[Stephen Cleghorn of Military Families Speak Out attended the Washington DC news conference where he delivered these words of support for FOR's Iraq Photo Project.]

The Iraq Photo Project. What a beautiful project! People to people; forgiveness asked, compassion extended; comforting, honest words across the miles between us to say we are sorry for all the harm our country has visited upon the Iraqi people, to say we are working to make it stop. 15,000 Iraqi civilians already dead and we simply want to say we are sorry for that. Why would anyone say this undermines our troops?

My stepson, back from Iraq after 15 months, now a Lt. Colonel, awarded the Bronze Star for his devotion to duty and his fellow troops, does not say so to me. He is proud of me for speaking out when he cannot. He knows my intention is to bring the troops home safely and soon, and to offer reparations to the Iraqi people.   Other career officers join him whose silence does not equal consent to this wrong and failing mission.

This project speaks past governments, past terrorists, directly to the Iraqi people. It took us 20 years after Vietnam to express our remorse and regret to the Vietnamese people for the holes we tore in their families, the one million dead civilians in an unnecessary war built on a lie. In the midst of this war that we tried to prevent because we knew that its basis was fraudulent, we are beginning earlier to express our sorrow.

As my stepson John did, our soldiers dedicate themselves to protecting our country on the trust that just and responsible leaders will lead them. He has always been willing to go into harm's way if necessary, but instead he was ordered to be harm's minister.

The President has abused my son's dedication to protecting his country. The war in Iraq is an unnecessary, triumphalistic war being waged by a fundamentalist Commander in Chief who believes he is on God's own mission to save the world from the evildoers.

That is not what our soldiers sign up to do, or to serve.

Abu Ghraib. No consequences to our political leadership. 15,000 civilians dead in this war; added to hundreds of thousands who died in the days our country supported and empowered Saddam Hussein. No acknowledgment of that history. We dig up the mass graves as though we had nothing to do with them. Take the war to the terrorists, the President says, so we don't fight them here. Did anyone ask the Iraqi people if they wanted their country to be the killing ground of terrorists, with their families caught in the crossfire?

In January 1971 while the Vietnam War still raged, some veterans came together in Detroit for the Winter Soldier Investigation. In a dark, long ago echo of Abu Ghraib, one veteran tearfully showed a picture of him smiling while he showed off a dead Vietnamese in a body bag like a trophy, and said something like this: "That's me smiling. Don't ever let your government do that to you."

A few months later I entered the Army, hoping to serve as a conscientious objector in the medical corps to save lives, not take them. A young corporal in my basic training barracks had pictures of dead Vietnamese posted at the head of his bunk, the last thing he would see before going to bed at night. As the son of a career Army man, I knew right away that something was desperately wrong with the Army to allow such a display. It was the Vietnam War that was desperately wrong. Our soldiers had been turned into harm's ministers and it was showing on that corporal's bunk.

Now we are in the midst of another desperately wrong war. A war of choice, thrust upon us by the neoconservative ideologues of pre-emptive use of American military might. Into this chaos this little project - the Iraq Photo Project - speaks a quiet voice of sorrow, and some say this undermines our troops.   No, it does not. This war and its fraudulent pretext undermine our troops.

This war based on lies needs to end. It is timely that some offer a word of truth to say we are ashamed of what our country has done. It is time to bring our boys and girls home. Mourn our dead and the Iraqi dead. Heal our wounded and the Iraqi wounded. End the war now. Bring the troops home, now.

- Steve Cleghorn

  Military Families Speak Out

  October 20, 2004