Despite months of intense public opposition to the war, Australian Prime Minister John Howard committed Australian troops to the American-led, non UN-sanctioned military action in Iraq.

Photographs 127-130 were taken in Wagga Wagga on Friday, March 21, 2003--the day the invasion commenced. Throughout Australia and the world, people took to the streets to denounce the military action of the Bush regime and its allies.

Within weeks of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq the regime of Saddam Hussein collapsed--though like the elusive Osama bin Laden, Hussein's ultimate fate remains unknown. Of Iraq's supposed "weapons of mass destruction," there was no sign--a fact that prompted Adele Horin to concede in the April 12-13 edition of The Sydney Morning Herald, that "It seems our politicians may have lied to us." Horin goes on to write: "We were told the raison d'etre for this war was to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to world peace . . . If the major reason for launching a pre-emptive strike turns out to have been an utter falsehood, we have been conned."

130. With the rapid fall of the Iraqi government, many within the justice and peace movement were openly challenged by those supportive of the invasion. In response to such challenges, Phil Steger, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Friends for a Non-Violent World, wrote the following commentary for the April 25 edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper.

"We [as justice and peace activists] believed that Saddam Hussein was enough of a threat to the Iraqi people and others that the United States should at least not have supported his brutal rule. We believed this in the 1980s, when Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush paid him billions in U.S. tax dollars to build his military, and to invade and gas his neighbors and his people.

"We believed the United States should have supported, or at least not hindered, the Iraqi people in seeking political and economic freedom in the 1990s, when America enforced the debilitating, total embargo known as sanctions for twelve years . . . The impact on Saddam Hussein was dramatic: He grew immensely stronger and richer. The impact on America was subtler, but just as serious. We ceased to be recognized as a moral force by most of the world.

"There's no way to calculate the number of Iraqis killed in the last three administrations' reckless efforts to get what they wanted in Iraq. The dead can't be liberated, and now Iraq's population faces an immediate future of looting, civil and guerrilla warfare, starvation, polluted water, disease and dehydration.

"It didn't have to be this way. This is exactly what our peace activism sought to prevent. There were other means to resolve this crisis, even to remove Saddam Hussein. But they should have been put into the hands of the Iraqi people, not the American president.

"We might have achieved this, but the president forced the country into a false choice: between doing nothing and going to war. Now, more than 100 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis, at least 1,000 of whom were civilians, have paid the price for that false choice, and war has plunged a nation of 24 million into humanitarian crisis and political chaos. Their total number of fatalities are certain to rise -- hour-by-hour for Iraqis, and, if the last Gulf War is any indication, again after a few years' incubation period for American veterans and Iraqis both. The number of GIs killed in combat in Desert Storm was around 280. According to the Veterans Administration, 9,600 Desert Storm veterans so far have died of illness since coming home.

"Others may think so little of American integrity, ingenuity, courage and creativity as to believe that America's only choice was between war and inaction. We do not.

"Sanctions should have been lifted. An arms embargo should have been enforced on Iraq, and a moratorium on weapons of mass destruction sales to the entire region established. Inspections should have continued their successful, if painstaking work, without the snide sabotage of the Bush administration.

"U.N. human rights inspectors might have increased the pressure on Saddam's regime and created a space for the Iraqi masses to experiment with ways of resisting and asserting their wills over their ruler. Under such conditions, we might have watched Saddam fall the way the Soviet Empire fell, Slobodan Milosevic fell in Yugoslavia, Augusto Pinochet fell in Chile, Ferdinand Marcos fell in the Philippines, the apartheid regime fell in South Africa, segregation fell in the American South and the British Empire exited from India--without a war.

"The time is coming when regimes that threaten the peace and security of the world's people will be promptly and peacefully removed from power by the nonviolent, political force of the people. It might have happened in Iraq. It will happen in America."

131. Howard Zinn, social activist, historian, and author of the renowned A People's History of the United States - St. Paul, Minnesota, April 23, 2003.

Commenting on Howard Zinn's address to an overflowing crowd at the University of St. Thomas, journalist John Tribbett noted in Pulse of the Twin Cities that Zinn "used his colorful history--being raised in a working class family, later becoming a bombardier in World War II and eventually earning a Ph.D. from Columbia University--as a backdrop to highlight the evolution of his beliefs and how they apply to current issues in the United States. [Zinn] spoke about his opposition to the current war in Iraq, the American media's failure to cover the victims of American-led attacks there, the conservatives' hijacking of the term 'patriotism' and the takeover of the presidency by George W. Bush."

Speaking to Tribbett after his talk, Howard Zinn observed that "the United States wants military bases in Iraq. It wants control of the oil in Iraq. It wants a regime friendly to U.S. interests. You can see that, they are trying to put people in power in Iraq who are wealthy and who have the same interests as the Bush administration. It really doesn't care about democracy in Iraq."

132. Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness - May 12, 2003, Minneapolis.

As part of the Iraq Peace Team, Kathy and others had planned since the summer of 2002 to witness from inside Iraq the U.S. invasion of the country. Visiting Minneapolis after the invasion to share her experiences, Kathy noted that the Iraq Peace Team did not see themselves as human shields. Rather, they wished simply to stand in solidarity with ordinary Iraqis living under the threat and reality of falling U.S. bombs.

During the invasion, up to 40 members of the Iraq Peace Team lived at the Al Fanar Hotel. U.S. bombs repeatedly fell on a palace about 100 yards away, causing the hotel to shake and sway. During the day, Kathy and others ventured out to visit hospitals and bombing sites and to comfort frightened Iraqi children. They also conversed with U.S. soldiers, who were surprised to be greeted by American protesters. Observing that the soldiers looked hot and thirsty, Peace Team members brought them water.

"They were forthcoming," Kathy said. "Several said they did not want to join the military in the first place, and they didn't want to be involved in killing Iraqi people. One fellow, a commanding officer, said, 'Don't blame these guys, I'm the one who has sleepless nights. In the heat of battle I made hasty decisions and we killed a lot of civilians.'"

Kathy said the U.S. forces did not bother them, except to prohibit them from handing out news releases at the Palestine Hotel where the media was staying--prior to it becoming a target of U.S. fire power. In one of the hospitals Kathy visited she met a little girl whose chest had been ripped by shrapnel, two boys whose legs were shattered, and a boy who lost both arms and had his torso badly burned. The boy's aunt said he would wake up crying and ask, "Will I always be this way?"

Kathy remains convinced that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was "immoral, illegal, unjustified and avoidable." She was encouraged by the millions who took to the streets to protest the invasion, noting that "the anti-war movement internationally came closer than ever before to achieving the critical mass needed to stop a war before it starts. I think . . . the best way to prevent the next war is to tell the truth fully about this war and about the consequences."

For further pictures of Kathy Kelly see Images 3 and 21 in Gallery 6, and Image 27 in Part 2 of Gallery 10.

Off-site Link: Voices in the Wilderness.

133. "Obviously, we don't want any more war," says Marie Bruan about the focus of the Lake St/Marshall Ave. Bridge Peace Vigil now that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has taken place. "So one new focus is 'No New Targets'. Related to this is 'Say No to Empire' and yes to healthcare, to education, to basic necessities in this country.

"We're going to stay focused on Iraq for a while because we want to make sure that the humanitarian crisis there is taken care of and that self-determination for the Iraqi people is achieved. We also want to make people aware of depleted uranium--how it was used in this conflict and in the first Gulf War and its effects on the environment, on the Iraqi people, and on U.S. soldiers."

Responding to those who dismiss the unprecedented worldwide protest for its failure to prevent the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Marie observes that "This is a long term process. I often tell the story of when I took my 6-week-old baby daughter to a demonstration against apartheid in South Africa. At that time I never would have thought that the then imprisoned Nelson Mandela would one day become president of that country and that they would have a reconciliation process.

"If you're in the justice and peace movement for the short term you will be discouraged because it is discouraging. But we need to be in it for the long term. That's the way change happens--over the long term. Howard Zinn, when he was here in the Twin Cities recently, said 'We lose and lose and lose and then we win'."

There are things that activist citizens can be encouraged by insists Marie: "We built the peace movement, we educated a lot of people--people get the concept of empire now. Nobody used this word a year ago and now when we talk about the U.S. as an empire, people get it. Also, we need to remember that only 11% of people supported the war worldwide. The world did not support this war. It was encouraging that Turkey could say no even while they were being bribed by the U.S. with billions of dollars, that the UN would not pass a resolution authorizing the use of military force, that we got 10 million people out on February 15. These are all very, very encouraging things. We need to keep active and think of creative things to do. And each of us needs to do that."

134. "My private healthcare insurance just went up $200 a quarter," says John who "absolutely" sees a direst correlation betwen the increase in military spending and the decline of social services within the U.S.

"Programs here at home have gone downhill ever since this country started putting all the money into militarism in the name of national security. And if it's not Communism or the Cold War, it's terrorism. Somebody's got to speak out about all this. It's all related--not taking care of our own and massacring people across the globe."

135. "In essence, when people understand things they make better decisions," says Gaius. "And education is a way of understanding. I support understanding."

136. "It's not over," says Rebecca of the situation in Iraq. "There's still fighting going on--in Iraq and other parts of the world." On the question of what drives the Bush regime in its invasion and occupation of Iraq and its targeting of other countries such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea, Rebecca responds, "I think part of the answer is greed."

137. "I feel we're targeting countries like North Korea because of greed," says Suzanne who has substituted "Iraq" with "North Korea" on her placard. "Before Iraq we were hated by some in the world. Now after Iraq we're despised by almost all the world."