A little help, if you have a few minutes

[WilliamPitt]

I've been invited to speak on Tuesday at the commemoration of the anniversary of the Kent State shootings in Ohio. I've been struggling for weeks to compile remarks appropriate for the occasion, and below is what I have come up with.

If you have a few minutes, I'd be very grateful if you could take a pass through this and suggest any aditions, deletions or changes, and let me know if what I have put together is suitable. There will be several speakers who will speak directly of those killed at Kent State, so I have taken a different tack.

Two things:

1. I know that some DUers will be going to this thing, so if you don't want to see beforehand what is coming on Tuesday, stop reading now.

2. This is a rough, the final version of which will be delivered on Tuesday and made into a truthout article Tuesday night. I'd be grateful, therefore, if you could keep this here and not forward it anywhere. I'll put the final up on Tuesday when it is ready.

Thanks again.

=====

It is one of the greatest honors of my life to speak to you here, today, on this sacred ground. I’ve spent the last several weeks trying to decide what, exactly, to speak about. For much of that time, I’ve been stuck. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to talk about. Quite the opposite. There is too much, much too much, that we need to discuss here today.

I feel, oddly enough, a little like Abraham Lincoln, after Lincoln was given the name of a Mrs. Bixby, who lost five sons on Civil War battlefields. How does one properly react to such news? “I feel how weak and fruitless,” Lincoln wrote to Mrs. Bixby, “must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.” That is how I feel standing here today. I am overwhelmed with grief, not just for those who were killed and wounded on this ground 34 years ago, but for this whole nation, which has so clearly and catastrophically lost its way, again. The essence of that catastrophe? We. Never. Learn.

As managing editor of truthout, I get a lot of email and letters. In the last several months, dozens of these letters have come from the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, children and friends of soldiers who have been killed in Iraq. One such letter reads as follows:

Dear Mr. Pitt, I must share with you the obituary I wrote for my son, Sgt. Evan Ashcraft, who was killed July 24 near Mosul. I often think of the contributions my intelligent, sensitive wonderful son could have made. He had so much potential. He told us that when he came back from Iraq he wanted to help people. He said he had seen so much hatred and death that the only way to live his life was through aid to others. Look at what we've lost. The loss is not just mine, it's the world's loss. Evan will always be alive in my heart. He and all the other victims of this heinous action in Iraq must be more than mere numbers emerging from the Pentagon's daily tally. His death is a crime against humanity – this is a mother speaking, remember - and the fault lies with the war criminals who inhabit our White House. Please share his story so that he may come alive to your readers.

Here, again, is that grief from a loss so overwhelming. I have shared the story of Evan Ashcraft with people from one side of this country to the other, because the story of Evan Ashcraft is also our story. In telling this story, I have felt time and again the grief his mother has endured, have felt time and again the grief endured by more than 750 families which have lost loved ones in this invasion, have felt the grief endured by the 18,000 other families who have had loved ones returned to them from this invasion missing an arm, a leg, a face, a future. I cannot speak for these families, or for any of you here, but only for myself when I say that my grief, my sorrow, my horror at all of this has turned to the deepest, darkest rage.

There is a page on the White House’s website – right now, at this moment, in May of 2004 – entitled ‘Disarm Saddam Hussein.’ This page correlates exactly with the information disgorged by George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address. To wit: Iraq is in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents (for those here without calculators, 500 tons = one million pounds…hide that), 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents, several mobile biological weapons labs, and operational connections between Iraq and al Qaeda. This page also states quite clearly – right now, today, at this moment - that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program.

The vast quantities of anthrax, botulinum toxin, sarin, mustard gas and VX, along with the munitions to deliver them, as well as any connections between Iraq and al Qaeda terrorism, have completely failed to show up in the 16 months since they were first described in tones of fearful doom to the American people. The 'mobile weapons labs' – termed “Winnebagoes of Death” by Colin Powell - have been shown to be weather balloon launching platforms sold to Iraq by the British in the 1980s. The claims about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger have been exposed as lies so deep and profound that America stands humiliated before the world. Those lies have also led to a federal investigation into this White House for, basically, treason: Because Ambassador Joseph Wilson dared reveal these lies to the public, his wife, Valerie Plame, was exposed as a CIA agent in an act of revenge perpetrated by officials within the Bush administration.

Make no mistake, and do not be fooled by refashioned rhetoric. We did not go to war to ‘liberate’ the Iraqi people, as the new rhetoric would claim. We did not go to war to bring democracy to Iraq, as the new rhetoric would claim. That State of the Union speech in January 2003, scant weeks before the invasion, made it very clear why we were going to war. Iraq was an imminent threat to the safety and security of the United States, we were told.

The usage of the words ‘imminent threat’ has led to some uncomfortable moments for the Bush administration once it became clear that all of their dire warnings were utter balderdash. They have many times denied ever describing Iraq as an imminent threat. The words ‘imminent threat’ and the administration’s denials led to some of the best television I have ever seen. A recent edition of the news program Face the Nation had Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defending the invasion. This is a portion of that interview, and please note that I am reading here from the transcript as best I can:

BOB SCHIEFFER (the host): Well, let me just ask you this. If they did not have these weapons of mass destruction, though, granted all of that is true, why then did they pose an immediate threat to us, to this country?

RUMSFELD: Well, you're the--you and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase `immediate threat.' I didn't. The president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore that that's--that's what's happened. The president went...

SCHIEFFER: You're saying that nobody in the administration said that.

RUMSFELD: I--I can't speak for nobody--everybody in the administration and say nobody said that.

SCHIEFFER: Vice president didn't say that? The...

RUMSFELD: Not--if--if you have any citations, I'd like to see 'em.

Mr. FRIEDMAN: We have one here. It says `some have argued that the nu'--this is you speaking--`that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain.'

RUMSFELD: And--and...

Mr. FRIEDMAN: It was close to imminent.

RUMSFELD: Well, I've--I've tried to be precise, and I've tried to be accurate. I'm s--suppose I've...

Mr. FRIEDMAN (quoting Rumsfeld again): `No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.'

RUMSFELD: Mm-hmm. It--my view of--of the situation was that he--he had--we--we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that--that we believed and we still do not know--we will know.

Hovering over all of all of these dire warnings in the months before the invasion was one unifying theme, an image hammered home to the American people day after day after day. Burning towers, innocent people leaping to their deaths. In every way possible, the Bush administration connected the immediate need to attack Iraq with the horror of September 11. We have to get them, they said, because Iraq is connected with al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, because Iraq has WMDs which they could give to bin Laden and bring forth a day which makes September 11 look like a picnic by comparison.

Scary stuff, that. But when it became clear that the WMD threats had been overblown, and when no connections could be made between Hussein and al Qaeda, the Bush administration backed away from the 9/11 connection claims as quickly as they had backed away from the ‘imminent threat’ claims. We never said Iraq and al Qaeda were connected, they complained. Why would anyone ever say we did such a thing?

September 2002: Rumsfeld said he had five or six sentences of "bulletproof" evidence that "demonstrate that there are in fact Al Qaeda in Iraq." Asked "Is there any intelligence that Saddam Hussein has any ties to Sept. 11?, Rumsfeld replied, "You have to recognize that the evidence piles up." Asked to name senior Al Qaeda members who were in Baghdad, Rumsfeld said, "I could, but I won't."

In his February speech to the United Nations, the one in which he revealed the existence of the “Winnebagoes of Death,” Secretary of State Powell warned of the "sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network."

In one of the most cynical moment of all, in arguing for the Iraq invasion, Bush on March 18 delivered a letter to the House and Senate that said, in paragraph two: "The use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."

And then there was May 1st, a little more than one year ago today, when Bush announced the end of "combat operations" underneath the soaring banner which read MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. On that day, Bush proclaimed: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001. The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of Al Qaeda. "

There are two crucial points to consider here. First, the reality is that, though Saddam Hussein was certainly a bloody wretch, he was also a secular leader who spent thirty years killing every Islamic fundamentalist he could get his hands on. He was particularly fond of killing practitioners of Wahabbism, the sect of Islam practiced by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda warriors. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been blood enemies for years; bin Laden has called for Hussein’s death on many occasions. The idea that Hussein would arm bin Laden with a pea shooter, much less weapons of mass destruction, is laughable. Saddam Hussein did not last in that neighborhood by being suicidal. Arming Osama bin Laden would have been suicide, because bin Laden would have used those weapons on Hussein. Period. End of story.

Beyond that is the simple fact that Saddam Hussein, for the last several years, was little more than the Mayor of Baghdad. Vast areas in the north and south in Iraq were totally beyond his control because of the no-fly zones. These, by the way, are the areas where al Qaeda fighters had reportedly been sighted. Those fighters had nothing to do with, and had no allegiance to, Saddam Hussein. A lot of them, in fact, wanted to kill him. To say that Hussein had al Qaeda connections because those guys were in his country at one time is to say that George W. Bush has al Qaeda connections, because they were in America before the September 11 attacks.

The second, and most important thing to consider, is simply this: They used September 11 against you. To this very day, they are using September 11 against you. I can think of no greater crime against any people anywhere than that which has been committed against us all by this administration. Make no mistake, it is a crime. It is a crime, and by God in heaven, there will be a reckoning for it.

