Transcript of Mayor Rocky Anderson's speech

Washington Square Salt Lake City, Utah August 30, 2006

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4263654
-------------------------------------------

A patriot is a person who loves his or her country.

Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today
to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation - and for our
world?

And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our
nation's leaders tell us the truth?

Let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the
truth!"

Let no one deny we are patriots. We love our country, we hold dear the
values upon which our nation was founded, and we are distressed at what
our President, his administration, and our Congress are doing to, and
in the name of, our great nation.

Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.

A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their
country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in
the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show
slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering,
human-rights-violating president.

That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That person
is a member of a frightening culture of obedience - a culture where
falling in line with authority is more important than choosing what is
right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I suspect, that
person is afraid - afraid we are right, afraid of the truth (even to
the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in with an
oppressive, inhumane, regime that does not respect the laws and
traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst
presidency our nation has ever had to endure.

In response to those who believe we should blindly support this
disastrous president, his administration, and the complacent, complicit
Congress, listen to the words of Theodore Roosevelt, a great president
and a Republican, who said: The President is merely the most important
among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or
opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or
bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able,
and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty
to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly
necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does
right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and
servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that
we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American
public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one
else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or
unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

We are here today as truth-tellers.

And we are here to demand: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give
us the truth!"

We are here today to insist that those who were elected to be our
leaders must tell us the truth.

We are here today to insist that our news media live up to its sacred
responsibility to ascertain and report the truth - rather than acting
like nothing more than a bulletin board for the lies and propaganda of
a manipulative, dishonest federal government.

We have been getting just about everything but the truth on matters of
life and death . . . on matters upon which our nation's reputation
hinges . . . on matters that directly relate to our nation's
fundamental values . . . and on matters relating to the survival of our
planet.

In the process, our nation has engaged in an unnecessary war, based
upon false justifications. More than a hundred thousand people have
been killed - and many more have been seriously maimed, brain damaged,
or rendered mentally ill.

Our nation's reputation throughout much of the world has been
destroyed. We have many more enemies bent on our destruction than
before our invasion of Iraq.

And the hatred toward us has grown to the point that it will take many
years, perhaps generations, to overcome the loathing created by our
invasion and occupation of a Muslim country.

What incredible ineptitude and callousness for our President to talk
about a Crusade while lying to us to make a case for the invasion and
occupation of a Muslim country!

Our children and later generations will pay the price of the lies, the
violence, the cruelty, the incompetence, and the inhumanity of the Bush
administration and the lackey Congress that has so cowardly abrogated
its responsibility and authority under our checks-and-balances system
of government.

We are here to say, "We will not stand for it any more. No more lies.
No more pre-emptive, illegal war, based on false information. No more
God-is-on-our-side religious nonsense to justify this immoral, illegal
war. No more inhumanity."

Let's raise our voices, and demand, "Give us the truth! Give us the
truth! Give us the truth!"

Let's consider some of the most monstrous lies - lies that have led us,
like a nation of sheep, to this tragic war.

Following September 11, 2001, the world knew that Osama bin Laden and
al Qaeda were responsible for the horrific attacks on our country. Our
long-time allies were sympathetic and supportive. But our president
transformed that support into international disdain for the United
States, choosing to illegally invade and occupy Iraq, rather than focus
on and capture the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

Why invade and occupy Iraq? Vice President ***** Cheney and Condoleezza
Rice represented to us, without qualification, that there were strong
ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

In September, 2002, President Bush made the incredible claim that "You
can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam."

President Bush represented to Congress, without any factual basis
whatsoever, that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11
attacks.

Our President and Vice-President, along with an unquestioning news
media, repeatedly led our nation to believe that there was a working
relationship between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, a relationship
that threatened the US. Even last week, when I met with Thomas Bock,
National Commander of the American Legion, I asked him why we are
engaged in the war in Iraq. He said, "Why, of course, because of the
9/11 attacks on our country." I asked, "What did Iraq have to do with
those attacks?" He looked puzzled, then said, "Well, the connection
between al Qaeda and Iraq."

