential for greatness, Bilmes and Stiglitz urge BETTER COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS before undertaking future wars!

How does one react to the recognition that life is priceless, but a price should be put upon it for the purpose of deciding whether to make war? It can only be with outrage. We are outraged that a war should be considered as anything but a last resort, fought in defense and after an attack by an organized and dangerous enemy bent on our destruction or conquest. We are outraged that a pre-emptive and poorly thought-out invasion of a foreign country was undertaken under a pretense that was subsequently revealed to be a pack of lies. We are outraged at the incalculable human cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. We are outraged that human and other resources desperately needed to respond to the Gulf Coast disaster last fall were instead in Iraq, being used for the wasting and occupation of that country.

Outrage is what Cindy was feeling when she toured the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans in mid-February. Outrage, sorrow, horror and sickness over the destruction she saw there. A destruction that is both complete and profound. A destruction that was made worse by poor preparation at all levels of government. Miles and miles of collapsed houses, overturned cars and toys alike flung far and wide: miles and miles of proof of the incompetence and callousness of government.

Cindy was in New Orleans as people were being kicked out of their subsidized FEMA housing while hundreds of millions of dollars of "FEMAtrailers" sat in lots and on railroad cars waiting for a place to be parked. She listened to Richard Skinner of Homeland Security say on CNN that FEMA is spending "eight to ten million dollars" to spread gravel on a lot in Arkansas so that the 11,000 trailers that should be in the Gulf States, but are parked on that lot, won't sink into the mud while they sit. She saw hundreds of units of low income housing in St. Bernard's Parish that could be rehabilitated with some sheetrock and paint, but are sitting empty and useless. Hundreds of residents could return to their homes for what it would cost for 18 months use of two of those empty trailers -- each of which is estimated by the Times-Picayune to cost as much as $120,000.

Cindy left New Orleans depressed and missing her son, Casey, even more. Like other American soldiers, Casey was raised to understand the importance of a virtuous life. He neither sought, nor wanted, to kill innocent people in Iraq, and he voiced this often during his last visit home at Christmas, 2003. On April 4, 2004, he was killed while on a rescue mission to retrieve wounded comrades in arms. Casey came home to be buried, as have almost 3000 others in the last three years.

But, what of those soldiers who come home wounded or unscathed? To what do they return? They come home to a Veterans Administration that is inadequately funded for the job it has to do. Too many come home to divorce, to become homeless, to die by their own hands. Iraq War veterans come home to a VA that has failed even to provide the benefits due veterans of the Vietnam War -- a war that has since claimed more veterans through suicide than were killed fighting.

Like the water that poured over the weak and compromised levees in New Orleans, the human lives and money that are being poured into the sands of distant Iraq are harming our very humanity. Rather than accolades, the American people are receiving worldwide hatred in return. Rather than greater security, they are receiving less. Rather than expanding freedom in the world, they are losing their own to a mindless expansion of federal government power.

Life is priceless. The present value of all the future income Casey Sheehan might have earned is miniscule compared to the value he had to himself, to Cindy, to his father, to his brother and sisters -- to all his family and friends. Multiply that way of valuing Casey by 3000 killed, 20,000 wounded, and thousands mentally damaged orembittered for life and you get an obscenity. This is the human cost of war.

Cindy Sheehan is the proud mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was 24 when he was KIA in Sadr City, Iraq on 04/04/04. She is also the author of Not One More Mother's Child available at www.koabooks.com. Cindy is the founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace. Cindy is above all the very proud mother of Carly, Andy, and Janey Sheehan who hold down the fort in California.

Sam Bostaph, Ph.D., is Pofessor of Economics and Chairman, Department of Economics, University of Dallas. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles on topics in intellectual history, economic theory and economic theory. A former Marine, who later served as a U.S. Army intelligence staff officer during the Vietnam War era, he is the proud father of Katie and Megan Bostaph and prays that they may never go to war themselves.

Dear Gold Star Families for Peace Supporters

Sign on today! Please join women and men from all over the world who have launched an Urgent Call for Peace in Iraq. CODEPINK: Women for Peace,is gathering over 100,000 signatures on this Call, and we need your signature, and your help, to do it! On International Women's Day, March 8, we will deliver these signatures to U.S. embassies, consulates, and federal offices all over the world. 

