Reply #16: One of the posters in the Environment forum lamented the lack of response. [View All]

[Kolesar]

He posts in the environment forum frequently. He lamented that he posts all of this material and links but no one seemed interested because no one responded. I had been reading his posts, but never had anything profound to say so never responded myself. Perhaps if DU still had the "number of views" feature, one would see more interest.

You are so correct that we should still be protesting the Iraq war. That we had been lied to about the threat posed by Iraq is insufferable. I keep thinking about those daily barrages from the White House that appeared in the press: "The United States stridently objects that Saddam Hussein is not disarming", when all the while Bush had no proof Saddam had chem/bio/nuclear weapons. In fact, it seems apparent that Bush knew that Saddam was no threat. He was lying about intelligence and we should be protesting.

What purpose do demonstrations serve? At the time when Bush had already attacked Iraq, the local press reported on why the local peace movement was "still" demonstrating. There was a feeling that it was not influencing anybody. The peace demonstrators seemed to be meeting just to express mutual solidarity. Since that time, however, we have uncovered mass lies by the Bush administration. The Ambassador Joe Wilson story and the lies about "yellowcake uranium" are huge. Our soldiers are getting maimed and killed for a lie. That is worth protesting.

How can we make our protestations influence the public? Mass demonstration seems appropriate. Some of the presidential candidates are doing a fine job of keeping this story alive, although none have not yet delivered the real knockdown hit yet. Then there are other means. We should be writing volumes of letters to the editors. We should be holding forums on campuses. I am rather new to this organizing, so I cannot determine what would be most effective, but it is true that we have to do something.

(By the way, there are four buses leaving from my town for that demonstration October 25. Are you "on the bus"?)