And what of the people of Iraq? More than 10,000 of them have been killed in the invasion and occupation. More than 10,000 and yet it seems for all the world that we have not yet gathered to ourselves enough revenge for the attacks of September 11. What of the people of Iraq, who did no harm to us and were never, ever a threat to us? Do they pine in the darkness of their nights for the democracy and freedom we promised them? If they do, then woe unto them, because there will be no freedom, no democracy for them. The Hussein bootheel which stood so long on their necks – a bootheel, by the way, marked ‘Made in the USA’ – has been replaced by another American bootheel worn by Hussein thugs.

Not so long ago, we were told by the Bush administration that it was Hussein loyalists and Ba’athist Party holdouts that were organizing and implementing the attacks against our forces. Now, we are reconstituting Hussein’s army to do the fighting for us. Now, we are opening doors of opportunity to Ba’athist holdouts. Now, we are putting a former Hussein general in charge of the besieged city of Fallujah. He returned days ago in triumph to that city, wearing his old Republican Guard uniform. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Here is what the people of Iraq know. There will be no democracy for them, because it has been made clear that this farcical June 30th handover date, which will purportedly mark a new dawn of Iraqi sovereignty, is a crude whitewashing of an ugly truth. Whatever this new Iraqi government will look like, it will have no power to make laws of any kind. It will have no command over the security of Iraq. It will have no power over the foreign troops occupying Iraqi soil.

Here is what the people of Iraq know. They have seen the gruesome pictures of fellow Iraqis tortured and humiliated at the hands of their American captors in the Abu Ghraib prison, which was for so long a home to torture by the hand of Saddam Hussein. They have seen the pictures of men forced to masturbate in front of each other, forced to simulate sexual acts upon each other, forced to stand naked with electrodes attached to them, forced to endure attacks by dogs.

The American media has made much of these photos, but there is a darker aspect to them which has not been examined properly, an added layer of humiliation which must be understood. The Iraqis who were tortured were Muslims, and the humiliations they endured were specifically intended to strike to the heart of their faith. This was not just physical torture, but spiritual torture as well. The Muslim prophet Mohammed outlawed homosexuality, and so these men were forced to pantomime homosexual sex upon each other. According to Islam, the saliva of a dog is Najis, or impure, and any place on the human body or clothing touched by this impurity must be cleansed immediately, and so a dog was sicced upon these men.

Here is what the people of Iraq know: These grave humiliations were not the result of one or two bad apples, were not isolated, and were not accidents. The investigation into the Abu Ghraib torture is also looking into thirty – thirty – similar cases as bad or worse which have taken place over the last year. Not only were the bodies of Iraqi people tortured, but their very souls were tortured as well. Their God, with deliberation and intent, was spit upon. Combine this with the siege of Najaf, holiest of cities for Shi’ites around the world, and you have before you an openly deliberate attempt not only to take possession of the nation of Iraq, but to undermine and offend the most fundamental religious underpinnings which define the lives of the people there.

This is what the Iraqi people know, and so they fight. If your home, your country, your religious faith were under deliberate assault, would you do any less? I’ll tell you this much. If Canada were to lose its mind and invade Maine to ‘liberate’ its people, and to grab Maine’s timber resources as a nifty little side bonus, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’d be on a train to Portland with a rifle in my hand. You can bet on one other thing as well: The Canadian press would call me an ‘insurgent.’ They might even call me a ‘terrorist.’ But in truth, I’d be a patriot, willing and ready to lay down my life to hurl back across that border any invader who would dare attempt to take my country away from me.

How dare I say such a thing in the light of day. How dare I use the word ‘patriot’ in the same sentence in which I describe the people who have killed more than 750 American soldiers. I will dare much in the name of truth, because I have read the letters from the family members of those American dead, I know the name of Evan Ashcraft and too many others, and in singing his song I must speak of these things. My grief for this loss is overwhelming, but I cannot in my grief sidestep the facts. The Bush administration has taken to labeling anyone on earth who would raise arms against this insane global aggression as ‘terrorists.’ If you’re not an American, you’re a terrorist…and according to certain portions of the Patriot Act, a good many Americans are also terrorists. Some of you here are terrorists. Welcome to the club.

The truth is that it is all too convenient to use tricks of language to blame Iraqi ‘terrorist insurgents’ for the deaths of all those Americans. Trade places with them, however, and face an invading army commanded by leaders whose goals and motives are fully criminal, face an invading army that would kill and torture and humiliate, and think about what you would do. No, I blame George W. Bush for our wretched estate today. I lay the bodies of our dead, and all the Iraqi dead, at the doorstep of this White House. This war, conceived in darkness and doomed to fail from the beginning, has been lost. All we are doing now is stirring the ashes. We. Never. Learn.

We have gathered here today to mourn the loss and celebrate the lives of those who fell here 34 years ago. This is sacred ground. 34 years ago, very ordinary Americans rose up to strike a blow against another criminal war, and the price paid for this decision to speak up and speak out was fearful. The wheel has rolled, and has come around once more. We must rise again on this sacred ground, we must enter again into the valley of the shadow of death, and we must fear no evil, because this must be stopped, and we must be the ones to stop it.

This is your wake up call, Mr. Bush. Your 15 minutes are just about over. Tin soldiers and we are coming.

Thank you.

[salin]

1. You need to start with a seque

*start with Kent State* ... transition to the body of your speech... then return to Kent State - and the audience today (perhaps start the conclusion with "this is our wakeup call... honoring those who were felled for speaking out by speaking out and not falling in silence due to fear of John Ashcroft or the government... but more importantly this is YOUR wakeup call, Mr. Bush..."

I would start with brief references to the Kent State Massacre... framed in a time when the country was divided over a war... and the powers that be were trying to "contain" unrest and came to view students expressing their opinion as "a threat" to the country... and the tragic, tragic consequences of policies based on those perceptions.

Move to the parallel of today - a country divided and a government treating questioning of policies as a threat - and a government that used 9-11 to pass a tool that more easily allows treating those speaking out as "enemies" - (Patriot Act)...

That the biggest honor we can pay to those who fell that day - is to speak out... and the time to speak out is NOW... (segue into your speech per Iraq..)

[wtmusic]

3. agree

Will, it's terrific. Maybe need to relate to what happened at Kent more though.

But the points you raise are excellent, and need to be continually hammered home just as you are doing...good work!!:-)

[Political_Junkie]

11. agreed

Also, this line sort of jumped out at me:

"I can think of no greater crime against any people anywhere than that which has been committed against us all by this administration."
Used when referring to the fact that the administration is using September 11th.
A bit over blown I think. Although it is a heinous crime, I don't think that it is even the worst thing that this administration has done, one of many crimes they have committed, but other people have had worse crimes committed against them by their own government. Just my humble opinion. Other than that it is wonderful, but I agree that you should expand on the Kent State theme a little more.

[bobbieinok]

46. agree - need more emphasis on Kent State at beginning

[liberalhistorian]

2. Will, that is just PERFECT,

just beautiful and very, very fitting. As you know, this will be my 18th commemoration and I've even helped plan several of them and this couldn't be a better fit with what the commemoration will be all about. I wasn't going to read it, since I'll be there Tuesday, but I just couldn't resist.

I think May 4 has a special relevance this year, given the current state of the country and what's currently happening; you've tied into that perfectly. The letter from the parent of the dead soldier is especially poignant and will go a long way toward dispelling the notion that those responsible for planning the commemoration, those attending, and those involved in the original incident, all hate the military and are against the troops.

Those involved in May 4 have always had to deal with that bullshit, even now. And be prepared for some hostility from some of the good people of Kent and Ravenna, to this day there are far too many who think May 4 was just the greatest thing since sliced bread and who simply refuse to listen to any of the facts at all.

You will be especially moved to meet some of the family members, even after all this time their pain is still so evident and so heartbreaking. I'll never forget the look on Sandy Scheuer's mother's face as she stood looking at the very spot where her daughter, who was ON HER WAY TO CLASS, was murdered.

[kentuck]

4. Will...

Is there a way to make more of a compare and contrast to the reason why they were protesting and why they were shot on that fateful day? And somehow connect it to what is happening in Iraq at this time. Sorry, I can't help you more with how that might be done. Your information on Iraq and its personal impact on families is excellent but somehow, Kent State needs to be more tied in with your comments, in some way, in my opinion....

[sandnsea]

7. I agree here, and one more thing

More succinct about the Niger documents. They were forgeries and Cheney knew they were forgeries at least by October. That's when Tenet said he told the Administration not to use those remarks because they couldn't be substantiated. I'm not sure people really know this.

But I also agree that somehow the correlations between Kent State and today need to be clearer. Because otherwise it sort of looks like you're just using Kent State to rant against this war and further your own personal agenda. And I'm being blunt because I don't think I need to tip-toe around your feelings. Hope I'm right there. Then again, maybe they asked you to do an anti-war speech, I don't know.

Otherwise, superb, as always!

[Bluebear]

5. Terrific speech...

Frankly I wouldn't miss the bit about Muhammed outlawing homosexuality. The right will manage to work that into their Defense of Marriage amendment. ("See, even Islam forbids it.")

I might also toss into this solemn and important speech the fact that Bush even to this day makes jokes about finding WMD's, that the self-anointed "War President" finds the outcome of his misleadings a treasure trove for comedic banter.

