Veterans for Common Sense

Iraq’s rushed constitutional process has deepened ethnic and sectarian rifts and is likely to worsen the insurgency and hasten the country’s violent break-up, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said on Monday.
“The constitution is likely to fuel rather than dampen insurgency,” said Robert Malley, head of the think-tank’s Middle East and North Africa program, introducing an ICG report.
“A compact based on compromise and broad consent could have been a first step in a healing process. Instead it is proving yet another step in a process of depressing decline.”
Iraqis are to vote on October 15 in a constitutional referendum on what the ICG calls a weak document that lacks consensus.
Its report says the draft, endorsed by Shi’ite Muslim cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, as well as Shi’ite and Kurdish parties, is likely to pass despite fierce Sunni Arab opposition.
The Sunnis, it says, are unlikely to muster the two thirds of votes in three provinces required to block its passage.
“Such a result would leave Iraq divided, an easy prey to both insurgents and sectarian tensions that have dramatically increased over the past year,” the ICG says.
To avert this outcome, it urges the United States to broker a last-minute political deal among Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds, before October 15 that would assuage Sunni fears of a Shi’ite “super-region” emerging in the south and of “de-Baathification.”
The parties would commit themselves to acting after December elections to limit to four the number of governorates that can fuse into an autonomous region, and not to bar Iraqis from office just because of past membership in the Baath party.
“There is strong reason to doubt whether such a strategy can succeed,” the report says, citing polarized communal positions. “But given the stakes, the U.S. cannot afford not to try.”
SUNNI ARABS LEFT OUT
The draft constitution drawn up since June bears the imprint of the Shi’ite and Kurdish parties that dominate the parliament elected in January polls largely boycotted by Sunni Arabs.
Fifteen Sunni Arab politicians were added to the drafting committee in an effort at inclusiveness, but the ICG says they felt increasingly marginalized after the August 1 decision not to seek a six-month extension of the drafting deadline.
Negotiations then took place informally among Shi’ite and Kurdish politicians. The Sunnis refused to sign their drafts.
The ICG report argues that U.S. pressure to stick to an arbitrary deadline reflected the Bush administration’s apparent desire to prepare for a significant military drawdown in 2006.
“As a result the constitution-making process became a new stake in the political battle rather than an instrument to resolve it,” the report says.
Sunni Arabs reject the draft mainly because they believe its provisions on federalism could lead to Iraq’s break-up, leaving them in a landlocked heartland without oil resources.
The proposed constitution is also vague and ambiguous on decentralization and powers of taxation, the ICG says, with many other questions left for future legislation — in parliaments where majority Shi’ites are likely to have the upper hand.
“The United States has repeatedly stated that it has a strategic interest in Iraq’s territorial integrity, but today the situation appears to be heading toward de facto partition and full-scale civil war,” the report says.

