Anti-War Activist Ann Wright Travels to Jordan Seeking Iraqi Peace - Interview

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AMANDA: That's interesting. Did you have an opportunity to speak to any additional family that had family members currently in Iraq or Afghanistan? Or that have had family members injured or killed?

ANN: Sure, yeah. In fact, since we've been here, there also has been a group from the Military Families Speak Out -- a group that have family members that are serving in the military -- the family member and sometimes the service member too feels that the war should not be going on. And they have their encampment up in Congress and they have been - every single day - going to various congressional delegations. As we have. We have been doing that while we have been fasting, and also sitting in on virtually every committee hearing meeting that has happened that concerns Iraq or the military commissions -- so we have been very, very busy. In fact Diane Wilson who is one of veterans, ask her, she has done about 6 or 7 fasts, plus Skip Gregory who has done almost 80 and Father Louie Vitolli who has done 15 or 20. All have been concerned because normally when you do a fast you are not really active you need to save your energies, save you strength. Because you do loose weight and fluids and you are not getting calories and nutrients at all. But we felt compelled, most of us, to go to Congress because we are in the city and very few Americans do go to the Congress, very few sit in on congressional hearings or go visit the congressmen. And it is important that Congress see the face of the Americans and hear whatever Americans are saying about their policies.

AMANDA: How are you received when you go there? And do you try to share some of the messages that you hear when you are talking to these people, the families...to the 95% that you have encountered that really are not for this war?

ANN: Sure, we portray that and the congressmen are getting the same sort of statistics from the people that call in or write in. That is where you are starting to see some good movement by members of Congress because they are now starting to reflect at long last the feeling of their constituents. Nobody is arguing about how we got into this mess, but it is just obvious that it is not going the way anybody thought it would or the way that the administration thought it would. I certainly and those that have been in the Middle East before, knoledgeable of foreign affairs...we knew exactly what was going to happen. I predicted in my letter of resignation and it wasn't that I had any great insight, but that I had the same insight of everybody else who has been in the Middle East... invading and occupying an Arab Muslim country that has done nothing to the United States was going to mean that there would be a Jihad against America. Muslims from all over the world would pour into Iraq to help the Iraqis fight invaders, the infidels. That is exactly what has happened. Plus you have the added bonus, tragically, of the sectarian violence of the Iraqis fighting, killing other Iraqis. It is such a chaotic situation that America has precipitated by its poor choice of invasion and occupation of Iraq.

AMANDA: From your 30 days encampment -- as you fasted for the war in Iraq -- you've watched another explosive development in the Middle East. You are going to Jordan, please speak to us if you will, about what your hopes and plans are, who you want to meet, what you want to do, and accomplish while you are there.

ANN: We are going to be meeting with five or seven Iraqi parliament members. They are coming, some of them live, all of their families I think live in Amman Jordan. They travel back and forth from Baghdad to do their work with the parliament. They have requested a meeting so they can explain the 28-Point Plan that was agreed to several months ago by virtually all of the major Iraqi fractions -- plan that the Bush administration has kept quite quiet and has quietly gutted. The Bush demanded the Iraqi government withdraw four elements of the peace plan: one of them being a time table for the withdraw of US troops, a second being compensation for those that have been injured by this war. Another one is amnesty for certain categories of fighters, not all fighters, but some. An amnesty that reflects what happens with every other war theatrically the US civil war. Lastly, it was to put on trial anyone who has committed war crimes. You know those are four key points -- ones that the Bush administration just refused to allow the legitimate elective government of Iraq to portray to the world. And right now the Bush administration with Gonzales (the attorney general) has been scrambling desperately to undercut the 1996 law that was passed that said, " Yes, US citizens can be convicted of war crimes if they have committed them." And of course there are clearly war crimes that have happened with Iraq. The invasion and occupation of a country that did nothing to us -- a war of aggression is the ultimate war crime by international standards. So, George Bush and all the cabinet members in the administration are guilty of war crimes, as well as tragically the military -- some of the military who have committed atrocities against the civilian population. So the Iraqis want to hold responsible those who committed international war crimes. That is something that the Bush administration demanded be eliminated from their peace plan. So we are going there to get a better understanding of all the aspects of this peace plan, and then, help the American public know about the plan because most of Americans have never even heard of it. They don't realize that the Iraqis want this war ended. They have a peace plan and yet the Bush administration wants the war to .

AMANDA: Have you been able through any of your efforts to determine exactly what it is that the Bush administration is trying to accomplish in Iraq?

