War Is A Crime .org

Trent Lott on Meet the Press today.

MR. GREGORY: Let me turn to something that you wrote in your book
about Iraq and put it on the screen: "In the summer of 2002...the
president began lobbying for an open-ended resolution empowering him
to wage war on Iraq.... Bush had made clear his intentions to wage war
on Iraq in several of our private meetings."

What are you speaking about precisely, Senator?

SEN. LOTT: Well, beginning in August that year and into the fall--in
fact, beginning not too long after 9/11--as we had leadership meetings
at breakfast with the president, he would go around the world and talk

Beltway Dems Regurgitate Right-Wing B.S. on Iraq; Grassroots Fights Back
By David Sirota

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a great piece today (attached) on how many of the highest-profile Democrats - other than the courageous Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) - are still unwilling to take a serious position on the Iraq War. I must say, there are very troubling signs in the article in terms of Democrats continuing to regurgitate dishonest right wing lies (a phenomenon our side seems to be prone to), and continuing to listen to the professional election losers (aka. "The Consulting Class") and the club of foreign policy elitists (aka. the "The Strategic Class") in Washington, D.C. But there are also some very encouraging signals this insulated Beltway Establishment is being shaken to its core.

By Greg Moses
http://peacefile.org/wordpress/?p=236

Two weeks ago in Crawford, Texas there was a lonely Peace House with payments to make and not much money in the bank. Today, there is not only a Peace House with enough money in the bank to pay it off, but there are two (count 'em two!) Camp Caseys that now reach out and around the vacation home of the President of the USA, supporting a peace movement that the mainstream media are having a difficult time hiding.

And where is the money coming from? From the same places the people are coming from who show up to the Peace House every day. From all over the country. And a movement that some thought would die overnight after Cindy Sheehan left town to care for her ailing mother? That movement will surely be swelling to the largest numbers ever Sunday night as confirmation is spreading at the speed of light: Joan Baez is coming!

President George W. Bush

1700 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, DC

Re: Sgt. Jeremy R. Smith, U.S. Army Reserves, Deceased

Mr. President,

On February 13, 2004, I lost my son, Sgt. Jeremy R. Smith, U.S. Army Reserves, while he was on active duty preparing for deployment to Iraq. Jeremy was killed on Highway 36, just outside of Gatesville, TX on the way back to Ft. Hood after renting a car so he and his buddies could have one last night out on the town before their departure to Iraq five days later. Jeremy was not killed in action, but he died a hero just the same, a hero formed from the standards of the United States Army that helped to shape him. On the way back to the base, Jeremy attempted to pass a car in order to get ahead of it. Too late, he saw a truck coming from the opposite direction. Jeremy could not get back into his lane without causing an accident. So, he drove off the road and straight into a stand of trees going 80 mph. The location of my son’s death is about 27 miles from your ranch, where you are currently vacationing.

Media Advisory

For 12 noon; Monday, August 22, 2005; Salt Lake City, Utah

Military Families, Veterans, Supporters Gather to Ask:

Why are Our Loved Ones Dying In an Unjust War?

SALT LAKE CITY, August 19, 2005: Gold Star families, military families and veterans, along with other concerned Utahans, will be gathering in downtown Salt Lake City on Monday, August 22 to call on President Bush to meet with Cindy Sheehan and the military and Gold Star families who are encamped outside the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. They will further call for the President to end the war and bring the troops home. The President will be in Salt Lake City Monday to address the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. As of today, 1,862 service men and women have lost their lives in the Iraq war – nine of whom were from Utah.

Rocky's call to protest Bush makes vets see red
Mayor's e-mail: 'Nothing radical,' supporters say
By Glen Warchol
The Salt Lake Tribune

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson called for "the biggest demonstration this state has ever seen" to protest President Bush's appearance Monday before a national veterans convention.

"This administration has been disastrous to the country," Anderson said Friday. "If people could organize and speak out in an effective manner from the reddest state in the country, that would garner a lot of attention."