A boxer who fails to answer the bell for a round by remaining on his stool loses the bout in a most inglorious way. Some might see that as analogous to the way U.S. forces left Vietnam in the only war America ever lost. Perhaps President Bush had that in mind when he vowed U.S. forces in Iraq will “stay the course.
The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, to North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces was a debacle. The eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq also threatens to be disastrous. The Bush administration–or subsequent ones–could find withdrawing more difficult than invading Iraq.
After pouring its blood and treasure into Iraq, the United States ultimately may have to settle for an Islamic republic similar to the one in neighboring Iran. If so, the administration’s dashed dream of planting the seeds of democracy in Iraq could become a nightmare. Bush and most Americans evidently are unwilling to escalate the war by committing the large number of troops that would be required to win it.
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who is considering a run for president in 2008, has called for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2006. Feingold rejects Bush’s assertion that announcing a deadline would give insurgents a reason to continue fighting.
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who has his eye on the White House, says the war in Iraq bears a depressing resemblance to the Vietnam War, in which he was awarded two Purple Hearts for wounds.
“We should start figuring out how we get out of there,” said Hagel, who believes the war has destabilized the Middle East. “Stay the course is not a policy. … We’re not winning.”
In the ornithological naming used during the Vietnam War, today’s hawks charge that the immediate withdrawal favored by some doves would be craven. But as the U.S. body count mounts, Bush may be forced by the increased number of war opponents to order a withdrawal.
His critics charge that he has no strategy for winning the war and lacks a withdrawal plan. The U.S. may be morally obligated to evacuate thousands of Iraqis who fought with us. Many of them could be in grave danger of reprisals if left behind.
When South Vietnam fell to communist forces, many Vietnamese who had been our strong allies were abandoned. Some of them spent years in “re-education camps.” It is a stain on our national honor.
As a reporter for United Press International, I watched the last helicopters fly from Saigon to U.S. Navy ships in the South China Sea. Panicked Vietnamese who had worked for Americans were left in despair outside the walls of the American Embassy. Many of them had been promised evacuation when the end came.
I remained in Vietnam for a month before the communist victors expelled the newspeople who had not left in the mass evacuation. Some had predicted the communist victory would result in a bloodbath of reprisals. There was no bloodbath, but many of our Vietnamese allies suffered, some remaining in hiding for years after the war.
Three decades later, Iraqis are struggling–with the help of American blood and billions of U.S. dollars–to put together a viable government acceptable to Islamic fundamentalist Shiites, Sunni members of Saddam Hussein’s former Baathist dictatorship, and the Kurds.
Sunni Arabs are behind the deadly insurgency in Iraq.
A draft constitution was bitterly attacked by Sunnis who complained they were unrepresented in the proposed constitution, which eventually must be ratified by a referendum.
The president insists the war in Iraq is a “noble cause,” but the evidence is mounting that invading that beleaguered country was a grandiose misadventure fueled by the president’s hubris. The pre-emptive invasion has landed the U.S. squarely in the middle of a raging war that may prove unwinnable and bears a remarkable resemblance to a Vietnam-style quagmire.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), writing about Vietnam in the forward to David Halberstam’s book “The Best and the Brightest,” said:
“It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn’t support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay.”
———-
Leon Daniel covered the Vietnam War for UPI and was UPI’s foreign editor.

