Posted on 05/16/2004 10:13:19 AM PDT by kcvl
I wonder why they don't do the same for all the abortions in the country? At least those children never had a chance to live. Our soldiers are fighting for our freedoms.
Veterans for Peace
Wilson "Woody" Powell
Executive Director
World Community Ctr.
438 North Skinker
St. Louis MO 63130
VOICE (314) 725-6005
FAX (314) 725-7103
vfp@igc.org
Simple. Their purpose isn't to oppose abortion. Their purpose is to oppose the war and they have no problem exploiting the deaths of our service members to do it.
5th Columnists at work, BUMP!
I just saw this guy interviewed on Fox. He threw in everything including Native American respect for the land. Bah!
March 8, 2004
SANTA BARBARA - Peace activist Stephen Sherrill has marched and shouted in dozens of antiwar demonstrations in his lifetime, but it was his silent protest that touched thousands of people.
Every Sunday since early November, on the sand next to Stearns Wharf, Sherrill has planted what is now a field of white crosses - a sobering tribute to America's fallen in Iraq.
Sherrill said he had put the crosses on display to create "a visual representation" of the cost of the Iraq war in American dead.
"People can read numbers in a newspaper article and just breeze right by the number," he said. "But to actually see objects, each object representing a life, is a powerful imagery."
Sherrill, a 55-year-old carpenter, said his greatest hope was that the idea would spread.
Photographs of his "Arlington West" cemetery have appeared in American and European newspapers, and the protest has spawned similar monuments in Santa Monica and Oceanside.
Moreover, the antiwar group Veterans for Peace plans additional exhibits of the "Arlington West" cemetery in Huntington Beach, elsewhere in Orange County, and in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, as well as cities in Florida, Maine and Michigan, said Wilson Powell, executive director of Veterans for Peace.
Sherrill said he had come up with the idea because the almost daily count of human lives lost in Iraq was too abstract.
"The original idea I had was for full-size cardboard cutouts of soldiers," he said. "The crosses were Plan B, but we instantly understood its impact and started making it better."
At the site, now frequently visited by tourists and locals, half a dozen American flags and more than 500 crosses shimmer in the bright sun. Most crosses bear the name, rank, age and hometown of a member of the U.S. military.
Taps sounds from a small stereo. Emotions of visitors range from sadness to rage, said Lane Anderson, Veterans for Peace chapter president in Santa Barbara.
"Some were just standing up on the wharf saying provocative things like, 'You don't care about them,' pointing at the crosses," Anderson said. "But most people have been very positive."
"When I first saw it I was very angry. I didn't want to see it," said Shawn Rickman, a Santa Barbara resident who was raised in Galveston, Texas. "The more I thought about it, though - those are individual lives."
"Washington, D.C., is where they need it, on the White House lawn," said Joe Tighe, a retired electrician with a grandson serving in Iraq. "The fact that they do it every Sunday shows a great love for humanity. It's an amazing fixture of the Santa Barbara community."
Strangers drop off donations to support the purchase of more crosses, and volunteers from Veterans for Peace in Santa Barbara and Santa Monica pledge to keep their Arlington Wests going, weather permitting, every Sunday until the troops come home.
Sherrill said the chance to take part in thought-provoking conversation is enough to keep him making crosses week after week.
"I was just misting up at first," said Frank Borreani, 61, of the Bay Area. "All of these people lost their dreams. This whole beach could be full of crosses before this is over."
Try using those same beaches with crosses representing UNBORN CHILDREN and see how fast you have to REMOVE them!
Wonder how many are really veterans.
VETERANS FOR PEACE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Servng Through End of 2004
Frank Houde
Gideon Rosenbluth
Bob Heberle
Wayne Wittman
End of 2005
Ellen Barfield
W. George Johnson
Gene Glazer
F. Lincoln Grahfs
End of 2006
David Cline
John Kim
Barry Riesch
Sharon Kufeldt
Ken Mayers
Current (2004) Officers
President - David Cline
Vice President - Ellen Barfield
Secretary - Bob Heberle
Treasurer - Ken Mayers
Maybe Mr. Sherrill would like to see a beach of crosses and Stars of David for ever life taken by a terrorist.
