[LAAMN] 2/21-22: National Call-In Days to Close the U.S. Army School of the Americas!

[SIUHIN]

 
Two weeks until Lobby Day and National  Call-in Day: Tell Congress to Close 
the SOA!
from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) 
 
SOA Watch Update
February 7,  2005

TWO WEEKS UNTIL THE DC  LOBBY DAY, ACTIONS and NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY: TELL 
CONGRESS TO CLOSE THE SOA/  WHINSEC!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21 and TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22

1. DC  legislative trainings,lobby day and actions
2. National Call-in Day to Close  the SOA/WHINSEC
 
For More  Information, Please Visit: _http://www.SOAW.org_ 
(http://www.soaw.org/) 




- - - - - - - - - - - - -
1. DC LEGISLATIVE ACTIONS DAYS: FEBRUARY  21-22

Click here for INFORMATION, including schedules,  location and housing 
information:  http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=983

Representative Jim McGovern  (D-MA) will be introducing new legislation 
to close the SOA/ WHINSEC early  this year, and the SOA Watch Lobby Day 
is a key to victory in this campaign!  Join us in DC to meet with your 
Representative's office, network with other  SOA Watch activists from 
your region, get up-to-date information on the  legislative campaign to 
close the SOA/ WHINSEC and participate in targeted  direct actions.

On Monday, February 21st, we'll gather at 1 pm at the  George Washington 
Univeristy Law School at 20th and H Streets for a  legislative teach-in 
and lobby trainings. On Tuesday, February 22nd, there  will be an SOA 
Watch drop-in space at the Church of the Brethren on Capitol  Hill, where 
you can stop by before, in between or after your Congressional  visits to 
get a cup of coffee, eat lunch, pick up materials for  Congressional 
offices and socialize with others working to close the  SOA.

FOR LOCATION INFORMATION, visit  http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=989.

Make your travel arragements  today! There are plenty of inexpensive 
flights to DC online right now. For a  start, check: www.cheaptickets.com 
and www.orbitz.com. Our meeting and  drop-in spaces are metro-accessible.

FOR TRAVEL and TRANSPORTATION  INFORMATION, visit  
http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=991.

ACCESSIBILITY: If you  have questions about accessibility at these events 
or if you need  accessibility accommodations, please email Christy Pardew 
at  cpardew(at)soaw.org or call her in the SOA Watch office at  202-234-3440.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
2.  NATIONAL CALL IN DAY â FEBRUARY 22, 2005

For more  information on the call-in day, visit  
http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=96.

Do you have 15 minutes to  spare for US military accountability and 
justice for the people of the  Americas?

Even if you are not able to make it to DC for this yearâs  Spring Lobby 
Day, you can still take IMPORTANT legislative action at home.  SOA Watch 
calls on you to call your Representative and Senators and urge  them to 
support legislation that would close and investigate the SOA/WHINSEC  
once and for all!

These three calls can truly make a difference.  Congressional offices 
count how many calls they get on a specific issue, and  these counts help 
influence political support and policy  decisions.

CONGRESSIONAL SWITCHBOARD:  202-224-3121

A GOOD PHONE CALL SHOULD:

-- Be  directed towards the appropriate person â- the legislative staffer 
who  handles the SOA/WHINSEC issue, usually either the foreign policy or 
defense  aide. Just ask when you call.
-- Include mention of your name and city/area  of residence so they know 
you are a constituent.
-- Clearly state your  request, or "ask":
** For Representatives: Co-sponsor new, upcoming  legislation that calls 
for the suspension and investigation of  the
SOA/WHINSEC. Have them Call Rep. McGovernâs office for more  information.
** For Senators: Introduce companion legislation in the Senate  that 
would call for the suspension and investigation of the  SOA/WHINSEC.
-- Briefly mention why that particular Member of Congress would  and 
should support the ask. Check out the talking points for ideas (but feel  
free to think outside the box) at  
http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=115.

RESEARCH BEFORE  YOU CALL:

A more informed caller usually gets a better response,  so please do a 
little background research on your Member of Congress. This  small 
investment will be useful in future lobbying on SOA/WHINSEC issues and  
many other causes.