[NMDemDist2]

6. k Will you asked for it-

"page correlates exactly with the information disgorged by George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address"
disgorged is a synonym to spew, I think a better choice should imply the dishonesty of the statement such as mendacity or fabrication. or perhaps

page correlates exactly with the mis-information disgorged by George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address

Re the passages about Saddam and alQueda, you don't cite a source disproving the WH allegations. You did a good job with the "imminent threat" section, but you need to finish with a bullet proof source on the no Saddam/al queda connection.

Not so long ago, we were told by the Bush administration that it was Hussein loyalists and Ba’athist Party holdouts that were organizing and implementing the attacks against our forces. Now, we are reconstituting Hussein’s army to do the fighting for us. Now, we are opening doors of opportunity to Ba’athist holdouts. Now, we are putting a former Hussein general in charge of the besieged city of Fallujah. He returned days ago in triumph to that city, wearing his old Republican Guard uniform. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
news is coming out that the CPA is denying this and says the media is "grossly mis-informed" better check that before you use it.


but to undermine and offend the most fundamental religious underpinnings which define the lives of the people there.
can you add a well sourced mention that the torture was ordered by mercenary intel agents that the administration gave carte blanc to and used OUR military to do the dirty work?


re the final lines--- Bush has had plenty more than 15 minutes, and he will live a lot longer as a stain on history.

The CS&N song you reference says "tin soldiers and NIXON coming" the tin soldiers were the poor National Guard troops who were so badly led (like today) and put in a very scary place, they felt they were surrounded when the started shooting. I would re-think the final line.

don't know if this is what you wanted, just some thoughts as i read it over

[thecrow]

25. Tin soldiers...?

I really didn't understand that part and I was a student at the time of the Kent State killings.
It jumped out at me as a *what is that about?* thing.

[FredScuttle]

29. Reference to the CSNY song "Ohio"

Supposedly, Neil Young read the Life Magazine article about the Kent State shootings, wrote "Ohio" to commemorate it and Crosy, Stills, Nash & Young recorded and released it a few weeks after the tragedy. It's a powerful song and I'm certain that most in the crowd will "get" the reference.

Ohio (N. Young)

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

[Misunderestimator]

38. Might be a good idea to work in a little explanation of tin soldiers

for those that don't understand. Even I had to think about it for a moment... :) FWIW

[Raven]

8. Sweetie, more about Kent state at the beginning....

maybe tie in with the soldiers who died in Iraq...the potential loss of the students killed that day... :-)

ps: edited for spelling

[bigtree]

9. I would speak also of the efforts by this administration to stifle dissent

as is described by the ACLU.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, at the president's direction, presented a plan; The Patriot Act of 2001, Public Law 107-56, to monitor the activities of ordinary Americans, which would rival the Reichstag Fire Decree. (Allowed the Nazi government to take any "appropriate" measure to remedy dangers to public safety, and represented one of the major steps in which the Nazi government established its rule.)

The Patriot act, act allows the investigation of Americans based on certain activities such as the participation in a protest or any form of activism. The American Civil Liberties Union has charged that at events attended by President Bush and other senior federal officials around the country, the Secret Service has been discriminating against protesters in violation of their free speech rights.

The ACLU's legal papers listed more than a dozen examples of police censorship around the country. According to their fact sheet, "such incidents have spiked under the Bush administration, prompting the ACLU to charge government officials with a "pattern and practice" of discrimination against those who disagree with its policies." The ACLU has asked a federal court for a nationwide injunction barring the Secret Service from directing local police to restrict protesters' access to appearances by President Bush and other senior administration officials.

According to the ACLU, the Patriot Act would, for the first time, allow the Justice Dept. to monitor privileged attorney-client conversations, permit FBI agents to monitor houses of worship, require local law enforcement to enforce civil immigration law and allow for companies such as nuclear facilities to keep secret, the flaws in their infrastructure by sharing that information with the Homeland Security Department. http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=12126&c=207&Type=s

Most of the Patriot act amends existing federal statutes that were targeted by conservatives before the 9-11 terrorist attacks. (Like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa, which was enacted in the wake of FBI surveillance of U.S. citizens in the '60's and the '70's) This national security intelligence tool is being recklessly manipulated in the administration's zeal to prosecute their cynical "war on terrorism."

The ACLU asked the Supreme Court to review whether the Constitution and the Patriot Act permitted the government to use looser foreign intelligence standards to conduct surveillance in criminal investigations in the United States. The Supreme Court refused that request.

The FISA was sponsored in the ‘60's by Sen. Edward Kennedy and others in an attempt to reign in warrantless surveillance. But the FBI and the NSA have used the act to set up secret courts and have perverted the act to conduct surveillance for domestic criminal investigations in addition to their foreign counterintelligence probes.

The FISA court and the Court of Review authorize government wiretaps in foreign intelligence investigations. Under FISA, all hearings and decisions are conducted in secret. The government is normally the only party to FISA proceedings and the only party that can appeal to the Supreme Court.

In an appeal, the ACLU argued that,"These fundamental issues should not be finally by courts that sit in secret, do not ordinarily publish their decisions, and allow only the government to appear before them."

The ACLU and its supporters have asserted that some of their members and many other Americans are currently subject to illegal surveillance, noting that the FBI has already targeted its members in numerous other ways. Under the FISA statute, a U.S. citizen may be subject to a FISC surveillance order for political statements and views that are determined to be unpopular by the secret Court of Review.

According to the ACLU:

- 8,000 Arab and South Asian immigrants have been interrogated because of their religion or ethnic background, not because of actual wrongdoing.
- Thousands of men, mostly of Arab and South Asian origin, have been held in secretive federal custody for weeks and months, sometimes without any charges filed against them. The government has refused to publish their names and whereabouts, even when ordered to do so by the courts.
- The press and the public have been barred from immigration court hearings of those detained after September 11th and the courts are ordered to keep secret even that the hearings are taking place.
- The government is allowed to monitor communications between federal detainees and their lawyers, destroying the attorney-client privilege and threatening the right to counsel.
- New Attorney General Guidelines allow FBI spying on religious and political organizations and individuals without having evidence of wrongdoing.
- President Bush has ordered military commissions to be set up to try suspected terrorists who are not citizens. They can convict based on hearsay and secret evidence by only two-thirds vote.
- American citizens suspected of terrorism are being held indefinitely in military custody without being charged and without access to lawyers.

In every provision, the Patriot act enhances or expands the government's ability to intrude in the private affairs of American citizens and weakens the very protections of freedom and individual rights that are embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which they claim to defend.

Further, the manner in which the Supreme Court intervened to halt the recount of the Florida election ballot, and effectively assured the ascendence of President Bush to the presidency, must be factored into any expectation of impartiality in higher court decisions involving prosecutions for dissent whose appellants challenge the motives and the prerogatives of the executive, especially in times of war.

These constitutional protections serve to restrain our government and its elected representatives as they perform their duties, to act in a manner which preserves the promises of democracy and provides for free expression, debate, and advocacy, and representation in our political and legal system.

Without these constitutional protections, it is impossible for the government to act decisively on the assumption it has the full weight of the American people behind any decision it might make.


I sure don't want you to think that I'm trying to 'teach' you about the Patriot Act. I've laid out these facts for you to consider and I hope it helps. I, for one, am extremely grateful for your efforts and visibility. Good luck with your address.

[doni_georgia]

10. Don't change a thing - Will

It's perfect. Thank you for saying all of this and for speaking the truth. God bless you brother!

[goclark]

14. Superb!

The message and the messenger are TOPS!

:bounce: :bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce:

[samadhi]

12. I thought you wanted to continue the war

when Kerry is President.
If Kent State happened again today, which side would you be on?

[Ladyhawk]

27. Why are you bringing up this argument?

He asked for feedback about a speech. I'm a bit leery of Kerry, too, but that's not what this thread is about. Take the debate somewhere else.

[frank frankly]

13. Will, I didn't read it because I am going to try and attend

might be too far a drive from Pittsburgh...

[VelmaD]

15. Some thoughts...

I agree with the people in line ahead of me that it needs a bit more of a tie in with what happened at Kent State all those years ago. If I come up with a brilliant thought on how to manage that I'll be sure to share. The end was starting to get there...maybe tying their sacrifice then to the need for us to make that same stand now is the way to go. I don't know.

I really like "We. Never. Learn." I can hear you in my head grinding that out angry. (Personally I would consider attaching one of the other phrases I've heard from you in the past that expresses what it is we don't learn. Actions. Have. Consequences.)

The "second point to consider"...about them using 9-11 against us. It's a point I agree with but it seems to me you give it very short shrift. You say it's most important but you don't flesh that part out as much as you did the point before it. It seems a bit like it just hangs there disconnected from what comes before and after it.

The part about the Canadians coming over the border...is gonna be a riot delivered with your dry wit I think. :)

Can't wait to see the final version.

[Eye and Monkey]

23. We. Never. Learn. (and a counterpoint to that fatalism)

Along the lines of: We. Must. Learn.

Or perhaps something that's more a call to action.

And what other folks here have already said - more about Kent, tie then and now.

You're really really good at this, and it's outstanding that you share this with us here. Cheers.

