Pubdate: Fri, 01 Sep 2006
Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
Copyright: 2006 The Salt Lake Tribune
Contact:  http://www.sltrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/383

TRANSCRIPT OF MAYOR ROCKY ANDERSON'S SPEECH

Editor's Note: Remarks appear as prepared in advance and differ 
slightly from those delivered.

Washington Square Salt Lake City, Utah August 30, 2006

A patriot is a person who loves his or her country.

Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here 
today to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation - and 
for our world?

And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our 
nation's leaders tell us the truth?

Let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Let no one deny we are patriots. We love our country, we hold dear 
the values upon which our nation was founded, and we are distressed 
at what our President, his administration, and our Congress are doing 
to, and in the name of, our great nation.

Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.

A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about 
their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking 
out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; 
to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, 
war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.

That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That 
person is a member of a frightening culture of obedience - a culture 
where falling in line with authority is more important than choosing 
what is right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I 
suspect, that person is afraid - afraid we are right, afraid of the 
truth (even to the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in 
with an oppressive, inhumane, regime that does not respect the laws 
and traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the 
worst presidency our nation has ever had to endure.

In response to those who believe we should blindly support this 
disastrous president, his administration, and the complacent, 
complicit Congress, listen to the words of Theodore Roosevelt, a 
great president and a Republican, who said: The President is merely 
the most important among a large number of public servants. He should 
be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by 
his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in 
rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full 
liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is 
exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him 
when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both 
base and servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that 
we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only 
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American 
public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one 
else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or 
unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

We are here today as truth-tellers.

And we are here to demand: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! 
Give us the truth!"

  We are here today to insist that those who were elected to be our 
leaders must tell us the truth.

We are here today to insist that our news media live up to its sacred 
responsibility to ascertain and report the truth - rather than acting 
like nothing more than a bulletin board for the lies and propaganda 
of a manipulative, dishonest federal government.

We have been getting just about everything but the truth on matters 
of life and death . . . on matters upon which our nation's reputation 
hinges . . . on matters that directly relate to our nation's 
fundamental values . . . and on matters relating to the survival of 
our planet.

In the process, our nation has engaged in an unnecessary war, based 
upon false justifications. More than a hundred thousand people have 
been killed - and many more have been seriously maimed, brain 
damaged, or rendered mentally ill.

Our nation's reputation throughout much of the world has been 
destroyed. We have many more enemies bent on our destruction than 
before our invasion of Iraq.

And the hatred toward us has grown to the point that it will take 
many years, perhaps generations, to overcome the loathing created by 
our invasion and occupation of a Muslim country.

What incredible ineptitude and callousness for our President to talk 
about a Crusade while lying to us to make a case for the invasion and 
occupation of a Muslim country!

Our children and later generations will pay the price of the lies, 
the violence, the cruelty, the incompetence, and the inhumanity of 
the Bush administration and the lackey Congress that has so cowardly 
abrogated its responsibility and authority under our 
checks-and-balances system of government.

We are here to say, "We will not stand for it any more. No more lies. 
No more pre-emptive, illegal war, based on false information. No more 
God-is-on-our-side religious nonsense to justify this immoral, 
illegal war. No more inhumanity."

Let's raise our voices, and demand, "Give us the truth! Give us the 
truth! Give us the truth!"

Let's consider some of the most monstrous lies - lies that have led 
us, like a nation of sheep, to this tragic war.

Following September 11, 2001, the world knew that Osama bin Laden and 
al Qaeda were responsible for the horrific attacks on our country. 
Our long-time allies were sympathetic and supportive. But our 
president transformed that support into international disdain for the 
United States, choosing to illegally invade and occupy Iraq, rather 
than focus on and capture the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

Why invade and occupy Iraq? Vice President Dick Cheney and 
Condoleezza Rice represented to us, without qualification, that there 
were strong ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

In September, 2002, President Bush made the incredible claim that 
"You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam."

President Bush represented to Congress, without any factual basis 
whatsoever, that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 
9/11 attacks.

Our President and Vice-President, along with an unquestioning news 
media, repeatedly led our nation to believe that there was a working 
relationship between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, a 
relationship that threatened the US. Even last week, when I met with 
Thomas Bock, National Commander of the American Legion, I asked him 
why we are engaged in the war in Iraq. He said, "Why, of course, 
because of the 9/11 attacks on our country." I asked, "What did Iraq 
have to do with those attacks?" He looked puzzled, then said, "Well, 
the connection between al Qaeda and Iraq."

I was shocked. Here is a man who has criticized us for opposing the 
war in Iraq - and he is completely wrong about the underlying facts 
used to justify this war.

Not only has there never been any evidence of any involvement by 
Saddam Hussein or Iraq with the attacks on 9/11, but there has never 
been any evidence of any operational connection whatsoever between 
Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

Colin Powell finally conceded there is no "concrete evidence about 
the connection." "The chairman of the monitoring group appointed by 
the United Nations Security Council to track al Qaeda" disclosed that 
"his team had found no evidence linking al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein." 
And the top investigator for our European allies has said, 'If there 
were such links, we would have found them.