-- The SOA Watch Legislative Action Center has  tons of helpful resources 
such as: a quick link to find out who your Members  of Congress are; past 
voting and co-sponsorship records (look under  âLegislative Historyâ), 
talking points and other ways to take action. Visit  today at 
http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=96.
-- The Latin America  Working Group (of which SOA Watch is a coalition 
member) keeps a  congressional voting record on Latin America issues, 
especially Colombia  votes. Check them out here:  
http://www.lawg.org/tools/scorecard/intro.htm.
-- Government sites with  information and links include: www.house.gov, 
www.senate.gov and  thomas.loc.gov.

DONâT STOP NOW:

Excited? Ther

[LAAMN] 1/27: Memorial Reception for 1964 Mississippi Civil Rights Murders

[SIUHIN]

 
Memorial Reception for C.O.R.E. Field Workers Goodman,  Chaney, & Schwerner


From: CORE Western Regional Office/Black  Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles 
County


Location: Nat'l Congress of Racial  Equality
3325 Wilshire Blvd Suite 767,Los Angeles,CA 
 
When: Sunday, February 27, 4:00pm to  6:30pm

Phone: 213-252-1996
 
 
This reception is given to posthumously honor three National Congress of  
Racial Equality (CORE) field workers, James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and  
Michael Schwerner, who were victims of the infamous 1964 Mississippi Civil  
Rights 
murders.

James Chaney was an African American and a Christian, and  Goodman and 
Schwerner were both white and Jewish, the three young men were  murdered while 
investigating the firebombing of an African American church  during CORE's 
Freedom 
Summer campaign.

On the way back to the CORE office  in Meridian, Mississippi on June 21, 
1964, the three men were arrested by Deputy  Sheriff Cecil Price. Later that 
evening they were released from the Neshoba jail  only to be stopped again on a 
rural road where a white mob shot them dead and  buried them in a earthen dam. 
On 
4th August, 1964, FBI agents found the bodies  in an earthen dam at Old Jolly 
Farm. This incident was depicted in the movie  "Mississippi Burning". Later 
this year in Los Angeles, CORE plans it's first  annual Goodman, Chaney, and 
Schwerner Memorial Awards Dinner.

So, please  join us for our Black History reception. CORE members and 
supporters, both  west-coast and east-coast, will inform you about CORE's 
domestic 
and  international economic development activities. 

As a nongovernmental  organization within the United Nations, CORE has 
established social and business  opportunities in many developing countries. 
For 
example, on January 18, 2005,  CORE National Director Roy Innis and the 
residing 
Ambassador of Nigeria held a  conference on food development in Africa.

Special Guest: Mr. Cedric  Innis, son of CORE National Director, Honorable 
Roy Innis. Topic: "From Civil  Rights to Economic Equality & Empowerment 
through 
Real Estate  Acquisition."

Attendance is free; donations $50 and over are welcomed to  help fund the 
Goodman, Chaney, & Schwerner Memorial Awards  Dinner.

Hosts:
Maryalice Jones, Western Region National CORE  Director

Mr. Carl McGill, Assistant Western Region National CORE  Director; Founder, 
CEO & Chairman of the Black Chamber of Commerce of Los  Angeles County

Websites:
Chaney, Goodman &  Schwerner
_http://www.core-online.org/history/chaney.htm_ 
(http://www.core-online.org/history/chaney.htm) 
National  CORE
_http://www.core-online.org_ (http://www.core-online.org/) 
Black  Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles County
_http://www.blackchamberlac.org_ (http://www.blackchamberlac.org/) 

=
ActionLA
Action for World Liberation Everyday!
Tel:  (213)403-0131
URL: http://www.ActionLA.org
e-mail:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Please Donate to ActionLA!
Send check  pay to:
ActionLA/SEE
1013 Mission St. #6
South Pasadena CA  91030
(All donations are tax deductible)

Please join our  ActionLA Listserv
go to: http://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/actionla
or  send e-mail to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]



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[LAAMN] two chances to protest the appearance of john yoo at uci on monday feb 7!