There’s an old adage among investigative journalists: if you want to know what’s really going on, ask the workers.
If you want to know what’s really going on in Iraq – to American soldiers, to their families back home, to Iraqi women – read this column, and learn what I did at the historic AFL-CIO convention held this summer in Chicago.
If you find yourself hesitating, your mind’s eye imagining a smoke-filled room full of union toughs battling over issues that have no relevance to your life, believe me: this convention defied all stereotypes.
Predictably, the mainstream media would have you believe that the only thing that happened at the convention was negative: the much anticipated (and widely decried) walkout and disaffiliation, before the convention began, of two of the nation’s largest unions, the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters. True, the defection cast a temporary pall over the AFL-CIO’s 50th anniversary celebration. But something else happened that caused the remaining 2,000 delegates to stand tall and walk with a spring in their step. For the first time in the history of the trade union movement, they voted nearly unanimously to break with the federal government over a foreign war while it was still being fought. They passed a strongly worded resolution against the war in Iraq, and demanded that American troops be brought home, not merely “as soon as possible,” but “rapidly.” And rapidly, according to one of the makers of the motion, was to be interpreted as “immediately.”
“Our soldiers,” the resolution read in part, “come from America’s working families. They are our sons and daughters, our sisters and brothers, our husbands and wives. They deserve to be properly equipped with protective body gear and up-armored vehicles. And they deserve leadership that fully values their courage and sacrifice. Most importantly, they deserve a commitment from our country’s leaders to bring them home rapidly. An unending military presence will waste lies and resources, undermine our nation’s security and weaken our military.”
The mainstream press did not cover the resolution, even though the convention hall erupted with cheers and applause when it passed with resounding “ayes” and only one “no.” I asked the New York Times reporter why he neglected it. “The AFL-CIO isn’t as important as it used to be,” he replied smugly, then confessed, perhaps realizing that his comment belied why he was there at the convention, “and besides, my editors told me to focus on the split.”
A telling comment. Even if America’s most powerful media are not all walking in lockstep behind the Bush Administration (the Times has been critical of the war), their owners tend to be dismissive of working people who make up the vast majority of Americans, especially unionized workers.
But this time, there had to have been more to the blackout than mere bias. Consider the impact of this resolution on the military’s recruitment efforts. Where would the troops come from if working families stopped sending them? No one, not even the New York Times, likes to be stigmatized for allegedly “unpatriotic behavior at a time of war.” Cindy Sheehan, the “Peace Mom” who lost a son in Iraq and turned a one woman vigil into a cause celebre outside the President’s ranch at Crawford, Texas, seems unfazed by the “traitor” charge. But she would be in a stronger, more defensible position if it were widely known that she and her supporters are not in a minority, but rather, part of a swelling movement against the war involving Americans who are most affected by it: working families. Consider the impact on families in Vermont, whose children signed up for the National Guard so they could defend their country at home and get the opportunity to go to college, only to be deployed to Iraq in a war waged on a lie. The death toll of Vermont’s National Guardsmen just went up to 4, bringing the total number of Vermont soldiers dead in Iraq to 19 – among the highest per capita in the nation.
What if more Americans knew that Henry Nicholas, a member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) of Pennsylvania, rose in favor of the anti-war resolution and explained that his son had been deployed to Iraq four times and was about to head out again. “In my 45 years in the labor movement,” he said to crescendoing applause, “this is my proudest moment in being a union member, because it is the first time we had the courage to say ‘enough is enough.”
Then there was Nancy Wohlforth, a leader of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, who expressed her solidarity with visiting Iraqi trade unionists who had all hoped for the freedom to organize unions following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and instead found themselves facing privatization, massive unemployment, and efforts to outlaw them anew. Some are getting death threats. One labor leader has been assassinated. Small wonder that the Iraqi trade unions, once hopeful that American troops would bring freedom and democracy to Iraq, are now calling for their withdrawal. “We have a duty to report this,” Wolworth said to applause. “We are sick and tired of George Bush’s lies, and we are sick and tired of the massive deficit that is built up supporting this war while schools are going down the drain, while our working people are being laid off, and while so many other vital needs are not being dealt with.”
One of the five visiting trade unionists was the female President of the Federation of Free Workers, Councils and Unions in Iraq. Falah Alwan explained that women in Iraq are worse off now than they were before American troops invaded their country. In Baghdad, she told the convention, women cannot go outdoors without fear of being targeted or kidnapped by religious extremists. “In April,” Falah said, “I couldn’t find women on the streets. Now I need a bodyguard. I never needed that when I was growing up.” Now, she went on, Islamist extremists are gaining ground, calling for women to go under the veil and insisting on Islamic Sharia law becoming part of the proposed new Iraqi constitution, which among other things allows for “stoning for sex outside of marriage.”
The bottom line is this: Iraqi trade unionists and women’s groups are fighting a life and death struggle to prevent the imposition of theocratic rule in Iraq. Now the Bush Administration is in a quandary. It wants stability for oil, and a new constitution for stability. But at what price? It doesn’t look good when the Administration is seen hailing the freedoms for women in Afghanistan while allowing the repression of women in Iraq. Or championing freedom and democracy in Iraq while denying trade unionists the freedom to organize in Iraq – a freedom, incidentally, that’s also under assault in our own country.
I can’t predict how this will all end, but this much I know: There’s anger in the air, and a will to fight back. It started in Iraq, and it is spilling over into this country. When the nation’s largest labor federation turns against the war, that’s news and word will get out. And when working families say enough is enough and stop sending their children into this war, that means George W. Bush is in big trouble. If you don’t believe me, just ask a worker.
Charlotte Dennett is writing a book on the origins of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, and is a proud member of the National Writers Union. You can contact her at crdennett@aol.com

Leaders of the anti-Iraq war movement expect 100,000 demonstrators to descend on the nation’s capital this weekend. But as it prepares to encircle the White House, the antiwar coalition is quietly divided.

Some major groups, including protest organizers United for Peace and Justice, demand that the United States immediately withdraw from Iraq. Others, including Moveon.org, instead back resolutions calling for a pullout starting in late 2006.

At a moment when the groups say they are steadily gaining support, each faction asserts the other’s message is undermining their common cause.

In a public statement last month, the Green Party of the United States accused Moveon.org of having ”undermined such [antiwar] efforts by refusing to endorse an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq.”

