Replies to post #63844 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Rick Faurot]

‘We Don’t Want Our Loved Ones Who Died in 9/11 Used as an Excuse to Start War’
Relatives of terror victims are foremost in the mass demonstrations that show not everyone loves Bush
by Matt Kelly
DAN Jones starts to cry. He's in the middle of Union Square in New York City and he's trying to explain how his children felt when they lost their favorite uncle - his brother-in-law - on September 11, 2001. Jones is one of the founders of the September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows organization and it's been a rough week for him.

His brother-in-law, he feels, has been wrapped in the Stars And Stripes and his death expropriated by the Republican Party, which has come to town just days before the third anniversary of the attacks on America for its pre-election convention.

The decision to hold the convention just a few blocks from the site where nearly 3000 people died in the World Trade Center attacks has been condemned by many opponents of the Republican Party as a gross exploitation of America's suffering. Each day of the convention has invoked the memory of 9/11 as a reason to "never forget and never forgive"; each day delegates have called on September 11 as a reason to justify war.

If the convention and the memory of his family's loss has made this a harrowing week emotionally for Jones, then it's also been a hard few days for him physically too. He's just completed the mammoth task of dragging a 5000lb tombstone - inscribed with the words "to the unknown civilians killed in war" - from Boston to New York in time for the convention. The "Stonewalk" saw some 500 people, led by Jones, pulling this hulk of granite along the same route that the planes which crashed into the twin towers took when they were taken over by the 9/11 hijackers.

The Tombstone now takes Center stage in Union Square. This usually bohemian, bustling little patch of ground has now been turned into a shrine for all those who have died since 9/11. Surrounding the tombstone are 978 pairs of boots - a set for every soldier who has died in Iraq. Hundreds of kids' shoes and women's shoes and the shoes of men are there as well - each pair representing a dead Iraqi. The names of all those who have died during the invasion and occupation of Iraq are being read out as Jones tries to describe the pain and anger his family has felt - pain at losing his children's uncle, Bill Kelly, and anger at the Bush administration for using their suffering, as they see it, as an excuse for war across the globe.

Bill Kelly was at a breakfast meeting at the Windows on the World restaurant at the World Trade Center when the first plane struck. His body was never found. "My children lost their favorite uncle," says Jones, a 39-year-old social worker in the New York school system. "We didn't want to see any other family going through what we did. My children are still very afraid. The shock and horror hasn't left them. No other children anywhere in the world should go through what they went through. The city in which they live saw planes crashing into buildings and the buildings falling down.

"We knew that if our country waged war that other families would be put in the same position that our family was put in - children would lose uncles and parents, people would lose their brothers and sisters, parents would lose their children.

"We wanted justice, not war. War is no way to get justice. It took a long time for the man who blew up the plane over Lockerbie to come to justice, but it happened in the end. We wanted this pursued as a crime, not to be considered as an act of war. The war in Afghanistan has not brought those who plotted my brother-in-law's murder to justice. And the war in Iraq has certainly not served that purpose either."

The tombstone that he and the other members of September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows dragged to New York is meant to quietly and symbolically show their President what they think of his foreign policy as he staged his party's national convention.

Not every protester is as eloquent as Jones and the 200 or so other families in his organization, but nearly all share his sentiments.

Since last Sunday - the day before the convention started - New York has been a sea of protest. Sunday alone saw some 200,000 people take to the streets in a demonstration aimed solely at one man - George W Bush. The poor, the homeless, military veterans, former police officers and firefighters who responded to 9/11, the gay community, the unemployed, anarchists, hippies, Muslims, Christians, soccer moms - someone from every segment of the myriad ways of life in America - has taken to the streets of New York this last week to tell their President to stop what he is doing and to let him know that they want him out of the White House this November. Most have been dignified and some have been silly - such as the panty protest down at Battery Park where women flashed their knickers bearing slogans like "F*** Bush". Only a very few have been violent and a handful have been pointless - there was more than a couple of wasted stoners desperately wandering New York looking for something to protest about but unable to locate the nearest demonstration.

The police arrested more than 2000 people, many for the slightest infractions. The NYPD has operated a policy of pre-emptive arrest, cracking down hard on anyone who so much as steps out of line. But although draconian, the police were mostly not too heavy-handed with the protesters. That's not surprising.