I was shocked. Here is a man who has criticized us for opposing the war
in Iraq - and he is completely wrong about the underlying facts used to
justify this war.

Not only has there never been any evidence of any involvement by Saddam
Hussein or Iraq with the attacks on 9/11, but there has never been any
evidence of any operational connection whatsoever between Saddam
Hussein and al Qaeda.

Colin Powell finally conceded there is no "concrete evidence about the
connection." "The chairman of the monitoring group appointed by the
United Nations Security Council to track al Qaeda" disclosed that "his
team had found no evidence linking al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein." And the
top investigator for our European allies has said, 'If there were such
links, we would have found them.

But we have found no serious connections whatsoever.'"

President Bush himself finally admitted nine days ago during a press
conference that there was no connection between the attacks on 9/11 and
Iraq. It's terrific that the President has now admitted what others
have known for so long - but where is the accountability for the tragic
war we were led into on the basis of his earlier misrepresentations?

Besides the fictions of Saddam Hussein somehow being linked to the 9/11
attacks and his supposed connection with al Qaeda, what was the
principal justification for forgoing additional weapons inspections,
failing to work with our allies toward a solution, refraining from
seeking additional resolutions from the United Nations, and hurrying to
war - a so-called "pre-emptive" war - in which we would attack and
occupy a Muslim nation that posed no security risk to the United
States, and cause the deaths of many thousands of innocent men, women,
and children - and the deaths and lifetime injuries to many thousands
of our own servicemen and servicewomen?

The principal claim was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction - biological and chemical weapons - and was seeking to
build up a nuclear weapons capability. As we now know, there was
nothing - no evidence whatsoever - to support those claims.

President Bush represented to us - and to people around the world -
that one of the reasons we needed to make war in Iraq - and to do it
right away - was because Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear
weapons. His assertions about Saddam Hussein trying to purchase nuclear
materials from an African nation and about Iraq seeking to obtain
aluminum tubes for the enrichment of uranium were challenged at the
time by our own intelligence agency and scientists, yet he didn't tell
us that! Ten days before the invasion of Iraq, it was proven that the
documents upon which President Bush's claim about Saddam Hussein trying
to obtain uranium was based were forgeries. However, President Bush did
not disclose that to the American people. By that failure, he betrayed
each of us, he betrayed our country, and he betrayed the cause of world
peace.

Neither did the vast majority of the news media disclose the forgeries
- until it was far too late. It took our local newspapers here in Salt
Lake City four months - until after President Bush declared that major
combat in Iraq was over - to report the discovery that the documents
were forgeries - and, therefore, that there was no basis for the false
claims about Saddam Hussein trying to build up a nuclear capability. By
its failure to promptly disclose the forgeries, the news media betrayed
us as well.

Had the American people known we were being lied to - had President
Bush informed us that the documents were forged and that he had no
other basis for his claim - had our nation's media done its job, rather
than slavishly repeating to us the lies being fed to it by the Bush
administration - our nation may well not have allowed the commencement
of this outrageous, illegal, unjustified war.

To President Bush, to his administration, to our go-along Congress, and
to our news media, we are here today, demanding, "Give us the truth!
Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that high-strength
aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear
weapons programs," warning "we don't want the smoking gun to be a
mushroom cloud."

Undisclosed by President Bush or Condoleezza Rice was the fact that top
nuclear scientists had informed the Administration that the tubes were
"too narrow, too heavy, too long" to be useful in developing nuclear
weapons and could be used for other purposes. Dr. Mohamed El Baradei,
director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, agreed.

So much for the phony claims of Saddam Hussein building nuclear weapons
- the primary claims justifying the rush to war.

What were we told about chemical and biological weapons of mass
destruction? These claims were as baseless and fraudulent as the claims
about nuclear weapons.

President Bush told us in his January 2003 State of the Union address
that Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin,
mustard and VX nerve agent. Then, in May of 2003, he made the
outlandish statement that, "We found the weapons of mass destruction.
We found biological laboratories."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told us, "We know where the [WMDs]
are." Vice President Cheney and then-Secretary of State Powell also
joined in the chorus of lies and misinformation about weapons of mass
destruction. Of course, no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons
were found.

Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay noted that Iraq did not
have an ongoing chemical weapons program after 1991-a conclusion
remarkably similar to statements made by Colin Powell and Condoleezza
Rice before the 9/11 attacks - and before they sacrificed the truth in
the service of promoting the Bush administration's case for war against
Iraq.

On February 24, 2001, less than 7 months before 9/11, Colin Powell said
that Saddam Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with
respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project
conventional power against his neighbors," said Colin Powell.

And in July 2001, two months before 9/11, Condoleezza Rice said: "We
are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been
rebuilt."

It is astounding how they changed their claims after the President
decided to make a case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq!

To think that we could be lied to by so many members of the Bush
administration with such impunity is frightening - chilling. Yet these
imperious, arrogant, dishonest people think we should just fall in line
with them and continue to take them at their word.

The truth has been established. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11
attacks on the United States. There is no evidence of any operational
ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. And there were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.

What a tragedy, leading to greater tragedy. We are fed lie after lie,
our media reinforces those lies, and we are a nation led to a tragic,
illegal, unprovoked war.

We are here because of our values. We love our country. We cherish the
freedoms and liberties of our country. We don't call those who speak
out against our nation's leaders unpatriotic or un-American or
appeasers of fascists. We have good, wholesome family values. In our
families, we teach honesty, we teach kindness and compassion toward
others, we teach that violence, if ever justified, must be an
absolutely last resort. In our families, we teach that our nation's
constitutional values are to be upheld, and that they are worth
standing up and fighting for. Our family values promote respect and
equal rights toward everyone, regardless of race, ethnic origin, and
sexual orientation.

In our families, we teach the value of hard work and competence - and
we are left to wonder about a President who, after receiving an
intelligence memo about the threat posed by al Qaeda, decides to
continue his month-long vacation - just before the 9/11 attacks on our
country.

As we demand the truth from others, let us also face the truth. Our
government all too often has not cared about the human rights of people
in other nations - and it doesn't really care about democracy, unless
it leads to the election of those who will do our bidding.

Consider the irony regarding the claims that Saddam had chemical
weapons and, because of that, we needed to rush to war in Iraq. When
Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons - first against Iranians,
then against his own people, the Kurds - our country provided him with
biological and chemical agents and equipment to make the weapons.
Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush refused even to support economic
sanctions against Hussein for his use of weapons of mass destruction.

What did our nation do in response to Hussein's use of chemical
weapons, killing tens of thousand of people, when he actually had them?

We befriended, coddled, and rewarded him - with government-guaranteed
loans totaling $5 billion since 1983, freeing up currency for Hussein
to modernize his military assets.

Perhaps those in the US government who aided and abetted Saddam Hussein
to further US business interests, while he was gassing the Kurds,
should be sharing his courtroom dock as he is being tried now for
crimes against humanity.

No more lies, no more hiding of the truth, no more wars that more than
triple the value of stock in ***** Cheney's prior employer, Halliburton
- and which, as of last September, has increased the value of the
Halliburton CEO's stock by $78 million.

We are patriots. We're deeply concerned. And we demand change, now.

No more lies from Condoleezza Rice about whether she and President Bush
were advised before 9/11 of the possibility of planes being flown into
buildings by terrorists.

No more gross incompetence in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

No more torture of human beings.

No more disregard of the basic human rights enshrined in the Geneva
Convention.

No more kidnapping of people and sending them off to secret prisons in
nations where we can expect they will be tortured.

No more unconstitutional wiretapping of Americans.

No more proposed amendments to the United States Constitution that
would, for the first time, limit fundamental rights and liberties for
entire classes of people simply on the basis of sexual orientation.

No more federal land giveaways to developers.

No more increases in mercury emissions from old, dirty, dangerous
coalburning power plants.

No more backroom deals that deprive protection for millions of acres of
wild lands.

No more attacks on immigrants who work so hard to build better lives.

No more inaction by Congress on fixing our hypocritical and
inconsistent immigration laws and policies.

