Sunday, October 28, 2007

War Criminal!




Last Wednesday, I called Condoleezza Rice a war criminal. Thirty uncomfortably cold hours of detention later, two other CODEPINK members, Liz Arizona, Medea Benjamin and I were released on our own recognizance with "stay away" orders for all of Capitol Hill until our court cases and or sentencing was served. (They do the crimes and we do the time!)

This was not the first time I had been told to stay away from somewhere since the U.S. invasion of Iraq destroyed the lives of millions of Iraqi people and decimated the cradle of all civilization.

Veterans' Day, two years ago, members of CODEPINK Fort Worth, crashed a Republican fundraiser at the Sheraton Hotel in my hometown Arlington, TX. To these lengths we had to take our petition in order to gain 10 seconds with our congressman. We wore our evening best and walked into the black tie affair standing near the door during the convocation, our hearts pounding out of our chests. I had never before in my life attended an event at which I was not welcomed.



Beatriz Saldivar, a registered Republican and Gold Star Families for Peace member, had sat at a table across the room. After her congressman spoke she stood up quickly and pulled out photos of her nephew, Daniel Torres, who had died in Iraq on his second tour of duty there. Asking Congressman Joe Barton to meet with her, she cried out in anger and despair. She was whisked out of the room.


No one had yet noticed Hillary, Nel and I and so after the rendition of God Bless America, Hillary Timmers, our Fort Worth CODEPINK coordinator shouted out, "This is for Daniel Torres!" and we unfurled the elegant black satin shawl she wore. The reverse side covered in huge pink duct tape letters read, GOP = WMD and we began singing a version of Yellow Submarine, "We don't want your dirty war machine, your dirty war machine, your dirty war machine..." A man sitting at the table nearest me grabbed at the shawl pulling my arms down with it making it difficult to hand out the hard candies we had prepared. Instead of being able to place them at nearby tables some went airborn. Each lemon or orange drop tagged with a pink paper strip said, "DON'T BE A SUCKER FOR THE GOP". Nel Labar, another cohort quietly placed some at the tables on her side of the room. On the reverse side of each candy was another message referring readers to a website about depleted uranium.

Hillary and I were summarily dragged out. This action resulted in our detention outside the hotel by Arlington Police who after lengthy interrogations, cited me with provocative assault for the candy "throwing" and made us sign a "stay-away" order to never return to the hotel.

To meet with our congressman over the issue of the war on Iraq was the whole point of this action. How could anyone hear Beatriz' story and not be affected by the tragedy of it all. This young man, before returning to Iraq on his second tour, asked his aunt to do something about it, to work for peace.

Our representative's office refused many times to give us an appointment until this night. He agreed to meeting just two people, Beatriz and myself.

A month later, the meeting we worked so hard to get was to no avail, the congressman had us quickly escorted off the property when he did not like what we had to say. I reminded him that he worked for us, the American people. Barton's response' "I work for the people who got me into office!"

What is a citizen to do when their representative has no interest in what that citizen has to say?? Who provides oversight for Congress? I can never get an appointment with Barton, or my senators Cornyn and Hutchison. Even after taking time off from work as a children's librarian to come to D.C. in September '05, May '06, and finally March '07 to find my representative has revealed to me their lack of humanity. Congress isn't listening. They haven't been for many many years. While they piddle and ponder, Iraqis die, our soldiers die and America's soul withers away.






I can no longer stay at home and nurture my own family while the families of others suffer and die by the hands of our soldiers and the guns and the bombs kill and maim little children. I can no longer stay at home while American sons and daughters kill the sons and daughters of Iraqi mothers. I can no longer stay at home while the horrors of rape and sodomy, rendition and torture, cholera and deformed fetuses pervade. I can no longer stay at home while the ringmasters of murder and mayhem, shock and awe, blood and guts and war crimes continue to "make a killing" Can you?

20 comments:

Dancewater said...

Great job, Des! I am behind you all the way. You picked some great pictures for this post.

But, I have to say - I don't think condi reacted much to the fake blood on your hands - and I think the reason for that is she is swimming in blood, which makes it very hard to see the blood on your hands.

Anonymous said...

It is so scary that Al-Fairooz can not understand that we vote in this country and that the majority rules.

She's prepared to undue Democracy and redefine it if it does not get her way, i.e., mob rule, as seen in their chants of "Show me what Democracy looks like. This is what Democracy looks like." So sorry, but Democracy looks like a ballot box, not a Communist mob.

Code Pink bastardizes the meaning of Democracy, just as the Democratic People's Kampuchia slaughter millions in the killing fields.

No doubt that Medea Benjamin could be come Pol Pot if ever she had the levers of power. He deciet and ideology is the same a Pol Pot's.

Anonymous said...

Stop The Pychologic Campiagn of Code Pink Terror.

DE-fuse Fairooz!

Anonymous said...

Terror is psychological violence and Al-Fairooz is a terrorist.