[Egalitarian]

16. A few thoughts

Maybe find a new word for "balderdash". I knew what you meant, but It distracted me a bit.

I found the following sentance a little awkward and think the message could be simplified.

"They have many times denied ever describing Iraq as an imminent threat."

Poweful speech.

[October]

17. Just my 2 cents

Since they're asking you to speak on the anniversary of the Kent State shootings, I would keep the speech more domestic -- it may be more of what the audience is expecting.

Perhaps you could compare the dissenters of Vietnam "then" (Kent State) and how they were treated, to the dissenters the Iraq war "today" and how they're still marginalized, etc.

A way to include Bush and his administration in this type of a piece might be to compare him (mercilessly) to our founding fathers and how they viewed "dissenters" as the most patriotic of all.

I like the piece. I'm just not sure what the request/assignment was, but as a reader, I was expecting it to be more about the Kent State tragedy.

Thanks for all you do.

[calimary]

18. Gonna have to start calling you "Ballpark."

As in "hit one out of the..."

Great as usual, Will. EXCELLENT. Please make sure to let us know how it went. I am eager to hear about the reaction and feedback - hoping that our college-age colleagues are NOT all completely spitten by the Dark Side, or body-snatched by the Young Republi-CONS.

[John_H]

19. Your speech made me think of Auden's

Epitaph on a Tyrant, which might fit in there somewhere, since it's hard to tell whether it's more fitting for Bush or Saddam.

"Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets."

Also, "Tin soldiers and we are coming," I bet, will be used several times by the time you speak, unless you're first. It's good enough to keep if nobody else uses it before you, but I'd have an alternate ending ready.

[opihimoimoi]

21. Will, a master piece, but since you asked, my 2 cents

Perhaps a small bit about Bush having had the warning(Aug 6 01) but failed to warn us Joe Public, never mind his People in charge of airport security.

If America knew what they knew, many of us would've used private jets too. Was he too lazy and/or asleep at the Wheel?

my 2 cents

[TruthIsAll]

20. Will, I am not worthy. Improve on that? Not likely.

TIA

[dolo amber]

22. You should start

off with:

"I just flew here from Boston, and BOY are my arms tired!!" :D ;)

Superb piece there, Mr. Pitt. :)

[Donkeyboy75]

24. Very nice, Will.

Since you asked, here are my thoughts:

Tie in Kent State a bit more. If I'm attending this commemoration, I'm there partly because of the atrocities that happened in 1970. I wonder if you run the risk of being seen as someone who's trying to push a political agenda.

Also, reading dialogue may be tricky. Can you think of another way to convey that information?

I like the way you indirectly draw parallels between the Iraqi resistance and those who protest here in America!

Just a couple of points from someone who speaks in public often...albeit in a very very different vein.

Good luck! :hi:

[Ladyhawk]

26. About bringing Kent State into your speech a little more...

...perhaps you could include a poignant story about a student slain that day and draw parallels to the loss of the young soldier. That might be a bit of a stretch since one was a protester and one was a soldier...just thinking out loud here.

I guess maybe I'm looking for a few more Kent State details that can be tied to the present-day situation...maybe the restraints put on anti-war demonstrations today: rubber bullets, "free speech" zones, Patriot Act limitations...something.

(Please forgive my incoherence. I didn't sleep very well last night and should already be in bed.) :P

On edit: the piece is very powerful as it is. I intend to bookmark it for future reference. You go, Will!

[DjTj]

28. Quoting the Rumsfeld interview verbatim...

...will be awkward in a speech. I'm not sure if you're going for a laugh there by pointing out Rumsfeld's stuttering or if you want it to come off deathly serious, but whatever tone you want to convey, you can probably do it better in more of a narrative form rather than reading from a transcript. Something like this:

Bob Schieffer, the host of the show, asked Rumsfeld, "If they did not have these weapons of mass destruction ... why then did they pose an immediate threat to us, to this country?" Rumsfeld responded, "...you and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase `immediate threat.' I didn't." Schieffer then produced several direct quotes from Mr. Rumsfeld, including one where Rumsfeld said, "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." Rumsfeld's stuttered response was almost comical, "Well, I've--I've tried to be precise, and I've tried to be accurate. I'm s--suppose I've..."

But there's nothing to laugh at there. The Secretary of Defense of the United States America was caught in a lie - a lie he told repeatedly to the people he is supposed to serve - a lie that sent hundreds of Americans to their death.

...that was kind of fun. In any case, the speech is wonderful. You'll knock 'em dead Will.

[drfemoe]

30. one reference ..

We knew that we had witnessed a cold-blooded, calculated, planned massacre. Years later, we learned there were orders to fire those 67 bullets. Later, during testimony in Federal Court in Cleveland in 1975, we learned that there was an order to fire at Kent State on May 4, 1970. At least one of the Ohio National Guard officers admitted he gave an order to fire on the unarmed students at Kent State.

Were others involved in a conspiracy to terrorize the student movement at Kent State on May 4, 1970? We are still attempting to uncover the cover-up of murder at Kent State on May 4, 1970. Someday, hopefully, we'll learn the entire truth about Kent State.
http://alancanfora.com/may4fr.htm

Will we still be looking for the entire truth about Ira*, WOT and 9/11, 34 years from now??

[suigeneris]

31. What is the assignment?

We can do a much better job of feedback if you tell us exactly what you have been asked to do. Can we see what you received in writing, please? Otherwise, tell us as much as you can of what was said.

I'll probably take a shot at critiquing what is here anyway but without the assignment there will be a lot of guesswork.

[suigeneris]

32. I should also have asked...

what do you know about the audience?

[suigeneris]

34. Well, why not bravely venture a re-write?

After all, you asked.

---

Thirty four years ago at this place, thirteen of our fellow Americans felt the awful hammer of supersonic lead slam into their young and fragile bodies. Most were here to raise their voices against their government’s illegal expansion of a mistaken war in a far-off land where America had exchanged the lives of thousands of its best and bravest for a million souls on the other side and gained nothing in the bargain. This ground is sanctified by the blood of those students that soaked into it that day and the tragedy and grief at their needless loss is daily refreshed by the rivers of tears still shed by those who loved them in life and we who respect and venerate their sacrifice down to this day.

The outrage tinged with hope that animated these, our fallen brothers and sisters three decades ago, must fill up and enervate us even now. For as surely as they rose in their day to call their government to repentance, so too must we in ours, and in that work we give meaning to their sacrifices and life to their aspirations. Like them, we must first inform ourselves of the terrible errors into which our present regime has fallen and must summon the strength to raise our voices in this day, our fists and our treasure, to turn our country from it present path of pointless killing and dying. To honor those wrongly taken from us here, we must replace the usurpers in power with honest men and women of good conscience and character who will lead our nation and the world toward understanding and harmony, and in justice, we must wreak violence only upon those who truly seek to harm us.

I am honored and humbled to speak to you today and awed by the magnitude of the loss and pain this place evokes for those who were lost and those who survived. Mindful of the responsibility to do justice both to the spirit of 1970 and the challenges of our own day, I have turned over many thoughts I might share with you and soon they flood in too numerous to discuss at length here today.

In this regard, I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln, after he was given the name of a Mrs. Bixby, who lost five sons on Civil War battlefields. “I feel how weak and fruitless,” the president wrote that Yankee mother, “must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.” Nor can I nor any of us in this sacred place be beguiled by soothing words from Washington from the overwhelming grief, not just for those who were killed and wounded on this ground 34 years ago, but for this whole nation, which has so clearly and catastrophically lost its way, yet again. The essence of the disaster which has befallen us? We. Never. Learn.

As managing editor of truthout, I get a lot of email and letters. In the last several months, dozens of these letters have come from the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, children and friends of soldiers who have been killed in Iraq. One such letter reads as follows:

”Dear Mr. Pitt, I must share with you the obituary I wrote for my son, Sgt. Evan Ashcraft, who was killed July 24 near Mosul. I often think of the contributions my intelligent, sensitive wonderful son could have made. He had so much potential. He told us that when he came back from Iraq he wanted to help people. He said he had seen so much hatred and death that the only way to live his life was through aid to others. Look at what we've lost. The loss is not just mine, it's the world's loss. Evan will always be alive in my heart. He and all the other victims of this heinous action in Iraq must be more than mere numbers emerging from the Pentagon's daily tally. His death is a crime against humanity – this is a mother speaking, remember - and the fault lies with the war criminals who inhabit our White House. Please share his story so that he may come alive to your readers.”

Here, again, is that grief from a loss so overwhelming. I have shared the story of Evan Ashcraft’s loss to loved ones and the world with people from one side of this country to the other, because the story of Evan Ashcraft is also our story. In telling it, I have felt time and again the grief his mother has endured, have felt time and again the grief endured by more than 750 families which have lost loved ones in this military misadventure, have felt the grief endured by the 18,000 other families who have had loved ones returned to them from this folly missing an arm, a leg, a face, a future. I cannot speak for these families, or for any of you here, but only for myself when I say that my grief, my sorrow, my horror at all of this has turned to the deepest, darkest rage, and lit a fire within me.

