OntheWilderSide

• Antiwar Americans should send a message to Congress by registering and voting Green, urge Green leaders

• Refusal to cut off war funding implicates Democrats in Bush’s war crimes, say Greens

WASHINGTON, DC — Green Party leaders criticized the retreat of Democratic Congress members and party leaders after President Bush last week vetoed legislation that included a timetable for withdrawl of US combat troops from Iraq.

Carl Romanelli, Pennsylvania Green candidate for the US Senate in 2006:  “The Green Party is providing the sole progressive antiwar political alternative to the bipartisan war machine.  The narrow debate between the two old parties shows how essential it is for Greens to win seats in Congress in 2008 and to compete in the presidential race.  Until Democrats and Republicans see masses of antiwar voters reregistering Green and a couple of Green victories in congressional races, they’ll have little motivation to change their tune.”

Jody Grage, treasurer of the Green Party of the United States:  “By backing off on a withdrawal timetable for the sake of compromise with President Bush, Democrats in Congress are opening the door for unending war in Iraq.  Democratic leaders pretend to speak for Americans who oppose the war, but they’ve limited their challenge to the White House to a nonbinding symbolic resolution, vague timetables about escalation and
withdrawal of combat troops, and benchmarks that allow US corporations to gain control over Iraqi oil production, while authorizing supplemental funding for the war.  If they really opposed the war, Democrats in either chamber in Congress could simply refuse to pass a bill providing war funding, forcing President Bush to withdraw US troops.”

Katy Culver, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States and 2006 candidate for Congress in Tennessee (District 7):  “The choice we face in Iraq isn’t victory or defeat, it’s criminality or the rule of law.  The invasion of a Iraq was a crime that resulted in mass Iraqi civilian and US troop casualties, alienation of our allies, and animosity against the US around the world.  The only way to restore the rule of law is to repudiate the Bush-Cheney ideology of preemptive invasion, challenge the power of corporate war
profiteers, cut off war funding to compel a quick troop withdrawal, and hold the President, Vice President, and other officials responsible for deceiving the American people and for invading a country that posed no threat to the US.”

Aimee Smith, co-chair of the Green Party’s Peace Action Committee (GPAX)
<http://www.gp.org/committees/peace/>:  “Democratic front groups like MoveOn.org have abandoned the antiwar movement.  We don’t need an ‘Americans Against Escalation in Iraq’ coalition, we need an independent political movement demanding removal of US troops as quickly as possible and renunciation of aggressive military
power.  Democratic leaders, including presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton and
Barack Obama, are rejecting these demands and are willing to see US forces remain in Iraq until late 2008, and even longer to serve US financial interests there and the strategic demands of Israel and its supporters in the US.  The goal of Democrats isn’t to end the war, it’s to seek party unity in order to win the White House.  There’s little doubt that most antiwar Democratic groups will line up behind their party’s prowar nominee in 2008.”

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