[Dan Tsang]

FYI...

Bibliography on Yoo: http://www.lib.uci.edu/online/fellows/Yoo.pdf

Bibliography on Viet Dinh (earlier speaker):
http://www.lib.uci.edu/online/fellows/Dinh.pdf

d.
-- Forwarded message --
Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 22:25:45 -0800
From: Mark Levine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
...

HERE'S OUR CHANCE TO TELL THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND THE PEOPLE THAT
BROUGHT YOU ABU GHRAIB JUST WHAT WE THINK OF THEM! WE HAVE TWO CHANCES TO
PROTEST THE PUBLIC LECTURE OF JOHN YOO, THE AUTHOR OF THE INFAMOUS TORTURE
MEMO FOR NEWLY CONFIRMED ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO GONZALEZ, AT UCI ON
MONDAY FEBRUARY 7TH.

1: The Chancellor's Distinguished Fellows Series panel discussion on
February 7, 2005, with Professor John Choon Yoo, UC Berkeley, School
of Law, has been moved to Monarch Bay B, Student Center.  The panel
discussion will begin at 1:30pm.

The panel members are John Choon Yoo, Mark Le Vine, UCI Associate
Professor of History, Cecelia Lynch, UCI Associate Professor of
Political Science, and Stephen Rohde, Attorney with Rohde and
Victoroff in Los Angeles and former President of the Southern California
chapter of the ACLU.


2: PUBLIC LECTURE:

A TEACH-IN FEATURING UCI PROFESSORS, INTERNATIONAL LAWYER VICTOR CONDE,
MEMBERS OF CODE PINK JUST BACK FROM THE IRAQ/JORDANIAN BORDER, OC PEACE
COALITION AND OTHERS WILL START AT 6PM SHARP ON THE BACK PATIO OF THE
UNIVERSITY CLUB. PLEASE COME OUT IN FORCE!

The public lecture by John Choon Yoo, entitled, "Fighting the New
Terrorism:  The Role of Law", will begin at 7 pm, February 7, 2005,
University Club.  No tickets or reservations are required.

Please visit UCI Chancellor's website for updates.
http://www.chancellor.uci.edu/cdfs/index.html

VIEW AND SIGN THE PETITION AGAINST YOO'S INVITATION AS A CHANCELLOR'S
DISTINGUISHED FELLOW: http://www.petitiononline.com/yoo2705/petition.html
  --

___
List-Info: https://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/uci-peace-justice


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[LAAMN] The Woman in the Balcony, The Axis of Oil

[Ed Pearl]

Daily Kos blog:
Who Was the Iraqi Woman in the Balcony?
Thu Feb 3rd, 2005 at 09:43:01 PST

(From the diaries -- kos. This cursory investigation
demands a deeper look into Ms. Sofia Taleb Al Souhail.
Held up as a shining example of why we've spent $200
billion and wasted 1,500 lives and counting, it looks
upon first glance that she doesn't live in Iraq, has
been affiliated with right-wing organizations, her
father was killed in Lebanon while planning a coup
against Saddam, and her family claims the US was
complicit in his assassination.)

I am always interested in finding out who the people are
that are chosen to sit with in the "good seats" at the
State of The Union.

Especially after last year, when Chalabi was sitting in
the seat. You often wonder who these people are.
So as I'm watching the woman hold up a shaky "peace"
sign, finger stained in purple, you are wonder. "Did
they fly her in? Wow, that's some crazy symbolism."

So I decided to look around.

Diaries  :: mikel1814's diary
 ::
Here's what Bush said.
"Eleven years ago, Safia's father was assassinated by
Saddam's intelligence service. Three days ago in
Baghdad, Safia was finally able to vote for the leaders
of her country -- and we are honored that she is with us
tonight."

Her name is Safia Taleb Al Souhail.
She works for the "International Alliance For Justice,"
which no longer has a website that is functioning. [
www.i-a-j.org. ] I tried to do a google search for the
site and found a cached version of another one, www.a-i-
j.org, which is down now as well and looks like it's
been taken over by a defunct porn website. As for www.i-
a-j.org, its now a rather generic "antispyware" website.