Green Party spokesman Scott McLarty explained that his faction believes Moveon.org is giving cover to Democrats who have criticized the war but have not supported proposals to cut off funding.

”The more we prolong the occupation, the more dead American soldiers and the more dead Iraqi civilians there will be,” McLarty said. ”It’s going to be a disaster whether we stay there or whether we don’t stay there. And by staying there, we are aggravating the disaster.”

Tom Matzzie, Washington director for Moveon.org, agreed that the United States should leave Iraq as soon as possible, but argued that the quickest way to end the war is to build support in Congress for a specific date to remove the troops.

”As political organizers, we think the best way to bring our folks home from Iraq is to create a political dynamic where Republicans are defecting from their leadership and Democrats are making Iraq a political liability for the Republicans,” Matzzie said.

The internal discord poses a threat to the coalition just as its leaders believe it is on the cusp of becoming a force in mainstream politics.

Antiwar activists trace their emergence to a series of events over the summer. The sequence began in May when The Times of London published a leaked British intelligence document now known as the ”Downing Street Memo.”

The memo said that nine months before the Iraq invasion, ”the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy” of removing Saddam Hussein. Opponents saw the document as proof that the Bush administration had misled the nation about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Then, in June, two Republican representatives — Ron Paul of Texas and Walter B. Jones of North Carolina — joined Democrats in sponsoring the first bipartisan resolution calling on Bush to start bringing American troops home by October 2006. That same day, the ”Out of Iraq Caucus” was formed by a congressional panel.

The increased dissent on Capitol Hill set the stage for a wave of unusually intense public grief after one Ohio-based Marine battalion suffered several casualties in late July and early August.

Then, as August progressed, President Bush and Congress went on vacation. The news vacuum was filled by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain Marine who started a vigil outside Bush’s Crawford ranch. The antiwar movement quickly latched onto Sheehan.

Then Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The continued cost of the military involvement in Iraq was thrown into relief both by the projected price of rebuilding at home and the slow response in rescuing residents, which some critics attributed to crucial National Guard equipment having been sent overseas.

According to a CNN/USA Today poll, over the summer a majority of Americans went from thinking the war was not a mistake to thinking that it was. In the most recent polling, from Sept. 16-18, a record 67 percent disapproved of Bush’s handling of Iraq, while 63 percent said some or all US troops should be withdrawn.

This weekend’s protests in Washington are expected to attract people from around the country. Among the Boston-area activists is Military Families Speak Out, based in Jamaica Plain. The group, which includes family members of troops in Iraq, plans to hold a candlelight vigil tonight near the Washington Monument.

The group is hosting more than 250 military families from across the country. A Cambridge-based group, United for Justice With Peace, is ferrying two busloads of protesters to Washington.

But even though anyone opposed to Bush’s Iraq policy is welcome to join the protests, the organizers say, their focus will be an immediate withdrawal.

”There is a loud cry, which is getting louder from the grass roots, to end this war and bring the troops home now,” said Bill Dobbs of United for Peace and Justice.”

Globe staff writer Bryan Bender contributed to this report.

100,000: Huge rally against Iraq war surrounds White House

Associated Press, Saturday, September 24, 2005; Posted: 6:49 p.m. EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Crowds opposed to the war in Iraq surged past the White House on Saturday, shouting “Peace now” in the largest anti-war protest in the nation’s capital since the U.S. invasion.

The rally stretched through the day and into the night, a marathon of music, speechmaking and dissent on the National Mall.

Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, noting that organizers had hoped to draw 100,000 people, said, “I think they probably hit that.”

Speakers from the stage attacked President Bush’s policies head on, but he was not at the White House to hear it. He spent the day in Colorado and Texas, monitoring hurricane recovery.

In the crowd: young activists, nuns whose anti-war activism dates to Vietnam, parents mourning their children in uniform lost in Iraq, and uncountable families motivated for the first time to protest.

Connie McCroskey, 58, came from Des Moines, Iowa, with two of her daughters, both in their 20s, for the family’s first demonstration. McCroskey, whose father fought in World War II, said she never would have dared protest during the Vietnam War.