But we have found no serious connections whatsoever.'"

President Bush himself finally admitted nine days ago during a press 
conference that there was no connection between the attacks on 9/11 
and Iraq. It's terrific that the President has now admitted what 
others have known for so long - but where is the accountability for 
the tragic war we were led into on the basis of his earlier 
misrepresentations?

Besides the fictions of Saddam Hussein somehow being linked to the 
9/11 attacks and his supposed connection with al Qaeda, what was the 
principal justification for forgoing additional weapons inspections, 
failing to work with our allies toward a solution, refraining from 
seeking additional resolutions from the United Nations, and hurrying 
to war - a so-called "pre-emptive" war - in which we would attack and 
occupy a Muslim nation that posed no security risk to the United 
States, and cause the deaths of many thousands of innocent men, 
women, and children - and the deaths and lifetime injuries to many 
thousands of our own servicemen and servicewomen?

The principal claim was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass 
destruction - biological and chemical weapons - and was seeking to 
build up a nuclear weapons capability. As we now know, there was 
nothing - no evidence whatsoever - to support those claims.

President Bush represented to us - and to people around the world - 
that one of the reasons we needed to make war in Iraq - and to do it 
right away - was because Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear 
weapons. His assertions about Saddam Hussein trying to purchase 
nuclear materials from an African nation and about Iraq seeking to 
obtain aluminum tubes for the enrichment of uranium were challenged 
at the time by our own intelligence agency and scientists, yet he 
didn't tell us that! Ten days before the invasion of Iraq, it was 
proven that the documents upon which President Bush's claim about 
Saddam Hussein trying to obtain uranium was based were forgeries. 
However, President Bush did not disclose that to the American people. 
By that failure, he betrayed each of us, he betrayed our country, and 
he betrayed the cause of world peace.

Neither did the vast majority of the news media disclose the 
forgeries - until it was far too late. It took our local newspapers 
here in Salt Lake City four months - until after President Bush 
declared that major combat in Iraq was over - to report the discovery 
that the documents were forgeries - and, therefore, that there was no 
basis for the false claims about Saddam Hussein trying to build up a 
nuclear capability. By its failure to promptly disclose the 
forgeries, the news media betrayed us as well.

Had the American people known we were being lied to - had President 
Bush informed us that the documents were forged and that he had no 
other basis for his claim - had our nation's media done its job, 
rather than slavishly repeating to us the lies being fed to it by the 
Bush administration - our nation may well not have allowed the 
commencement of this outrageous, illegal, unjustified war.

To President Bush, to his administration, to our go-along Congress, 
and to our news media, we are here today, demanding, "Give us the 
truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that 
high-strength aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were "only really 
suited for nuclear weapons programs," warning "we don't want the 
smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Undisclosed by President Bush or Condoleezza Rice was the fact that 
top nuclear scientists had informed the Administration that the tubes 
were "too narrow, too heavy, too long" to be useful in developing 
nuclear weapons and could be used for other purposes. Dr. Mohamed El 
Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, agreed.

So much for the phony claims of Saddam Hussein building nuclear 
weapons - the primary claims justifying the rush to war.

What were we told about chemical and biological weapons of mass 
destruction? These claims were as baseless and fraudulent as the 
claims about nuclear weapons.

President Bush told us in his January 2003 State of the Union address 
that Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of 
sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. Then, in May of 2003, he made the 
outlandish statement that, "We found the weapons of mass destruction. 
We found biological laboratories."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told us, "We know where the 
[WMDs] are." Vice President Cheney and then-Secretary of State Powell 
also joined in the chorus of lies and misinformation about weapons of 
mass destruction. Of course, no stockpiles of biological or chemical 
weapons were found.

Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay noted that Iraq did 
not have an ongoing chemical weapons program after 1991-a conclusion 
remarkably similar to statements made by Colin Powell and Condoleezza 
Rice before the 9/11 attacks - and before they sacrificed the truth 
in the service of promoting the Bush administration's case for war 
against Iraq.

On February 24, 2001, less than 7 months before 9/11, Colin Powell 
said that Saddam Hussein "has not developed any significant 
capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable 
to project conventional power against his neighbors," said Colin Powell.

And in July 2001, two months before 9/11, Condoleezza Rice said: "We 
are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been 
rebuilt."

It is astounding how they changed their claims after the President 
decided to make a case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq!

To think that we could be lied to by so many members of the Bush 
administration with such impunity is frightening - chilling. Yet 
these imperious, arrogant, dishonest people think we should just fall 
in line with them and continue to take them at their word.

The truth has been established. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 
attacks on the United States. There is no evidence of any operational 
ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. And there were no weapons of mass 
destruction in Iraq.

What a tragedy, leading to greater tragedy. We are fed lie after lie, 
our media reinforces those lies, and we are a nation led to a tragic, 
illegal, unprovoked war.

