We are veterans of the United States armed forces. We stand with the majority of humanity, including millions in our own country, in opposition to the United States' all out war on Iraq. We span many wars and eras, have many political views and we all agree that this war is wrong. Many of us believed serving in the military was our duty, and our job was to defend this country. Our experiences in the military caused us to question much of what we were taught. Now we see our REAL duty is to encourage you as members of the U.S. armed forces to find out what you are being sent to fight and die for and what the consequences of your actions will be for humanity. We call upon you, the active duty and reservists, to follow your conscience and do the right thing. In the last Gulf War, as troops, we were ordered to murder from a safe distance. We destroyed much of Iraq from the air, killing hundreds of thousands, including civilians. We remember the road to Basra -- the Highway of Death -- where we were ordered to kill fleeing Iraqis. We bulldozed trenches, burying people alive. The use of depleted uranium weapons left the battlefields

Open harassment by Columbus Police, vigilantes and possibly federal agents against the peace movement began Saturday, March 15, 2003. More than 400 peace activists gathered in Blackburn Park at 18th and Main Streets in the heart of the black community. Bill Moss, a prominent African American Columbus School Board member and former “Soldier of the Year” in Ohio spoke out against the illegality of the war with Iraq; Barry Edney, local barber, founder of the Ordinary People’s Movement and a Vietnam-era vet also spoke. Despite the involvement of these well-known black activists within the peace coalition, the Columbus Free Press learned that local precinct officers fanned out through the community, including those assigned to the gang squad, to warn black youth that a large group of white troublemakers was coming into their neighborhood to cause disruption.

  Joan Baez joins protesters along High St. near Spring. - March 20



Women  in Black at 15th and High. - March 14



The sound of protest.



Downtown protesters line the street.



NO BLOOD FOR OIL!



Protesters line both sides of the street.

Contact Larry Fairbanks

Photos by Mike Gruber:



Joan Baez at the rally.



Baez and Gruber at the rally. Peace!

Propaganda has been used for as long as people have been around. Mankind uses propaganda to make it easier to kill one's enemy. When you convince your people that the enemy is subhuman and a threat, a threat that must be stopped, then it is very easy to kill your enemy because you are doing the right thing. This method of dehumanizing your enemy is as old as time.

There are many examples of this in American history. American propaganda against the Japanese in World War II and the communists in the Korean War, Vietnam, and the cold war are examples of this. In World War II we told American that the Japanese are a mindless evil and told Americans that every gun made kills a Jap and every tank made kills a Jap and so on. Propaganda doesn't just happen between two enemy nations, but also between different cultures, races, and religions. The Klan and other White Power Aryan Nations used propaganda against blacks, hispanics, Jews, homosexuals, and communists.

They try to portray African-Americans and criminals and white-woman rapists. They constantly bombard people with the idea that Afriacn-Americans are sub-human both through art and racial slurs.

A nation that prides itself on its adherence to the "rule of law" has violated that commitment in launching a patently illegal war.[1]

Under fundamental international law, military force is permissible only in self-defense or when authorized by the U.N. Security Council.

The administration does not attempt to argue that self-defense applies. Iraq poses no imminent threat.

The Bush team's new doctrine of "preventive war" simply has no legitimacy under international law. Nazi leaders offered the same defense at the Nuremberg Tribunal.[2]

Rejecting the claim, the Tribunal found the Nazis guilty of the crime of aggression. As the Tribunal said, "To initiate a war of aggression, however, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."