The Veterans For Peace National Convention was held at the University of Washington in Seattle from August 10th to Aug 13..
On August 11th, Iraq combat veteran Ricky Clousing held a pressconference near the convention. Clousing is a 24 year old Army sergeant and interrogator from Seattle who left Fort Bragg, North Carolina in 2005 after returning from Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division and has been AWOL since.
Clousing stated: “In Iraq I operated as an interrogator and was attached to tactical infantry units during daily patrol operations. As an interrogator I spoke to Iraqis each day. This gave me an idea of what local civilians thought of coalition forces. Throughout my training very appropriate guidelines for the treatment of prisoners were set. However, I witnessed our baseless incarceration of civilians. I saw civilians physically harassed. I saw an innocent Iraqi killed before me by US troops. I saw the abuse of power that goes without accountability. Being attached to a tactical infantry unit and being exposed to the brutalities of war, I began to doubt and reconsider my beliefs.”
On August 12, Lt. Ehren Watada spoke to the convention. Watada publicly refused to deploy with the Fort Lewis, Washington based 3rd Stryker Brigade on June 22 becoming the first military officer to take such a stand. The next day, Sarah Rich, mother of U.S. Army soldier Suzanne Swift, blasted the Army for jailing her daughter at Fort Lewis for refusing orders to return to Iraq. Speaking to a jam packed news conference at the convention, Rich said her daughter was repeatedly subjected to sexual harassment by U.S. soldiers during her first deployment to Iraq: “She was arrested, stripped, treated like a common criminal, while the criminals who assaulted her go free,” Rich said. “Suzanne was my hero when she went to Iraq, my hero when she came home, and my hero when she went AWOL. Right now, soldiers are being raped. It’s an epidemic.
There are 22 task forces on military sexual assault, yet the perpetrators go free,” she charged. “Free my daughter and stop military sexual assault now!” On August 13th, 150 U.S. military veterans boarded buses for Peace Arch International Park on the US/Canadian border to celebrate resistance to unjust war with U.S. soldiers who fled to Canada to avoid duty in Iraq and to demand an end to the war and occupation. This was the culmination of the Convention.. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright embraced 22 year old Iraq veteran turned refugee Kyle Snyder at the border. Of his resistance to the war, Col. Wright stated, "It is part of military tradition that you can refuse illegal orders," she said. "They have the courage to stand up and say... 'I'm not going to have this war on my conscience.'" Veterans For Peace President David Cline told the crowd, “It’s great being up here at this Peace Arch Park. Peace has no borders. It’s important to express our solidarity with U.S. soldiers who have come here. When a war is illegal, immoral and unjust, it is not honorable to fight in it.”
Cline said he was wounded three times in Vietnam and later came to oppose the war, while others opposed it from the beginning. “It doesn’t matter if you come to the table early or late,” he said. “What matters is that you come to the table.” He thanked Canada for sheltering more than 50,000 Vietnam War draft resisters and urged the Canadian government to reverse its policy of denying asylum to soldiers who flee deployment to Iraq. “I appeal to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to stop following George Bush and start following your heart,” Cline said. Lee Zaslofsky, who fled to Canada in 1970, now heads the Toronto based War Resisters Support Campaign.
He read aloud a letter from U.S. soldiers appealing court rulings ordering them expelled from Canada. “We agree with former Prime Minister Trudeau that Canada should be a refuge from militarism,” he said. Kyle Snyder served with a U.S. Army Stryker Brigade in Mosul, Iraq, before fleeing to British Columbia in April 2005. Dressed in the desert fatigues of the 94th Brigade, he told the crowd, “I feel that I was betrayed and lied to by this administration. The Pentagon lists over 40,000 soldiers as AWOL since this war began. I’m here five minutes from the border and I can’t go home to visit my family. That’s absurd. I’m fighting for my country right now!” (Adapted from US People’s World) ?