CODEPINK has been struggling since before the war in Iraq began to build a movement for peace across borders. We marched with you on February 15, 2003 and have been fighting with you to end the war ever since!  As the human toll of war increases, and the peace movement gains momentum, we are standing up in increasing numbers with our international sisters and brothers to say ENOUGH to war and violence. Please join us in demanding peace now!

You can help by signing the Call today at http://www.womensaynotowar.org/ , and spreading the word through your email lists.  We also hope you’ll consider joining us on March 8 in Washington DC, or joining an action in your town. Visit http://www.womensaynotowar.org/ for details.

In Solidarity Towards Peace,

Medea Benjamin, Gael Murphy, and Jodie Evans
Co-founders of CODEPINK Women for Peace

P.S. There are many more ways to get involved! You can add a beautiful pink link to the petition on your organization’s website by downloading the banner at http://www.womensaynotowar.org/article.php?id=698. If you would like more information about this campaign, please email info@womensaynotowar.org.

Women’s Call for Peace: An Urgent Appeal

We, the women of the United States, Iraq and women worldwide, have had enough of the senseless war in Iraq and the cruel attacks on civilians around the world. We’ve buried too many of our loved ones. We’ve seen too many lives crippled forever by physical and mental wounds. We’ve watched in horror as our precious resources are poured into war while our families’ basic needs of food, shelter, education and heathcare go unmet. We’ve had enough of living in constant fear of violence and seeing the growing cancer of hatred and intolerance seep into our homes and communities.
 
This is not the world we want for ourselves or our children. With fire in our bellies and love in our hearts, we women are rising up—across borders—to unite and demand an end to the bloodshed and the destruction.
 
We have seen how the foreign occupation of Iraq has fueled an armed movement against it, perpetuating an endless cycle of violence. We are convinced that it is time to shift from a military model to a conflict-resolution model that includes the following elements:


The withdrawal of all foreign troops and foreign fighters from Iraq;

• Negotiations to reincorporate disenfranchised Iraqis intoallaspects of Iraqi society;
• The full representation of women in the peacemaking process andacommitment to women’s full equality in the post-war Iraq;
• A commitment to discard plans for any foreign bases in Iraq;
• Iraqi control of its oil and other resources;
• The nullification of privatization and deregulation lawsimposedunder occupation, allowing Iraqis to shape the trajectory of thepost-wareconomy;
• A massive reconstruction effort that prioritizes Iraqicontractors,and draws upon financial resources of the countriesresponsible for theinvasion and occupation of Iraq;
• Consideration of a temporary international peacekeeping forcethatis truly multilateral and is not composed of any troops fromcountriesthat participated in the occupation.
  

To move this peace process forward, we are creating a massive movement of women—crossing generations, races, ethnicities, religions, borders and political persuasions. Together, we will pressure our governments, the United Nations, the Arab League, Nobel Peace Prize winners, religious leaders and others in the international community to step forward to help negotiate a political settlement. And in this era of divisive fundamentalisms, we call upon world leaders to join us in spreading the fundamental values of love for the human family and for our precious planet.

Our Special Day

Today is a very special day for me. Since a young child, the only thing I ever wanted to be was a mommy. It took me several years and many loss pregnancies before my very special little man was born (2 weeks late), on my birthday. 8 years ago today was the happiest day of my life. They joy I felt holding my little Dean in my arms for the first time will never leave me. We were given a special bond being born on the same day.  My little bundle of love.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAN-0-BAMBINO. I couldn't have asked for a better son than you. I am so thankful for you, my precious little man.

Our weekend trip to Naples

             

Peace Everyone!  Enjoy Your Moments!            

Our Actions have REACTIONS!

HOW MUCH HATE DO YOU THINK WE HAVE CREATED? HOW MUCH OF THIS HATE IS GOING TO BLOW US UP IN OUR FUTURE?

The photos America doesn't want seen - World - smh.com.au

By Matthew Moore
February 15, 2006

MORE photographs have been leaked of Iraqi citizens tortured by US soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Tonight the SBS Dateline program plans to broadcast about 60 previously unpublished photographs that the US Government has been fighting to keep secret in a court case with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Although a US judge last year granted the union access to the photographs following a freedom-of-information request, the US Administration has appealed against the decision on the grounds their release would fuel anti-American sentiment.

