Pro War Rally in Novato

that's cool. In Seattle, the right wing AM radio station keeps dispatching their people to disrupt antiwar events, and I was thinking, the obvious proper reaction would be to locate future antiwar rallies in places that would be highly irritated by a bunch of dittohead yahoos stinking of the vicinity and suppressing their business, such as a mall. I'm sure the type of people you find in Marin County really want to visit this mall when the freepers are skulking around the parking lot.

Seems to me that these people are not pro-war, exactly. They're mostly pro-troops. We're not anti-troops. I don't think anyone on this site wants US troops to die. YET, this is what our prez would have the pro-troop people believe.... don't you see? Divide and conquer. He clearly told the world "You're with us or against us".

They think that our anti-war stance means we want US troops to die....

Let's not fall victim to the same divisive illogic that prezzy W has.

Let's be Anti-War, pro Troop. Let's all get behind a common message. STOP THE WAR. BRING THE TROOPS HOME SAFELY.

I think if we constucted our messages even half as cleverly as the spin doctors over at whitehouse, inc. we could easily get these pro-troop people to join us, instead of having them against us.

I read in the article that in a poll, 70% of Americans support the war. What I would like to know is where this poll was taken because none of my friends have taken the poll, my family hasn't taken the poll, and I'm not sure who took the poll. Maybe the poll was taken at a republican/right-wing gathering. Everybody turn on your Crap Detectors.

Americans are only 6% of humanity. The rest of the world is against this war.

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has written an action alert concerning the corporate media equating "pro-troop" with "pro-war". It can be viewed at
http://www.fair.org/activism/pro-troops.html

It seems to me that as anti-war activists, we need to be clear that our message is: Support the Troops, Bring them Home.

There's a company that keeps sending me emails trying to get me to take their poll on the war. I'm not sure how serious this company or it's poll can be taken, but it shows a definate desire to misrepresent public opinion. I'm sure this desire is shared by news organizations that profit from war.
Anyways, the top of the email has a picture of Saddam Hussein with a circle and a line through it, and a picture of George W. Bush surrounded by a circle of stars. So the slant is obvious. As incentive to take their poll, they offer a chance to win a patriotic "God Bless America" with a waving flag t-shirt. This seems to me to be offering incentive only to people who agree with their slant. While many anti-war people consider themselves patriotic, most are too disgusted by what's going on to wear a shirt like that right now. So this isn't really an attempt to get accurate figures.
Polls are easy to manipulate. You have to consider who's administering them, and what they have to gain from it.
But even if these polls are correct, and a majority of Americans support this war, that still doesn't justify it. A majority of Germans supported Hitler invading Poland. That doesn't mean it was the right thing to do.
People always rally 'round their leader when their country is at war, regardless of the causes. Most Americans don't even understand the causes. They're fooled by the administration's lies and the media's unwillingness to challenge them.
But the world's population, as stated above, is strongly against this war. Even amongst the "Coalition of the willing" there's only one or two countries that are acting with the support of their public.

Pauly: you said that a majority of Germans supported the invasion of poland...do you have a source for this info? I would like to use it as a point if it's verifiable...

germany became a 'democracy' with the Weimar republic at the end of the treaty of versailles - which was the same time that the British empire symbolically gave up a lot of its territory and draw really badly inspired border lines in much of Africa and the near east. in the 1870s in Germany, some symbolic democratic measures were added. Anyway, Hitler's national socialist party burned the Reichstag one week before a presidential election and blamed it on communists from the east. He was elected, and subsequently suspended civil liberties under an article of the constitution, citing the Reichstag event and trying to make the case that the country faced the risk of falling to socialism. After this, the population wasn't really polled, and lacked democratic mechanisms (as in, voting or recalling representatives) for expressing their will. There wasn't any TV and people didn't all have telephones.

Here is an account from my sister, in Seattle:

We got harassed by drunks and they got picked up by the police
tonight... D is on the mailing list for some anti-war organization
affiliated with the April 12th protest. So tonight they distributed
posters at 6:30 and we picked up a stack to put up around the
u-district. We were walking up the northern end of the Ave stapling
them to telephone poles. D had just put one up on a pole near the
last bar on the west side of the Ave before Cowen park, and two drunk
guys came out and noticed it, so one of them asked if we're anti-war
protesters, and D said we are. The guy went and tore the
poster down and then started following us down the sidewalk. His friend
started following too saying stuff like "He's not ready for it, he's got
his girlfriend with him, man, don't do this", so D got my cell
phone out of his backpack and started dialing 911 and we proceeded to
turn the corner on Ravenna and walk west toward home, and the two guys kept following us at a close distance with this constant torrent of
drunk babbling about how it's their right to protest our anti-war
protesting, and that they hadn't touched us so we could go ahead and
call the cops because they weren't doing anything wrong. We didn't say
anything and just kept walking. We walked past 11th and turned south on
Roosevelt and just kept walking. The whole while these guys were saying
stuff like that anti-war people don't appreciate their country and
should move out, and that ignorance is bliss, and that we're stupid
ignorant, liberal college kids who sit around listening to Jerry Garcia.
It seemed like they were practically talking themselves into starting
a
physical fight. One of them, I think the one who'd been discouraging
the other guy from starting a fight at first, started saying "I'm
getting HOT now, man!", like he was starting to feel like a fight would
be a good idea. They were slurring a bit, like they were quite drunk.
So we just kept walking, not saying anything, and D was describing
to the police where we were. So a couple police cars and bike cops finally found us at about Roosevelt & 55th, and arrested the guys. We
agreed to press charges. I don't think there's any question they were
threatening us, because from the moment they started following us they
were acting like they were holding themselves back from beating us up.
The police want you to express that you were afraid that they would hurt
you. Like by what language they were using. I don't know what else I
should think they wanted to do when they follow for several blocks
directly behind us yelling the whole time about how they haven't hit
us. And one of the cops told us it's illegal to poster on wooden poles
because of the fire hazard, and that he's just mentioning it so we know,
because the defense will probably point that out. That doesn't sound
true though. There was a debate about that in the local papers, and as
far as we remember it was overruled by a judge.

also, I forgot to mention - the man in the story above was in the air force for 4 years.

One post was that you don't want U.S. troops to die. I am convinced that the liberal left DOES want American casualities AND they favor the evil regime in Iraq. They refused for years to point out the terrible conditions for fear of offending their Muslim counterparts, although Saddam is the #1 killer of Muslims right now.

"They refused for years to point out the terrible conditions for fear of offending their Muslim counterparts, although Saddam is the #1 killer of Muslims right now."

What the hell are you going on about?

"They refused for years to point out the terrible conditions "

The let were the ones who spoke out against the gassing of the Kurds while Reagan was supporting Sadam as a buffer to Iran. Reagan nevefr did admit his buddy used gas on his own population since the US was sending Iraq weapons at the time.