Eye Alerts
| Click here to write your local papers about Eye Alerts! |
 |
Alerts on key issues facing Congress are sent to "EYE contacts" around the country from the WILPF in Washington office or the DISARM Eye on Congress committee on a regular basis. Click on the links below to read our current alert or past alerts on key disarmament issues.
Read more about the EYE on Congress project, or to become an Eye contact for your WILPF branch, please contact Val Mullen (vmullen@together.net)
New US WILPF Statement on the War in Iraq and Iran
TO ALL CONGRESS PEOPLE
re: WAR in IRAQ and IRAN
We condemn and oppose the United States war and occupation of Iraq, which has caused the death of over 4,000 U.S. military personnel and over 1 million Iraqis. Untold numbers of combat troops have been physically and psychologically damaged. In addition there are over 5 million Iraqi refugees, which place a strain on the economies of the receiving countries. An estimated 1 million war widows work to eke out a living for their families.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days -- August 6 to 9
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days -- August 6 to 9 -- are now almost upon us. The DISARM UPDATE has been carrying action and organizing resources since May. Report your plans to the WILPF DISARM committee for sharing with other Branches and on the national event register. Check out our Hiroshima-Nagasaki Days and Nuclear Free Future Month page for items you can use, including a petition from the Burlington WILPF Branch calling on Congress to declare August 6 national Nuclear Disarmament Day. We plan to deliver it to Congress in September.
WILPF is also co-sponsoring the United For Peace and Justice national web site and event register now available at http://www.nuclearfreefuture.org/ . You will find there many additional resources, action ideas, and a place where you can enter plans for your own events and read descriptions of others. In addition WILPF has joined UFPJ in designating the whole of August as Nuclear Free Future month. So we can join many others the whole month long in collecting petitions, vigiling, asking questions of candidates, joining in legislative action, educating ourselves and our communities and finding ways to lift high our demands for nuclear disarmament. This is the right time!
Click here to download the Nuclear Disarmament Day petition in pdf format
Alert-From FCNL-Invest in Peace Action
There is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security - diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development."
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates speaking at Kansas State University, 11/26/07The failure of the U.S.'s unilateral military engagement in Iraq has fueled a growing understanding within the military that the U.S. needs diplomatic tools to help prevent war. But Congress has not yet invested in tools that can lead to a lasting peace.
Your representative can make an investment this year in building peace by supporting the Reconstruction and Stabilization Civilian Management Act (H.R. 1084). Instead of sending the military to countries teetering on the brink of war or emerging from conflict, the U.S. could send civilian experts who specialize in training police, running hospitals and schools, improving farm production, and other specialties. These trained civilians would help governments strengthen the public institutions that meet people's basic needs and give them confidence in their government's ability to protect and support them.
From FCNL-Take Action on Diplomacy
The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to require the president to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq within 30 days and set a goal for withdrawal of most combat troops by the end of 2008. The bill would also ban the use of torture in interrogations, direct the administration to seek regional stability in conversation with Iraq's neighbors, and prohibit the U.S. from building permanent military installations in Iraq. But the bill, which provides $50 billion in additional funding for war, will never become law because President Bush will veto it and Congress does not have enough votes to override the president's veto.
Webb letter on Iran
Some Democratic lawmakers have questioned whether a new Bush administration request for $88 million to fit "bunker-busting" bombs to B-2 stealth bombers was part of preparations for an attack on Iran.
A Bush administration summary said the request was needed for "development of a Massive Ordnance Penetrator for the B-2 aircraft in response to an urgent operational need from theater commanders," but gave no details. The Massive Ordnance Penetrator is a conventional bomb designed to destroy hardened or deeply buried targets.
"My assumption is that it is Iran, because you wouldn't use them in Iraq, and I don't know where you would use them in Afghanistan; it doesn't have any weapons facilities underground that we know of," said Rep. Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat who is on the House Appropriations Committee and intends to argue against the request.