It would strech from San Fran to L.A.
Check out the chapter and contact information in your state...
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/chapters_112603.htm
This is for Arkansas...
Chapter-
094 NW Arkansas
Norman Williams
#1 Chelsea Rd.
Bella Vista AR 72714
vfp@iabv.com
479-876-5645
We could put a stop to it immediately by placing a cross for EVERY ABORTION next to it. They will either have to take theirs down or share the beach with crosses of dead babies who never got a chance to live at all. It might prove a point also.
Veterans for Peace
2004 National Convention
July 22-25 Boston MA
******
WEVE BEEN HERE BEFORE
VETERANS FOR PEACE STATEMENT ON
IRAQ PRISONER ABUSE SCANDAL
(.pdf flyer version of statement HERE)
Veterans For Peace believes that the recent allegations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison, and other places, by U.S. military personnel should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been to war.
In his investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba found:
numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force.
Some of our members served in Military Intelligence or Military Police units. We were part of a culture that gives lip service to the Geneva Conventions in training but encourages psychological and physical brutality in the pursuit of intell. In other words, the problem has been and is systemic.
For many veterans the painful feeling that we have been here before is overwhelming. We recall that such brutalities were commonplace in Korea and Vietnam, wars fought, as is Iraq, in the midst of a civilian populace, where combatants blend into and disappear among the civilian population.
Operating in a foreign land, hostile to our presence, coupled with the administrations demonstrated disdain for the restraints imposed by the Geneva Convention on prisoner treatment has led, inevitably, to these abuses. Can our soldiers, if captured, expect treatment governed by the terms of an agreement their own government has violated?
The abuse at military prisons is the latest step in the shameful course that our nation has been following in Iraq. It began with an invasion for reasons that have proven to be falsehoods and lies. This is more than the criminal activity of a few bad apples, it is the brutal, systemically embedded result of a misguided national policy.
There must be a full and public Congressional investigation and those all the way up the chain of command to General Myers and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld who should be held accountable.
The United States government must change course and admit to the unjust nature of this war, the disastrous miscalculations of the response of the Iraqi people to invasion and occupation, begin the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and restore real self-rule.
We expect there will be token dismissals. However we must not hang on to the policies that have led to these horrors, have further compromised our nations security and lost us the respect of the world. They must be excised, swiftly and thoroughly.
That is the only way to restore dignity and honor to our military and to our country.
Adopted by VFP National Board of Directors 5/14/04
Veterans for Peace = Same Kerry crowd that will spit on the returning vets, just as they did 30 years ago.
Interview with David Cline
DAVID CLINE is a disabled Vietnam War veteran. He is national president of Veterans for Peace, a coordinator of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and helped initiate Bring Them Home Now!, a newly formed coordinating committee of military families, veterans, active duty personnel, reservists and others opposed to the ongoing war in Iraq. Cline talked to the ISR¹s ERIC RUDER.
Statement of Ellen Barfield
U.S. Veteran and Vice President, Veterans for Peace
Ellen Barfield is the National Vice President of Veterans for Peace and a full-time peace and justice activist. She served in the U.S. Army from 1977-1981. She is also a member of the national boards of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the War Resister's League, and the School of the Americas Watch.
Veterans for Peace (VFP) is proud to join the ACLU and other concerned parties in strengthening the call for U.S. government disclosure of information about detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. As former military members, and in some cases as former prisoners of war, VFP members are very concerned about the likelihood that U.S. secrecy about foreign detainees could threaten the safety of U.S. soldiers who may be captured in future conflicts.
I would believe that there has got to be at least one angry person that is willing to approach tha ACLU about
Crosses being placed on public property, and a lawsuit be promptly filed.
Also that only Crosses are being display, would, I am sure insult the families of soldiers that have died who are not of that belief.
Am I missing the mark?
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