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness, Anonymous, the way YOU describe our government is mob rule! Please read the Constitution and some American history. While our government has some democratic aspects, we are really a federal constitutional republic. We are supposed to have quite a few protections for individual rights, minority rights, and a system of checks and balances. All of these things keep us from being a true democracy.

Code Pink is acting just as the Founders of the United States of American hoped. They wanted all voices to be heard in this country.

Eileen Coles said...

These nimrods still think we're communists?? I tell one of them that my tour of duty at HQ USAFE was during the COLLAPSE of the Eastern Bloc in Europe and he STILL calls me a communist?? What an utter twit. *shakes head*

Go Desiree. Next time I make YOU the margarita. :)

Anonymous said...

hey coles, hit amazon dot com and tell me how many books praising the cuban revolution medea benjamin has written

makes you look like an ass when you say "These nimrods still think we're communists??"

btw, atomic spy julius rosenberg had two codenames assigned by the soviets, one of which was "liberal"

Anonymous said...

i'll spot you one title for medea's books to overcome your inertia, "CUBA: Talking About Revolution"

Anonymous said...

coles...coles....class....anyone....buller....bueller....

a free che shirt for the first person who tells me the title's of medea's three books praising the cuban revolution

come on, you know you want one

Karen said...

Democracy has evolved to allow everyone to have a voice, and laws used to be created to keep the minority from being over-ridden by a more vocal (or less attentive) majority. Sadly, a Republican, uber-capitalist government doesn't care about the minority, unless it's the minority with the most cash.

I applaud you, Desiree, and all Code Pink demonstrators. It is only the fear of arrest that keeps me from joining you. I cannot afford to run the risk of losing my job over being arrested... but at least I have the balls to sign my post with a REAL name, and not anonymous. Come on... if you're going to accuse pacifists of being terrorists, then have the guts to sign your own goddamn name.

Anonymous said...

OK, my name's Karen too.

Happy?

Anonymous said...

And Karen, I didn't accuse, I made my case that your folks are terorists.

Anonymous said...

Karen, don't worry about the arrests, it's NO big deal. The Pinkos know that it's just $50 and a few hours.

It's called "post and forfeit", it's like a traffic ticket. No big deal.

It's a cheap why to be a hero of the revolution and build street cred with the other America haters.

Just be sure to yell, "Attica,...Attica,....AaaaTtttTtttIiiiCcccAaaa on the way out of the hearing room.

Anonymous said...

Condi rocks! She handled herself so well in the face of these insane women who need to get a life!

Anonymous said...

Is this Fairooz loon the one who has been setting fires in the bathrooms in the Senate Building?

Anonymous said...

gosh you code pinkers are truly insane....

Anonymous said...

The Liars March for Tyranny and Oppression: Commie Claws are Coming to Town

Kerri Houston

The media is already characterizing the protesters as “anti-war activists” and their organization as “peace groups.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. They are communists. They are not in favor of peace; indeed, they are hell bent on inciting a communist revolution here in the United States.

Because there aren’t enough of them to occupy an entire city block, they snatch the well meaning into their grasping clutches by misrepresenting their true agenda and hoodwinking college students, grandparents, and soccer Moms with a social conscience into participating in their rallies. Afterall, a rally with only 10 people is, well, a meeting held outside.

So far the media either has not discovered the true nature of protest organizers, or it is generally unwilling to report it.

Communism is a failed political ideology spawning government sponsored terrorism responsible for the murder of over 100 million souls and the unimaginable misery of hundreds of millions more during the 20th century. Its political leaders have sanctioned genocide, giving us the killing fields of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and the intentional starvation of 10 million Ukrainian peasants in 1933 by Josef Stalin. Millions of innocent Chinese were starved by their communist government resulting in reports of horrifying stories of villagers sacrificing children as a food source.

Modern communists recognize that most people find murderous thuggery distasteful. They wisely do not want to be associated with the brutal realities of past and present communist dictatorships of Stalin, Castro to Kim Jong Il. They have therefore hidden their real agenda behind ideals of which we all approve, such as “peace” and “justice.”

United for Peace and Justice is the chief sponsor of the Inaugural protests and it is run by Leslie Cagan, a longtime communist activist and devotee of Fidel Castro who was active in the American Communist Party commencing in the Vietnam War era. She was also a member of the Communist Party USA’s Committee for Correspondence. Her goals are the promotion of communism and the destruction of the current U.S. system of democracy.

UPF was deliberately formed as a false public and “moderate” voice to shield the American Marxist movement. Their water was originally carried by A.N.S.W.E.R., a communist front “anti-war” organization that was the brainchild of the Stalinist Workers World Party, but when A.N.S.W.E.R. showed its true colors at one too many anti-war rallies, the organized Left became nervous, prompting the formation of United for Peace and Justice with Ms. Cagan in charge.

