President George W. Bush used the words “peace” or “peaceful” 11 times in brief remarks Monday at the White House. Meanwhile, the AP reported on the same day: “U.S. warplanes and helicopters bombed two villages near the restive city of Ramadi, killing an estimated 70 militants, the military said Monday, though witnesses said at least 39 of the dead were civilians.”
On Friday, Reuters reported that Jean Ziegler, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food “accused U.S. and British forces in Iraq of breaching international law by depriving civilians of food and water in besieged cities as they try to flush out militants.” He “said the Geneva Conventions banned military forces from using ‘starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.'”
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FRANK BRODHEAD
Brodhead is co-author (with Edward S. Herman) of the book Demonstration Elections: U.S.-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador and wrote the article “Reframing the Iraq Election.”
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NORMAN SOLOMON
Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. The book includes these examples of statements during the Vietnam War:
· 1964 – President Johnson: “Our one desire — our one determination — is that the people of Southeast Asia be left in peace to work out their own destinies in their own way.”
· 1965 – Vice President Humphrey: “Our commitment to strengthening the peace has not weakened.”
· 1966 – President Johnson: “I do not genuinely believe that there’s any single person anywhere in the world that wants peace as much as I want it.”
· 1967 – Vice President Humphrey: “There is no quick and easy way to peace — it must and will be built out of the cumulative acts of men and women who dedicate their lives to the service of their fellow men — and therefore to the service of God.”
· 1968 – President Johnson: “But our goal is peace — and peace at the earliest possible moment.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
