August 13th, 2005 11:20 pm
Northwest Woman Joins Protest Outside President Bush's Ranch

Michaelmoore.com 

By George Howell / Komo News

SEATTLE - A California woman, whose son died in the war in Iraq, has inspired a peace movement that's brought dozens of people to her side in Crawford, Texas -- including some who made the trek all the way from the northwest.

Arthur and Lietta Ruger were both following Cindy Sheehan, before she started gaining momentum.

Arthur said, of his wife Lietta, "she was beside herself when it started. She was just in many, many, ways dying to be down there."

The Rugers were both desperate to be part of the now nationally publicized protest, because they have a unique perspective to offer the peace movement.

Arthur and Lietta pride themselves on their very close ties to the military. The two have a son-in-law presently serving overseas. Arthur is a Vietnam era veteran, and Lietta grew up in a military family. They now represent a group called Military Families Speaking Out, protesting the war in Iraq.

Arthur said his wife recently approached him about a personal invitation she received in the mail, to be part of the protests in Crawford. "She sent me a letter saying, they'd actually asked me if I'd like to go," Arthur explained. "I said back to her 'I'll have to figure out our finances, and you go.'"

So, Lietta Ruger went, and Arthur stayed here at home. The two have been in constant communication with one another. Lietta has been sending pictures back from the protests, and updates for people who want to know more about Cindy Sheehan and her fight.

"Cindy is like the focus," Arthur explained, "but they have this sense of mutual advocacy, they're all talking about the same thing. We're talking about why are our sons and our daughters dying."

Protestors plan to keep camping out, until Sheehan a face-to-face answer from President Bush. So far, that has not happened. The Rugers still believe Sheehan protests have been successful, because she's given a voice to military families who see this as a senseless war.

"In some ways, you could say she's lit a candle or a fuse on a lot of unvented rage across the country, against the kind of thing that's going on." Arthur Ruger said.

Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PDT

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NW mom enlists in the Texas peace corps 

By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Lietta Ruger of Bay Center in southwest Washington admits she didn't know what she was getting into when her feet hit the ground in Crawford, Texas, at 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday. 

But soon, by cell phone, she was describing the scene around her. The way daylight sketched the emerging shapes of five tents. The early rising figure of the suddenly famous Cindy Sheehan. And the outlines of the growing numbers of her supporters.

Right away, the Washington woman told me, she knew she was getting into something amazing: a gathering of mothers and others galvanized by Sheehan's quiet but stubborn questioning.

"Why?" Sheehan wants to ask the vacationing President, "did her 24-year-old son Casey really die in Iraq?" And would Mr. Bush please stop using the loss of her son to justify why even more sons and daughters must die?

She's not leaving, she says, until he either answers her or cuts and runs.

Ruger had never met Sheehan until Wednesday when they shared a long, trembling hug on the stubbly public right of way near Bush's Prairie Chapel Ranch. But they had exchanged a lot of e-mail, Ruger as a member of Northwest Military Families Speak Out and Sheehan as founder of Gold Star Families for Peace.

Ruger's son-in-law and nephew already have served 15-month stretches in Iraq and thankfully, so far, stayed alive. But both still face second "stop-loss" deployments.

Just before she caught a Texas-bound red-eye out of SeaTac, her 5-year-old grandchild said, "Grandma's going to talk to the president so my daddy doesn't have to go away again."

But Ruger will leave the talking and most of the waiting to Sheehan. She worries if she stays away too long, her own family members may be gone before she gets back.

For the trip, Ruger packed sunscreen, insect repellent, bandanas to wet against the heat, bottles of water, hats, visors and changes of socks. They're the same things moms across the country have tucked into the packs of their departing soldiers.

If the encampment is not shooed off or arrested as a supposed "national security risk" as they have been warned they will be, a Porta Potty will be delivered soon to the site. Meanwhile, Ruger says, she's willing to dig a hole. "Our troops are doing it," she said.

Through Monday, she will sleep in a tent at "Camp Casey," named for Sheehan's son. She'll do it, she says, to bring Sheehan some moral support. To recognize "the huge outpouring of support she is getting." And to help people hear the voice of military families like hers who want to express their support and care for the troops by keeping them from coming home the way Sheehan's son did.

Ruger has no desire to join Sheehan's Gold Star club. The dues -- the loss of a cherished child -- are simply too high.

But she's there for another reason, too. Ruger knows that Sheehan's integrity is already under attack by those trying to discredit her by saying she has changed her tune. She was still in shock just after Casey's death when Sheehan and other military families met Bush at Fort Lewis. But, even then, Ruger said, Sheehan was against the war.

Rain with a decidedly Seattle feel wet the encampment the morning Ruger arrived. But the gathering thunder isn't weather. It's the power and the anger of moms across the country. And Sheehan is their lightening rod.

So far, Ruger is the only known Washington state woman to report for duty. But Julie Decker of Carlsbad and San Marcos, Calif., respectively, have just arrived. Neither knew Sheehan or had been previously involved in the peace movement.

"People just need to do something hands-on to help," Ruger said. "I think it reflects how powerless they have felt, until now, about this war."