Few would have had the guts to test the patience of the police in a city that looked as if martial law had been declared. Giant spy blimps floated over the city as helicopters patrolled the skies. On every street corner in Manhattan there were dozens of police officers. Streets were blocked off in all directions by anti-car bomb barriers. Flotillas of motorcycle cops sped around as officers on horseback and with batons drawn idled in the streets. Madison Square Garden itself looked as if it was under siege, ringed by secret service agents, the National Guard and thousands of police officers armed to the teeth. This was not a city taking any chances. New Yorkers were sure that there was going to be a terrorist attack.

The Republicans have delighted in disparaging the demonstrators as a bunch of leftie hippies who have cost the city a fortune in security.

The response from the demonstrators is that the Republicans should have taken their convention somewhere else. But Jones is not the type of protester that the Republicans are likely to pick on. He's their worst nightmare - a victim of terrorism who is also a pacifist and an opponent of America's wars. As bells ring in Union Square for everyone who has died in the Iraq war, Jones says: "The philosophy of our organization is to highlight civilian deaths. Our family members went to work, got on airplanes, went to breakfast, responded to an emergency and were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We don't want our loved ones used as an excuse to start war. Yet the death toll of the innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan just keeps going up. Like our families, these people were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"We just want peace and justice. Our organization takes its name from something that Martin Luther King said - 'wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows'. That's all we want - a peaceful tomorrow, and these wars we are involved in are no way to bring that about. The stone that we've brought to New York is a compliment to the tomb of the unknown soldier. It is a mark of respect to the suffering and anguish of the families of soldiers who have lost loved ones overseas. It's a reminder about the human toll of war.'

As Jones speaks the names of Iraqi children are read out. "Some of them were just two years old," Jones says. "I have children and it is horrible to think of the one day of terror that we lived through in New York.

"But the nightly bombings in Iraq is terror raining down every day, and the soldiers over there wondering each time a car passes whether or not it is going to blow them up are living with a constant threat of death."

American politics, Jones says, has become a "fiery cocktail". "These wars haven't made my country safer," he adds, "and even if they had, the means aren't justified. The entire world is a far more dangerous place, due in large part to the actions of my government."

Jones believes that what is happening overseas is an act of revenge. He quotes an old college buddy of his - a navy veteran - who told him that it was military doctrine that no army should take part in a war for the sake of vengeance because it is dishonorable and the military lives or dies by its honor.

"If the horror of those pictures from Abu Ghraib prison hasn't shocked us into admitting that we have no moral authority any more, then I don't know what can stop this," he says. "The genie is out of the bottle and I don't know how to get it back in. I wish I did."

Jones hasn't lost hope though. He says he and all the other millions of protesters around America have to keep on protesting for their children and the belief in a "peaceful tomorrow".

"My children miss their uncle greatly," he says, coughing as his voice fills up with tears. "Their experiences have prepared them for life at much too young an age.

"It's painful for them, very painful. It's painful for all of us - both here and abroad. The pain has to stop."

© newsquest (sunday herald) limited

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0905-03.htm

[Rick Faurot]

War News for September 6, 2004 draft

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers killed, 16 wounded in mortar attack near Balad.

Bring ‘em on: Seven US Marines killed, eight wounded in convoy ambush near Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: US launches retaliatory air strikes in Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: US troops in heavy fighting near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: US convoy ambushed near Mosul; one Iraqi killed, seven wounded.

Bring ‘em on: US troops fighting in Sadr City.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi scientist assassinated near Mahmoudiyah.

Bring ‘em on: Four Jordanian truck drivers kidnapped by insurgents in Iraq.

Bring ‘em on: Norwegian woman killed in ambush near Kirkuk.

More fighting anticipated. “A U.S. assault on one or more of Iraq's three main ‘no-go’ areas — including Fallujah — is likely in the next four months as the Iraqi government prepares to extend control before elections slated for January, the U.S. land-forces commander said yesterday. Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the No. 2 American military leader in Iraq, said the U.S. military will work to regain control of rebel strongholds and turn them over to Iraq's fledgling security forces so elections will be seen by Iraqis — and the world — as free and fair.”

Wounded troops. “Lance Cpl. Ian Anderson of Spokane was a gung-ho Marine who was shot five times while serving his country in Iraq. Now he is an embittered 23-year-old coping with his wounds, angry at his medical care, and unsure what he will do with the rest of his life. One of more than 130 Washington residents who have been wounded so far in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Anderson personifies a hard truth about war: Enthusiastic patriotism often gives way to shattered lives.”

