It is better to "talk, talk. talk, talk, talk" for 10,000 years, than to waste even One Life for an Unjust and Unnecessary War.
Peace Vigils

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Peace on HOT+hUMID Fridays in September 2007
Gonzo Jones mans the bench office.

 - Please join us -
- Silent Peace Vigils on Friday Afternoons 5:30 - 6pm
- Rain or Shine, let your silence be heard! 
- Pro-peace or Anti-war messages only, please.
- No personal nor political bashing.
- Join those who share your concerns and take a stand for your convictions. 
- Signs are provided.
-
Meet across the street from the Post Office on College Street in Macon, Georgia. 

The THIRD FRIDAY of every month beginning Friday September 21st

  • Wear and distribute black ribbons and armbands - Need Volunteers to make armbands -contact- Teeth@mindspring.com
  • Iraq Moratorium! (here)
Lee and Peggy
Sisters Lee A. Johnson of Macon, left, and Peggy Johnson, a Navy veteran of Lexington Okla. right,
 attend a peace rally at the Pentagon in Washington, DC




  http://www.answercoalition.org





 


Contact us - E-Mail

   30 Minutes of Silence Can Say a Lot!
Meet across the street from the Post Office on College Street in Macon, Georgia.

  Friday Afternoons



Military members join the movement ---
 Appeal For Redress .org
and
Vote Vets.org



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(1) Before reading Krugman's article below, view this video to get some perspective:
http://pol.moveon.org/troopshome
"Don't Get Fooled Again"


(2) Time to Take a Stand

By PAUL KRUGMAN
September 7, 2007
Here's what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he'll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq -- as long as you don't count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

Here's what I'm afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus's uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won't ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they'll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.

So how can the military be claiming otherwise?
Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that "if a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian. If it went through the front, it's criminal." So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.

Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls because there's nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by the Pentagon's metric.

Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.

I've written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming "tangible progress" in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that "Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt," that "Iraqi leaders are stepping forward" and that "there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security." A year later, he declared that "there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces."

But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces "will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months."

Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia's deputy prime minister that "we're kicking ass" in Iraq. Enough said.

Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don't see Congress doing anything to stop the war.

In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a "goal" for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate -- but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters -- political cover.

And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.

One thing is for sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a "khaki election" in which Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against the troops. The only question is whether they can also, once again, claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can't make up their minds.



(3) A response to Krugman:
Re: Time to Take a Stand
Anyone with a sense of history will have to chortle at
the latest claims, and for that matter the previous
year's set of claims, and the year before that's, about
how the Iraqi government and military are doing better
than ever.  If you were around during Vietnam, you will
recall the stories, that came out every year, about how
the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam, aka the
puppet troops), how 80 battalions were being trained,
about how the army is taking over more missions
previously assigned to US forces, and usually there was
a favorite province where every year the gullible media
would be taken on tour to see all the progress (the
fact that the province in question had never had much
Viet Minh or NLF organization, being ruled by one of
the weird religious sects, was never mentioned as it
would ruin the Happy Days! message).  There were
several years running when I recall the figure of 80
battalions in training being mentioned, and by gosh,
the same number (maybe the same battalions?) has been
cited for Iraq several years running.  The small print,
as usual, what generally never makes the story, is that
6 of these battalions are rated as combat worthy, and
by that they mean that 3 of the battalions are believed
to be good enough to be trusted with live ammunition,
and relied upon not to run away when shooting starts.
And every time, some serious military intellectual will
scratch his head and not be able to understand why
these guys aren't all that eager to die for "their"
government that we have given them.  And why the guys
on the other side still seem willing to brave the
insane amount of firepower the US military can
generate.  "Just doesn't make sense, must be outside
agitators, Chinese Communists, uh, Iranian fanatics,
Mooslim extremists, devils from hell, crazy people.
They just don't act right."
Do you think there is extant somewhere in the British
archives a report from some general claiming 80
battalions of Loyalists training in North America,
ready to take over the duties of His Majestie's forces
soon?  Wanna bet?
Jack Radey






APRIL 25, 2007: "Buying the War"

Intro:
BILL MOYERS:
Four years ago this spring the Bush administration took leave of reality and plunged our country into a war so poorly planned it soon turned into a disaster. The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn't have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on.

Since then thousands of people have died, and many are dying to this day. Yet the story of how the media bought what the White House was selling has not been told in depth on television. As the war rages into its fifth year, we look back at those months leading up to the invasion, when our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war.

Summation:
The American number of troops killed in Iraq now exceeds the number of victims on 9/11. We have been fighting there longer than it took us to defeat the Nazis in World War II. The costs of the war are reckoned at one trillion dollars and counting. The number of Iraqis killed -- over thirty-five thousand last year alone-- is hard to pin down. The country is in chaos...