“Today, I had some courage,” she said.

While united against the war, political beliefs varied. Paul Rutherford, 60, of Vandalia, Michigan, said he is a Republican who supported Bush in the last election and still does — except for the war.

“President Bush needs to admit he made a mistake in the war and bring the troops home, and let’s move on,” Rutherford said.

His wife, Judy, 58, called the removal of Saddam Hussein “a noble mission” but said U.S. troops should have left when claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction proved unfounded.

“We found that there were none and yet we still stay there and innocent people are dying daily,” she said.

“Bush Lied, Thousands Died,” said one sign. “End the Occupation,” said another. More than 1,900 members of the U.S. armed forces have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003.

A few hundred people in a counter demonstration in support of Bush’s Iraq policy lined the protest route near the FBI building. The two groups shouted at each other, a police line keeping them apart. Organizers of a pro-military rally Sunday hoped for 10,000 people.

Ramsey said the day’s protest unfolded peacefully under the heavy police presence. “They’re vocal but not violent,” he said.

Arthur Pollock, 47, of Cecil County, Maryland, said he was against the war from the beginning. He wants the soldiers out, but not all at once.

“They’ve got to leave slowly,” said Pollock, attending his first protest. “It will be utter chaos in that country if we pull them out all at once.”

Folk singer Joan Baez marched with the protesters and later serenaded them at a concert at the foot of the Washington Monument. An icon of the 1960s Vietnam War protests, she said Iraq is already a mess and the troops need to come home immediately. “There is chaos. There’s bloodshed. There’s carnage.”

The protest in the capital showcased a series of demonstrations in foreign and other U.S. cities.

A crowd in London, estimated by police at 10,000, marched in support of withdrawing British troops from Iraq. Highlighting the need to get out, protesters said, were violent clashes between insurgents and British troops in the southern Iraq city of Basra.

In Rome, dozens of protesters held up banners and peace flags outside the U.S. Embassy and covered a sidewalk with messages and flowers in honor of those killed in Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who drew thousands of demonstrators to her 26-day vigil outside Bush’s Texas ranch last month, won a roar of approval when she took the stage in Washington. Her 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in Iraq last year.

“Shame on you,” Sheehan admonished, directing that portion of her remarks to members of Congress who backed Bush on the war. “How many more of other people’s children are you willing to sacrifice?

She led the crowd in chanting, “Not one more.”

Separately, hundreds of opponents of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund danced to the beat of drums in the Dupont Circle part of the city before marching toward the White House to join the anti-war protesters.

Supporters of Bush’s policy in Iraq assembled in smaller numbers to get their voice heard in the day’s anti-war din. About 150 of them rallied at the U.S. Navy Memorial.

Gary Qualls, 48, of Temple, Texas, whose Marine reservist son, Louis, died last year in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, asked: “If you bring them home now, who’s going to be responsible for all the atrocities that are fixing to happen over there? Cindy Sheehan?”

The Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee accused the Pentagon on Wednesday of stonewalling an inquiry into claims that the U.S. military identified four September 11 hijackers more than a year before the 2001 attacks.

The Defense Department barred several witnesses from testifying at a judiciary committee hearing and instead sent a top-level official who could provide little information on al Qaeda-related intelligence uncovered by a secret military team code-named Able Danger.

“That looks to me like it may be obstruction of the committee’s activities, something we will have to determine,” said the panel’s chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Specter also complained that the Pentagon delivered hundreds of pages of documents related to Able Danger late on the eve of the hearing, giving his committee staff no time to review the material.

“The American people are entitled to some answers,” Specter said. “It is not a matter of attaching blame. It is a matter of correcting errors so that we don’t have a repetition of 9/11.”

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the Pentagon considered Able Danger to be a classified matter and declined to participate when the judiciary committee chose to hold an open hearing.

“We have to obey the laws with respect to security classifications,” Rumsfeld told reporters.

Witnesses barred from testifying included military intelligence officers and analysts involved in Able Danger, a now defunct operation that used powerful computers to sift through public data in search of intelligence clues.

People involved with the operation have said that Able Danger identified September 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers as being members of an al Qaeda cell in the early months of 2000.

