Call for Action, August 2-3
So, just how many wrong wars are the American people supposed to fight? Here we’ve got a president that criminally deceived us into making war on Iraq and who is now trying to plunge us into another criminal venture against Iran!
If you swallowed the Bush lie he struck Iraq based on faulty CIA analysis doesn’t his motivation become clear when he rejects the new National Intelligence Estimate’s report that told him there is no basis for attacking Iran?
By rejecting it, Bush proves he’ll wage war no matter what his intelligence agencies tells him! He’s been telling Iran to “come clean” when he’s neck deep in what comes out of the hind end of a Texas longhorn.
So far, Bush’s aggression in Iraq has cost the American people 4,000 lives and 30,000 wounded and a trillion dollars and it has cost the people of Iraq a million killed, perhaps another million wounded, four million driven from their homes, and two million forced to leave the country!
The Bush-Cheney war has throttled the Iraqi economy: unemployment stands at 70%; most people have little access to electricity; hospitals are overcrowded hellholes; doctors and professional people have fled; oil production is no greater today than before the invasion; and the quality of daily life is actually worse under George Bush than under the dictator Hussein.
The UN calls it a “humanitarian crisis” but those are just words to many Americans. It is not our families, our children, our loved ones driven into the streets! Still worse, Commander-in-Chief Bush has allowed the Pentagon to fire banned irradiated ammunition all over Iraq as though it is some kind of paintball palace, radiation that is likely causing cancers, radiation that may poison that unfortunate country for centuries to come.
Are we, the people, so blind, have we so lost our perspective that we will now believe this lying president when he tells us that Iran, a country with an annual military budget of under 5 billion bucks, poses a threat to USofA, which has a “defense” budget 100 times greater? That Iran, which doesn’t have the beginning of a nuclear bomb, poses a threat to Israel, with its arsenal of 200 nukes or to the U.S. with its arsenal of 10,000 nukes?
According to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, writing in the March 5th issue of The New Yorker, it is the U.S. that is preparing to attack Iran, not the other way around. “The Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the President.”
According to one former intelligence official who spoke with Hersh, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within 24 hours.”
That planning group, several sources told Hersh, has been handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. The time to prevent another illegal war is now.
But there is something you can do. The Stop War on Iran Campaign has designated the weekend August 1-3 for nation-wide anti-war demonstrations.
According to the Campaign, here have already been local actions in more than 50 cities. “Folks are picketing recruitment centers, holding vigils, demonstrating and marching or just handing out leaflets, getting petitions signed, or holding ‘Honk if you oppose war in Iran’ signs,’” the organization reports.
The Stop War campaign has a website where you can download a ready-made anti-war leaflet and/or a petition and get further information. It is: http://www.stopwaroniran.org . The organization’s phone number in New York City is 212-633-6646. The organization’s mailing address if 5C, 55 W. 17th Street, NY, NY 10011. Donations appreciated.
Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based writer that covers political and military subjects. He formerly worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and wire services. Reach him at [email protected]