No more reliance on fiction rather than the science of global warming.

No more manipulation of our media with false propaganda.

No more disastrous cuts in funding for those most in need.

No more federal cuts in community policing and local law enforcement
grant programs for our cities.

No more inaction on stopping the genocide in the Darfur region of
Sudan.

No more of the Patriot Act.

No more killing.

No more pre-emptive wars.

No more contempt for our long-time allies around the world.

No more dependence on foreign oil.

No more failure to impose increased fuel efficiency standards for
automobiles.

No more energy policies developed in secret meetings between *****
Cheney and his energy company cronies.

No more excuses for failing to aggressively cut global warming
pollutant emissions.

No more tragically incompetent federal responses to natural disasters.

No more tax cuts for the wealthiest, while the middle class and those
who are economically-disadvantaged continue to struggle more and more
each year.

No more reckless spending and massive tax cuts, resulting in historic
deficits and historic accumulated national debt.

No more purchasing of elections by the wealthiest corporations and
individuals in the country.

No more phony, ineffective, inhumane so-called war on drugs.

No more failure to pass an increase in the minimum wage.

No more silence by the American people.

This is a new day. We will not be silent. We will continue to raise our
voices. We will bring others with us. We will grow and grow, regardless
of political party - unified in our insistence upon the truth, upon
peace-making, upon more humane treatment of our brothers and sisters
around the world.

We will be ever cognizant of our moral responsibility to speak up in
the face of wrongdoing, and to work as we can for a better, safer, more
just community, nation, and world.

So we won't let down. We won't be quiet. We will continue to resist the
lies, the deception, the outrages of the Bush administration. We will
insist that peace be pursued, and that, as a nation, we help those in
need. We must break the cycle of hatred, of intolerance, of
exploitation. We must pursue peace as vigorously as the Bush
administration has pursued war. It's up to all of us to do our part.

Thank you everyone for lending your voices to this call for compassion,
for peace, for greater humanity. Let us keep in mind the injunction of
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Our lives begin to end the day we become
silent about things that matter."

Transcript of Mayor Rocky Anderson's speech

Washington Square Salt Lake City, Utah August 30, 2006

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4263654
-------------------------------------------

A patriot is a person who loves his or her country.

Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today
to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation - and for our
world?

And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our
nation's leaders tell us the truth?

Let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the
truth!"

Let no one deny we are patriots. We love our country, we hold dear the
values upon which our nation was founded, and we are distressed at what
our President, his administration, and our Congress are doing to, and
in the name of, our great nation.

Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.

A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their
country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in
the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show
slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering,
human-rights-violating president.

That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That person
is a member of a frightening culture of obedience - a culture where
falling in line with authority is more important than choosing what is
right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I suspect, that
person is afraid - afraid we are right, afraid of the truth (even to
the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in with an
oppressive, inhumane, regime that does not respect the laws and
traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst
presidency our nation has ever had to endure.

In response to those who believe we should blindly support this
disastrous president, his administration, and the complacent, complicit
Congress, listen to the words of Theodore Roosevelt, a great president
and a Republican, who said: The President is merely the most important
among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or
opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or
bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able,
and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty
to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly
necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does
right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and
servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that
we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American
public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one
else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or
unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

We are here today as truth-tellers.

And we are here to demand: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give
us the truth!"

We are here today to insist that those who were elected to be our
leaders must tell us the truth.

We are here today to insist that our news media live up to its sacred
responsibility to ascertain and report the truth - rather than acting
like nothing more than a bulletin board for the lies and propaganda of
a manipulative, dishonest federal government.

We have been getting just about everything but the truth on matters of
life and death . . . on matters upon which our nation's reputation
hinges . . . on matters that directly relate to our nation's
fundamental values . . . and on matters relating to the survival of our
planet.

In the process, our nation has engaged in an unnecessary war, based
upon false justifications. More than a hundred thousand people have
been killed - and many more have been seriously maimed, brain damaged,
or rendered mentally ill.

Our nation's reputation throughout much of the world has been
destroyed. We have many more enemies bent on our destruction than
before our invasion of Iraq.

