JAMES JENNINGS
President of Conscience International, a humanitarian aid organization that has worked in Darfur since 2004, Jennings said today: “President Bush doesn’t understand Sudan any better than he did Iraq. The U.S. is behind the curve by making policy decisions based on ethnic cleansing that happened in 2004, and is jumping the gun by circumventing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon’s already negotiated joint African Union/United Nations solution. By trying to trump the UN Security Council through unilateral action, Bush is likely to make the situation in Darfur worse, as he did in Iraq. The new sanctions on Sudan are a blunt instrument that will hurt the refugees and may lead to a larger war, rather than stopping it. If embracing a more forceful policy on Darfur is the administration’s way of enlarging the so-called ‘War on Terror,’ it will backfire and create more terrorists, as it did in Iraq.”
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TINA RICHARDS
AP reports: “Cindy Sheehan, the soldier’s mother who galvanized an anti-war movement with her month-long protest outside President Bush’s ranch, said Tuesday she’s done being the public face of the movement.” Sheehan’s “resignation” piece is here.
Sheehan wrote: “I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. … However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the ‘left’ started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. …
“Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most. I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life.”
A native of Missouri, Richards is currently in D.C. and working with others to end the war in Iraq. Richards’ son has been deployed to Iraq twice and attempted suicide while he was facing a third deployment. Richards, who has worked with Sheehan, said today: “I think I understand much of what Cindy is going through. When I would challenge members of the Democratic Party leadership about their continued funding of this illegal and immoral war, people who cheered me on when I challenged Bush would suddenly be attacking me — even though I was calling for an end to war in both cases.” Richards gained notice when she challenged David Obey, the Democratic chair of the House appropriations committee, about the stance that Democrats were taking on funding the Iraq war.
She said today: “The leaderships of both parties are, in different ways, committed to continuing this war.” Some of the same assessments in Sheehan’s piece are evident in Richards’ recent piece, “Memorial Day: A Marine Mom’s Perspective.”
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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
