Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out were prevented from joining the annual parade down Atlantic Avenue and restricted to a nearby parking lot, officials said. Organizers said the groups were trying to push a political agenda at an event to honor veterans. Earlier this week, the Veterans Day Parade Committee rejected their applications to participate, according to the Long Beach Press- Telegram. "This is not a political event, this is a time to come and just say thank you to all veterans," said Long Beach City Councilman Val Lerch, who also was on the parade committee.
Here's Val. I'm hoping he means well, but you just don't know these days, with such a dissent-averse rightwing as we have now. The partisans in charge.
Keith Olbermann had on a very compelling Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), where they covered the stifling of veteran free speech, the 1 in 4 stats of Iraq & Afghanistan war vets currently homeless, and a recent case story in the L.A. Times by a photographer who got closer than usual to his Marlboro Marine.
Oh, and they cover Bush not pausing in his war council to attend the annual wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetary.
Meanwhile our very own Admiral William Fallon, head of Central Command, says:
None of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and around and around that any day now there will be another war which is just not where we want to go.
Getting Iranian behaviour to change and finding ways to get them to come to their senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book.
Getting our government to change its behavior is not even possible until January 20, 2009.
It's enough to drive one to absinthe.