Beats me. I have my theories about all of these freedom
and justice and happy iraqi websites that are oh so
slick and oh so American, but I can't draw any
conclusions because I have no background in doing so.

I was struck by the line "three days ago in Baghdad,
Safia was finally able to vote..."

I did a search and found that she published an article
in December of 2003 for the group "Foundation For the
Defence of Democracies." [www.defenddemocracy.org]

They seem pretty reasonable when you look at their
mission statement on the website. The Foundation for the
Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a non-partisan, non-
profit policy institute dedicated to:

* Finding the most effective ways to defeat terrorism--
and the totalitarian ideologies used to incite and
justify terrorism.

* Employing strategic communications, education and
research to fight terrorism across national, ethnic and
religious lines.

* Promoting freedom and basic human rights for all
peoples.

So, then I went to see who they are, being non-partisan
and all. Board of Directors?

Steve Forbes.
Jack Kemp.
Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

OK, so far not so balanced.

Distinguished Advisors?

Newt Gingrich.
R. James Woolsey.

OK, yikes. Still a bit off kilter.

Board of Advisors?

Gary Bauer.
Charles Karuthammer, (yes the columnist)
Bill Kristol.
Zell Miller.
Richard Perle.

wow. OK and then finally we see who represents the other
side on that board.

Donna Brazille. (?)
Frank Lautenberg.
Chuck Schumer.

All very interesting, strange, but leading me away from
my original question. Who is Safia Taleb Al Souhail?
Well I read her piece published under the banner of this
group here. It was written in January of 2003. Just
before we headed off to war. I think it's important to
remember the mood of the time, and the debates we were
having.


The first paragraph is what got me.
"As we watch UN inspectors search Iraq for weapons of
mass destruction, I ask, why are there no UN inspectors
investigating Saddam Hussein's crimes against the Iraqi
people? Along with hidden caches of biological and
chemical weapons, Iraw also has hidden tourture
chambers, prisons, and maass graves."

Sound familiar? Does to me. Not only does he have lots
of weapons that he's hiding, the United Nations is a
worthless organization that isn't holding Sadaam
accountable. Hmmm...

The article goes on to explain how bad Sadaam was for
women, which we all know his brutality was second to
none. But what struck me again was that she left the
country in 1968. She returned to the country at some
point recently. I found an article about her return to
Iraq. to hold a Iraqi women's conference in Baghdad in
July "facilitated by the coalition provisional
authority." It seems she was in a group of people that
had "returned" to Iraq with the "facitity" of the CPA.
This was at another pastel colored, sleek website called
"womenforiraq.org"

But here it is again, you click to read more about the
conference in Baghdad...and you go to another blank page
that says "Hopefully /article928.php at www.i-a-j.org
will be up again soon. - 1254726158" And you click the
"home" button and you're right back at that anti-spyware
site. All of these groups are strangely connected to
each o

[LAAMN] Anti-Capitalist Article Posted on Sites/ New Organization Formed

[m0rph 30]

Why Anti-Capitalism? (Excerpt from Anarcho-Communism piece) posted on
a couple of different sites

Correction of name, my name is Joaquin Cienfuegos (not
Cienfuefos, or Cienguegos), just realized that.
Check out the sites:
Celtic Fire - http://celticfire.t35.com/?id=anticap
Global Resistance Network -
http://www.globalresistancenetwork.com/id125.html
 

 
Newly formed Anti-Capitalist Network Formed in Los Angeles,CA
 
Los Angeles Collective Society Network (proposed name)
 
Draft Mission Statement:
 
Students, workers, and activists are coming together to fight against 
capitalism, which is the cause of all the misery here in the U.S. and around 
the world affecting humanity.
 
To achieve a better society is to organize ourselves and take direct action.
 
In order for action and organization to be effective we need to have autonomy, 
union, direct democracy, a collective vision, and co-operation amongst 
ourselves.
 