We are here because of our values. We love our country. We cherish 
the freedoms and liberties of our country. We don't call those who 
speak out against our nation's leaders unpatriotic or un-American or 
appeasers of fascists. We have good, wholesome family values. In our 
families, we teach honesty, we teach kindness and compassion toward 
others, we teach that violence, if ever justified, must be an 
absolutely last resort. In our families, we teach that our nation's 
constitutional values are to be upheld, and that they are worth 
standing up and fighting for. Our family values promote respect and 
equal rights toward everyone, regardless of race, ethnic origin, and 
sexual orientation.

In our families, we teach the value of hard work and competence - and 
we are left to wonder about a President who, after receiving an 
intelligence memo about the threat posed by al Qaeda, decides to 
continue his month-long vacation - just before the 9/11 attacks on 
our country.

As we demand the truth from others, let us also face the truth. Our 
government all too often has not cared about the human rights of 
people in other nations - and it doesn't really care about democracy, 
unless it leads to the election of those who will do our bidding.

Consider the irony regarding the claims that Saddam had chemical 
weapons and, because of that, we needed to rush to war in Iraq. When 
Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons - first against Iranians, 
then against his own people, the Kurds - our country provided him 
with biological and chemical agents and equipment to make the 
weapons. Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush refused even to 
support economic sanctions against Hussein for his use of weapons of 
mass destruction.

What did our nation do in response to Hussein's use of chemical 
weapons, killing tens of thousand of people, when he actually had them?

We befriended, coddled, and rewarded him - with government-guaranteed 
loans totaling $5 billion since 1983, freeing up currency for Hussein 
to modernize his military assets.

Perhaps those in the US government who aided and abetted Saddam 
Hussein to further US business interests, while he was gassing the 
Kurds, should be sharing his courtroom dock as he is being tried now 
for crimes against humanity.

No more lies, no more hiding of the truth, no more wars that more 
than triple the value of stock in Dick Cheney's prior employer, 
Halliburton - and which, as of last September, has increased the 
value of the Halliburton CEO's stock by $78 million.

We are patriots. We're deeply concerned. And we demand change, now.

No more lies from Condoleezza Rice about whether she and President 
Bush were advised before 9/11 of the possibility of planes being 
flown into buildings by terrorists.

No more gross incompetence in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

No more torture of human beings.

No more disregard of the basic human rights enshrined in the Geneva 
Convention.

No more kidnapping of people and sending them off to secret prisons 
in nations where we can expect they will be tortured.

No more unconstitutional wiretapping of Americans.

No more proposed amendments to the United States Constitution that 
would, for the first time, limit fundamental rights and liberties for 
entire classes of people simply on the basis of sexual orientation.

No more federal land giveaways to developers.

No more increases in mercury emissions from old, dirty, dangerous 
coalburning power plants.

No more backroom deals that deprive protection for millions of acres 
of wild lands.

No more attacks on immigrants who work so hard to build better lives.

No more inaction by Congress on fixing our hypocritical and 
inconsistent immigration laws and policies.

No more reliance on fiction rather than the science of global warming.

No more manipulation of our media with false propaganda.

No more disastrous cuts in funding for those most in need.

No more federal cuts in community policing and local law enforcement 
grant programs for our cities.

No more inaction on stopping the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

No more of the Patriot Act.

No more killing.

No more pre-emptive wars.

No more contempt for our long-time allies around the world.

No more dependence on foreign oil.

No more failure to impose increased fuel efficiency standards for automobiles.

No more energy policies developed in secret meetings between Dick 
Cheney and his energy company cronies.

No more excuses for failing to aggressively cut global warming 
pollutant emissions.

No more tragically incompetent federal responses to natural disasters.

No more tax cuts for the wealthiest, while the middle class and those 
who are economically-disadvantaged continue to struggle more and more 
each year.

No more reckless spending and massive tax cuts, resulting in historic 
deficits and historic accumulated national debt.

No more purchasing of elections by the wealthiest corporations and 
individuals in the country.

No more phony, ineffective, inhumane so-called war on drugs.

No more failure to pass an increase in the minimum wage.

No more silence by the American people.

This is a new day. We will not be silent. We will continue to raise 
our voices. We will bring others with us. We will grow and grow, 
regardless of political party - unified in our insistence upon the 
truth, upon peace-making, upon more humane treatment of our brothers 
and sisters around the world.

We will be ever cognizant of our moral responsibility to speak up in 
the face of wrongdoing, and to work as we can for a better, safer, 
more just community, nation, and world.

So we won't let down. We won't be quiet. We will continue to resist 
the lies, the deception, the outrages of the Bush administration. We 
will insist that peace be pursued, and that, as a nation, we help 
those in need. We must break the cycle of hatred, of intolerance, of 
exploitation. We must pursue peace as vigorously as the Bush 
administration has pursued war. It's up to all of us to do our part.

Thank you everyone for lending your voices to this call for 
compassion, for peace, for greater humanity. Let us keep in mind the 
injunction of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Our lives begin to end 
the day we become silent about things that matter."  
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman