[Peace-discuss] Recall Bush Rally Speech

[Paul King]

Hi Everyone,

The college Democrats held a Recall Bush Rally today on the UIUC quad and
asked me to speak. I've posted the text of my speech below for anyone who
might be interested in reading it. Please let me know if I've mistankenly
made any claims that are not true.

I was introduced as a member of AWARE and a veteran. I did not claim to
speak for AWARE.

..:: paul

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Yesterday guerillas shot down a U.S. transport helicopter near Baghdad
killing 15 soldiers. Journalists were told to leave the area and their
film was confiscated.

A wheat farmer was quoted with saying this:

"The Americans are pigs. We will hold a celebration because this
helicopter went down -- a big celebration. The Americans are enemies
of mankind."

This is not a sentiment unique to the people we are killing in Iraq.

71 percent of Europeans view the current presidency as the biggest
threat to world peace and stability today.

Why is this?

In September of 2002 a radical and illegal international agenda was
declared with the release of the new National Security
Strategy. Basically, this doctrine announces that we plan on
maintaining permanent global domination through the *unilateral* use
of military power. In other words, we seek full spectrum dominance of
the entire world and we will crush anyone we perceive to be a threat
to this objective...

...And we've killed 19,000 people in an impoverished, defenseless
country to show the world that we mean it.

Our money is dirty.

The gas in our cars may as well be blood.

Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef writes:

I'll spit in the jackal's faces,
I'll spit on their lists,
I'll declare that we are the people of Iraq,
We are the ancestral trees of this land.

Soon after the National Security Strategy was released, Space Command
announced that the U.S. not only wants to control space, we want to
own it - permanently - for military purposes.

Kennedy's dream is dead. Space is no longer regarded as the frontier
where nations work together and, once and for all, leave behind their
ancient, terrestrial disputes. Instead, we want to use space so that
we can attack any other country without warning whenever and wherever
we want.

My God, who are these people? Who has seized control of our country?

Actually, we know who they are. We've seen them before. They are the
most reactionary sectors from the Reagan-Bush administration and they
have reinstalled themselves through the use of intimidation, threats
and assassination.

They were never elected.

Under this illegitimate regime America has become a rogue nation. The
mightiest nation-state in the history of the world has decided that it
will no longer abide by international law. Consider the following:

* We have requested that the United Nations remove us from the
  Elections Monitoring Board.

* We have dissolved more international treaties in the past two years
  than during any other administration in our history.

* We have withdrawn from the World Court of Law.

* We have refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war.

* We have compelled the UN to remove us from the Human Rights
  Commission!

* We no longer abide by the the Geneva Conventions!

* We have resumed the arms race with a vengeance, increasing the
  proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons all over the world.

* Finally, we have committed the supreme crime condemned at Nuremberg
  by waging a "preventive war". We have attacked and occupied a
  sovereign nation against the will of the American people, the United
  Nations and the majority of the international community. And we have
  declared that this shall be our right forevermore.

We are no better than Saddam Hussein or Al Quada. We poison our own
troops with depleted uranium and then slash their health care
benefits. Many of them will never be healthy again and they will bring
their sickness back with them, passing it on to their spouses and
children.

This whole fucking administration is criminal and insane.

The man who currently occupies the executive branch is not our
president. He is a liar. He is a murderer. And he is guilty of the
highest crimes against humanity.

He must be removed.

But let us not forget that he is merely a corporate puppet, the
friendly face of American fascism. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz
and others are equally complicit. The entire administration needs to
be removed. Otherwise, in the words of the Iraqi wheat farmer, we will
remain the "enemies of mankind."

And as such, nothing less than our total destruction will be required
to restore sanity and peace to the world once again. America must find
itself or we must perish.
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