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| Mid-Missouri Fellowship of
Reconciliation The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) is a group composed of people from many faiths, and no particular faith -- all coming together to support nonviolence and justice. Offering people of conscience an action response to a morally-impaired U.S. foreign policy. |
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A Report on the Injustice in the Application of the Death Penalty in Missouri (1978-1996)(Microsoft Word document) News
Common Dreams Background Iraq Crisis Issue Guide by Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies U.S. History with Iraq, 1980 - 2 August 1990 Commentary Common Dreams News Center April 12, 2003 April 8, 2003 March 30, 2003 March 29, 2003 March 25, 2003 March 24, 2003 U.S. steps up secret surveillance March 23, 2003 March 22, 2003 March 20, 2003 |
Local News and Announcements... Don't miss anything...please scroll downHere are some photos from our action at the recruiting station on Wednesday June 30. And the text of the flyer handed out during the demonstration. Scroll down for more recently posted information about Iraq. 
TORTURED LOGIC IN IRAQ As the Bush adminstration tries to convince the US public that Iraq will now have "full sovereignty" we remind you that sovereignty is defined as "supreme power over a body politic" & "freedom from external control". Sovereign nations do not have 140,000 foreign troops occupying their nation operating under foreign commanders. They don't allow foreign soldiers to break into homes, arrest citizens or shoot Iraqis resisting the occupation of their nation. Nor do they allow them to interrogate or torture their citizens at US run prisons or allow detainees to be secretly flown to other countries where torture is not legally contested. Sovereign nations do not allow other nations to choose former CIA agents like Prime Minister Allawi to head their new govenment or allow US administrator Paul Bremer to issue edicts prohibiting US soldiers, intelligence agents and civilian contractors from being prosecuted for war crimes. TORTURE AS U.S. POLICY While the US prosecutes low ranking military prison guards for torturing and murdering at least 37 detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq their behavior was the direct result of Bush's decision to accept the White House counsel's flawed interpretation of the Geneva Conventions as irrelevant and of Bush and Rumsfeld's orders allowing prisoners to be tortured. We have conveniently forgotten that torture as an instrument of US policy has a long, bloody history. l By the end of 1969, 20,000 Vietnamese had been assassinated during the CIA's Operation Phoenix program. Most were interrogated using torture before being executed. CIA agent Bart Osborne told Congress in 1971 "I never knew in the course of all these operations any detainee to live through his interrogation. They all died. There was never any reasonable establishment of the fact that any one of those individuals was, in fact with the VC (Viet Cong), but they all died and the majority were either tortured to death or thrown out of helicopters". l In 1983 the CIA trained Honduran soldiers in the notorious Battalion 316 in the use of "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations". The CIA Interrogation Manual --"Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual" recommended "arresting suspects early in the morning by surprise, blindfolding them, and stripping them naked. Suspects should be held incommunicado and deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms should be windowless and soundproof, dark and without toilets". When no longer suspects were killed and buried at the US built base at El Aguacate. John Negroponte, then ambassador to Honduras ordered an aide compiling stats on human rights abuses to be kept from Congress so that funding Reagans Contra War would continue. In Aug. 2001 mass graves with 185 corpses including 2 Americans were found there. Negroponte's willingness to hide human rights abuses do not bode well for Iraqis as Negroponte assumes his new role as ambassodor to Iraq. l US written manuals used to train the Contra mercenaries against Nicaraqua recommended hiring professional criminals to carry out 'selective jobs', creating a 'martyr' by arranging a violent demonstration that leads to the death of a rebel supporter and sabotage. l In 1996 the Pentagon admitted that manuals condoning "executions of guerrilas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion and false imprisonment" were used to teach Latin Americans at the US Army's School of the Americas. Therefore we call for the immediate withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Tenent to be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Some things you can do to express your concerns and to force change in the interventionist U.S. foreign policy, (including ending the U.S. Occupation of Iraq): *WRITE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR *ORGANIZE YOUR OWN PROTEST and let others know about it OR JOIN OTHER GATHERINGS urging peaceable and just, U.S. international relations: --Saturdays, 10:00-11:00 a.m., Columbia Post Office, Walnut St.; --Tuesdays, 12 Noon-1:00 p.m., Speakers Circle, UMC campus; --Wednesdays, 4:15-5:45 p.m., corner of Broadway and Providence --Third Friday, 6:00-7:00 p.m., corner of Broadway and 9th Street. *CONTACT OFFICIALS AND CANDIDATES for federal office: --LEGISLATORS.. Sens. Kit Bond, phone 202-224-5721,e-mail kit-bond@bond.senate.gov and Sen. Jim Talent, 202-224-6154, senator_talent@talent.senate.gov, Sen._______, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 20510; Rep. Ken Hulshof (or your representative), locally at 449-5111 or 202-225-2956, rep.hulshof@mail.house.gov, Rep. ______, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 -- WHITE HOUSE... Comment Desk: 202-456-1111, FAX: 202-456-2461, president@whitehouse.gov, President George W. Bush, The White House, Washington, DC 20500 For more information contact, with the co-sponsoring organizations, Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation (Jeff Stack 449-4585) or St. Francis House Catholic Worker (Steve Jacobs 443-0096). ---------------------------------- Email this:  
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| Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation |
P.O. Box 268 Columbia, Missouri 65205 |
| Questions about the Fellowship of Reconciliation? -- contact Jeff Stack at
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