NIR ROSEN
Rosen has spent a total of two and a half years in Iraq since the invasion. He said today: “The [Baker-Hamilton] commission is based on consensus, calling for eventual withdrawal but no timeline; I don’t think it’s very significant. The U.S. can make things worse in Iraq, but it can’t make things better. Everything it has touched in the region has turned to dust.” Rosen has just returned from Iraq, Lebanon and Somalia. He is a fellow at the New America Foundation and is author of the book In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq.
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STEVEN KULL
Kull is director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which just released a poll that found that “three out of four Americans believe that in order to stabilize Iraq the United States should enter into talks with Iran and Syria, and eight in ten support an international conference on Iraq. A majority also opposes keeping U.S. forces in Iraq indefinitely and instead supports committing to a timetable for their withdrawal within two years or less.”
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SUE UDRY
MEDEA BENJAMIN
Benjamin of Global Exchange said today: “We did not elect James Baker and Lee Hamilton to come up with the new policy on Iraq — we elected the new Congress to do that.” Said Udry of the anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice: “The Congress has enormous room to do the bidding of the electorate, stem the bloodshed and stop the flow of funding for a failed policy.”
Udry and Benjamin are part of the new Mandate for Peace campaign, which “calls on Congress to restore the bonds of trust between the people, who want a swift end to the Iraq war, and our elected representatives, who have not represented the will of the majority with regards to Iraq.” Relevant polling data are at Polling Report.
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TERRY ROCKEFELLER
A member of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Rockefeller said today: “In January 2003, I went to Iraq because we must form alternatives to the use of violence. My sister was an innocent civilian killed in the World Trade Center on 9-11 and we’ve now had so many more innocents die in Iraq because our government chose war. Now our military is not proving to be effective in stabilizing Iraq; it should get out. We need to have honest discussion between citizens. And our government should apologize for this war.”
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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