And the hatred toward us has grown to the point that it will take many
years, perhaps generations, to overcome the loathing created by our
invasion and occupation of a Muslim country.

What incredible ineptitude and callousness for our President to talk
about a Crusade while lying to us to make a case for the invasion and
occupation of a Muslim country!

Our children and later generations will pay the price of the lies, the
violence, the cruelty, the incompetence, and the inhumanity of the Bush
administration and the lackey Congress that has so cowardly abrogated
its responsibility and authority under our checks-and-balances system
of government.

We are here to say, "We will not stand for it any more. No more lies.
No more pre-emptive, illegal war, based on false information. No more
God-is-on-our-side religious nonsense to justify this immoral, illegal
war. No more inhumanity."

Let's raise our voices, and demand, "Give us the truth! Give us the
truth! Give us the truth!"

Let's consider some of the most monstrous lies - lies that have led us,
like a nation of sheep, to this tragic war.

Following September 11, 2001, the world knew that Osama bin Laden and
al Qaeda were responsible for the horrific attacks on our country. Our
long-time allies were sympathetic and supportive. But our president
transformed that support into international disdain for the United
States, choosing to illegally invade and occupy Iraq, rather than focus
on and capture the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

Why invade and occupy Iraq? Vice President ***** Cheney and Condoleezza
Rice represented to us, without qualification, that there were strong
ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

In September, 2002, President Bush made the incredible claim that "You
can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam."

President Bush represented to Congress, without any factual basis
whatsoever, that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11
attacks.

Our President and Vice-President, along with an unquestioning news
media, repeatedly led our nation to believe that there was a working
relationship between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, a relationship
that threatened the US. Even last week, when I met with Thomas Bock,
National Commander of the American Legion, I asked him why we are
engaged in the war in Iraq. He said, "Why, of course, because of the
9/11 attacks on our country." I asked, "What did Iraq have to do with
those attacks?" He looked puzzled, then said, "Well, the connection
between al Qaeda and Iraq."

I was shocked. Here is a man who has criticized us for opposing the war
in Iraq - and he is completely wrong about the underlying facts used to
justify this war.

Not only has there never been any evidence of any involvement by Saddam
Hussein or Iraq with the attacks on 9/11, but there has never been any
evidence of any operational connection whatsoever between Saddam
Hussein and al Qaeda.

Colin Powell finally conceded there is no "concrete evidence about the
connection." "The chairman of the monitoring group appointed by the
United Nations Security Council to track al Qaeda" disclosed that "his
team had found no evidence linking al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein." And the
top investigator for our European allies has said, 'If there were such
links, we would have found them.

But we have found no serious connections whatsoever.'"

President Bush himself finally admitted nine days ago during a press
conference that there was no connection between the attacks on 9/11 and
Iraq. It's terrific that the President has now admitted what others
have known for so long - but where is the accountability for the tragic
war we were led into on the basis of his earlier misrepresentations?

Besides the fictions of Saddam Hussein somehow being linked to the 9/11
attacks and his supposed connection with al Qaeda, what was the
principal justification for forgoing additional weapons inspections,
failing to work with our allies toward a solution, refraining from
seeking additional resolutions from the United Nations, and hurrying to
war - a so-called "pre-emptive" war - in which we would attack and
occupy a Muslim nation that posed no security risk to the United
States, and cause the deaths of many thousands of innocent men, women,
and children - and the deaths and lifetime injuries to many thousands
of our own servicemen and servicewomen?

The principal claim was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction - biological and chemical weapons - and was seeking to
build up a nuclear weapons capability. As we now know, there was
nothing - no evidence whatsoever - to support those claims.

President Bush represented to us - and to people around the world -
that one of the reasons we needed to make war in Iraq - and to do it
right away - was because Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear
weapons. His assertions about Saddam Hussein trying to purchase nuclear
materials from an African nation and about Iraq seeking to obtain
aluminum tubes for the enrichment of uranium were challenged at the
time by our own intelligence agency and scientists, yet he didn't tell
us that! Ten days before the invasion of Iraq, it was proven that the
documents upon which President Bush's claim about Saddam Hussein trying
to obtain uranium was based were forgeries. However, President Bush did
not disclose that to the American people. By that failure, he betrayed
each of us, he betrayed our country, and he betrayed the cause of world
peace.

