Iraqing Iran: They Lied Last Time, They’re Lying Now

Retired Army Colonel Ann Wright to speak in Charlottesville, Va.

City Council Members Dave Norris and Dede Smith will be present, and we will thank them and their colleagues for having passed a resolution urging reductions in military spending and opposing any attack on Iran.

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http://charlottesvillepeace.org/ann

7 p.m. Thursday, May 3, 2012
Albemarle County Office Building – Fifth Street Extended
Room A
Charlottesville, VA
Directions: http://www.albemarle.org/page.asp?info=dir
( Ridge Street becomes 5th Street SW. Continue on 5th Street and pass over I-64. Turn Left into the parking lot for COB-5th Street located at corner of Old Lynchburg Road and 5th Street.)

=&0=& is a former U.S. Army Colonel and a career diplomat who received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone.  She served the State Department in Micronesia, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada, and Nicaragua. She helped reopen the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan in 2001 and publicly resigned the day the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. Wright has been a fulltime peace activist since 2003, and a member of Veterans for Peace.  She managed Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, in 2005, participated in Camp Democracy in Washington, D.C., in 2006, and has been part of countless nonviolent campaigns for peace and justice since. 

Wright has repeatedly gone to read more

They told me I was the best, better than any human.  I didn’t hesitate.  I didn’t flinch.  I didn’t think.  

It wouldn’t have occurred to me to think.  I’d been taught to value obedience above all else, and I did so, and they loved me for it.

They told me I could fly faster without a pilot onboard, and that I had no fear.  I didn’t know what fear was, but I took it to be something truly horrible.  I was glad I didn’t have read more

War is legal, but pointing out its illegality is not mistaken; it’s irrelevant and un-strategic. That’s the argument I’m hearing from a number of quarters.

Chase Madar has a terrific new book on Bradley Manning in which he argues that many of the offenses Bradley Manning allegedly revealed through Wikileaks (the murder in the collateral murder video, the turning over of prisoners to be tortured by Iraq, etc.) are immoral but legal. When I pointed out to Madar that the Kellogg read more

I recently wrote about a conversation I’d had with a fairly typical Democratic candidate for Congress (O.K. perhaps he was below average) — a former military officer who claims to be for peace, but whose every solution involves war.  I asked him to make commitments on what sort of things he would vote for or against, and he evaded every such question, while maintaining that he held a desire for peace somewhere in his heart.

The suspicion might arise in a reasonable reader that read more

I just had a chat with a Democratic candidate who has just about wrapped up his party’s nomination for Congress here in Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District.  John Douglass is a retired Brigadier General, a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and a former deputy U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium.  

Obviously a candidate for war, right?  That’s not what people were telling me, and not what Douglass himself says.  read more

Three members of Veterans For Peace — Russell Brown, John Amidon, and Elliott Adams — were among 33 peaceful protesters arrested on Sunday outside Hancock Air Field in New York State.  Almost all of the 33 were arrested preemptively, as they walked single-file and silently along a road, prior to reaching the military base, at which they intended to approach the gate and deliver a written statement.

Here is video of the walk:

And read more

Here’s an Associated Press story on an agreement for another decade of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, an agreement between two governments that do not represent their peoples, a story that was clearly translated from the language of some foreign planet.  I’ll help out with improving the translation a bit below:

“By HEIDI VOGT, Associated Press

“KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The U.S. and Afghanistan reached a deal Sunday on a long-delayed strategic partnership agreement read more