David Swanson At Tuesday Peace Vigil: Honor The Dead, Add No More To Their Number

[Hissyspit]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/26215

Honor the Dead, Add No More to Their Number

By David Swanson

Remarks at Peace Vigil in Charlottesville, VA, on August 28, 2007

Thank you all for coming. My name is David Swanson.

Ken Zelin who organized tonight's vigil asked me to welcome everyone and say a few words.

This event is one of over 500 taking place today all over the country organized by Moveon and many other organizations.

Moveon provided me with suggested things to say, but – for better or worse – and with gratitude for their organizing work, I'm going to make a few changes to what they suggested.

Moveon calls what is happening in Iraq a war. It's not a war. It's an occupation. Our brave men and women who signed up to defend this country have been sent thousands of miles away to occupy someone else's country. They never signed up for that. And the American people never agreed to it. A war is a contest between two armies. It can be won or lost. An occupation is a crime committed by one army against a civilian population. It cannot be won or lost. You can never win a crime. You can only stop committing it.

- snip -

Moveon wants us to urge Congress Members to vote to end the occupation. We need to urge Congressman Goode to do that. We need to applaud Senator Warner for suggesting that he might. We need to demand that Senator Webb finally do what we elected him to do. But we need to demand something very specific. We need to be aware that any bill ending the occupation will be vetoed. And we need to be aware that the Democratic leadership in Congress can end the occupation by simply announcing that there will be no more votes on any bills to fund it. Bush has plenty of money already in the pipeline to bring the troops safely home, and he should use it.

- snip -

Four U.S. servicemen and women were killed in Iraq yesterday, bringing the official total to 3,732. Of these, 729 have been killed since we elected a new Congress to end the occupation. These figures do not include the tens of thousands seriously injured in body and mind.

We are going to take turns reading some of the reports of U.S. military deaths in Iraq this year.

Before we do, I think we should take a moment to recognize, honor, and consider the Iraqis killed over the course of our occupation of their country. The only scientific estimate, maintained by Just Foreign Policy, now places the figure of Iraqi deaths resulting from the invasion and occupation at 1,025,092. I'll say that again: 1,025,092. Can we have a very brief moment of silence to recognize these victims of war.

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[saracat]

1. Does this person know ANYTHING about how government works?

"And we need to be aware that the Democratic leadership in Congress can end the occupation by simply announcing that there will be no more votes on any bills to fund it"

Does he not realize we need a super majority to do something like this? Sheesh. Opinion as fact strikes again.