Try to fathom, if you can, these facts: There is a page on the White House’s website – right now, at this moment, in May of 2004 – entitled “Disarm Saddam Hussein.” This page correlates exactly with the information so earnestly and ominously disgorged by George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address. To wit: Iraq is in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents (for those here without calculators, 500 tons = one million pounds…hide that), 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents, several mobile biological weapons labs, and operational connections between Iraq and al Qaeda. This page also states quite shamelessly – right now, today, at this moment - that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger for use in a reconstituted nuclear weapons program.

Despite the scripted certainties delivered in our president’s most solemn address to the nation, the vast quantities of anthrax, botulinum toxin, sarin, mustard gas and VX, along with the munitions to deliver them, as well as any connections between Iraq and al Qaeda terrorism, have completely failed to materialize in the 16 months since they were first described in tones of fearsome doom to the American people. The “mobile weapons labs” – fatuously termed “Winnebagoes of Death” by Colin Powell - have been shown to be weather balloon launching platforms sold to Iraq by the British in the 1980s. The claims regarding Iraq’s seeking uranium from Niger have been exposed as lies so infamously exposed that America stands humiliated before the world. Those lies have also led to a federal investigation into this White House for, basically, treason: Because Ambassador Joseph Wilson dared reveal these falshoods to the public, his wife, Valerie Plame, was exposed as a CIA agent in a cowardly and felonious act of revenge perpetrated by officials within the Bush administration.

Make no mistake, and do not be fooled by official rhetoric cynically refashioned by professional spin doctors who know how to commission a focus group and overnight poll and then re-package talking points to improve their palatability. We did not go to war to ‘liberate’ the Iraqi people, as that new rhetoric now claims. We did not go to war to bring democracy to Iraq, as the wordsmiths claim. That State of the Union speech in January 2003, scant weeks before the invasion, made it very clear why we were going to war: Our president looked 100 million Americans in the eye and told us Iraq was an imminent threat to the safety and security of the United States.

Now, the use of the words ‘imminent threat’ has led to some uncomfortable moments for the Bush administration once it became clear that all of their dire warnings were drawn from exaggerations and miscalculations with a foundation as shifting as desert sands. In an unworthy resort to semantic word play they have many times denied ever describing Iraq as an imminent threat, which has lead to some of the best television I have ever seen if the deceit were not so deadly serious. A recent edition of the news program Face the Nation had none other than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defending the invasion. This is a portion of that interview, and please note that I am reading here from the transcript as best I can:

BOB SCHIEFFER (the host): Well, let me just ask you this. If they did not have these weapons of mass destruction, though, granted all of that is true, why then did they pose an immediate threat to us, to this country?

RUMSFELD: Well, you're the--you and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase `immediate threat.' I didn't. The president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore that that's--that's what's happened. The president went...

SCHIEFFER: You're saying that nobody in the administration said that.

RUMSFELD: I--I can't speak for nobody--everybody in the administration and say nobody said that.

SCHIEFFER: Vice president didn't say that? The...

RUMSFELD: Not--if--if you have any citations, I'd like to see 'em.

Mr. FRIEDMAN: We have one here. It says `some have argued that the nu'--this is you speaking--`that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain.'

RUMSFELD: And--and...

Mr. FRIEDMAN: It was close to imminent.

RUMSFELD: Well, I've--I've tried to be precise, and I've tried to be accurate. I'm s--suppose I've...

Mr. FRIEDMAN (quoting Rumsfeld again): `No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.'

RUMSFELD: Mm-hmm. It--my view of--of the situation was that he--he had--we--we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that--that we believed and we still do not know--we will know.

Hovering over all of all of these dire warnings in the months before the invasion was one unifying theme, an image hammered home to the American people day after day after day. Burning towers, innocent people leaping to their deaths, a collapsed pile of smoking rubble - grave to thousands. In every way possible, the Bush administration connected the immediate need to attack Iraq with the horror of September 11. We have to get them, they said, because Iraq is connected with al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, because Iraq has WMDs which they could give to bin Laden and bring forth a day overshadowing September 11 with an even deadlier mushroom or chemical or biological cloud.

Scary stuff, that. But when it became clear that the WMD threats had been overblown, to state the matter charitably, and when no connections could be demonstrated between Hussein and al Qaeda, the Bush administration backed away from the Iraq-9/11 claims as quickly as they had backed away from the "imminent threat" claims. Why, we never said any such thing, they and their toadies complained indignantly.

September 2002: Rumsfeld said he had five or six sentences of "bulletproof" evidence that "demonstrate that there are in fact Al Qaeda in Iraq." Asked "Is there any intelligence that Saddam Hussein has any ties to Sept. 11?, Rumsfeld replied, "You have to recognize that the evidence piles up." Asked to name senior Al Qaeda members who were in Baghdad, Rumsfeld said, "I could, but I won't."

In his February speech to the United Nations, the one in which he revealed the existence of the “Winnebagoes of Death,” Secretary of State Powell warned of the "sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network."

In one of the most cynical moments of all, in arguing for the Iraq invasion, Bush on March 18 delivered a letter to the House and Senate that said, in paragraph two: "The use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."

And then there was May 1st, a little more than one year ago today and one that also deserves to live in infamy, when Bush announced the end of "combat operations" underneath the soaring banner which read MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. On that day, Bush proclaimed: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001. The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of Al Qaeda." Balderdash.

There are two crucial points to consider here. First, the reality is that, though Saddam Hussein was certainly a bloody wretch, he was also a secular leader who spent thirty years killing every Islamic fundamentalist he could get his hands on. He was particularly fond of killing practitioners of Wahabbism, the sect of Islam practiced by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda warriors. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been blood enemies for years; bin Laden has called for Hussein’s death on many occasions. The idea that Hussein would arm bin Laden with a pea shooter, much less weapons of mass destruction, is laughable. Saddam Hussein did not last in that neighborhood by being suicidal. Arming Osama bin Laden would have been suicide, because bin Laden would have used those weapons on Hussein. Period. End of story.

Beyond that is the simple fact that Saddam Hussein, for the last several years, was little more than the Mayor of Baghdad. Vast areas in the north and south in Iraq were totally beyond his control because of the no-fly zones. These, by the way, are the areas where al Qaeda fighters had reportedly been sighted. Those fighters had nothing to do with, and had no allegiance to, Saddam Hussein. A lot of them, in fact, wanted to kill him. To say that Hussein had al Qaeda connections because those malefactors were in country is to say that George W. Bush has al Qaeda connections, because, after all, they were in America before the September 11 attacks.

The second, and most important thing to consider, is simply this: They used September 11 against me and against you. To this very day, they are using September 11 against me and against you. I can think of no greater crime against any people anywhere than that which has been committed against us all by this administration. Make no mistake, it is a crime. It is a crime, and by God in heaven, there will be a reckoning for it.

And what of the people of Iraq? More than 10,000 of them have been killed in the invasion and occupation. More than 10,000 and yet it seems for all the world that we have not yet gathered to ourselves enough revenge for the attacks of September 11. What of the people of Iraq, who did no harm to us and were never, ever a threat to us? Do they pine in the darkness of their electricity-less nights for the democracy and freedom we promised them? If they do, then woe unto them, because there will be no freedom, no democracy except on our terms or those of the next band of despots attracted by the political power vacuum we deliberately created but are powerless to fill with authentic Iraqi leaders. The Hussein boot heel which stood so long on their necks – a boot heel, by the way, conspicuously marked "Made in the USA" – has been replaced by another American boot heel worn by Hussein thugs.

Not so long ago, we were told by the Bush administration that it was Hussein loyalists and Ba’athist Party holdouts that were organizing and implementing the attacks against our forces. Now, we are reconstituting Hussein’s army to do the fighting for us. Now, we are opening doors of opportunity to Ba’athist holdouts. In our desperation, now we are putting a former Hussein general in charge of the besieged city of Fallujah. He returned days ago in triumph to that city, wearing his old Republican Guard uniform. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And in the greatest irony of all, even George W. Bush enthusiastically looks forward to dumping his mess in the hands of the United Nations as soon as ambassaor Brahimi will permit it.

Here is what the people of Iraq know. There will be no democracy for them, because it has been made clear that this farcical June 30th handover date, which will purportedly mark a new dawn of Iraqi sovereignty, is a crude whitewashing of an ugly truth. Whatever this new Iraqi government will look like, it will have no power to make laws of any kind. It will have no command over the security of Iraq. It will have no power over the foreign troops occupying Iraqi soil.

Here is what the people of Iraq know. They have seen the gruesome pictures of fellow Iraqis tortured and humiliated at the hands of their American captors in the Abu Ghraib prison, which was for so long a home to torture by the hand of Saddam Hussein. They have seen the pictures of men forced to masturbate in front of each other, forced to simulate sexual acts upon each other, forced to stand naked with electrodes attached to them, forced to endure attacks by dogs.

The American media has made much of these photos, but there is a darker aspect to them which has not been examined properly, an added layer of humiliation which must be understood for its speaks volumes about the true instigators of these outrages. The Iraqis who were tortured were Muslims, and the humiliations they endured were specifically intended to strike to the heart of their faith. This was not just physical torture, but spiritual torture as well. The Muslim prophet Mohammed outlawed homosexuality, and so these men were forced to pantomime homosexual sex upon each other. According to Islam, the saliva of a dog is Najis, or impure, and any place on the human body or clothing touched by this impurity must be cleansed immediately, and so a dog was sicced upon these men.

Here is what the people of Iraq know: These grave humiliations were not the result of one or two bad apples, were not isolated, and were not accidents. The investigation into the Abu Ghraib torture is also looking into thirty – thirty – similar cases as bad or worse which have taken place over the last year. The men who designed these humiliations were not mere guardsmen from an American backwater, they were expert professionals who knew exactly how to torment their captives, and not the bodies alone of these petty thieves or “detainees” rounded up in midnight raids but their very souls. Their God, with deliberation and intent, was spit upon. Combine this with the siege of Najaf, holiest of cities for Shi’ites around the world, and you have before you an openly deliberate attempt not only to take possession of the nation of Iraq, but to undermine and offend the most fundamental religious underpinnings which define the lives of the people there.

This is what the Iraqi people know, and so they fight. If your home, your country, your religious faith were under deliberate assault, would you do any less? I’ll tell you this much. If Canada were to lose its mind and invade Maine to "liberate" its people, and to grab Maine’s timber resources as a nifty little side bonus, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’d be on a train to Portland with a rifle in my hand. You can bet on one other thing as well: The Canadian press would call me an "insurgent." They might even call me a "terrorist." But in truth, I’d be a patriot, willing and ready to lay down my life to hurl back across that border any invader who would dare attempt to take my country away from me.

How dare I say such a thing in the light of day. How dare I use the word ‘patriot’ in the same sentence in which I describe the people who have killed more than 750 American soldiers. I will dare much in the name of truth, because I have read the letters from the family members of those American dead, I know the name of Evan Ashcraft and too many others, and in singing his song I must speak of these things. My grief for this loss is overwhelming, but I cannot in my grief deny the facts. The Bush administration has taken to labeling anyone on earth who would raise arms against this insane global aggression as a “terrorist.” If you’re not an American, you’re a terrorist…and according to certain portions of the Patriot Act, a good many Americans are also terrorists. Some of you here are terrorists. Welcome to the club.

The truth is that it is all too convenient to hijack language for political effect in blaming Iraqi “terrorist insurgents” for the deaths of all those Americans. Trade places with them, however, and face an invading army commanded by leaders whose goals and motives you and most of the world regard as criminal, and face an invading army that would kill and torture and humiliate, and think about what you would do

I blame George W. Bush for our wretched estate today. I lay the bodies of our dead, and all the Iraqi dead, at the doorstep of this White House and its occupant who is far more comfortable ordering death and dying than any leader of a free and peaceful nation ought to be. This war, conceived in darkness and doomed to fail from the beginning, has been lost. All we are doing now is stirring the ashes. We. Never. Learn.

We have gathered here today to mourn the loss and celebrate the lives of those who fell here 34 years ago, and most importantly to draw from their courage and pluck up our own. This is sacred ground. Thirty four years ago, very ordinary Americans rose up to strike a blow against another criminal war, and the price paid for their decision to speak up and speak out was fearful. The wheel has turned, and come ‘round once again. Now we must rise as they did before us and go forth from this place to carry on for our generation and far-flung humanity their mission to halt injustice and call our leaders to account for their wrongs. Perhaps like those committed protesters before us, we must enter into the valley of the shadow of death, and we must fear no evil, because wrongs must be put right; now is the time and we are the ones.

This is your wake up call, Mr. Bush. Your kleptocracy is nearly done. Tin soldiers and we are coming.

---

Regards

[WilliamPitt]

36. Nice

Someone above didn't like the word 'balderdash.' I'dd add my concerns about 'kleptocracy.'

:)

[kentuck]

40. Smooth...

:)

[WilliamPitt]

33. UPDATED VERSION WITH CHANGES

Still not final yet, but I did my best to incorporate your awesome suggestions. Pay no mind to the weird line breaks; it is broken up this way so I don't have incomplete sentences jumping off mid-page.

Thank you so much again.

===

It is one of the greatest honors of my life to speak to you here, today, on this sacred ground. It was in this place, one of many, that conscientious Americans stepped forward to say no to a government that was sprinting towards disaster. That action was met in this place with deadly force, force that took the lives of those who marched, along with the lives of those who happened to be passing innocently by when the bullets began to fly.

I’ve spent the last several weeks trying to decide what, exactly, to speak about today. For much of that time, I’ve been stuck. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to talk about. Quite the opposite. There is too much, much too much, that we need to discuss here today. The wheel has come around again. A day when ordinary Americans must stand forth and say no to a government sprinting towards disaster has come again.

I feel, oddly enough, a little like Abraham Lincoln, after Lincoln was given the name of a Mrs. Bixby, who lost five sons on Civil War battlefields. How does one properly react to such news? “I feel how weak and fruitless,” Lincoln wrote to Mrs. Bixby, “must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.” That is how I feel standing here today. I am overwhelmed with grief, not just for those who were killed and wounded on this ground 34 years ago, but for this whole nation, which has so clearly and catastrophically lost its way, again. The essence of that catastrophe? We. Never. Learn.

As managing editor of truthout, I get a lot of email and letters. In the last several months, dozens of these letters have come from the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, children and friends of soldiers who have been killed in Iraq. One such letter reads as follows:

Dear Mr. Pitt, I must share with you the obituary I wrote for my son, Sgt. Evan Ashcraft, who was killed July 24 near Mosul. I often think of the contributions my intelligent, sensitive wonderful son could have made. He had so much potential. He told us that when he came back from Iraq he wanted to help people. He said he had seen so much hatred and death that the only way to live his life was through aid to others. Look at what we've lost. The loss is not just mine, it's the world's loss. Evan will always be alive in my heart. He and all the other victims of this heinous action in Iraq must be more than mere numbers emerging from the Pentagon's daily tally. His death is a crime against humanity – this is a mother speaking, remember - and the fault lies with the war criminals who inhabit our White House. Please share his story so that he may come alive to your readers.




Here, again, is that grief from a loss so overwhelming. I have shared the story of Evan Ashcraft with people from one side of this country to the other, because the story of Evan Ashcraft is also our story. In telling this story, I have felt time and again the grief his mother has endured, have felt time and again the grief endured by more than 750 families which have lost loved ones in this invasion, have felt the grief endured by the 18,000 other families who have had loved ones returned to them from this invasion missing an arm, a leg, a face, a future. I cannot speak for these families, or for any of you here, but only for myself when I say that my grief, my sorrow, my horror at all of this has turned to the deepest, darkest rage.

There is a page on the White House’s website – right now, at this moment, in May of 2004 – entitled ‘Disarm Saddam Hussein.’ This page correlates exactly with the information disgorged by George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address. To wit: Iraq is in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents (for those here without calculators, 500 tons = one million pounds…hide that), 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents, several mobile biological weapons labs, and operational connections between Iraq and al Qaeda. This page also states quite clearly – right now, today, at this moment - that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program.

The vast quantities of anthrax, botulinum toxin, sarin, mustard gas and VX, along with the munitions to deliver them, as well as any connections between Iraq and al Qaeda terrorism, have completely failed to show up in the 16 months since they were first described in tones of fearful doom to the American people. The 'mobile weapons labs' – termed “Winnebagoes of Death” by Colin Powell - have been shown to be weather balloon launching platforms sold to Iraq by the British in the 1980s.

The claims about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger have been exposed as lies so deep and profound that America stands humiliated before the world. Those lies have also led to a federal investigation into this White House for, basically, treason: Because Ambassador Joseph Wilson dared reveal these lies to the public, his wife, Valerie Plame, was exposed as a CIA agent in an act of revenge perpetrated by officials within the Bush administration.

Make no mistake, and do not be fooled by refashioned rhetoric. We did not go to war to ‘liberate’ the Iraqi people, as the new rhetoric would claim. We did not go to war to bring democracy to Iraq, as the new rhetoric would claim. That State of the Union speech in January 2003, scant weeks before the invasion, made it very clear why we were going to war. Iraq was an imminent threat to the safety and security of the United States, we were told.

The usage of the words ‘imminent threat’ has led to some uncomfortable moments for the Bush administration once it became clear that all of their dire warnings were utter balderdash. They have many times denied ever describing Iraq as an imminent threat. The words ‘imminent threat’ and the administration’s denials led to some of the best television I have ever seen. A recent edition of the news program Face the Nation had Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defending the invasion. This is a portion of that interview, and please note that I am reading here from the transcript as best I can:

BOB SCHIEFFER (the host): Well, let me just ask you this. If they did not have these weapons of mass destruction, though, granted all of that is true, why then did they pose an immediate threat to us, to this country?

RUMSFELD: Well, you're the--you and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase `immediate threat.' I didn't. The president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore that that's--that's what's happened. The president went...

SCHIEFFER: You're saying that nobody in the administration said that.

RUMSFELD: I--I can't speak for nobody--everybody in the administration and say nobody said that.

SCHIEFFER: Vice president didn't say that? The...

RUMSFELD: Not--if--if you have any citations, I'd like to see 'em.




Mr. FRIEDMAN: We have one here. It says `some have argued that the nu'--this is you speaking--`that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain.'

RUMSFELD: And--and...

Mr. FRIEDMAN: It was close to imminent.

RUMSFELD: Well, I've--I've tried to be precise, and I've tried to be accurate. I'm s--suppose I've...

Mr. FRIEDMAN (quoting Rumsfeld again): `No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.'

RUMSFELD: Mm-hmm. It--my view of--of the situation was that he--he had--we--we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that--that we believed and we still do not know--we will know.

Hovering over all of all of these dire warnings in the months before the invasion was one unifying theme, an image hammered home to the American people day after day after day. Burning towers, innocent people leaping to their deaths. In every way possible, the Bush administration connected the immediate need to attack Iraq with the horror of September 11. We have to get them, they said, because Iraq is connected with al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, because Iraq has WMDs which they could give to bin Laden and bring forth a day which makes September 11 look like a picnic by comparison.


Scary stuff, that. But when it became clear that the WMD threats had been overblown, and when no connections could be made between Hussein and al Qaeda, the Bush administration backed away from the 9/11 connection claims as quickly as they had backed away from the ‘imminent threat’ claims. We never said Iraq and al Qaeda were connected, they complained. Why would anyone ever say we did such a thing?

September 2002: Rumsfeld said he had five or six sentences of "bulletproof" evidence that "demonstrate that there are in fact Al Qaeda in Iraq." Asked "Is there any intelligence that Saddam Hussein has any ties to Sept. 11?, Rumsfeld replied, "You have to recognize that the evidence piles up." Asked to name senior Al Qaeda members who were in Baghdad, Rumsfeld said, "I could, but I won't."




In his February speech to the United Nations, the one in which he revealed the existence of the “Winnebagoes of Death,” Secretary of State Powell warned of the "sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network."

In one of the most cynical moment of all, in arguing for the Iraq invasion, Bush on March 18 delivered a letter to the House and Senate that said, in paragraph two: "The use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."




And then there was May 1st, a little more than one year ago today, when Bush announced the end of "combat operations" underneath the soaring banner which read MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. On that day, Bush proclaimed: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001. The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of Al Qaeda. "

There are two crucial points to consider here. First, the reality is that, though Saddam Hussein was certainly a bloody wretch, he was also a secular leader who spent thirty years killing every Islamic fundamentalist he could get his hands on. He was particularly fond of killing practitioners of Wahabbism, the sect of Islam practiced by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda warriors.


Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been blood enemies for years; bin Laden has called for Hussein’s death on many occasions. The idea that Hussein would arm bin Laden with a pea shooter, much less weapons of mass destruction, is laughable. Saddam Hussein did not last in that neighborhood by being suicidal. Arming Osama bin Laden would have been suicide, because bin Laden would have used those weapons on Hussein. Period. End of story.

Beyond that is the simple fact that Saddam Hussein, for the last several years, was little more than the Mayor of Baghdad. Vast areas in the north and south in Iraq were totally beyond his control because of the no-fly zones. These, by the way, are the areas where al Qaeda fighters had reportedly been sighted. Those fighters had nothing to do with, and had no allegiance to, Saddam Hussein. A lot of them, in fact, wanted to kill him.


To say that Hussein had al Qaeda connections because those guys were in his country at one time is to say that George W. Bush has al Qaeda connections, because they were in America before the September 11 attacks.

The second, and most important thing to consider, is simply this: They used September 11 against you. To this very day, they are using September 11 against you. I can think of few greater crimes than that which has been committed against us all, and against the world entire, by this administration. Make no mistake, it is a crime. It is a crime, and by God in heaven, there will be a reckoning for it.

And what of the people of Iraq? More than 10,000 of them have been killed in the invasion and occupation. More than 10,000 and yet it seems for all the world that we have not yet gathered to ourselves enough revenge for September 11.

What of the people of Iraq, who did no harm to us and were never, ever a threat to us? Do they pine in the darkness of their nights for the democracy and freedom we promised them? If they do, then woe unto them, because there will be no freedom, no democracy for them. The Hussein bootheel which stood so long on their necks – a bootheel, by the way, marked ‘Made in the USA’ – has been replaced by another American bootheel worn by Hussein thugs.

Not so long ago, we were told by the Bush administration that it was Hussein loyalists and Ba’athist Party holdouts that were organizing and implementing the attacks against our forces. Now, we are reconstituting Hussein’s army to do the fighting for us. Now, we are opening doors of opportunity to Ba’athist holdouts. Now, we are putting a former Hussein general in charge of the besieged city of Fallujah.


He returned days ago in triumph to that city, wearing his old Republican Guard uniform. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Here is what the people of Iraq know. There will be no democracy for them, because it has been made clear that this farcical June 30th handover date, which will purportedly mark a new dawn of Iraqi sovereignty, is a crude whitewashing of an ugly truth. Whatever this new Iraqi government will look like, it will have no power to make laws of any kind. It will have no command over the security of Iraq. It will have no power over the foreign troops occupying Iraqi soil.

Here is what the people of Iraq know. They have seen the gruesome pictures of fellow Iraqis tortured and humiliated at the hands of their American captors in the Abu Ghraib prison, which was for so long a home to torture by the hand of Saddam Hussein. They have seen the pictures of men forced to masturbate in front of each other, forced to simulate sexual acts upon each other, forced to stand naked with electrodes attached to them, forced to endure attacks by dogs.

The American media has made much of these photos, but there is a darker aspect to them which has not been examined properly, an added layer of humiliation which must be understood. The Iraqis who were tortured were Muslims, and the humiliations they endured were specifically intended to strike to the heart of their faith. This was not just physical torture, but spiritual torture as well. The Muslim prophet Mohammed outlawed homosexuality, and so these men were forced to pantomime homosexual sex upon each other. According to Islam, the saliva of a dog is Najis, or impure, and any place on the human body or clothing touched by this impurity must be cleansed immediately, and so a dog was sicced upon these men.

Here is what the people of Iraq know: These grave humiliations were not the result of one or two bad apples, were not isolated, and were not accidents. The investigation into the Abu Ghraib torture is also looking into thirty – thirty – similar cases as bad or worse which have taken place over the last year. Not only were the bodies of Iraqi people tortured, but their very souls were tortured as well. Their God, with deliberation and intent, was spit upon. Combine this with the siege of Najaf, holiest of cities for Shi’ites around the world, and you have before you an openly deliberate attempt not only to take possession of the nation of Iraq, but to undermine and offend the most fundamental religious underpinnings which define the lives of the people there.

This is what the Iraqi people know, and so they fight. If your home, your country, your religious faith were under deliberate assault, would you do any less? I’ll tell you this much.

If Canada were to lose its mind and invade Maine to ‘liberate’ its people, and to grab Maine’s timber resources as a nifty little side bonus, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’d be on a train to Portland with a rifle in my hand. You can bet on one other thing as well: The Canadian press would call me an ‘insurgent.’ They might even call me a ‘terrorist.’ But in truth, I’d be a patriot, willing and ready to lay down my life to hurl back across that border any invader who would dare attempt to take my country away from me.

How dare I say such a thing in the light of day. How dare I use the word ‘patriot’ in the same sentence in which I describe the people who have killed more than 750 American soldiers. I will dare much in the name of truth, because I have read the letters from the family members of those American dead, I know the name of Evan Ashcraft and too many others, and in singing his song I must speak of these things.

My grief for this loss is overwhelming, but I cannot in my grief sidestep the facts. The Bush administration has taken to labeling anyone on earth who would raise arms against this insane global aggression as ‘terrorists.’ If you’re not an American, you’re a terrorist…and according to certain portions of the Patriot Act, a good many Americans are also terrorists. Some of you here are terrorists. Welcome to the club.

The truth is that it is all too convenient to use tricks of language to blame Iraqi ‘terrorist insurgents’ for the deaths of all those Americans. Trade places with them, however, and face an invading army commanded by leaders whose goals and motives are fully criminal, face an invading army that would kill and torture and humiliate, and think about what you would do. Language is a funny thing. It can be used to reveal, and to disguise.

Even today, 34 years later, you can find a similar argument right here. Were the people shot down here insurgents? Were they terrorists? Were they patriots? I have my answer to that question, and you have yours, and others have theirs.

There is language, and there is truth. The truth, for me, is this: Those who fell here on this day were patriots and innocents, and the wheel has come round. The truth, for me, is this: I blame George W. Bush for our wretched estate today. I lay the bodies of our dead, and all the Iraqi dead, at the doorstep of this White House. This war, conceived in darkness and doomed to fail from the beginning, has been lost. All we are doing now is stirring the ashes. We. Never. Learn.

The truth, for me, is this: We have gathered here today to mourn the loss and celebrate the lives of those who fell here 34 years ago. This is sacred ground.

34 years ago, some very ordinary Americans rose up to strike a blow against another criminal war, and the price paid for this decision to speak up and speak out was fearful. The wheel has rolled, and has come around once more. We must rise again on this sacred ground, we must enter again into the valley of the shadow of death, and we must fear no evil, because this must be stopped, and we must be the ones to stop it. Patriots once marched here, and must march here again. We. Must. Learn.

This is your wake up call, Mr. Bush. Your 15 minutes are just about over. Tin soldiers and we are coming.

Thank you.

[suigeneris]

35. I didn't see this before my own edit.

I'll read yours and you read mine of yours ;-)

[VelmaD]

39. Oh Will...

I really like the new ending. Ties it up much better to when happened at Kent State all those years ago. And I think it provides a ,ore powerful call to arms with the change to "We. Must. Learn." at the end.