Current projects working on: Freedom Uprising Festival, and Organization
 
We hold dialogue and meetings every Sunday at 5pm - 
Open to anyone
 Velocity Cafe 
2127 Lincoln Blvd, Santa Monica, CA (3 blocks South of Pico) (Location might 
change in the future)


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[LAAMN] Ex-fullback for Broncos defends Ward Churchill

[Michael Novick]

Churchill rant has some truth
By Reggie Rivers
February 04, 2005, Denver Post
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,36~155~,00.html
It's easy to attack University of Colorado professor Ward
Churchill. He went too far in his essay "Some People Push
Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens." He made
overstatements, praised the Sept. 11 terrorists as noble
heroes and labeled their victims as criminals who deserved
what they got.
The essay is not a scholarly document. It's not subtle,
reasonable or balanced. In fact, Churchill states in the
addendum that it's more of a "stream-of-consciousness
interpretive reaction to the Sept. 11 counterattack than a
finished topic on the piece." I'd say that's a fair
assessment.
I can only assume that in a true scholarly work, Churchill
wouldn't describe former Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright as "a malignant toad" or "Jaba (sic) the Hutt." I
assume that he wouldn't call President Bush the "Scoundrel-
in-Chief," or refer to the FBI as "a carnival of clowns."
But while it's easy to attack Churchill's inflammatory words,
it's harder to deny the core argument of his essay. It is a
critique of U.S. policies around the globe, particularly the
12 years of sanctions in Iraq that former U.N. Assistant
Secretary General Denis Halladay denounced as "a systematic
program ... of deliberate genocide."
I have long been a vocal opponent of sanctions in Iraq,
because everything I read on the subject revealed that it was
regular citizens, not the leadership, who suffered under
sanctions. Saddam Hussein easily circumvented the
restrictions, made billions of dollars and built more
palaces. It was regular Iraqis who died for lack of clean
water, sewage-treatment facilities and basic medical
supplies.
We might expect Hussein to show indifference to his own
people, but I was shocked by the degree of indifference
Americans showed toward them. We continued to enforce
sanctions that killed civilians.
If you put aside Churchill's angry words, his message is
something that every American needs to consider. Why were we
attacked? After Sept. 11, I repeatedly asked this question on
the radio and in this column, and I was stunned by the
vitriolic response that I received from listeners and
readers.
People accused me of "justifying" the terrorists, being a
terrorist sympathizer, an unpatriotic American and a
heartless jerk. Some people told me to shut my mouth until
after I'd visited ground zero, while hundreds of others
suggested that I leave the United States. No one was willing
to have a rational conversation about why we were attacked.
An analogy can be found in the life of Martin Luther King Jr.
If someone had thrown a brick through his living room window,
it would have been reasonable for his wife to say, "Explain
to me again why these marches and speeches are worth putting
our family at risk."
Asking the question doesn't suggest that she sympathizes with
the brick-thrower, but it does demand some accountability
from her husband, so that she can decide whether his being a
civil rights leader is worth the risk.
It would be silly for King to respond, "They attacked us
because they hate our freedom and our goodness."
Ironically, the reaction to Churchill's essay mimics the
thesis of his essay. In calling the victims of Sept. 11
"little Eichmanns," Churchill has offended so many people
that he has provoked an effort to remove him from the CU
faculty. He argues that enforcing sanctions that kill
hundreds of thousands of children angered terrorists so much
that they attacked the United States.
We can clearly see the connection between Churchill's
statements and the public effort against him, but we seem
unable or unwilling to see the connection between U.S.
foreign policy and terrorist reactions against it.
[Reggie Rivers was a fullback for the Denver Broncos]



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[LAAMN] Cockburn on Ward Churchill and right-wing mad dogs

