No Blood For Oil ­ Stop the War Against Iraq

Green Party USA spokesperson Mitchel Cohen charged today that George Bush's warmongering threats make him a far greater danger to world peace than Saddam Hussein. “I'm no Saddam hugger, but if we want someone to step down from office,” Cohen said, “the world would benefit if George W. Bush would do so."

The Green Party USA blasted Junior Bush’s administration for escalating the oil-pipeline global domination policies of Papa Bush as well as the Democrats, and denounced government plans for an all-out bombardment of Iraq. “The Green Party USA condemns this brazen act of lawlessness on the part of the US government which is in clear violation of the UN Charter and International Law,” Cohen charged.

Cohen announced that the Green Party USA has endorsed the call for nonviolent antiwar activities across the country on September 11th initiated by the California-based organization Global Exchange, and its spokesperson Medea Benjamin.

Green Party USA representative from Maine, Nancy Oden, added: "The Green Party wants Iraquis and other people throughout the world to know that there are millions of Americans who oppose the war crimes being planned by the White House. Silence is complicity. It is time for all of us to Speak Out against the coming massacre, stop Bush’s ‘endless war,’ and prevent the Bush administration from using the Bill of Rights as a rag to wipe their shoes.”

Oden was one of the first to expose the new apparatus of repression when she found herself to be an early target of the government last November, as she attempted to board a plane to Chicago where she was scheduled to address a Green Party USA board meeting. “I was told my name had been flagged in the computer,” she said, and military personnel escorted her away from the plane. “Since that time, hundreds of people have been unconstitutionally detained at airports,” Oden said. “The attacks on civil liberties are part and parcel of the war buildup.”

Oden pointed out that the Iraqi people are being threatened again by the biggest and only military superpower in the world. The US is spending as much on its military than all the other countries in world combined. It has more weapons of mass destruction than the rest of world and is the only country to have ever launched a nuclear first strike -­ August 6th, 1945 -- against the people of Hiroshima and, a few days later, Nagasaki. It has recently carried out devastating bombings of Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan using "depleted Uranium," a deadly poison that carries a high risk of genetic malformations and cancer.

During the 1991 Gulf War, the US dropped more than 88,000 tons of explosives in a 42-day period, killing more than 200,000 Iraqis. “Economic Sanctions imposed on Iraq since August 1990 and continuing to this day have taken the lives of a million civilians -- mainly children under the age of five. Sanctions have proven to be weapon of mass destruction,” Oden said, “and the Green Party USA is organizing to stop this war.”


July 18, 2002
The Greens/Green Party USA
Founded 1984, Organized as Party in 1991 ­
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PO Box 1406, Chicago, IL 60690
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Contact:
Mitchel Cohen (718) 670-3231
 mitchelcohen@mindspring.com