The third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq was marked by worldwide protests and peace vigils. In Minneapolis, close to 3,000 people gathered in the Uptown area before processing down Hennepin Ave. to the Basilica of St. Mary.

Writing in the Toronto Star on March 19, 2006, Haroon Siddiqui observed that "the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster" with 2,300 Americans and at least 38,000 Iraqis dead, and an unknown number of people maimed and displaced.

"Iraq," notes Siddiqui, "has been turned into a failed state, with the occupying forces unsuccessful in their primary duty of providing security to the occupied. As U.S. troops hide behind bunkers and in armoured cars, Iraqi soldiers and policemen become cannon fodder and ordinary Iraqis retreat into the relative safety of families, tribes, clans and their militias. In these conditions, democracy, the retroactive justification for the war, is having a hard time taking hold . . ."

"Promises of security have evaporated with a military occupation unable to restore the most basic of services to pre-war levels, including the delivery of clean water, electricity and heating oil. The chaos threatens Iraq's historic ethnic and religious mosaic and has forced Iraqis to seek safety in homogenous communities.

"The first steps are removing U.S. troops and bases, and giving up American control of administrative, economic, political, and military structures. While many around the world may see the violence in Iraq as fundamental and inherent, rooted in history or simply incomprehensible, this is not the case. The current violence in Iraq is a direct result of the U.S. invasion and hostile military occupation.

"The U.S. cannot win this war with more troops. However, the alternative is not the abandonment of the Iraqi people. Lasting peace calls for a focus on diplomacy, and funneling these billions of dollars into reconstructing Iraq.

"The United States cannot afford to ignore the voices and sentiments of the many other countries that oppose the occupation. Bridges need to be rebuilt between the United States and the international community. The past three years show that unilateral militarism, with disregard for our allies, leads to isolation and failure.

As Haroon Siddiqui notes, "the clearest solution is for the Americans to pull out, or at least set a date for doing so. Their departure cannot possibly make matters any worse. At the very least, it will reduce terrorism, certainly Muslim radicalism, not just in Iraq, but everywhere . . . America desperately needs a time-out to heal itself. It must close down not only Abu Ghraib but also Guantanamo Bay and other such shameful shrines to human abuse. It must abandon shipping off suspects on secret CIA planes to torture chambers. It must stop preaching democracy to the world while balking at its results in the Israeli Occupied Territories, and also eroding the most fundamental democratic principles at home, by holding people without charge and denying them fair trials. It needs to re-impose legislative controls over such abuses of presidential powers as snooping on citizens without warrants."

When asked, "What's the solution" to the situation in Iraq?, Faiza Al-Araji, a civil engineer who had recently fled with her family to Jordan after her son was temporarily kidnapped, noted that "the first step is [to] help the Iraqis have a national unity government, to . . . get a good government, a real government which is . . . representative of the Iraqi people. This is step number one. Step number two: give training for the Iraqi police and the [Iraqi] soldiers to help their people, not to arrest them and kill them . . . or to move with the American occupation force to kill Iraqi people. We need something new, strong, [something to] trust . . . And then the other step [is to] ask that . . . the [US] troops pull out . . . from Iraq."

Countering the argument that Iraq would descend into civil war if US troops were withdrawn, Eman Ahmed Khamas declared: "No . . . it's not going to be like that. I mean, you have to plan it in a way that, you know, guarantees that there will be no civil war . . . There is the U.N., there is the Security Council, there are the peacekeeping troops. There are many things that they can work out to, you know, follow this security vacuum so that [Iraq] wouldn't . . . go into civil war.

"But the occupation should end immediately. It's something wrong. It's wrong for the Iraqis, for the Americans, for the world, for peace, for international law. Everything. It's wrong. It has to end now. Immediately. And then . . . we Iraqis, we can work things out. We are capable of that. And if we kill each other, it's our problem. It's not the Americans' problem . . . I'm sure that we are capable of taking care of ourselves."

129 Sami Rasouli (photographed October 2004).

A longtime American businessman, Sami Rasouli returned to his native Iraq after Saddam Hussein was ousted from power in 2003. He is adamant that the U.S. needs to withdraw its troops immediately in order for violence in Iraq to cease.

"The latest war has been devastating Iraqi life," said Rasouli on March 8, 2006. "And [Iraqis] don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. We failed to make Iraq secure, we failed to reconstruct Iraq and we failed to defeat violence. Violence is increasing and not only in Iraq. The war on terror is not succeeding."

Rasouli returned to Iraq in November 2004 after selling Sinbad's, his successful cafe and market in Minneapolis. He had originally moved to the United States more than twenty years earlier to seek medical treatment for his deaf son. In time, he became a U.S. citizen.

While in Iraq, Rasouli and some friends formed the Muslim Peacemakers Team to attempt to use nonviolent solutions to conflict and war, much like the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

During a presentation on March 8 at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Rasouli, a Shitte Muslim, told students he has traveled throughout Iraq, working with different communities, and recently returned to the United States to share his stories and experiences with Americans.

Saddam Hussein, said Rasouli, was a brutal dictator, but U.S. efforts in Iraq have failed, leaving his homeland worse off than before by encouraging the division of Iraqi people by sects, religions and ethnic backgrounds.

"Occupation should end because it's colonial strategy from the past, and we are here now at the beginning of the third millennium where we should have, a long time ago, adapted the civilized communication," he said.

Off-site Link: Muslim Peacemaker Teams.

237. Rev. Jesse Jackson, photographed in Minneapolis at a rally in support of hotel workers - July 2000.

In the April 11, 2006 edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, Jackson had a commentary published entitled, "Stop Bush Before He Attacks Iran."