The formerly quiet Crawford Peace House nearby is now such a hive that incoming calls have jammed the phone line. "This was not an orchestrated thing, so people were really unprepared," Ruger said.

Still, she's grateful for the groundswell.

Cell phones warble constantly in camp. Sheehan gets 1,000 supportive e-mails a day.

Military Families Speak Out is organizing car caravans to Crawford leaving early Monday morning.

And, through the peace organization Code Pink, women are staging fasts in places like Red Hook, N.Y., Haysville, N.C., Gilbertsville, Ky., and Wilsonville, Ore.

In Seattle, the already thin Gerri Haynes has vowed to stay on a liquid fast until the president comes out to answer Sheehan's questions. She will be the 2006 chair of the Veterans for Peace national convention.

The organizer of a trip to Iraq by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Haynes has visited that country five times. And she spoke on Wednesday at the rally outside Seattle's Federal Courthouse.

She's thankful that, due to the mobilizing effect of Sheehan, more moms like Ruger have started something that, while still small, is growing into something amazing.

Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PDT

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Published on Wednesday, July 27, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Worlds Apart 
by Stacy Bannerman
 
When you’re a Governor, making difficult decisions is part of the job description. Just ask the chief executives of 33 states who attended the 97th annual meeting of the National Governor's Association in Des Moines, Iowa on July 15-16, where they had to choose between boots, bats, or bucks. The 233 pairs of combat boots -- one for each National Guard soldier killed in Iraq – were the focal point of a Memorial service co-sponsored by American Friends Service Committee and Military Families Speak Out to honor the citizen soldiers. Batting practice at Principal Park included a lavish reception for governors and their families, and was followed by an Iowa Cubs baseball game. A couple of heavily barricaded blocks away, Republicans held a fundraising reception at the Des Moines Club. The events took place within a six-block radius, but they were worlds apart.

8-year-old Mary Sapp, of Billerica, Mass., her older sister Lydia, and her mother, Anne, were at Nollen Plaza for the commemorative service. Mary clutched a picture of her dad, Staff Sgt. Andrew Sapp, a National Guardsman deployed to Iraq in October 2004. Mary talked about how much she missed him, and how sad she was that he hadn’t been able to attend her first softball game.

Back at the ballpark, Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Governor-Puerto Rico, stood next to his son, chatting up the players before throwing the opening pitch. After the Cubs rallied to beat the Omaha Royals, the Gov’s and their families were treated to a fireworks display. The next morning, the Governors tackled the conference agenda, focused on health care and Medicaid costs and economic development.

The war in Iraq wasn’t highlighted on the docket because it’s not considered a pressing domestic concern. But with nearly 300,000 National Guard and Reserve soldiers deployed to Iraq so far, and 138,457 pairs of boots belonging to citizen soldiers currently on the ground, how can it not be?

Reserve and National Guard troops tend to have significantly higher rates of stress-related disorders than active duty military. A study of Persian Gulf War veterans found that upwards of 90% of Reservists had one or more symptoms of Post-traumatic stress six months after coming home, compared to approximately 20% of fulltime soldiers. (Comprehensive Clinical Evaluation Program, Department of Defense Report, June 1995)

Reservists returning from Iraq are reporting mental health problems at levels more than twice that of active duty personnel, and a Seattle Times article stated that “out of 76 members of [the Washington National Guard] Bravo company, 14th Engineer Battalion, just under half were referred for counseling.” (July 26, 2005) But Vet Centers are so desperately underfunded that they’ve turned away citizen soldiers seeking medical and dental services, making veterans care a state health care issue by default. Federal labor statistics revealed that the unemployment rate of young male veterans was nearly double that of comparable civilians in the first quarter of 2005, which is obviously relevant to local economies. When a military newspaper cites “ divorce rates as high as fifty to eighty percent in some [Guard & Reserve] units returning from yearlong deployments.” (Fort Lewis Ranger, March, 2005), clearly the war has come home. The unprecedented suicide rate of Iraq War Veterans makes the war a domestic problem, as does the number of women who are murdered by their returning husbands. One such case is Matthew Denni of Oregon’s Army Reserve 671st Engineer Company. Driven, in part, by the trauma he experienced in Iraq, Denni murdered his wife and packed her corpse into an Army regulation footlocker. He was convicted of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years in a state penitentiary.

Celeste Zappala, co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, received a different sort of sentence when her son, Sherwood Baker, was killed in Iraq. His was one of the names she read at the Memorial service. When a mother bears witness to the death of her child, this nations’ foreign policy becomes a domestic matter of the highest order.

Meanwhile, George Pataki (NY), Mike Huckabee (AK), and Mitt Romney (MA) socialized with donors. Their quips about being Republican Governors in predominantly Democratic states got some laughs, which isn’t surprising, because Republican leaders have proven that they can be a very funny group.

After all, President Bush did his own comedy routine at a party fundraiser in 2004. The Commander-in-Chief looked behind curtains and under tables, laughing with the audience, telling them that he was searching for hidden weapons of mass destruction. His joke has cost 233 of our Guard and Reserve troops their lives. But the Governors decided there was no time for mourning in Des Moines.