In an e-mail Wednesday to about 10 activist leaders, the maverick mayor of Utah's capital called for a diverse demonstration to greet Bush when he speaks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars at the Salt Palace Convention Center. The mayor plans to join the protesters.

The Canton Repository (Ohio)
Sunday, August 21, 2005

Thank God for Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son to the Iraq war and who pursues our elusive, yet always vacationing president in hopes that if he has the courage to meet with her again, this time he will remember her son’s name.

Our commander in chief, who ducked his chance to serve in Vietnam, now ducks a sole, lonely mother who dares to question the lies and deception that led to her loss and her cause of trying to ensure no other mother loses a child in what two-thirds of Americans see as a perpetual quagmire.

Staying the course and dying for this noble cause, as President Bush constantly mentions, is easy for someone who has his two daughters safely at home, spends one day out of five vacationing and who, while off for five weeks of vacation, can’t seem to meet with Ms. Sheehan or take the time to visit the Ohio battalion that recently lost 20 Marines.

Boston Globe
By Ellen Goodman

The headline this morning labels her ''peace mom." It's a moniker that simultaneously personalizes and trivializes the lanky woman with the high-pitched voice who has been camping out in Crawford, Texas. It's a shorthand that both grants and diminishes her authority to speak out against the war, a moral authority won the hardest way possible, through the loss of her child.

We are now ending Week Two at Camp Casey. The August phenomenon of 2005 is not shark bites or missing women, but a mother who showed up at the president's vacation doorstep. Cindy Sheehan came impulsively, intemperately to ask the president of the United States why he ''killed" the ''sweet boy" whose brief life span is tattooed on her left ankle: ''Casey '79-'04."

Pittsbugh Post-Gazette
By Missy Comley Beattie

He is number 1,828, 1,829 or 1,830. We don't know for sure, because so many died last week.

Marine Lance Cpl. Chase Johnson Comley died when his vehicle was hit head-on by a suicide bomber. His death admits his family to a club no one wants to join: the grieving, questioning families who have heard the dreaded ring of the doorbell followed by a messenger's words, "We regretfully inform you that your son ..."

You realize that nothing you've thought, done or felt has prepared you for this reality. The feeling is so much worse than a broken heart. It is an evisceration.

The New York Times Editorial
Sunday 21 August 2005

The Bush administration has announced plans for a Freedom Walk on Sept. 11, which will start at the Pentagon and end at the National Mall, and include a country music concert. The event is an ill-considered attempt to link the Iraq war to the terrorist attacks of 2001, and misguided in almost every conceivable way. It also badly misreads the public's mood. The American people are becoming increasingly skeptical about the war. They want answers to hard questions, not pageantry.

It is perfectly appropriate for the Defense Department to organize a memorial for Americans who died on Sept. 11, since many were Pentagon employees. It is also fine to pay tribute to the sacrifices being made by the troops in Iraq. What is disturbing is the Bush administration's insistence on combining the two in a politically loaded day of marching and entertainment.

DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE

The Minnesota DFL Party has planned a welcome-home celebration today in St. Paul for state Sen. Becky Lourey, who is due back from her trip to Crawford, Texas, to support another mother who lost her soldier-son in the Iraq war.

Lourey, of Kerrick, missed seeing Cindy Sheehan, who has camped down the road from George W. Bush's ranch in an unsuccessful attempt to present her anti-war message to the president. Sheehan rushed Thursday to the California hospital bedside of her mother, who suffered a stroke.

The DFL greeting for Lourey is scheduled for 2 p.m. on the steps at the south side of the State Capitol, according to a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party news release.

DesMoines Register
By GILBERT CRANBERG
August 20, 2005

As polls show that Americans increasingly believe the war in Iraq to have been a mistake, so, too, do they show a growing conviction that the Bush administration lied the country into war.

