- WASHINGTON (AFP, Arab News)
-- The families of more than 600 US troops in Iraq have launched a campaign
for their return, bitterly criticizing President George W. Bush's reasons
for going to war and what they see as his belittlement of the risks.
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- "George Bush said, 'Bring them on,'" said Nancy
Lessin, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, referring to the president's
response to post-war attacks on US troops occupying post-war Iraq. "Those
three words galvanized Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace
and other veterans' organizations to initiate the campaign we are launching
today," she said.
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- "We say, 'Bring them home now.' Bring them home
because our troops should not have been in Iraq in the first place. "Bring
them home because there was no imminent danger to the United States. Bring
them home because there were no weapons of mass destruction. Bring them
home because there was no link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein,"
said Lessin.
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- "We are here today to say it was wrong for the US
to invade Iraq, it is wrong for the US to be occupying Iraq, and there
is no right way to do a wrong thing."
-
- Members of her group rallied in Washington on Wednesday
and Thursday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of the 82nd Airborne Infantry.
They stressed that most of them were Republicans, had voted for Bush and
had supported the war based on intelligence presented early this year.
"From proud liberators in the great American tradition, our troops
have become oppressors and occupiers in a hostile nation," said Susan
Shuman, whose son is in the Massachusetts National Guard serving in Iraq.
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- "Our troops are stuck in a quagmire of urban desert
guerrilla warfare for which they are not prepared or equipped," she
said. "My question to Mr. Bush is, 'How many more of our sons do you
need to bring our children home?'" said Fernando Suarez de Solar,
whose son, Jesus Alberto, was killed in action in Iraq. "How many
American lives are worth one gallon of oil?," he mused.
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- Stan Goff of Raleigh, North Carolina, a 26-year career
soldier and retired Special Forces master Sergeant, was bitter about the
war.
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- "You know, in all the administration's fictions
of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear programs and... the phony Al-Qaeda
connections that are being exposed as fabrications, this is not the rule
of law," he said. "This is the rule of bombs and bullets. These
are rich men in very expensive suits conducting statecraft like gangsters.
-
- "The US does have a responsibility to Iraq and to
the people of Iraq to clean up the mess that we have made," said Charlie
Richardson, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out. But, he added, "It
can't be done with US troops. In launching the 'Bring Them Home Now' campaign,
we are calling on military families and others in the military and veterans
communities to speak out against the use of our troops as cannon fodder
... against the reckless occupation of Iraq."
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