[Michael Novick]

http://www.thenation.com
Beat The Devil --
Ward Churchill and the Mad Dogs of the Right
by Alexander Cockburn
When it comes to left and right, meaning the contrapuntal voices of
sanity and dementia, we're meant to keep two sets of books.
Start with sanity, in the form of Ward Churchill, a professor at the
University of Colorado. Churchill is known as a fiery historian and
writer, often on Indian topics. Back in 2001, after 9/11, Churchill
wrote an essay called "Some People Push Back," making the simple point,
in a later summary, that "if U.S. foreign policy results in massive
death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of
that destruction is returned."
That piece was developed into a book, On the Justice of Roosting
Chickens. About those killed in the 9/11 attacks, Churchill wrote
recently, "It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target,
or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following
the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have
consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad,
this placement of an element of the American 'command and control
infrastructure' in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade
Center itself into a 'legitimate' target."
At this point, Churchill could have specifically mentioned the infamous
bombing of the Amariya civilian shelter in Baghdad in January 1991,
with 400 deaths, almost all women and children, all subsequently
identified and named by the Iraqis. To this day, the US government
says it was an OK target.
Churchill concludes, "If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these
'standards' when they are routinely applied to other people, they
should not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them.
It should be emphasized that I applied the 'little Eichmanns'
characterization only to those [World Trade Center workers] described
as 'technicians.' Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children,
janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in
the 9-1-1 attack. According to Pentagon logic, [they] were simply part
of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my
point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when
applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else." I'm glad he puts
that gloss in about the targets, thus clarifying what did read to some
like a blanket stigmatization of the WTC inhabitants in his original
paper.
A storm has burst over Churchill's head, with protests by Governor
Pataki and others at his scheduled participation in a panel at Hamilton
College called "Limits of Dissent?" In Colorado, he's resigned his
chairmanship of the department of ethnic studies, and politicians,
fired up by the mad dogs on the Wall Street Journal editorial page and
by Lord O'Reilly of the Loofah on Fox, are howling for his eviction
from his job (Loofah? See O'Reilly's lewd fantasies:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11272004.html).
Why should Churchill apologize for anything? Is it a crime to say that
chickens can come home to roost and that the way to protect American
lives from terrorism is to respect international law? I don't think he
should have resigned as department chair. Let them drag him out by
main force.
So much for the voice of sanity. Now for the dementia of the right.
The New Republic's Tom Frank (not the Frank, please note, who just
wrote a book about Kansas) describes in TNR how he recently sat in on
an antiwar panel in Washington.
Frank listened to Stan Goff, a former Delta Force soldier and current
organizer for Military Families Speak Out, who duly moved Frank to
write that "what I needed was a Republican like Arnold [Schwarzenegger]
who would walk up to [Goff] and punch him in the face." Then upon
Frank's outraged ears fell the views of International Socialist Review
editorial board member Sherry Wolf, who asserted that Iraqis had a
"right" to rebel against occupation, prompting TNR's man to confide to
his readers that "these weren't harmless lefties. I didn't want Nancy
Pelosi talking sense to them; I wanted John Ashcroft to come busting
through the wall with a submachine gun to round everyone up for an
immediate trip to Gitmo, with Charles Graner on hand for
interrogation." After Wolf quoted Booker Prize-winning author
Arundhati Roy's defense of the right to resist, Frank mused, "Maybe
sometimes you just want to be on the side of whoever is more likely to
take a bunker buster to Arundhati Roy."
Now suppose Churchill had talked about Schwarzenegger's war on the poor
in California and called on someone to punch the governor in the face,
or have a jovial Graner force Pataki to masturbate what remain of
Schwarzenegger's steroid-shriveled genitals, or have Ann Coulter rub
her knickers in his face or get blown up by a bomb? He'd be out of his
job in a minute.
Right-wing mad dogs are licensed to write anything, and in our
Coulter-culture they do, just so they can burnish their profiles and
ge

[LAAMN] Support this American soldier who has refused to fight in Iraq

[Joan Sekler]

Please support this American soldier who has refused to fight in Iraq


Breaking Ranks to Shun War
An Army sergeant who refuses to return to Iraq 
seeks a discharge as a conscientious objector. He 
may instead face a court-martial.
By David Zucchino
Times Staff Writer

February 7, 2005

HINESVILLE, Ga. - His sergeant called him a 
coward to his face. His chaplain sent him an 
e-mail saying he was ashamed of him. His 
commanders had him formally charged with 
desertion.