Formal members of the Peace and Justice Coalition include state chapters of A.N.S.W.E.R., Committees for Correspondence, Communist Party USA, Communist Party of Vietnam, Ruckus Society, Not In Our Name (NION), September Eleventh Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow, MoveOn, the Communist Parties of Maryland, New York and Indiana, The Exploding Goldfish, Tennessee Guerrilla Women, Code Pink and the Marxist Feminist Lesbian Jamaican Radical Poets.

One of the leaders of A.N.S.W.E.R. is President Johnson’s former Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, an outspoken communist activist who has volunteered for the Saddam Hussein defense team. He founded an organization that supported former murderer Slobodan Milosevic and current murderer Kim Jong Il. He is a director of the post-Trotsky Workers World Party and claims that Osama bin Laden is a victim of U.S. terrorism. He believes that our government deliberately set out to make Islam its enemy so that we had a reason to build more things that go boom.

Brian Becker, another protest organizer and member of UPJ’s partner A.N.S.W.E.R was recently found in North Korea proudly denouncing the U.S. for “war crimes” against that country’s citizens while accusing our soldiers of committing mass murders. He is also a member of Clark’s organization and the anti-Semitic Workers World Party, which incidentally, is on the FBI’s terrorist watch list.

Code Pink, another “anti-war” organization hiding its ideology, is run by communist associate Medea Benjamin. Code Pink has primarily chosen women to lie to, taking advantage of the genuine concern that some homemakers and grandmas have about the Iraq war and using them to add voices at local protests.

Benjamin’s main claim to fame is organizing the violent 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in which she used the Marxist World Worker’s party to help supply bodies. The ensuing riots injured innocent bystanders, caused millions of dollars of property damage for business owners and taxpayers, and left many out of a job. A long time friend of Cagan and Central American communists, Ms. Benjamin was instrumental in the founding of Peace and Justice.

Ms. Benjamin also has formed a group in Baghdad called Occupation Watch dedicated to demoralizing U.S. troops by encouraging them to abandon the Iraqi people and obtain discharges under false pretenses. She was also behind placing in Baghdad the pre-war “human shields” whose dedication to the cause was quickly revealed when they headed for high ground just prior to shock and awe.

UPJ’s partner Not in Our Name is a group with connections to the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party. Communist activist Clark Kissinger was an instrumental member of the 1960’s violent Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Panthers and founded an organization dedicated to halting U.S. security interests during the cold war. He is a co-director of NION.

Parents, if your well-intentioned college student is participating in a “peace” protest on Inaugural Day, these are his or her partners.

They are not patriotic Americans who love peace and hate war. They are unpatriotic Americans who love communism and hate us. Human freedom is their enemy, and they have snared thousands of uninformed protesters into their web.

They are brilliantly deceptive as they cleverly incorporate their communist beliefs into activism that they cover in a mainstream cloaking device. But if they are so dedicated and proud of their beliefs, why do they strive to hide them?

Communism was, and continues to be, a plague on mankind. It has caused incalculable economic and ecological destruction as well as extinguishing the human spirit of millions of our global neighbors, past and present.

As today’s communist movement ironically uses the freedom of speech stripped from those under communist rule to ruthlessly and deliberately promote their agenda, we must never forget those who have suffered under its hands.

In our own act of irony, let’s commit a positive act of compassion by taking an active step to honor communism’s victims. Thank them for reminding us of the tyranny that is communism and go to www.VictimsofCommunism.org to donate some of your ill-gotten gains of evil capitalism for a monument to be built in Washington that reminds us of a brand of human suffering we must never allow again.

That’ll really hack them off.

Anonymous said...

You people make me sick. How many pinkies have been to Iraq to make up their own minds? How many of those who haven't been there are willing to listen to soldiers who have been there?

So code pink claims that soldiers are directly responsible for the bloodshed, but soldiers are victims of the administration? What the fuck? Make up your minds.

I never once killed or harmed an Iraqi civilian. I shot insurgents. I called artillery fire and airstrikes on insurgents, making DAMN SURE TO AVOID CIVILIAN CASUALTIES. I have seen first hand, insurgents shoot an 8 year old Iraqi girl in the middle of the street and then shoot at the soldiers who tried to save her. She bled to death. Not because of us, but because some jackass from Syria or Jordan or Iran decided to shoot her to lure Americans out from cover and shoot us.

Code pink, you people make me absolutely sick. You spread lies, plenty of them. You spout rhetoric and words repeated from the news because every single one of you are too lazy or without enough conviction to get on an airplane, fly to Baghdad, interview soldiers and Marines WHO KNOW WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, and see for yourselves first hand who is killing innocent civilians.

I disagree with why we invaded, but we are doing the right thing. Our mission is to protect the Iraqis from foreign fighters while we wait for them to get off their asses and try to rebuild an infrastructure. But as long as we're there footing the bill and providing them with security, they won't do a damn thing to help themselves.

WHY DON'T YOU TAKE THE MONEY YOU SPEND ON REDICULOUS DISPLAYS AND CANDY, BUY A PLANE TICKET TO IRAQ AND SEE WHAT IS GOING ON FOR YOURSELVES? ARE YOU ALL THAT BLIND?

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