LORETTA ALPER
Alper is the producer and co-director of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” a film that documents a pattern of falsehoods disseminated by successive administrations and major media to go to war, as well as a series of rationalizations to keep wars going. The film highlights the Iraq war, but shows similar patterns in conflicts over several decades.

The film features Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, and is narrated by Sean Penn.

ANN WRIGHT
Wright is a 29-year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a colonel and a former U.S. diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war in Iraq. In December 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She has been to Gaza twice in the last month.

Wright said today: “As we’re going into the seventh year of the U.S. war in Iraq and continuing in the midst of the eighth year in Afghanistan — and as we’ve seen U.S.-made missiles smash Gaza, there seems to be plenty to be discouraged about.

“Two months into the new administration, there’s much to press it about. The longer the U.S. military stays in these places, the more damage is done and the more our national security will be jeopardized.”

On Wednesday afternoon Wright will be at a hearing of a Senate subcommittee on military suicides.

On Saturday, she will be participating in a march on the Pentagon against war and occupation. A listing of protests around the U.S. is online.

Wright can also comment on the just-released “Report on Sexual Assault in the Military.” She is the co-author of the book Dissent: Voices of Conscience.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167