To be sure, pollsters do not use such blunt-edged words as "lie." Instead, they ask, as the Washington Post-ABC News poll did recently, "In making the case for war with Iraq, do you think the Bush administration told the American people what it believed to be true, or intentionally misled the American public?" "Intentionally Misled" topped "What It Believed to Be True" 52 percent to 48 percent.

On September 26, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is organizing people from all around the country to meet with Congress Members, Senators, and their staffs to urge them to stand up against the war. If your group is planning to bring a delegation to DC to pressure your Representatives and Senators, phone those offices right away this Monday and set up appointments on Sept. 26 with your elected officials or their staff. Then register your group on the UFPJ website:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/congressform

If you are an individual interested in joining an existing delegation, send an email to

http://www.leavemychildalone.org

Host a Back-to-School Event

Because most high schools turn over their student lists to military recruiters in October, it's imperative that we get as many kids as possible "opted out" during the month of September. Parents, teachers, grandparents and concerned citizens are planning Leave My Child Alone back-to-school events from September 7-30. It's easy to host an event at your home or local coffee shop -- we provide you all the forms and information you need, plus a free DVD on opting out featuring Cindy Sheehan if you register with us online before Aug. 31. Click here to register an event now and help local parents opt out!

By The Denver Post
DenverPost.com

Thirteen Coloradans are driving to Crawford, Texas, today to carry on with Cindy Sheehan's vigil near President Bush's ranch.

Sheehan had been camped outside the ranch since Aug. 6 to protest the war in Iraq after her 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed there.

Sheehan had to leave the vigil Thursday because her mother had a stroke in California.

"We're going to the Bush ranch to stand in the breech for Cindy, and for all the mothers who've needlessly lost their sons and daughters in Iraq," said Karen Trietsch, organizer of the trip. "Now, more than ever, we owe Cindy our support, and we will carry on her courageous vigil. She is brave for personally sacrificing so much to hold the most powerful man on Earth accountable for his actions. Our thoughts and prayers are with her."

San Francisco Chronicle
- C.W. Nevius

Before the war in Iraq, Cindy Sheehan was no rebel. The mother of four was a youth minister at St. Mary's Catholic Church, in quiet, conservative Vacaville.

But when Sheehan's son Casey, 24, was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004, her world lurched out of orbit. In the sleepless days and nights that followed, Sheehan tapped into the anti-war movement on the Internet, looking for answers.

"Sometimes I get up in the mornings and I turn on my computer,'' she told me when I met her in February at a peace vigil in Benicia, "and my husband comes home at 5, and I'm still there in my pajamas.''

Los Angeles Times
By Warren Vieth
Times Staff Writer
August 21, 2005

CRAWFORD, Texas — As antiwar activists set up a second roadside tent city and scores of motorcyclists conducted a rolling counter-rally, President Bush on Saturday launched a verbal campaign to shore up support for the war in Iraq.

Bush also did a little biking of his own, taking Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong on a sweaty, two-hour trail ride on the 1,600-acre ranch where the president and First Lady Laura Bush are spending the month of August.

Supporters of peace activist Cindy Sheehan, who has been unable to persuade Bush to talk to her about her son's death in Iraq, found the contrast galling.

http://crawfordupdate.blogspot.com/

Beatrice Saldovar has come to Camp Casey to represent the Torres family whose son-- her nephew-- Daniel was killed in Iraq in February 2005, and she has done so with the utmost grace. Whether speaking to the press or the Camp Casey participants, Beatrice's words both honor her nephew's memory and condemn the injustice of the Iraq war. Around camp, she is always giving people hugs, helping with whatever needs to be done, and using every ounce of remaining energy to voice her opposition to the war. She has become so dear to everyone here. I sat down with Beatrice last week to hear the story of her nephew's last visit with his fiancee Sofia; how she had to break the news of his death to Sofia, then 7 weeks pregnant; and Sofia's difficult road ahead without her baby's father.

http://crawfordupdate.blogspot.com/

We had an incredible evening yesterday up at the new Camp Casey site. Now, as you read the rest of this post, keep in mind that the new site is literally within spitting distance of Bush's ranch-- though we wouldn't actually spit, as we're trying to behave ourselves. And besides, why stoop to vulgar behavior when we have a sound system so loud the words "No more war!" can surely be heard in the man's bedroom?!?