Neither did the vast majority of the news media disclose the forgeries
- until it was far too late. It took our local newspapers here in Salt
Lake City four months - until after President Bush declared that major
combat in Iraq was over - to report the discovery that the documents
were forgeries - and, therefore, that there was no basis for the false
claims about Saddam Hussein trying to build up a nuclear capability. By
its failure to promptly disclose the forgeries, the news media betrayed
us as well.

Had the American people known we were being lied to - had President
Bush informed us that the documents were forged and that he had no
other basis for his claim - had our nation's media done its job, rather
than slavishly repeating to us the lies being fed to it by the Bush
administration - our nation may well not have allowed the commencement
of this outrageous, illegal, unjustified war.

To President Bush, to his administration, to our go-along Congress, and
to our news media, we are here today, demanding, "Give us the truth!
Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that high-strength
aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear
weapons programs," warning "we don't want the smoking gun to be a
mushroom cloud."

Undisclosed by President Bush or Condoleezza Rice was the fact that top
nuclear scientists had informed the Administration that the tubes were
"too narrow, too heavy, too long" to be useful in developing nuclear
weapons and could be used for other purposes. Dr. Mohamed El Baradei,
director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, agreed.

So much for the phony claims of Saddam Hussein building nuclear weapons
- the primary claims justifying the rush to war.

What were we told about chemical and biological weapons of mass
destruction? These claims were as baseless and fraudulent as the claims
about nuclear weapons.

President Bush told us in his January 2003 State of the Union address
that Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin,
mustard and VX nerve agent. Then, in May of 2003, he made the
outlandish statement that, "We found the weapons of mass destruction.
We found biological laboratories."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told us, "We know where the [WMDs]
are." Vice President Cheney and then-Secretary of State Powell also
joined in the chorus of lies and misinformation about weapons of mass
destruction. Of course, no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons
were found.

Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay noted that Iraq did not
have an ongoing chemical weapons program after 1991-a conclusion
remarkably similar to statements made by Colin Powell and Condoleezza
Rice before the 9/11 attacks - and before they sacrificed the truth in
the service of promoting the Bush administration's case for war against
Iraq.

On February 24, 2001, less than 7 months before 9/11, Colin Powell said
that Saddam Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with
respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project
conventional power against his neighbors," said Colin Powell.

And in July 2001, two months before 9/11, Condoleezza Rice said: "We
are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been
rebuilt."

It is astounding how they changed their claims after the President
decided to make a case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq!

To think that we could be lied to by so many members of the Bush
administration with such impunity is frightening - chilling. Yet these
imperious, arrogant, dishonest people think we should just fall in line
with them and continue to take them at their word.

The truth has been established. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11
attacks on the United States. There is no evidence of any operational
ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. And there were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.

What a tragedy, leading to greater tragedy. We are fed lie after lie,
our media reinforces those lies, and we are a nation led to a tragic,
illegal, unprovoked war.

We are here because of our values. We love our country. We cherish the
freedoms and liberties of our country. We don't call those who speak
out against our nation's leaders unpatriotic or un-American or
appeasers of fascists. We have good, wholesome family values. In our
families, we teach honesty, we teach kindness and compassion toward
others, we teach that violence, if ever justified, must be an
absolutely last resort. In our families, we teach that our nation's
constitutional values are to be upheld, and that they are worth
standing up and fighting for. Our family values promote respect and
equal rights toward everyone, regardless of race, ethnic origin, and
sexual orientation.

In our families, we teach the value of hard work and competence - and
we are left to wonder about a President who, after receiving an
intelligence memo about the threat posed by al Qaeda, decides to
continue his month-long vacation - just before the 9/11 attacks on our
country.

As we demand the truth from others, let us also face the truth. Our
government all too often has not cared about the human rights of people
in other nations - and it doesn't really care about democracy, unless
it leads to the election of those who will do our bidding.