ANN: Well, I like all the rest of the American public has been bombarded by the Bush administration's of variety of excuses of why we are in Iraq. I don't believe democracy in the region was never the goal, it just happened to be the fall back -- the default of those two. All of the Bush family has always worked with dictators in the area and never held their nose to it. So, it is not that democracy is a hallmark of the Bush family...and certainly not of the Necons. It is just the last thing left after every other thing failed for them. I think they definitely want to secure America not for Americans, but for corporate America, and the cheap oil and they fully intended to assure that their friends in the corporate world, and in fact they, the Bush family, are the great beneficiaries -- as well as Chaney of the increase of oil prices all over the world. Some of Americans say, yeah but we need that oil. We need oil, but we also need to develop alternative sources. And we also need guarantee that oil be sold at reasonable prices and that the people, whose only resource is oil get reasonable prices, and that the oil companies get reasonable profits. But guarantee that the American public is not screwed by the oil companies with the highest profit ratings ever in the history.

AMANDA: They are happy campers now, aren't they?

ANN: Yeah.

AMANDA: What do you think about some of this other saber rattling that is being done by the Bush administration with regards to Iran, Venezuela, parts of South America, Cuba?

ANN: It is certainly dramatic saber rattling. It is as if the Bush administration has gone oil crazy. Any place in the world -- any place speaks of America in realistic, honest terms -- has the Bush administration threatening them with oil. While I don't condone leaders of the world going around saying various nations should be annihilated, George Bush has fallen into the same trap as they have. He is a very reactionary person and war and military options are the first things that come to his mind, rather than diplomacy -- trying to work through issues without starting wars that wreck havoc on the civilian population. Wars that do nothing but increase the profit margins of the defense in military industrial complex while they are creating tons of more new weapons and ammunition, and weapons of war. War is Iraq. War is a big business, and the cronies of the Bush administration have gotten extremely rich from the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, from the potential of going to war in Iran. North Korea is another place where saber rattling from the Bush administration is always there. Fortunately the international community forced the Bush administration to go into at least multilateral talks with the North Koreans. Bush administration they are gun tigers, gun slingers, they are ready to draw the pistol first rather than talk things out.

AMANDA: It's interesting... well it's rather sad. The Bush administration is not rallying many takers at the Middle East Lebanon conflict.

ANN: That's absolutely right. When it comes to Israel the Bush administration is given a green light to Israel to go ahead and kill as many Lebanese civilians as you want to. That is a war crime, that is complicity. That is encouraging another nation to use the weapons of war of the United States to commit war crimes. The Bush administration has really, really -- it is atrocious -- it is horrendous what the Bush administration is doing to encourage the Israelis. The rest of the world -- the few people that might have said, oh well, I'll go on the Iraq war path because we at least got rid of Suddam Hussein -- aren't outraged on what's going on here, then there is very little else left in the world to be outraged about.

AMANDA: In Washington, who is talking war crimes? I know that there is the movement and Gonzales they say is somewhat worried that if the Bush administration can not get the 1996 war crimes ruling overturned, or legislation overturned, or somehow amended, that some of them could be prosecuted. Are they more afraid of the indictment, the legal process, and the potential information that will come out than perhaps seeing the inside of the jail? Is there anyone, outside protestors and the like in DC saying. "Hey, the Congress and the Senate have been complicit in the commission of these war crimes?" It has been known for sometime now that they were all deliberately.

ANN: The lily- livered Congress...they are scared of their own shadow. The Republicans, well there a couple of Republicans that are starting to stand up. There are certainly some very brave Democrats, who is spite of what the leadership of the Democratic party wants they stand up for truth, honesty and have a conscious. Everybody is running scared right now because of the election. The Democrats, rather than ceasing the bull by the horns and saying these are the issues that are so important to America and knowing that this is what America is talking about...and as a result they are going to do what they did in 2004 and cede much of the electoral territory back to the Republicans. And yet this is a time for courage. This is a time for honesty. And this is a time for truth. I tell you what...if there is a Republican that says we need to get of that war and that he/she thinks that the war in Iraq is such an important issue and is key to everything else in America, and will be able to do the same in the future on domestic issues and as well as other international issues, then I am willing to vote for a Republican that says I will stop this war. Because without us getting a coalition in the Congress that will stop the war, we are faced with unlimited leakage our Treasury into this war. We have got billions, hundreds of billions of dollars spent on this war and our social programs in America that are now necessary for everybody -- education, transportation, and other ordinary things. These are not being funded because of this war.

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Amanda was a managing editor at OpEdNews and worked with Rob Kall on the site from 2004 to April 2009. A retired research ethnographer, she now resides in Georgia.

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