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Missy Comley Beattie | Cindy Sheehan and Rose Gentle: Two Women Changing the World    [

    Troops Home Fast to End; Fasters Meeting With Iraqi Leaders
    t r u t h o u t | Press Release

    Tuesday 01 August 2006

US fasters on 30th day of hunger strike travel to Jordan on Wednesday to meet with MPs about peace plan and break fast, then on to Lebanon.

    After 28 days of fasting, anti-war hunger strikers received a breakthrough victory for their sacrifice: Leading members of the Iraqi Parliament invited fasters to join them to discuss their plans for peace in Iraq. On Wednesday, August 2, hunger strikers will travel to Amman, Jordan to meet with these Iraqi MPs and break their fast. The group includes:

• Peace mom Cindy Sheehan,
  
  
• Retired Colonel Ann Wright,
  
  
• Iraq war veteran Geoffrey Millard,
  
  
• Politician/Writer Tom Hayden,
  
  
• CODEPINK co-founders Medea Benjamin, Jodie Evans, Gael Murphy and Diane Wilson.

    The trip is being sponsored by CODEPINK: Women for Peace and the human rights group Global Exchange.

    This invitation comes after fasters were rebuffed in numerous attempts to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during his visit to Washington last week, including setting up "Camp Al-Maliki" across from the Iraqi Embassy and publishing an open letter to him in one of the largest Iraqi newspapers. Faster and CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin was arrested for disrupting al-Maliki's address to Congress last Wednesday, saying loudly and repeatedly, "Iraqis want the troops to leave, bring them home now!" The parliamentarians, who expressed concern for fasters' health and dismay at the Prime Minister's dismissal of their repeated requests for a meeting, will travel to meet with the US delegation in Jordan on August 3.

    The Iraqi elected officials will brief the Americans on the Reconciliation Plan they have been working on at the Reconciliation Conference held in Cairo last week. CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin said, "It is a breakthrough for the US peace movement to meet directly with Iraqi parliamentarians working on a peace plan. We hope to return to the US to build support for their plan."

    With the increased violence between Israel and Lebanon, a part of the U.S. delegation will go on to Syria and Lebanon to bear witness to the suffering of innocent victims of war in the region.

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    For more information on the delegation to Jordan, please see www.troopshomefast.org.

    Cindy Sheehan and Rose Gentle: Two Women Changing the World
    By Missy Comley Beattie
    Gold Star Families for Peace
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Tuesday 01 August 2006

    I have often remarked to my husband that if more and more families of the fallen would speak out against the war in Iraq, the mainstream media might, just might, begin to give them airtime. My 81-year-old mother was interviewed by Pacifica Radio host Deepa Fernandez ("Wakeup Call") soon after my nephew died in Iraq. Her words and pain are still vivid in my mind and heart. She speaks the same way today about the death of her grandson.

    Soon, we will mark the first anniversary of the death of Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, killed in action on August 6, 2005. We received the news early Sunday morning, the day after he died, that day our lives changed forever.

    When I hear or read that a devastated family member has said, "He died doing what he loved," or "protecting our freedoms," or "she was fighting them over there so we wouldn't have to fight them over here," I turn to my husband or call my parents with complete understanding of the tragic loss, and we discuss that, while it might be some small comfort to believe all this, we simply can't. And we wish that more parents and relatives of the dead would say, "This is an illegal, immoral war that took our child, our loved one. So, now, what are we doing to do to prevent others from hearing the words that no family should have to bear?"

    Early on in the war, I saw a man in the news who loudly said into the camera, "George Bush killed my son." I talked with my mother about this and commented that it received little attention. This, of course, is the failure of our mainstream media - those journalists who used to be essential to our system of checks and balances. Now, for the most part, they have been rendered superfluous.

    But Cindy came along. Sheehan, of course. And she arrived with such presence - this tireless woman with more courage than anyone in our chickenhawk administration could ever dream about having. Traveling to Crawford, Texas, she tenaciously sat, stood and waited for the president to acknowledge her pain and answer the question: "For what noble cause did my son Casey die?" All he had to do was walk outside, listen to this grieving mother who became the peace movement's mover and shaker, and answer her question. Instead, he rambled about having to get on with his life, one of the many stupid statements that underscores his dumber than a box of doorknobs description. But the truth is that the president could never give a satisfactory answer because not only is there nothing noble about war, this particular one is not just wrong - it is criminally, insanely so. It is a crime against our troops, their families, the coalition, everyone lied to by the president, and the Iraqi people.

    And despite the opinion that a majority of Americans now have about the calamity of mass destruction that is Iraq, the war machine rolls on with its unacceptable denial and its decision to send more of our young to die. Note that the warmongers have no children in harm's way.

    Finally, finally, today, I received an article from Gold Star Families for Peace, the organization founded by Cindy Sheehan and her husband to protest their son's death, the continued carnage in a war based on lies, and to provide support to others suffering immeasurable loss. The facts in the piece give hope to all of us who believe that the president and his administration should be held accountable for its crimes against humanity and the essence of life - the quality that separates us from those who find it so effortless to declare war. In other words, people without consciences. This is the article:

27 July 2006
By Robert Verkaik, The Independent UK

0aThe families of four British soldiers killed in Iraq have won an important round in their legal battle to force the Government to hold an independent inquiry into the decision to go to war.

0aThree judges sitting in the Court of Appeal in London ruled that the families should be entitled to argue their case at a new hearing later this year.

0aLawyers for the families, whose relatives died in Iraq between 2003 and 2005, called the ruling "a stunning victory." "The Government now have to produce evidence to a full hearing in the Court of Appeal," said Phil Shiner, the families' solicitor. "That evidence needs to establish once and for all whether the decision to invade was lawful."

0aThe Court of Appeal ruled they were entitled to apply for a judicial review of the Government's refusal to hold an independent inquiry into the decision to go to war. It reversed a ruling last year when a High Court judge said that the families did not have an arguable case.

0aIn their ruling, the Court of Appeal judges, led by Sir Anthony Clarke, Master of the Rolls, said: "It is at least arguable that the question whether the invasion was lawful, or reasonably thought to have been lawful, as a matter of international law is worthy of investigation."

0aAfter the ruling, Mr Shiner said: "In particular, the Government must finally explain how the 13-page, equivocal advice from the Attorney General of 7 March 2003 was changed within 10 days to a one-page, completely unequivocal advice that an invasion would be legal."

0aYesterday's appeal was brought by Peter Brierley, the father of Shaun Brierley; Beverley Clarke, the mother of David Clarke; Rose Gentle, the mother of Gordon Gentle, and Susan Smith, the mother of Phillip Hewett.

0aLance Corporal Shaun Brierley, 28, whose family are from Batley, West Yorkshire, was serving with 212 Signals Squadron when he was killed in a crash in Kuwait in March 2003.

0aTrooper David Clarke, 19, from Littleworth, Staffordshire, was one of two soldiers who died in March 2003 in a "friendly fire" incident west of Basra.

0aFusilier Gordon Gentle, 19, from Glasgow, of the Royal Highland Fusiliers, died in June 2004 in an improvised explosive device attack on vehicles in Basra.

0aPrivate Phillip Hewett, 21, from Tamworth, Staffordshire, was one of three soldiers from C Company, 1st Battalion Staffordshire Regiment, who died in a roadside bomb blast in the Risaala district of Amarah in July 2005.

0aRose Gentle said: "My son died when a roadside bomb went off under the vehicle he was travelling in. He was in Iraq to fight for his country, but I now know he should never have been sent there. He died for nothing."

0aShe added: "I have done everything in my power to persuade Tony Blair to meet with me, but he refuses. Now I will finally get to see the Government have to justify their decision to invade Iraq, which most of the public believe was unlawful and counter-productive."

    I love the name Rose Gentle. It conjures up an image - the rose, beautiful and fragile, supported by a stalk of thorns. I imagine Rose Gentle to be like Cindy Sheehan, kind and tenacious, yet held high by stems of thorns, a symbol of piercing pain. It is this that maintains their strength. It is this that intimidates the leaders of Great Britain and the United States. Rose Gentle and Cindy Sheehan are thorns in the plans of men who would wage endless war. Perhaps this court decision will prevent these plans.

    So, please, tell every person you know about this court decision. Don't just preach to the choir. Deliver a sermon to those who still cling to the pants legs of a man who claims to be a Christian, a president who changed the reasons for war after each rationale was vetted and proved false. Convince the equivocators. If families in Great Britain can see justice served for the deaths of their loved ones in this war, then we should be able to demand the same for ours. And for the thousands of injured. And for the tens of thousands of Iraqis. Imagine the members of Gold Star Families for Peace who, at last, could, before a court of law, seek an investigation into the deaths of those whose loss they will mourn every second of every minute of every hour of every day, forever.