Other statements that boomed over the loudspeaker tonight, besieging Mr. Bush and his pro-war agenda:

By David Swanson

The Washington Post today wondered out loud whether Cindy Sheehan might be a "catalyst for a muscular antiwar movement." In translation, this is an assertion that Cindy Sheehan has already become an accepted reason for the corporate media to finally acknowledge the existence of, and consequently help to build, the antiwar movement. There has, of course, been a major anti-war movement longer than there has been a war. And Cindy Sheehan has been speaking eloquently at anti-war events for many months. What has changed is primarily the media.

A website called Blue Oregon noticed this yesterday and wrote: "the Oregonian appears to be using Cindy Sheehan as cover to mention the lies upon which the war was justified." Yes, the Oregonian used the L word:

Refusal to See Sheehan Is Second-Guessed
A Decision Characteristic of Bush Has the Potential to Be a Consequential Act

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 21, 2005; Page A05

CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 20 -- It would have taken half an hour or less, and it might have lowered the temperature on a month's worth of searing publicity.

When Cindy Sheehan showed up outside President Bush's ranch on the fourth full day of his five-week working vacation to talk about a son who had been killed in Iraq, he declined to meet with her -- a decision that has been widely second-guessed, even by some Republicans. The way that choice was made, and the reasons for it, provide a vivid illustration of several hallmarks of Bush's style, including his insistence on protocol, his concern with precedent, his resistance to intrusions and his aversion to hand-wringing.

(AP) A Utah television station is refusing to air an anti-war ad featuring Cindy Sheehan, whose son's death in Iraq prompted a vigil outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch.

Also, a patriotic camp with a "God Bless Our President!" banner sprung up in downtown Crawford, Texas Saturday, countering the anti-war demonstration started by Sheehan. The camp is named "Fort Qualls," in memory of Marine Lance Cpl. Louis Wayne Qualls, 20, who died in Iraq last fall.

The anti-war ad began airing on other Salt Lake City-area stations Saturday, two days before Bush was scheduled to speak in Salt Lake City to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Two War Protesters Injured During March
The Associated Press

PITTSBURGH -- Two women protesting the war in Iraq were taken to a hospital Saturday after police broke up an unauthorized march involving about five dozen people on a busy one-way street near an Army recruiting station.

David Meieran, who helped organize the protest, accused police of "inappropriate and excessive force."

Sgt. Clint Winkler, a supervisor on duty, told The Associated Press that one woman who would not leave was subdued with a Taser. He also confirmed that a police dog bit another woman on the leg when she refused police orders to disperse.

http://www.valleyfordemocracy.com/

At a meeting with representatives of Valley Grassroots For Democracy, Daniel Tamm and John Heaner, Congressman Brad Sherman (D-27th CD) agreed to co-sponsor H. Res. 375 - the Resolution of Inquiry, introduced by Democratic Bay Area Representative Barbara Lee. The resolution requests the President and directs the Secretary of State to transmit to the House of Representatives all information in their possession relating to communication with officials of the United Kingdom between January 1, 2002, and October 16, 2002, relating to the policy of the United States with respect to Iraq. You can read a copy of H. Res. 375 at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/roi-onepage.pdf

New York Times
By FRANK RICH

CINDY SHEEHAN couldn't have picked a more apt date to begin the vigil that ambushed a president: Aug. 6 was the fourth anniversary of that fateful 2001 Crawford vacation day when George W. Bush responded to an intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" by going fishing. On this Aug. 6 the president was no less determined to shrug off bad news. Though 14 marine reservists had been killed days earlier by a roadside bomb in Haditha, his national radio address that morning made no mention of Iraq. Once again Mr. Bush was in his bubble, ensuring that he wouldn't see Ms. Sheehan coming. So it goes with a president who hasn't foreseen any of the setbacks in the war he fabricated against an enemy who did not attack inside the United States in 2001.