Good luck tomorrow with it. Can't wait to hear how it goes. :)

[JHB]

43. And it's ripe to happen again...

One of the biggest connections between what's happening in Iraq now and at Kent State 34 years ago is that, My God, the stage is being set for it to happen AGAIN.

We already have "mainstream" commentators who don't hesitate to call us "traitors" and "treasonous" and "pro-terrorist" and otherwise characterize us as something to be purged rather than as rational citizens with voices to be listened to. At the very minimum, the situation at the protest in 1970 was tense and confused and ripe for a bloody explosion. As the present lie-based war drags on, and the administration abuses its newfound powers to suppress dissent (First Amendment zones? Isn't the whole country supposed to be a "First Amendment zone"?) What happens when someone decides knock over the barricades, pull down the fences, or otherwise "tear down the wall"? What will the people with guns do?.

If this war is allowed to go on, how long before before the song is about "Tin soldiers and Bush's army"? How can we honor the "four dead in Ohio" if we let the same damn thing happen all over again.

[bobbieinok]

47. again - tie in to Kent State more at beginning

I remember how great a shock it was.

Students protesting a far-away war, dissenters targeted, war could not be defended.

I think you're missing the point of your invitation if you don't emphasize the actual events at Kent State more at the beginning.

Also agree with earlier comment that there should be more emphasis on today's attempt to shut up protest and compare to VN attempt to shut up protest.

[anarchy1999]

52. I went to Kent State

I got to hear Abbie Hoffman in 1989 as a student, when he charged the audience with laziness. He explained we have a continual obligation to put these evil governments in check (speaking of Nixon, Reagan, Bush...), and he had only begun the fight. He, like you, has asked that today is the day we get more involved.

Thank you for keeping with tradition. You make me proud. :thumbsup:

As a May Fourth speaker, I couldn't have picked a better envoy for the peacekeepers of the future. Kent Staters are loyal to this day to the tradition of carrying the memories and lessons of that awful day with candlelight vigil. They will be at the forefront of the future protests and calls for action.

They're ready to hear your message.

God Bless!

[Misunderestimator]

37. POWERFUL... My 2 cents follows:

If I may:

In this sentence, I would take a pause before the word treason for emphasis: "Those lies have also led to a federal investigation into this White House for, basically, treason:"

And this part, slowly (most people I talk to STILL do not have any clue about the Wilson/Plame scandal): "Because Ambassador Joseph Wilson dared reveal these lies to the public, his wife, Valerie Plame, was exposed as a CIA agent in an act of revenge perpetrated by officials within the Bush administration."

Also, here, a pause before "we were told:" "Iraq was an imminent threat to the safety and security of the United States, we were told."

One typo: "In one of the most cynical moment of all," moments needs an 's.'

Another suggestion... is it possible to work in the "Mission Accomplished" Banner lie? (Where Bush claims that it was not him who put up the banner.) It would represent another flip-flop which is already represented in your other vignettes. On the other hand, it could take away from the power of his stance on the war being over and the irony now of not having removed any threat.

Love the amount of time you spend on dispelling the myth of the Hussein/Bin Laden tie.

This one is hugely effective: "The Hussein bootheel which stood so long on their necks – a bootheel, by the way, marked ‘Made in the USA’ – has been replaced by another American bootheel worn by Hussein thugs."

And emphasize this one: "According to Islam, the saliva of a dog is Najis, or impure, and any place on the human body or clothing touched by this impurity must be cleansed immediately, and so a dog was sicced upon these men. " I never heard of this... astonishingy upsetting.

You might want to add the looting of Iraqi treasure to this: "Combine this with the siege of Najaf, holiest of cities for Shi’ites around the world, and you have before you an openly deliberate attempt not only to take possession of the nation of Iraq, but to undermine and offend the most fundamental religious underpinnings which define the lives of the people there."

And GREAT closing paragraphs.

KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK! :) (Will this be videotaped?)


On edit, I also did not see the revised version, so take mine with a grain of something. :)

[HFishbine]

41. "They used September 11 against you."

Amen! Say it loud and clear... and often.

[wadestock]

42. A++ with a couple comments

Intelligent, informative, and heartfelt.

I'm 51, just missed Vietnam, and have strong emotions about Kent state and that time. Back then, I knew no one that really wanted to "kick the commis ass" and not one single person that wouldn't do anything to get out of going. Watching Johnson on TV is still very fresh in my mind. He made the war sound as if it was a matter of duty and honor in his over diliberate style. Packaged BS as the war machine pressed on.

You're exactly right that they've used 911 against us to get us to endorce WAR. Remember how it was "the authorization to use force" that Kerry and others voted for...when promised force would be used only as a last resort? Suddently that got morphed to "regime change" almost overnite. I sat there wondering....hmmm here we go again. The regime change then went full speed to war status with the notion of "WINNING". See...if you can WIN, then the military expedition was a success.

The patriotism and the kick ass attitude against terrorism have been exploited. There's no WINNING in war. We, the most powerful country in the world should set the example for how to conduct operations in other than a war mode. Inspections could have been VERY VERY aggressive. There were alternatives.

All out blitzgrieg WAR....and with it the destroying of every single last piece of artillery piece and tank against an army which had no real fighting power or even an air force was uncalled for and profoundly illogical when considering what would be happen and be required AFTER the war was over.

All that the Bush machine is left with at this point is:
"The world is better off without Saddam, right?"

No, I'm not fooled, although many are wrestling with this. Saddam was contained and over time operations other than war had many possibilities. There are many other situations in the world which exist today which must be faced intelligently. Many will surface in the future and we'll have to have the maturity to deal with them. This has just been one giant step backwards.

Maybe one of the very best first steps in the future is to be honest with ourselves and others. Don't sell weapons to one side, then play switcheroos. Don't endorce Israel's nuclear weapons on one hand and then do everything including starting wars to stop others from using them. Be consistent. Be honest. And don't guide your motives by capitalistic intentions and maybe the rest of the world will start paying us some respect.

[tom_paine]

44. No time to help right this moment but KICK!

:kick: :bounce: :kick:

[eileen from OH]

45. Will, I'm a Kent "townie" and remember it from

that POV - I was home from my college by then (finished junior year.) If I may respectfully add some stuff - and maybe a different perspective, because I think frankly you are missing some parallels between what happened at Kent State and Iraq. (Some others may have hit on these, I'm in a rush!)

All the students involved in the anti-war movement at KSU were not total innocents. Remember - there were riots downtown the weekend before and the ROTC building was burned. But as awful and illegal as these acts were, they did not present any imminent danger (things had quieted down) to justify Gov. Rhodes sending in the National Guard. Sound familiar?

Rhodes was determined to teach these anti-war hippies a lesson, to provide an example to the rest of the nation's college campuses. Just as Bush is trying to use Iraq as a "message" to the Arab world of our might and power. The use and abuse of military power to control was no less true of Kent State than it is in Iraq.

Most of the National Guardsmen who were brought to Kent came there directly from a labor dispute. They were tired and stressed and many were the same age as the college kids. They were not trained or prepped to handle the situation. Very similar to the way our soldiers in Iraq are now supposed to be cops, diplomats, and, yes, prison guards - things for which they were not trained. Kent State was almost bound to happen - once the Guard was brought in.

Several of the students killed were "collateral damage" in that they weren't even involved in the protest, rioting, etc. Multiply it by the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have been killed who had no connection to terrorism or Saddam, but just going on about their daily lives.

The students who died at Kent State, if they were alive today, most likely would have children of their own - who would be of of an age to be serving in Iraq. Just as we remember the fallen children of Kent State, we must remember all the children of that generation who are dying now for a reasons as pointless and immoral as the tragedy that was Kent State.

eileen from OH

[bobbieinok]

48. Will-- LISTEN to her; this is IMPT, will IMPROVE the speech

Your speech as it stands is good, just maybe not the best for commemorating KENT STATE and the 60s ATTEMPT TO SHUT UP CRITICS.

I've liked everything you've written; I just don't think the speech as it stands is appropriate for Kent State commemoration.

[Zardeenah]

49. I would love to offer changes, but...

I am having a hard time reading that piece objectively. It is one of the most powerful statements on the war in Iraq, the domestic situation, and the importance of the moment that I have read in the last year. And I read *alot* of editorials. This brings tears to my eyes, and were I able to watch you deliver it, I would not be able to without a whole box of tissue.

Is there any possibility of a video of this being posted online? (Sorry if this was already asked)

Susan

[Tyler Durden]

50. Just change one word:

Reads: "...the sect of Islam practiced by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda warriors."
Change to: "the sect of Islam practiced by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda fighters."

Warriors, although accurate, could be spun by critics as a statement supportive of bin Laden. You KNOW how our enemies nitpick.

LOVE the first law of holes ref. RandomKoolzip would be proud.

[MuseRider]

51. Will,

reading the edit I would say it is wonderful and powerful like it is now. I just wanted to tell you I was moved by it all but when I read the Tin Soldiers part the tears started to flow. Good move Will, I remember Kent State well and the song well. The ending of the speech with that quote was too much and in this case too much is just right. Thanks again.