Senator Graham:

The reason for my correspondence is that you in the U.S. Congress
have created a dysfunctional loony bin in Iraq. Your recent
interview in the Charleston Post and Courier shows that in
desperation you are a victim of doing the same thing over and over
again and expecting different results. In backing Mister Bush’s
surge plan, your are backing the same kind of high intensity massive
intervention that was Vietnam, yet another slippery slope leading to
genocidal application of massive firepower against civilians.

When I left Vietnam, in 1967, after one year in combat, we Americans
had killed 160,000 Vietnamese; 8 years later when President Ford
ended all the surges, calls that it was the Vietnamese peoples’ war
to win, and hand wringing that we had spent too much blood, sweat
and treasure to pull out we had killed over 2.5 million. I do not
need to point out to such a student of history that most of those 2
million plus dead were civilians. During the 8 years I refer to the
point was made incessantly in Washington that we could not cut and
run in Vietnam or the sky would fall and we would see hordes of
Communists invading San Francisco; but we did cut and run and we are
still here. Remember Senator a Great People do not remain great by
doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

Have a nice day, roll up your sleeves and get right to work on
fixing the mess you all made.

Best Regards,

Philopatrios

and a little pimpo,a manip i did few t(y)ears ago

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/gaffeur/1067798881bush_bozo.jpg

Click through for the new Mark Fiore animation on the War in Iraq….

NOW Calls for End to War in Iraq, Ready to March on Saturday

Statement of NOW Executive Vice President Olga Vives

January 24, 2007

The National Organization for Women is proud to be a part of
this powerful coalition calling for an end to the war in Iraq.
Saturday’s mobilization of people coming to our nation’s
capital from all over the country will demonstrate one more
time to the Bush-Cheney administration and to Congress the
level of disapproval at the continuation of the disaster this
war has brought to Iraq, to the Middle East, to the United
States, and to the world.

On Nov. 7, 2006, voters went to the polls with a very clear
message: end the war. Congress switched hands to the
Democratic leadership when voters elected candidates who
pledged to bring a resolution to the conflict in Iraq. Women in
particular expressed their displeasure with their votes —
electing 10 new women to the House of Representatives, 8
of them Democrats, and 2 to the Senate, both Democrats as
well. The gender gap in some races, like Jim Webb’s in
Virginia and Jon Tester’s in Montana, was the margin of
victory, and that margin decided the fate of the U.S. Senate.
These candidates expressed their opposition to the
continuing U.S. military actions in Iraq.

Women voted for change — not more of the same. Surveys
after the election show that the war in Iraq topped the list of
women’s concerns. This was followed by health care, Social
Security, and the economy. And now, as if the voters hadn’t
spoken, we are confronted with the Bush administration’s
defiance of the people’s clear message with a planned
escalation of troops in Iraq, in spite of what appears to be a
bipartisan consensus that this latest plan for the war will not
be successful either. President Bush has chosen not to listen
to his generals, bipartisan commissions and members of
Congress, and instead has chosen to further his own failed
plan. Past troop “surges” have met with little success.

The human cost of the war in Iraq is enormous. Over 3,000
U.S. military men and women and an estimated 55,000 Iraqi
civilians have been killed. Countless more have suffered
serious injuries and most Iraqis live in constant fear. It
seems that the only beneficiaries of the U.S. action in Iraq
are Halliburton, Bechtel and other disaster profiteers. And
now, our president is ready to send even more troops into
this carnage, into the middle of what we have created in
Iraq: a civil war.

The monetary cost is depleting our treasury and saddling
future generations with a mountain of debt; domestic
programs that help the most vulnerable are set aside while
the benefits of building the military complex to sustain the
war enrich a few individuals and corporations.

NOW’s stance against the Iraq war dates back to 2002,
when on the eve of the Iraq invasion and occupation we
expressed our opposition to military action. We knew then as
we know now, as stated in a resolutions approved by our
membership, that women bear additional personal costs in
patriarchal wars that ruin their country’s physical
infrastructure, destabilize their economy, destroy their homes
and kill and maim children and families. Eighty percent of the
world’s refugees and displaced persons are women and
children. Women are victims of increased sexual abuse in
areas of conflict and in the military, as we have seen here at
home at military bases and recruitment centers, and in Iraq.
Sexual violence and abduction of women and girls increase
significantly under military occupation; perpetrators are rarely
appreheded and prosecuted in such violent and hostile
environments.

The National Organization for Women encourages its
members and supporters to come to Washington, D.C., on
Saturday, Jan. 27. The Bush-Cheney administration
apparently did not hear the voters’ message; they are doing
exactly the opposite of what the voters called for. So we are
coming to visit them, right here on their doorstep, knocking
on their door, voicing our opposition to their plan to escalate
and continue to occupy Iraq. There was an opinion poll this
week about the president’s leadership. People said that he
was decisive and stubborn; and I would add to that: wrong!
The incompetence of this administration, the mistakes in the
planning and execution of the war, is mind-boggling. How
could we allow them to continue to lead us in this reckless
direction?

And to our friends in Congress we say: We will work with you
and support you in your efforts to end the war. We want our
women and men deployed in Iraq to come home now. We
call for withdrawal of all U.S. troops immediately and a plan
to help the region find political and diplomatic solutions, not
military ones, to an end to what has become a national
tragedy not only for the Iraqi people but for the people of
the United States. And we call for a plan to reconstruct Iraq
with funding for the victims of war, namely women and
children — providing them with housing, health care,
education and safety.

One man alone cannot impose his will on the people of a
nation. Our democratic system relies on the balance of
power. The United States Congress must exercise their
oversight and appropriation authority to effectively end this
war and to investigate this administration’s conduct in
leading us to war with what now appears to have been false
information. Congress now has a mission to accomplish to
fulfill the wishes of the people who sent them there. That
mission is to bring an end to the war in Iraq effectively and
over the objections of Bush and Cheney.

To the members of the National Organization for Women, our
supporters and our allies: come to Washington, D.C., this
weekend and let your voice be heard for peace, for freedom,
for justice!

http://lists.now.org/t/420884/781638/1355671/0/