 Read the entire transcript:

<http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/transcript1.html>


"The Big Lie" 
Posted on Thu, Aug. 30, 2007

Continuing 'The Big Lie'

There have been four new TV political ads airing for a little more than a week across the U.S. that use wounded veterans or relatives of slain soldiers to explain what a tragedy it would be for Congress "for political reasons" to withdraw from the war in Iraq.

These are part of a $15 million, privately supported effort by a group of powerful Republicans who have strong ties to President Bush. It is the latest effort to shore up crumbling support in Congress for a war that has fallen out of favor with more than 70 percent of Americans.

These 30-second spots are being broadcast in 20 selected states and in more than five dozen congressional districts, preceding the report Gen. David Petraeus is to give to Congress concerning the success or failure of the U.S. surge effort in Iraq.

The campaign is spearheaded by Freedoms Watch, (online, Freedoms Watch.com) whose spokesman, according to The New York Times, is Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to President Bush and a member of the group's board.

Fleischer told The Times particular states were targeted because "Anyone who is considering switching their vote is somebody we care about."

And McClatchy newspapers reported that Freedoms Watch president, Bradley A. Blakeman, is a former senior assistant to President Bush. He says the mission "is to get out the message that surrender is not an option in Iraq - to stiffen the back of Congress to do the right thing and not to switch votes for political reasons."

Lucky us, Georgia is one of the states that the President's Men feel members of Congress need that extra spinal support to keep the war humming.

While one might disagree with the sentiment in the ads because they are deceptive in the way they are presented, everyone has a right to lobby for political causes, even bad ones. It would be nice, however, if the campaign were based on truth.

That's not the case here. These ads are disingenuous; three of the four TV spots are based on a continuation of The Big Lie, that there really is a connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attack by Islamic terrorists.

Well I'm sorry, but that just isn't so, and anybody capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time should know this by now.

There is absolutely no evidence that Saddam Hussein, a genuinely nasty piece of work, played any role in 9/11. When America unleashed its "shock and awe" attack on Iraq, it didn't target the Saudi Arabians who co-opted our jetliners and used them as flying bombs.

The U.S. went to war with Iraq supposedly to unseat Saddam because Mr. Bush and Congress mistakenly thought Iraq had those infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction and was a threat to the United States.

But here's the storyline of the first ad broadcast; the others follow the general tone. A injured veteran, in a home-like setting, says:

"Congress was right to vote to fight terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. I re-enlisted after 9/11 because I don't want my sons to see what I saw.

"I want to be free and safe. I know what I have lost.

"I also know that if we pull out now everything that I've given up and sacrificed will mean nothing.

"They attacked us, and they will again. They won't stop with Iraq.

"We are winning on the ground, and we are making real progress. It's no time to quit.

"It's no time for politics."

The ad shows the twin towers of the world trade center with smoke billowing from gaping holes where the airliners hit.

A later ad has a mother of a veteran who tell us that "we've already had one 9/11, we don't need another one."

These ads are slick - and sick. They make their point through deception while twisting reality. Incidentally, the phone number the ads give to call your congressional representative - 1-877-222-8001 - isn't Congress. It's a number at Freedoms Watch, and they are only looking for messages of support.

To call Congress direct, to give whatever message you might wish, the Senate's number is (202) 225-3121 and the House is (202) 225-3121.

Phil Dodson can be reached at 744-4239 or at pdodson@macontel.com.


  Christian vigils:
 
www.christianpeacewitness.org  

Jews, Christians, Moslems :
Old Testament links US All under One Law

Moses brought new laws and new regulations for his people. Moses (peace be upon him) not only gave the Ten Commandments to the Israelites, but a very comprehensive ceremonial law for the guidance of his people.

As regards to Jesus (peace be upon him) he took a strong stand to assure the Jews that he had not come with a new religion or new regulations different from what Moses brought to the world. Jesus was quoted in the gospel of Matthew 5:17-18 saying "Think not that I am come to destroy the Law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one title shall in no way pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

Mohammad (peace be upon him) took the pains to assure what Jesus had assured before him to the world. Mohammad also came to fulfill not to deny or destroy what Moses had established and what Jesus confirmed.

You can read in the Holy Quran chapter 2 verse 62 "Those who believe in the Quran, and those who follow the Jewish scriptures and the Christians and the Sabians, and any who believe in God and the last day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; On them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve."

Muslims have been warned many times in the Quran not to discriminate against any previous laws or scriptures that were revealed upon Abraham, Moses and Jesus and all must be believed in and must be admitted throughout Muslim behavior. The Quran stated in chapter 2, verse 136 "Say you: We believe in God, and the revelation given to us, and to Abraham, Ishmail, Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to all prophets from their Lord: We make no difference between one and another of them, and we bow to God in peace."

That is why there has never been quoted any statement by a Muslim against the person of Abraham, Moses or Jesus. It always has and always will be, one law and one message from the Lord of Universe to the mankind.

Ahmed Yousef is a resident of Macon.
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/editorial/letters/17002920.htm
Posted on Mon, Apr. 02, 2007

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