Recent war protest in D.C. was 'where we need to be'

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6312

Recent war protest in D.C. was 'where we need to be'
by Ed Tant | Mar 24 2007


Editor's note: Ed's photos of the march can be found at edtant.com

WASHINGTON - Chanting "Not another nickel, not another dime. No more money for Bush's crime," thousands of anti-war Americans marched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon on March 17. The demonstration coincided with the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and came nearly 40 years after the 1967 march on the Pentagon that was a turning point in protests against the Vietnam War.

Despite bone-chilling cold and biting winds, concerned citizens converged upon Washington and the Pentagon across the Potomac in Virginia. Even large and angry groups of pro-war protesters did nothing to diminish the determination of the anti-war legions. Like echoes of the '60s resounding into the present, the peaceful and good-humored war protesters chanted, "Hell no, we won't go. We won't kill for Texaco," and "Hey, Bush! What do you say? How many kids did you kill today?"

Carrying signs urging an end to the Iraq war and impeachment of the Bush/Cheney administration, the marchers surged across the Potomac to the Pentagon in a long and winding peace procession led by war veterans and Gold Star family members who had lost sons or daughters in Bush's Iraq misadventure.

"Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan told a cheering audience, "Forty years ago there was a march on the Pentagon and here we are 40 years later marching on the Pentagon against another illegal and immoral war. When is it going to stop? This country gets into these wars for the corporations. It's to make people like Halliburton and Exxon and Blackwater and Raytheon rich and to line the pockets of George Bush and Dick Cheney and all the rest of the war criminals. We have to march on the Congress to tell them that we are the deciders and that we have decided that we want Bush and Cheney impeached, we want them indicted and we want them imprisoned."

Talking with me after her speech, Sheehan urged parents to discourage their children from joining the military and said that whether parents of fallen military personnel are for or against the Iraq war, "My heart is with you because I know how painful it is."

Sheehan lost her son in Iraq in 2004.

"I wish I had tried harder to stop my son, Casey, from joining the military," she told me.

more...

[Monkeyman]

1. Its time to cut off the Military From Our Kids

[EFerrari]

2. They tried to put up a recruiting billboard in our neighborhood

and it lasted less than a day before it was "edited".

[lazer47]

3. For too long they have held

our kids and young ones hostage to wars that have been created by older adults,, Wars would be fought a lot less if the ones who started it had,, to go fight it..