Blue Oregon
By Jeff Alworth

I'd like to draw your attention to a passage from the lead editorial in today's Oregonian:

"Two years later, though, the U.S. death toll is nearing 1,900. The misty scrim that obscured our view of the war -- wishful thinking, distortions, outright lies -- is rapidly dissolving. Americans increasingly see the war as it is, and know it's going badly. Little wonder that when a gold-star mother parks herself inconsolably in Crawford, Texas, asking hard questions and spurning glib answers, she strikes a nerve."

I've highlighted the bit that particularly attracted my eye. Here we are 28 months into an ill-conceived war, and the Oregonian appears to be using Cindy Sheehan as cover to mention the lies upon which the war was justified. And now the editors are sufficiently emboldened to actually call the administration's justifications "lies."

Soldier Benefit Barbecue
NBC-KSBY

This week, a Central Coast mother and father grieve the loss of their fallen soldier in very different ways.

Cathy Baker held a fundraiser Saturday, collecting donations to send care packages to American soldiers overseas.

Her son, 25-year-old Michael Mitchell was killed in Iraq in April 2004.

Michael's father spent the week in Crawford, Texas, with Cindy Sheehan, who's son died in the same incident as Michael Mitchell.

They're insisting the President send the American troops home.

Baker says her benefit has nothing to do with Sheehan's Vigil and that it's all about showing support.

ASSOCIATED PRESS WIRE
War Backers Start Camp Near Bush Ranch By ANGELA K. BROWN
Saturday, August 20, 2005 10:05 PM EDT

CRAWFORD, Texas - A patriotic camp with a "God Bless Our President!" banner sprung up downtown Saturday, countering the anti-war demonstration started by a fallen soldier's mother two weeks ago near President Bush's ranch.

The camp is named "Fort Qualls," in memory of Marine Lance Cpl. Louis Wayne Qualls, 20, who died in Iraq last fall.

"If I have to sacrifice my whole family for the sake of our country and world, other countries that want freedom, I'll do that," said the soldier's father, Gary Qualls, a friend of the local business owner who started the pro-Bush camp. He said his 16-year-old son now wants to enlist, and he supports that decision.

Bush Begins Five-Day Push to Defend Iraq War
By NEDRA PICKLER, AP

CRAWFORD, Texas (Aug. 20) - With anti-war protesters continuing their vigil outside President Bush's ranch, the commander in chief began a five-day push Saturday to tell Americans why he thinks U.S. troops must continue the fight in Iraq.

In his weekly radio address, Bush argued that the war in Iraq will keep Americans safe for generations to come. He'll try to drive the point home with speeches in upcoming days in Utah and Idaho.

"Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy,'' the president said in the recorded broadcast.

Cindy Sheehan's vigil outside the President's ranch has galvanised the anti-war movement - and provoked a vicious political slanging match. Paul Harris reports

Sunday August 21, 2005
The Observer

Candles were lit all across America last week in one of the largest single anti-war protests in recent US history. At more than 1,600 vigils tens of thousands of protesters gathered in solidarity with the woman who has been the catalyst for the rebirth of the anti-war movement: Cindy Sheehan.
Her remarkable one-woman stand outside George Bush's Texas ranch has turned into a national phenomenon - and one of the most vicious political slanging matches in recent US history. On the pro-war side, Sheehan has been derided as a traitor to America, betraying her dead soldier son's memory. On the anti-war side she has become a secular saint, laden with the powerful imagery of the avenging mother roused to action. For them, she is the lone soccer mom who is taking on Bush - and winning.