A Pentagon review of the operation turned up no documents to support the assertion that Able Danger had been able to identify Atta as an al Qaeda member.

But one official, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, has also said publicly that Able Danger members tried to pass the information along to the FBI three times in September 2000 but were forced by Pentagon lawyers to cancel the meetings.

Much of the information related to Able Danger was destroyed in 2000.

“Had that information been shared with the FBI, which was trying to get it, 9/11 might have been prevented,” Specter said.

The September 11 commission, which investigated the attacks that killed 3,000 people, has also said it found no documented evidence that Able Danger had identified Atta and other hijackers.

But former commissioner Slade Gorton acknowledged in a September 20 letter to the judiciary committee that Able Danger member, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, had told a commission lawyer that he saw Atta’s name and photo before the attacks.

William Dugan, acting assistant to the defense secretary for intelligence oversight, told Specter he knew little about Able Danger but said any information on Atta could have been transferred to the FBI if obtained under proper regulations.

“I understand that you were sent over in a very limited capacity, with perhaps the calculation that you didn’t have this information,” Specter told Dugan.

For two full days, George W. Bush was bashed. He was taken to task on his handling of stem cell research, population control, the Iraq war and, especially, Hurricane Katrina. The critics were no left-wing bloggers. They were rich, mainly Republican and presumably Bush voters in the last two presidential elections.

 The Bush-bashing occurred last weekend at the annual Aspen conference sponsored by the New York investment firm Forstmann Little & Co. Over 200 invited guests, mostly prestigious, arrived Thursday night (many by private aircraft) and stayed until Sunday morning for more than golf, hikes and gourmet meals. They faithfully attended the discussions presided over by PBS’s Charlie Rose on such serious subjects as “global poverty and human rights” and “the ‘new’ world economy.” The connecting link was hostility to President Bush.

 “All discussions are off the record,” admonished the conference’s printed schedule. Consequently, I will refrain from specifically quoting panelists and audience members. But the admonition says nothing about personal conversations outside the sessions. Nor do I feel inhibited in quoting myself. Even if I am violating the spirit of secrecy rules, revealing criticism of Bush by this elite group, and the paucity of defense for him, is valuable in reflecting the president’s parlous political condition.

 The Forstmann Little Aspen Weekend is made possible by the generosity of Theodore J. Forstmann, a doughty supporter of supply-side economics and longtime contributor to the Republican Party. Invited guests are drawn from government, diplomacy, politics, the arts, entertainment and journalism.

 I was surprised that the program indicated the first panel, on stem cell research, consisted solely of scientists hostile to the Bush administration’s position. In the absence of any disagreement, I took the floor to suggest there are scientists and bioethicists with dissenting views and that it was not productive to demean opposing views as based on “religious dogma.” The response was peeved criticism of my intervention and certainly no support.

 I do not see myself as a defender of the Bush presidency, and I am sure the White House does not regard me as such. But as a member of the second panel consisting of journalists, I felt constrained to argue against implications that Hurricane Katrina should cause the president to rediscover race and poverty. My comments again generated more criticism from the audience and obvious exasperation by Charlie Rose. Indeed, after the closing dinner Saturday night, the moderator made clear he was displeased by my conduct.

 After the first two panels, I feared I was the odd man out in accepting Teddy Forstmann’s invitation. But during a break, one of the president’s closest friends — who had remained silent — thanked me profusely for my comments. That set a pattern. Throughout the next two days, men and women who were mute publicly thanked me privately for speaking up. When I said nothing during one panel discussion, some people asked me why I was silent.

 Longtime participants in Forstmann Little conferences (this was my first and, after this column, probably my last) told me they had not experienced such hostility against a Republican president at previous events. Yet, they were sure a majority of the guests had voted for Bush.

 This analysis was reported to me over lunch by a financier who regularly attends these events. When he thanked me for my comments and said he shared my sentiments, I asked why he did not express them publicly at a session. He replied that he did not feel able to articulate what he felt. Critics of the president who are vocal and supporters who are reticent comprise a massive communications failure.