Sgt. Kevin Benderman, who has served one tour of 
duty in Iraq, is refusing to serve another. When 
his fellow soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division 
packed their gear and left nearby Ft. Stewart for 
Iraq last week, Benderman stayed home. He says he 
has chosen to follow his conscience - not his 
commanders.

After 10 years in the Army, Benderman has applied 
for a discharge as a conscientious objector - a 
heresy to many in the military at a time when the 
country is fighting two wars overseas.

Today, Benderman, 40, will attend a military 
court hearing at Ft. Stewart that will determine 
whether he will face a court-martial for 
desertion and failure to report for a unit 
deployment. He could face up to seven years in 
prison if convicted.

"War is the greatest form of wrong," Benderman 
wrote in his seven-page conscientious objector 
application. "I believe that my moral obligation 
to humanity is to not allow myself to be a part 
of this destruction."

In the six months he spent in combat in Iraq in 
2003, Benderman said, he was badly shaken by what 
he witnessed. He saw a young Iraqi girl with her 
arm horribly burned and blackened, standing 
helplessly on a roadside as Benderman's convoy 
rushed past. He saw dogs feasting on civilian 
corpses that had been dumped into pits. He saw 
young U.S. soldiers treat war like a video game, 
he said, with few qualms about killing or the 
effects of the invasion on ordinary Iraqis.

Benderman said he begged an officer to stop and 
help the girl, but was told that the unit 
couldn't spare its limited medical supplies. "I 
had to look at that little girl, look into her 
eyes, and in her eyes I saw the TRUTH. I cannot 
kill," Benderman wrote in his application.

Only a handful of conscientious objector 
applications have been filed during the wars in 
Iraq and Afghanistan, which are being fought by 
professional soldiers, not draftees. Vietnam, a 
war that bitterly divided the U.S., produced 
172,000 conscientious objector applications from 
draftees and 17,000 from active-duty soldiers.

For the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, applications 
increased from 23 in 2002 to 60 in 2003 and 67 
last year, according to Pentagon figures. Of 
those applications, 71 - almost half - have been 
approved. Unlike Benderman, few applicants have 
spoken publicly about their beliefs.

After seeing the civilian corpses, Benderman 
said, he made a point of befriending ordinary 
Iraqis, only to be warned by officers not to 
fraternize with "the enemy." He had long talks 
with an English-speaking schoolteacher. He began 
reading the Koran and realized that the religious 
and moral values of most Iraqis were similar to 
his. Everything he had been told about the 
rationale for the U.S. invasion, he said, seemed 
misguided and destructive.

Benderman said he now believed the war in Iraq - 
and all wars - were immoral. His conscience would 
no longer allow him to fight or kill, he said, 
even if that made him a pariah.

"War robs you of your humanity. It makes people 
do terrible things they would otherwise never 
do," Benderman said in the living room of his 
home in Hinesville, his wife, Monica, by his side 
and his dog, Carl, at his feet.

When Benderman returned from Iraq to Ft. Stewart 
a year ago, he began studying the works of Ralph 
Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. He engaged 
in long discussions with his wife. He weighed his 
options before deciding to file his application 
Dec. 28. Benderman said his military superiors 
tried to shame him and talk him out of it. But he 
said he was willing to endure the contempt of his 
peers, and even go to prison.

"I'm not going to run from my convictions," he 
said. "I believe what I'm doing is the right 
thing, whatever the consequences."

Monica Benderman, whose essay on a faith-based 
pacifist website about the immorality of war 
helped crystallize her husband's views, said she 
was proud of him. Many soldiers and their 
families have told the couple they share their 
opposition to war, she said, but were afraid to 
speak up for fear of being ostracized. Several 
Vietnam veterans have stepped forward to support 
them.

"We believe in speaking the truth. You put 
forward the truth and the right things will 
happen," she said.

The couple said they have received e-mails and 
letters of support from people around the world, 
including Iraqis, Guatemalans and Germans. They 
have also received e-mails and phone calls 
branding them cowards and traitors.

"All because a man