Some of the photos are similar to those published in 2004, others are different. They include photographs of six corpses, although the circumstances of their deaths are not clear. There are also pictures of what appear to be burns and wounds from shotgun pellets.

The executive producer of Dateline, Mike Carey, said he was showing the pictures leaked to his program because it was important people understood what had happened at Abu Ghraib.

Seven US guards were jailed following publication of the first batch of Abu Ghraib photographs in April 2004.

Mr Carey said he could not explain why the photographs had not yet been published, as he thought it was likely that some journalists had them.

"It think it's strange, maybe they think its more of the same."

■ The Daily Telegraph, London reports: A British soldier who is believed to have filmed fellow troops assaulting Iraqi civilians has been arrested, the Ministry of Defence said on Monday. The ministry had not confirmed whether he was being questioned as a witness or a suspect.

The best kind of love to have

Is the love you have for yourself. Happy Valentines Day

May Peace be inside all of us

For the Love of God, Can't you Make him Stop?! by Cindy Sheehan

For the Love of God, Can't you Make him Stop?!

By Cindy Sheehan

Former President George Bush took a shot at protestor Cindy Sheehan on Friday while speaking to students at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.

Bush told the audience if she shows up to their church as expected she'll have to deal with his wife Barbara.
--KVET News, Central Texas:

On President's Day (Feb 20th), Gold Star Families for Peace, Veterans for Peace, and Code Pink are sponsoring an action in Houston, Tx. near the elder Bush's estate called, "For the Love of God. Can't you make him stop?"

We will be demonstrating in front of George Sr. and Bar's church, St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston from 4pm to 7pm on President's Day on Monday, February 20th. And we have something to say to the Bush family (who apparently send their women to fight their battles): "Bring Her On."

Mrs. Bush can read my sign with a big picture of my son, Casey, on it which will read: "Your Son Killed My Son, Make him Stop!"

George, Sr. says that I will have to deal with Barbara. Well, SHE will have to deal with me and she will have to deal with:

• Amy Branham, whose son, Jeremy, was killed while in training to be deployed to Iraq;
• Juan Torres, whose son, John, was killed in Afghanistan while he was trying to expose the active drug trade on his post;
• Beatriz Saldivar, whose nephew, Daniel Torres, was killed in Iraq;
• Dede Miller, whose nephew, Casey, was killed in Iraq;
• and Bill Mitchell, whose son, Michael, was killed in the same incident in Iraq that my son was killed in.

We have some questions for Barbara so we hope she will come. Here are a few of our questions:

If you think that this war is such a noble cause why aren't any of your children, or grandchildren in combat over in Iraq?

Do you think that any of us wanted to trouble our pretty minds with images of flag draped coffins? Only for us, they weren't images. They were actual flag draped coffins carrying our dear loved ones. Not only are we troubled by these images, they are imprinted on our heartsand souls forever.

About how much money do you think the Bush family has raped from America over the years from war profiteering?

Did you ever wash Little George's mouth out with soap for lying?

Lately, we have heard from Larry Wilkerson how the intelligence and all of the pre-invasion posturing was a hoax how do you think that makes us feel? Our children are dead because of a trick played on the world by your son and his administration.

How many innocent Iraqis have died and how many are your family willing to have die before the travesty in Iraq ends?

I am sure that we will think of many more questions between now and next week.

So, we Gold Star Families for Peace, invite you Mrs. Barbara Bush, to a Tea Party in front of your church on Feb. 20, 2006 at 4pm in the afternoon. Come and deal with us. We welcome the opportunity to speak with you.

We will set an extra place at our Tea Party for Truth for you. Come join us.

 

****************************************************************

SPEAK OUT FOR PEACE!

Join us for an evening PEACE RALLY in The Woodlands

Cindy Sheehan
And
The Gold Star
Families
For Peace

February 19, 2006
Sunday 7:00 p.m.
Montgomery College Theatre
Building D
Montgomery College
3200 College Park Dr.
The Woodlands, TX

Event sponsors include the North Houston Peace Group, Gold Star Families for Peace, Potlucks for Peace and Concerned Citizens of Montgomery County.

