Tuesday, May 22, 2007

THIS JUST IN! FLIP-FLOP!

 
 
BILL RICHARDSON, WHO SERVED IN THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION, FORMALLY DECLARED YESTERDAY THAT HE WAS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT.
 
TODAY, BILL RICHARDSON TOLD THESE REPORTERS HE WAS TELLING VOTERS HE WANTS THEM TO "CONSIDER ME, NOT BECAUSE I AM HISPANIC BUT BECAUSE I HAVE THE BEST PROGRAM FOR THE COUNTRY."
 
MOMENTS LATER, HE EXPLAINED HOW HE WAS GOING TO TARGET HISPANIC VOTERS, "I AM SAYING 'IT'S BILL RICHARDSON LOPEZ AND I AM ONE OF YOU."
 
AS SEASONED CAMPAIGN REPORTERS EVEN WE WERE SHOCKED BY THE SPEED WITH WHICH RICHARDSON FLIP-FLOPPED.
 
 
 
In war resistance news, Nilanjana S Roy (India's Business Standard).reviews Joshua Key's The Deserter's Tale and concludes, "His story, blunt, unapologetic and defiant, may be the most unsettling indictment of the Iraq war to have emerged thus far."  Roy becomes another reviewer in a long line to sing the praises of Key's  The Deserter's Tale which traces his journey from a father attempting to help put food on the table and willing to believe a recruiter to a young man serving in Iraq and seeing the war was based on lies.  Key self-checks out of the military while back in the States and he, Brandi Key and their children move to Canada where the family now resides. Key concludes his book (pp. 230-231):
 
When I came home I told Brandi that I had seen innocent people die in Iraq.  For the longest time, that is just about all she knew.  But because she loved me that was all she needed to hear.  In fact, she did not want to hear any details.  Taking care of three young boys and me, as well as little Anna, who was soon growing in her womb, Brandi did not feel she had the strength to hear about everything I had seen and done in Iraq.  Apart from one time in Philadelphia when I got drunk and began to shout about the young girl I had seen killed outside the hospital in Ramadi, I have never spoken to her directly about all the intimate details given in this book.  She reads the information form I gave the Canadian immigration authorities when I applied for refugee status.  When she put it down, she said she never would have read it in the first place if she had known what she'd find it.  We both carry emotional wounds as a result of the war in Iraq, and I imagine that thousands of other Americans who served in Iraq have also brought their own nightmares back home.  Their families, too, will be suffering.  Ordinary Iraqis have paid very dearly for this war, and ordinary Americans are paying for it too with their lives and with their souls.    
I have never been a man to run from a challenge, and I have never fled from danger or abandoned vulenerable people.  I am neither a coward nor a traitor.  When I was being recruited in Oklahoma City in 2002, I had to sign a paper to the effect that I had read and understood a warning from the military: "Desertion in the time war means death by a firing squad."  That just about sums it up.  We could do whatever we wanted to Iraqis.  Yet if we ran from duty, there would be hell to pay.  I will never apologize for deserting the American army.  I destered an injustice and leaving was the right thing to do.  I owe one apology and one apology only, and that is to the people of Iraq.
 
Joshua Key is part of a growing movement of war resistance within the military that also includes Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull,  Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.

Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
 
 
Reminder, a look at another activist airs tonight on  The Sundance Channel:

Tuesday, May 22nd 9:30 pm e/p
Forest For The Trees (U.S. Television Premiere) -- Directed by Bernadine Mellis. Mellis follows her father, civil rights lawyer Dennis Cunningham, as he goes to federal court in 2002 on behalf of his client, the late environmental activist Judi Bari. A leader of EarthFirst!, Bari was injured in a car bombing as she prepared for 1990's "Redwood Summer," a peaceful action protesting the logging of old-growth redwoods in Northern California.
Arrested for the crime but never charged, Bari believed she was targeted in order to discredit her organization and sued the FBI and the Oakland Police. A suspenseful chronicle of an important trial, Forest for the Trees is also a profile of a dynamic and funny woman, who earned the respect of loggers as well as environmentalists.
 

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