Consider the irony regarding the claims that Saddam had chemical
weapons and, because of that, we needed to rush to war in Iraq. When
Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons - first against Iranians,
then against his own people, the Kurds - our country provided him with
biological and chemical agents and equipment to make the weapons.
Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush refused even to support economic
sanctions against Hussein for his use of weapons of mass destruction.

What did our nation do in response to Hussein's use of chemical
weapons, killing tens of thousand of people, when he actually had them?

We befriended, coddled, and rewarded him - with government-guaranteed
loans totaling $5 billion since 1983, freeing up currency for Hussein
to modernize his military assets.

Perhaps those in the US government who aided and abetted Saddam Hussein
to further US business interests, while he was gassing the Kurds,
should be sharing his courtroom dock as he is being tried now for
crimes against humanity.

No more lies, no more hiding of the truth, no more wars that more than
triple the value of stock in ***** Cheney's prior employer, Halliburton
- and which, as of last September, has increased the value of the
Halliburton CEO's stock by $78 million.

We are patriots. We're deeply concerned. And we demand change, now.

No more lies from Condoleezza Rice about whether she and President Bush
were advised before 9/11 of the possibility of planes being flown into
buildings by terrorists.

No more gross incompetence in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

No more torture of human beings.

No more disregard of the basic human rights enshrined in the Geneva
Convention.

No more kidnapping of people and sending them off to secret prisons in
nations where we can expect they will be tortured.

No more unconstitutional wiretapping of Americans.

No more proposed amendments to the United States Constitution that
would, for the first time, limit fundamental rights and liberties for
entire classes of people simply on the basis of sexual orientation.

No more federal land giveaways to developers.

No more increases in mercury emissions from old, dirty, dangerous
coalburning power plants.

No more backroom deals that deprive protection for millions of acres of
wild lands.

No more attacks on immigrants who work so hard to build better lives.

No more inaction by Congress on fixing our hypocritical and
inconsistent immigration laws and policies.

No more reliance on fiction rather than the science of global warming.

No more manipulation of our media with false propaganda.

No more disastrous cuts in funding for those most in need.

No more federal cuts in community policing and local law enforcement
grant programs for our cities.

No more inaction on stopping the genocide in the Darfur region of
Sudan.

No more of the Patriot Act.

No more killing.

No more pre-emptive wars.

No more contempt for our long-time allies around the world.

No more dependence on foreign oil.

No more failure to impose increased fuel efficiency standards for
automobiles.

No more energy policies developed in secret meetings between *****
Cheney and his energy company cronies.

No more excuses for failing to aggressively cut global warming
pollutant emissions.

No more tragically incompetent federal responses to natural disasters.

No more tax cuts for the wealthiest, while the middle class and those
who are economically-disadvantaged continue to struggle more and more
each year.

No more reckless spending and massive tax cuts, resulting in historic
deficits and historic accumulated national debt.

No more purchasing of elections by the wealthiest corporations and
individuals in the country.

No more phony, ineffective, inhumane so-called war on drugs.

No more failure to pass an increase in the minimum wage.

No more silence by the American people.

This is a new day. We will not be silent. We will continue to raise our
voices. We will bring others with us. We will grow and grow, regardless
of political party - unified in our insistence upon the truth, upon
peace-making, upon more humane treatment of our brothers and sisters
around the world.

We will be ever cognizant of our moral responsibility to speak up in
the face of wrongdoing, and to work as we can for a better, safer, more
just community, nation, and world.

So we won't let down. We won't be quiet. We will continue to resist the
lies, the deception, the outrages of the Bush administration. We will
insist that peace be pursued, and that, as a nation, we help those in
need. We must break the cycle of hatred, of intolerance, of
exploitation. We must pursue peace as vigorously as the Bush
administration has pursued war. It's up to all of us to do our part.

Thank you everyone for lending your voices to this call for compassion,
for peace, for greater humanity. Let us keep in mind the injunction of
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Our lives begin to end the day we become
silent about things that matter."