Montgomery College Road Map

Directions to Montgomery College:
To Montgomery College from NORTH:
- Take I-45 south to exit #79 (Needham Rd./Hwy. 242/College Park Dr.).
- Turn right (away from interstate) and head approximately 1/4 mile.
- Main college entrance is on the right.
To Montgomery College from SOUTH:
- Take I-45 north to exit #79 (Needham Rd./Hwy. 242/College Park Dr.).
- Turn left under interstate and head approximately 1/4 mile.
- Main college entrance is on the right.
*****************************************************************

 

Sheehan speaks at local church

Protesters gather to support troops

By DAMIANE RICKS
Advocate staff writer
Published: Feb 13, 2006

While Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan was inside the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge on Sunday, condemning the war in Iraq, about a dozen Blue Star Mothers and others gathered outside to encourage support for troops serving overseas.

Sheehan made headlines last year when she and members of her organization, Gold Star Families for Peace, camped outside President Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch, unsuccessfully demanding a meeting with the president after her son, U.S. Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed in action in Iraq on April 4, 2004.

Sheehan, who is calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, said the emotional effects of the war make the number of U.S. casualties higher than the 2,267 reportedly killed in action to date.

“It doesn’t matter if they come back whole, all of them are a casualty of this war,” she said. “I wonder if the people across the street know anything about this: the true human cost of the war.”

Gold Star Mothers are mothers who have lost a child in the service of the country. Blue Star Mothers are mothers who now have, or have had, children serving in the military.

Blue Star Mother Martha Leblanc of Baton Rouge, whose son returned home two weeks ago from serving in Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division, said she supports her son’s decision to serve in the military.

Sheehan said to the more than 100 in attendance at the church forum that “joining the military can be honorable, but you don’t join when there are irresponsible leaders in the administration, like George Bush.”

The Blue Star group stood on the sidewalk across the street from the church, waving American flags and “Support our Troops” banners decorated with yellow ribbons.

Janet Broussard, president of Blue Star Mothers of Louisiana, held a sign that read, “Honor, Respect, Never Forget Our Fallen.” Passing automobiles, honking their support, could be heard from inside the church.

Broussard insisted their presence was not in opposition to Sheehan, but rather to promote support for “our troops.”

“I don’t agree with her,” Broussard said, “but I’m not going to talk bad about her. She lost her child.”

Sheehan was joined by retired Col. Ann Wright, a 26-year veteran of the U.S. Army who worked for 16 years as a U.S. diplomat until she resigned in opposition to the war.

Both women arrived at the church wearing large black T-shirts similar to the one Sheehan wore Jan. 31 when she was detained by police before the President’s State of the Union Address earlier this month. The message on the shirt: “2,245 Dead. How many more?”

Wright’s T-shirt Sunday had the number updated to 2,267.

“What happened to me on Jan. 31 should shock, anger and scare you,” Sheehan said, claiming her civil rights were violated.
Wright criticized the federal government’s practice of monitoring international phone calls within the country. She said she is sure Sheehan’s calls have been monitored.

“Would you like our cell phone numbers? Everyone else seems to have them,” she joked.

Clyde Johnson, a Baton Rouge resident and a member of the church, said he supports Sheehan’s call for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

“I grieve at the number of young lives lost on both sides for no real reason that would make this world a better place that I can see,” Johnson said.

Rachel Patineau, 66, of Baton Rouge, echoed Johnson’s sentiment.

“I am very pleased to see the opportunity for people to hear about the atrocities of this war,” she said. “I’m grateful for the church providing the community to hear this.”

The Rev. Steve Crump said the church, which has many views among its membership, does not endorse Sheehan’s views.
“We’re just providing a forum for her viewpoint,” Crump said. “I think the status quo is what we often hear from the Defense Department and the administration, so this is just another viewpoint in the spirit of fairness.”

Crump said Sheehan belongs to a club of increasing numbers in Louisiana of parents who have lost children in the military in this war.

“I’d say most Americans disagree with her, but she’s become a symbol of hatred,” he said. “She’s a citizen simply speaking her mind.”

Crump said if anti-Sheehan activists wanted to use the church as a forum for their views, he would try to meet their request.

Today, Sheehan will take part in a forum titled “Two Perspectives: The War in Iraq” from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication. Representing the other perspective will be U.S. Marine Corps Col. David Couvillon.