Shifting priorities. “The Bush administration is preparing to seek congressional approval to divert $3.3 billion earmarked to rebuild Iraq's shattered infrastructure into programs focused mainly to establish law and order. The move comes against a backdrop of steadily deteriorating public security in the country as it approaches a crucial first round of elections set for January. Those working on the changes said the proposed reallocation amounts to nearly one-fifth of the $18.4 billion Congress approved last November to rebuild Iraq. They said the shift would delay vital electricity, water and sewage projects -- all crucial to restoring Iraq's economy and building public support for the country's struggling interim government.”

Pipeline security. “Iraq's Oil Ministry has deployed a new 14,000-member security force, has begun paying tribal leaders to guard pipelines and plans to double its fleet of reconnaissance aircraft, Oil Ministry spokesman Assim Jihad said Sunday. ‘When these pipelines were laid decades ago, no one then thought that saboteurs will damage them,’ Jihad said in discussing the security challenge.” Don’t feel too bad, Mr. Jihad. Last year when the neo-cons were planning to occupy Iraq they didn’t think about that shit, either.

Retired West Virginia officer sounds off. “West Virginia’s top Army Reserve spokesman says the Iraq war was a mistake, and President Bush should be voted out of office. In a long interview with Gazette columnist Sandy Wells, Col. Lew G. Tyree of Charleston publicly revealed his feelings about the Iraq invasion, saying: ‘I feel we were not told the truth. I do not think we should be there. America is in more danger now because we are using up a tremendous amount of human resources, the soldiers. We tend to ignore that there are well over 1,000 dead and well over 7,000 injured. We use many of the soldiers time and time again. Where are the replacements going to come from? We’re getting re-enlistments, but not recruits. Where is the strength for defending this country in another arena?’”

Another Bush lie exposed. “United Nations' chief weapons inspector has concluded there is no evidence that Iraq ever developed unpiloted drones capable of discharging chemical and biological weapons agents on enemy targets. The Bush administration cited the threat that Iraqi drones could be used in such attacks on U.S. cities in making its case for invading Iraq, but U.S. weapons inspectors in Iraq challenged those claims after the U.S.-led invasion. The CIA's top weapons expert in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, revived the debate, telling Congress last April that the group overseeing the U.S.-led hunt for Iraqi weapons had found evidence of advances in the development of Iraqi drones that were not reported to the United Nations.”

Foreign fighters. “The elder al-Zahameel told The Associated Press he made several fruitless trips to Syria to search for his son. Then, in mid-July, Dhari, his friend and two other Kuwaitis - one also a teenager - were sent home from Syria. The Kuwait government said they had been accused of trying to enter Iraq illegally, the first official acknowledgment that citizens of this U.S. ally were taking up arms against American troops in Iraq.”

Commentary

Editorial: “But before that grim assessment is dismissed as more of the same from the nattering nabobs of negativism, check out the institute's best-case scenario: The Bush Doctrine, which virtually guaranteed the creation of a full-fledged democracy in Iraq friendly to the West, is hopelessly naive. The most the United States and its allies can hope for is a "muddle-through" scenario in which enormous amounts of money and military might are expended just to keep the country from disintegrating. The sobering report comes not from President Bush's political enemies, but from from the nation that is his most steadfast ally in Iraq. It was prepared by an independent group of foreign affairs experts whose scholars frequently advise the British government and the Foreign Office on international issues. This is not a Chicken Little outfit.”

Analysis: “These days, with a few exceptions, US military casualties in Iraq are being reported as parts of other stories — for example, the battle for Najaf — or buried deep inside the paper or not reported at all. And information about Iraqi casualties is even harder to find, since the Pentagon does not track this figure. Is this some vast journalistic or bureaucratic conspiracy to make President Bush look better? I don’t think so. I think what’s happening may be even worse. The US media — especially television — always finds it difficult to cover more than one big story at the same time. Added to this multitasking challenge is the sense that the American public is just plain tired of reading and hearing these awful numbers. And who can blame them?”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Idaho Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: New York Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Texas Marine killed in Iraq.

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

[Rick Faurot]

DOJ Asks Court for Secrecy In Suit
Case Challenges ID Requirement
Associated Press
Monday, September 6, 2004; Page A09
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 5 -- The Justice Department has asked an appellate court to keep its arguments secret for a case in which privacy advocate John Gilmore is challenging federal requirements to show identification before boarding an airplane.

..."We're dealing with the government's review of a secret law that now they want a secret judicial review for," one of Gilmore's attorneys, James Harrison, said in a telephone interview Sunday. "This administration's use of a secret law is more dangerous to the security of the nation than any external threat." ...

Full Story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64439-2004Sep5?lan...