 U.S. News & World Report disclosed this week, with apparent disdain, that presidential adviser Karl Rove took time off from the Katrina relief effort to be at Aspen. He was needed as a counterweight. I settled in for serious fireworks, expecting Bush-bashers to assault his alter ego at the conference’s final session. However, direct confrontation with a senior aide must have been more difficult than a remote attack on the president. It would be a shame if Rove returned to Washington without informing George W. Bush how erstwhile friends have turned against him.

I spent three weeks in Crawford, Texas. The heat was unbearable; bugs were everywhere, including fire ants crawling into my keyboard. But I wouldn’t have traded Camp Casey for any other story that I have ever covered.

I remember the frigid cold of January in Washington DC, when millions around the world said no to the war in Iraq. We covered the Democratic and Republican conventions, I went to Iowa and New Hampshire to cover the primaries. These were all stories that I will not forget, but what happened this August in Crawford, Texas, was historic.

Twenty years from now, social studies classes will be studying the impact that Cindy Sheehan, Camp Casey, and the September 24th March on Washington had on George Bush’s Iraq policy.

There were several moments in Crawford when I thought to myself, “I am witnessing history.” Cindy Sheehan was the spark plug, and has emerged as a leader of the anti-war movement. Other leaders also emerged at Camp Casey; it is not that they were new to protesting the war, but Cindy’s stand gave them the national stage that they were unable to gain access to before.

I remember the first press conference that I attended, Day 6 of the camp. Cindy opened with her emotional plea for answers, and many other family members followed, letting the world know that she was not alone.

I remember Bill Mitchell and Dante Zapalla in tears as they placed flowers on their loved ones’ crosses. It was the first day that the crosses from Arlington West were set up at Camp Casey. Veterans for Peace had been setting those crosses up for over a year – now they were on the national stage.

I remember when Larry Northern mowed those crosses down with his pickup truck. I was at the Crawford Peace House, typing my blog report; Cindy was a few feet away typing her daily blog post. The phone call came, letting us know that the crosses had been mowed down. A few minutes later, a volunteer sitting behind us shouted “No!” At first we thought she was just learning about the crosses, but she had just learned that her pen pal was killed in Iraq. Cindy immediately comforted her. Cindy Sheehan has an amazing gift for connecting with people individually. Everywhere she goes now, people want to meet her, and while others would probably be uncomfortable, Cindy with a hug or a word of encouragement connects with them all.

I remember the candlelight vigil the night that tens of thousands of people around the country held vigils in their communities. Aidan Delgado, a veteran of the war in Iraq, gave an impassioned plea for us to make sure that our military is never used again until all other means have been exhausted.

I remember Hart Viges, another Iraq War vet, talking about how hard it is for him to deal with the knowledge that he killed people defending their homeland. And Charlie Anderson speaking after learning that his wife had left him. Cody Camacho explained that his own wife left him because she didn’t recognize him when he returned from Iraq.

Marine Jeff Key played taps at dusk every day, and one night invited the counter protesters across the road to join Camp Casey for a vigil honoring our fallen soldiers. Jeff came back across the street carrying a huge pole with the American flag on top, followed by the counter protesters, who sang and vigiled with Camp Casey.

Ann Wright, who, after decades in the military and diplomatic corps resigned in protest of the Iraq war, was the Camp Casey Commandant. Her leadership kept things organized and from descending into chaos.

Beatriz Saldivar, Dante Zappala, Mimi Evans, Celeste Zappala, Tamara Rosenleaf, and dozens of other family members of fallen or deployed soldiers also emerged as leaders of the anti-war movement.

Grammy Award-winning musician Steve Earle put it best: “It wasn’t the fact that I opposed the Vietnam War that stopped it … It was when my father came to oppose the war that it ended.”

With Cindy, Beatriz, Ann, Dante, Mimi, Charlie, Jeff, Aidan, Cody, Celeste, Tamara, and the thousands of others who got their voice at Camp Casey leading the way to Washington this week, more mothers and fathers will begin to oppose this war.

On April 24, 1971, Vietnam Veterans Against the War were among the leaders of 500,000 people who converged on Washington to end the Vietnam War. On September 24, 2005, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans for Peace will be leading another huge march against today’s war. As the call goes out far and wide to gather in the nation’s capitol, history stands to be made again.