Writes Jackson: "Here we go again. The administration says 'regime change' is needed. Warnings are issued about the threat posed by the 'madman' who leads the oil-rich country. Alarming intelligence estimates are leaked about nuclear weapons programs. The vice president warns 'monumental consequences' if the alleged efforts to develop nuclear weapons are continued. Neo-conservatives call for military action. Administration operatives express scorn for international monitoring. The Pentagon is reported not only to be developing contingency plans for an assault, but already launching mock bombing runs to measure air defense capacities. Covert military incursions are said to be active on the ground.

"Iran has oil and gas - lots of it, second only to Saudi Arabia in reserves. It controls the straits of the Persian Gulf, where 40 percent of the world's oil flows each day. It is headed by an Islamist fundamentalist who vows Israel should be wiped off the map. Iran admittedly has a nuclear energy program in process, and many believe that it is committed to building nuclear weapons.

"But this may well be more about the United States than about Iran. President Bush's polls are at record lows. Republicans face a brutal off-year election. Karl Rove has pledged to make the war on terror a partisan issue in the fall. It surely isn't an accident that the White House is turning up the heat on Iran now, just as it did against Iraq in the run-up to the 2002 elections . . ."

238. Phyllis Bennis (photographed in Minneapolis, December 7, 2002).

A Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and author most recently of Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy U.S. Power, Phyllis Bennis states that "any military strike on Iran would be a violation of international law prohibiting preventive war. And George Bush now admits that "preventive war" - not his earlier claim of pre-emptive war -iIs indeed his strategic doctrine."

In her April 19, 2006 article, "Iran: The Day After," published on the Common Dreams website, Bennis notes that "according to the International Court of Justice, even threatening to use nuclear weapons is a violation of international law - and the Bush administration is threatening to use nuclear 'bunker-buster' bombs to attack Iran. We don't hear much about it, but we know the National Academy of Sciences has found that 'the use of such a weapon would create massive clouds of radioactive fallout that could spread far from the site of the attack, including to other nations. Even if used in remote, lightly populated areas, the number of casualties could range up to more than a hundred thousand...' "

"We know all that," says Bennis. "But what if the Bush administration orders it anyway? What if they do carry out just such a strike, nuclear or otherwise? Then what? What happens the day after? Practically no one is talking about that. And that makes this whole threat even more dangerous."

What else should we be talking about? "At the end of the day," insists Bennis, "Iran has been pretty clear about what it wants. It doesn't seem to want an actual nuclear weapon (both the late Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor have issued religious prohibitions, or fatwas, against such weapons) although there's little doubt that President Ahmadinejad appears to believe that posturing aggressively about 'going nuclear' will help his flagging domestic ratings. (Sound familiar?) What Iran really wants, and has asked for, is serious negotiations with the U.S., based on equality, not humiliation. And at the end, a security guarantee that neither Europe nor the UN, but only the U.S. itself - the world's 'sole super-power' and the only nuclear weapons state threatening to actually use its nuclear arsenal - can provide.

"For all sides, talk is crucial. Nuclear weapons - in anyone's hands - are a nightmare that should be abolished once and for all, as the now-fading Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) anticipated so many years ago. Certainly Iran should abjure any search for nuclear weapons - but that's not going to happen alone. What we need - what we all need - is a weapons of mass destruction-free zone throughout the Middle East. So not only no nukes for Iran, but let's be sure Israel signs the NPT and places its unacknowledged but highly provocative Dimona arsenal of 200-400 high-density nuclear bombs under international supervision, and then allows the inspectors to destroy them. Let's be sure no country in the Middle East is running a chemical- or biological-weapons program - the poor countries' nuclear weapons substitute of choice and an unfortunate inevitability as long as Israel has a nuclear monopoly in the region.

"And it's way past time for the U.S. to make good on its own NPT obligations to move towards full and complete nuclear disarmament. As long as Washington laughs off that obligation, and officially rejects it, it is hard to imagine why any other countries should take seriously a U.S. demand that take nuclear weapons off their agenda.

"Ironically enough the U.S. is already on record supporting just such a WMD-free zone in the Middle East. Article 14 of UN Security Resolution 687, that ended the 1991 Gulf War and imposed crippling sanctions on Iraq, states that disarming Iraq should be viewed as part of 'establishing in the Middle East a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them.'

"The language was written by the U.S. It's time we held Washington accountable to that pledge. Let's talk to Iran."

239-240. Amy Santoriello of Gold Star Families For Peace and Sargent Geoffrey Millard of Iraq Veterans Against the War - Minneapolis, April 22, 2006.

241.At the beginning of his April 22 talk in Minneapolis, Sargent Geoff Millard displayed his numerous medals and noted how in the eyes of the military they give him "legitimacy." Yet, says Geoff, "they don't mean shit to me."

It's his 13 months of military service in Iraq, symbolized by the worn boots he holds up and displays to the audience, that gives Geoff legitimacy to speak as he does against the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

"War is really about dehumanization," says Geoff. "It's the Oval Office and the Pentagon that forces the dehumanization down to the grunts on the ground. It's a strategy that's designed to turn an 18-year-old kid into a sociopath."

"Soldiers are good people at heart," insists Geoff, "but they're turned into sociopaths by the dehumanizing process of military training."

Referring to the anit-war activism of people like Cindy Sheehan, Geoff notes that the peace movement doesn't demoralize the troops. "They welcome us back home and give us a hug," he says. What demoralizes the troops, according to Geoff, is the horrifying realities of war and their impact on people's lives. "The establishment, not the peace movement, disrespects soldiers."

"You can never divorce the word 'war' from 'war crime'," says Geoff. "They're the same thing."

Off-site Link: Gold Star Families for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War