Stacy Bannerman is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) and on the Advisory Board of Military Families Speak Out (www.mfso.org). Her book “When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Citizen Soldiers and the Families Left Behind,” will be released by Continuum Publishing in 2006. Her husband deployed to Iraq with the Army National Guard 81st Brigade in March 2004, and returned home on March 11, 2005.

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Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PDT

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A plea from Military Families Against the War in Britain to friends in America

Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PDT

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Footing the bill of war

By Nicole Brodeur

Seattle Times staff columnist

[Article excerpts. Click here to read the entire article. ] 

Dance in them, drink from them, wear them to bed.

As long as the military boots came home to Kent with her husband in them, Stacy Bannerman doesn't care what he does with them. Because hundreds of pairs of boots have come home empty, their owners lost to the bomb blasts and gunfire of the war in Iraq.

... But it is another thing entirely to stand before 1,500 pairs of war-worn boots, as the region will do when "Eyes Wide Open" comes to Fisher Pavilion this weekend.

The exhibit, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, represents the American soldiers who have lost their lives; and 1,000 pairs of civilian shoes, representing Iraqi civilian casualties.

 ... And while she has never seen "Eyes Wide Open" in person (the exhibit has been traveling around the country since January 2004), Bannerman is urging people to go.

It may be the only way for those who have not watched a loved one leave for war to get a sense of "the human cost."

And there's this: The war in Iraq is the first long-term military engagement where the burden has not been more shared by those at home. No rationing. No war bonds. No appeals to make cutbacks.

Even the Vietnam War was more closely felt here, Bannerman said, "because the draft was operative."

While her husband was in Iraq, Bannerman couldn't open her blinds for fear of seeing a government vehicle pull up, bearing bad news.

"I was absolutely powerless," she said.

She wants others to see the war beyond deployment and homecoming ceremonies.

"We are so geared to the 'Johnny comes marching home,' that we don't want to see the millions of people left behind," she said. Or the ones who never came home.

Bannerman imagines "Eyes" will be something like standing at Arlington National Cemetery's Section 60, an area set aside for soldiers killed in Iraq.

Can she put that experience in words?

There was a long pause. The start of tears. And then:

"I don't know that I will ever be able to. There is something unspeakably sad about a plot of land being set aside by our government, waiting for the dead bodies of our children and husbands and wives."

Bannerman knows she is one of the lucky ones.

"He came back whole, and he came back alive."

And his boots?

"They're in the closet," she said. Seems Sgt. Bannerman has re-upped.

"He's using them still."

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PDT

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Families want Guard excused from Iraq

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune
Published: March 8th, 2005 12:01 AM

Family members of soldiers serving in Iraq urged Gov. Christine Gregoire on Monday to call on President Bush to release Washington National Guard troops from service in Iraq.

The family members, who oppose the war, said the heavy use of guardsmen in Iraq is diminishing the state’s response to natural disasters and creating long-term hardships for the part-time soldiers and their families.

Their meeting with an aide to Gregoire follows similar efforts in at least two other states.

Members of the same groups – Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for Peace and Veterans for Peace, among others – rallied in Salem, Ore., last week to press a similar resolution to Oregon’s governor and lawmakers.

In Vermont, the majority of residents participating in the state’s annual March 1 town meetings endorsed a call for their governor to ask for the return of the state’s deployed guardsmen.

And in Montana, Gov. Brian Schweitzer asked the Pentagon last week to send home 1,500 of his state’s guardsmen and their helicopters, so they’ll be available for what is expected to be a difficult fire season.

The families who met in Olympia on Monday with Antonio Ginatta, an executive policy adviser for Gregoire, presented a mix of political and practical considerations. They contend the president’s primary reasons for war in Iraq “have been proven false or declared invalid.”

Long deployments are straining police and fire departments and other public safety agencies, many of whose members are part-time soldiers, they argue.

And there is a social cost.

“We need to be looking at the devastating effect these deployments, the unprecedented use of the Guard and Reserve, has had on families,” said Stacy Bannerman of Kent, whose husband is a Washington guardsman in Iraq.

Others who met Monday with Ginatta included Susan Livingston, whose brother, Spc. Joseph Blickenstaff, died in Iraq in 2003 while deployed with the first Fort Lewis Stryker brigade. His family is also active in the anti-war effort in Oregon, his home state.

Ginatta said he will present the group’s concerns to Gregoire and told the families they could expect to talk more with the governor’s office.

“The reintegration of our troops, getting them back into our state with as seamless a transition from combat to kitchen, is very important to the governor,” Ginatta said. But he added the groups’ demands “raise some very heavy federal questions that we have to look at.”

The National Guard generally works at the direction of governors unless the president calls units to active-duty service.

About 3,200 Washington guardsmen are in the process of returning home after a year in Iraq with the 81st Brigade Combat Team. It was the largest deployment of the Washington Guard since World War II.

But members of the groups that met in Olympia on Monday say their message is still relevant because U.S. troops are likely to be in Iraq for several years and Washington’s part-time soldiers might be sent back.

Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921

mike.gilbert@thenewstribune.com

Posted by SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PST

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