Ecological Wisdom * Social Justice * Grassroots Democracy * Non-Violence
>> Green Party of Michigan <<
http://www.migreens.org
>>> ---------------- <<<
>>> News Release <<<
>>> ---------------- <<<
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
---------------------
June 12, 2005
For More Information Contact:
----------------------------
Douglas Campbell, Vice Chair/Green Party of Michigan
e-mail: naderladuke2000detroit@yahoo.com
John La Pietra, Media Committee/GPMI
e-mail: jalp@internet1.net
Michigan Greens Agree with National Party that
Downing Street Memo Is Evidence for Bush Impeachment
====================================================
Call on People to Join Non-Partisan Drive, Sign Petitions
by Conyers and Others to Demand Answers, and Show How
We Support and Value the Troops -- By Bringing Them Home
The Green Party of Michigan (GPMI) joins the national
Green Party of the United States (GPUS) in citing the
"Downing Street memo" as further evidence of the deceit
of the Bush administration in its rush to unconstitutional,
unjustified, and undeclared war in Iraq -- and as reason
for citizens of all parties (or none) to call for the end
of the occupation and the impeachment of George W. Bush.
GPMI welcomes the efforts of Michigan's 14th District
Congressman John Conyers, Jr. on these issues. Conyers has
written to the White House, with the backing of 88 other
House members, demanding explanations of the revelations in
the memo from a top-level meeting of the British government.
With the help of a wide spectrum of citizens' groups,
Conyers and others have collected almost half a million
signatures on petitions supporting the demand for the truth.
Conyers will also be holding a committee hearing next
Thursday the 16th on the memo writer's testimony that
intelligence about the situation was being "fixed around
the policy" -- that the decision had already been made to
attack Iraq.
GPMI vice-chair and 2002 Green gubernatorial candidate
Douglas Campbell echoes the answer Daniel Ellsberg has been
giving to people who ask him whether there aren't big
differences between the Iraq War and Vietnam: "Of course,
there are differences. In Iraq, it's a dry heat. And the
language that none of our troops or diplomats speak is
Arabic rather than Vietnamese."
There may be another parallel -- in that the Vietnam
War lasted almost exactly as long as US military forces
went on occupying the country, and ended "just about the
day after we bailed out," as Campbell puts it.
And, like Vietnam, undeclared war in Iraq -- and
Afghanistan before it -- has had a lot of support from
elected leaders in both "major" parties.
Just recently, Campbell reminded a crowd in Benton
Harbor, every one of the 100 U.S. Senators -- all the
Republicans and all the Democrats, including Michigan's
Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow -- voted to
spend another $82,000,000,000 for the illegal wars.
Stabenow is up for re-election next November.
As Campbell pointed out at a voters' rights and
justice rally called by the Black Autonomy Network
Community Organization (BANCO), a billion for each
of the states and a billion for each of America's
32 largest cities would go a long way to eliminating
their deficits -- and/or softening the depression
here at home . . . which, he adds, is going to get
a lot more painful very soon when 25,000 GM employees
hit the unemployment line.
Another cost has also continued to grow. According
to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count Web site, U.S.
military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are approaching
2,000 . . . 53 of them from Michigan. And that does not
count the deaths of coalition military personnel, con-
tractors and mercenaries, civilian government employees,
embassy staff -- or tens of thousands of civilian
bystanders.
And Campbell is concerned about the impact having
thousands of Michigan National Guard members deployed
in Iraq and Afghanistan will have on emergency
preparedness. "What will we do during the next blackout
or major natural disaster -- or in case of riots here
at home?" he asks. "Governor Granholm is apparently
unaware of the role the Michigan National Guard has
here in Michigan, or else she just doesn't think it's
important."
Montana governor Brian Schweitzer has asked the
Pentagon to send his state's overseas National Guard
members home to provide much-needed help as the wildfire
season arrives there. Grassroots movements in other
states are gathering public support for calls to their
governors to do the same.
After about a dozen governors resisted Ronald Reagan's
sending National Guard units to Honduras in 1986, Congress
passed the Montgomery Amendment -- which bans governors
from withholding their consent for the President to use
National Guard troops for "active duty outside the United
States because of any objection to the location, purpose,
type or schedule of such duty."
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the amendment in 1990,
ruling that it reflected legitimate Federal authority to
direct overseas "training" of the National Guard.
- * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
For more information on Rep. Conyers's letter to the
White House about the Downing Street memo (and the 88 other
Representatives who have signed, including Dale Kildee and
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Michigan), and his planned
committee hearing, visit:
http://www.johnconyers.com
Information about the memo and the Conyers letter
(including the latest available count of people who have
signed onto that letter) is available at:
http://www.downingstreetmemo.org/
A coalition of groups supporting action in the wake
of the memo can be contacted via:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/
Other online petitions on the subject include:
* Bob Fesmire of DowningStreetMemo.com to George W. Bush
http://www.petitiononline.com/dsm/petition.html
OR
http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/dsm3/
[CAUTION: you will face *SEVERAL* offers to refuse
before this site finishes processing your signature]
* Sen. Ted Kennedy to other Senators
http://www.tedkennedy.com/page/petition/downingstreet
* Military Families Against the War to Tony Blair
http://www.petitiononline.com/mfaw/petition.html
For more information about the Green Party of Michigan,
including links to other Green Party organizations and past
Green statements on the illegal war in Iraq, please visit
the GPMI Web site:
http://www.migreens.org
# # #
Green Party of Michigan * 548 S. Main Street *
* Ann Arbor, MI 48104 * 734-663-3555
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The Green Party of Michigan was formed in 1987 to address
environmental issues in Michigan politics. There are Greens
organized in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each
state Green Party sets its own goals and creates its own structure,
but US Greens agree on Ten Key Values:
Ecological Wisdom * Grassroots Democracy
Social Justice * Nonviolence
Community Economics * Decentralization
Feminism * Respect for Diversity
Personal and Global * Future Focus/
Responsibility Sustainability
created/distributed using donated labor
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Green Party
News Release
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_06_09.html
Downing St. Memo Is Evidence for Bush Impeachment
=================================================
Thursday, June 9, 2005
Contacts:
--------
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator
202-518-5624
mclarty@greens.org
Nancy Allen, Media Coordinator
207-326-4576
nallen@acadia.net
The Downing Street Memo proves that invasion of Iraq
wasn't the 'last resort' but Bush's intent all along,
leading to cooked intelligence and other impeachable
offenses; Greens note bipartisan and media complicity
in overlooking evidence of deceit, urge public protest.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green leaders reiterated the party's
July 2003 call for impeachment of Bush, and called on all
Americans outraged by the Bush Administration's list of
deceptions, violations of the U.S. Constitution, the
disastrous Iraq occupation, and policies that have disgraced
the U.S. to demand that Congress begin the impeachment process.
"The invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused the deaths
of over 1,600 U.S. military personnel, as well as untold
suffering and tens of thousands of civilian dead in Iraq,"
said David Cobb, the Green Party's 2004 candidate for
President of the United States. "The Downing Street Memo
confirms what we already knew -- that a conspiracy to deceive
the American people led us into the war, and that this
conspiracy constitutes 'high crimes and misdemeanors'
according to the U.S. Constitution."
The Green Party of the United States called for the
impeachment of George W. Bush during the party's 2003
national meeting:
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_07_21_03.html
Greens have organized and participated in numerous
protests against the war since early 2003, and have called
for an immediate end to the occupation, cancellation of
further war spending, and removal of military recruiters
from schools as U.S. troops continue to face death and
injury in Iraq.
Greens praised Rep. John Conyers' (D-Mich.) public demand
for an explanation from President Bush in the wake of Downing
Street Memo's publication, and questioned why so many of the
mainstream U.S. media have remained silent on the content and
implications of the memo.
But Greens also called many Democrats as responsible as
Republicans for Iraq policy, having voted in October 2002 to
transfer war power to the President, which created the
scenario for White House deceit and abuse of power, and
having recently voted for another $82 billion for the war.
"It was already apparent, long before the Downing Street
Memo, that President Bush's case for invading Iraq was based
on fraud," said Rebecca Rotzler, co-chair of the Green Party's
Peace Action Committee.
"All of the reasons for invasion that Mr. Bush listed
in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union address -- Iraqi
WMDs, collusion between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda,
evidence that Saddam had sought nuclear weapons materials
from Africa, nuclear aluminum rods, Iraq's supposed threat
to the U.S. and to other nations -- are now known to be
false.
"The Downing Street Memo shows that the intelligence
supporting an invasion was fixed, with the complicity of the
Bush and Blair administrations, as early as July 2002."
Green Party leaders also noted that Ahmed Chalabi, whose
false testimony to U.S. intelligence officials on Iraqi WMDs
formed much of the basis of the claim that Saddam Hussein
was an international threat, is now serving as interim Iraqi
Oil Minister, with the Bush Administration's approval -- and
that John Bolton, now under consideration for appointment
as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., repeatedly manipulated
intelligence and lied to the U.S. media and the U.N. about
Iraqi weapons materials.
"Americans should be protesting in every way possible
against the continued occupation of Iraq, and for the
impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney,"
said Jake Schneider, treasurer of the Green Party of the
United States.
"But this has also been a bipartisan war all along,
and every Democrat and Republican in Congress who has
supported it despite evidence of deceit from the very
beginning also deserves removal from office."
MORE INFORMATION
----------------
Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org
1700 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 404
Washington, DC 20009
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
202-319-7193 fax
Green Party Peace Action Committee
http://www.gp.org/committees/peace/
"The 'I' word"
By Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese
The Boston _Globe_, May 31, 2005
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/05/31/the_i_word?mode=PF
Letter to President Bush Concerning the "Downing Street Minutes"
From Rep. John Conyers
http://www.johnconyers.com
"Hold Bush Accountable If He Lied About Iraq"
By Mark Dunlea (Green Party of New York State)
The Albany _Times Union_, July 9, 2003
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0709-04.htm
# # #
Other Contacts:
Green Party of Michigan
548 S Main St
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
734-663-3555
info@migreens.org
posted to web 12 June 2005