LOS ANGELES, October 26, 2005--Drawn together by the unimaginable nightmare of unending war, more than a hundred protestors somberly lifted candles and signs at the northwest and northeast corners of Wilshire and Veteran Avenues this evening. The site of the Spanish-American Veterans War Memorial was one of more than two dozen vigils in Los Angeles and over 1300 nationwide called by MoveOn on the occasion of the 2000th U.S. soldier’s death.

Quiet renditions of “We Shall Overcome” and “Peace, Salom, Shalom” haunted the busy intersection in the twilight, punctuated by nearly non-stop auto horns supporting the protestors. Mainstream television stations took advantage of the few photo opportunities, including a Marine in dress uniform bugling “Taps,” and protestors dressed in the orange jumpsuits of Iraqi prisoners and hooded to remind the world of the torture victims.

Code Pink, which hosted the event, hung crosses on the wall of the adjoining cemetery and used the monument as an altar for candles and memorials. These veterans, of four years of protests against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had little left to say to each other. The 2000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the 200 other Coalition forces, the 5920 Iraqi police and military, the 276 contractors, the 246 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the more than 100 journalists, and the untold tens of thousands of civilians who have died seemed to haunt the protestors, who, by 8:30, had disappeared into the night, except for the twinkling candles.

MoveOn.org reports over 100,000 people participated in vigils nationwide.

(I don’t know how the photos below will come out here. My apologies if they’re too dark to be seen.)

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Who was the man in uniform with the trumphet? Was he a member of a military?

He showed up, the media swarmed him, he played and left.

I'm sure he meant well but I hope he wasn't a fake LOL.

I can't believe what I've just seen. I see a mockery of those untold numbers who were tortured and maimed and murdered at Abu Ghraib before Hussein was driven out. There was never a peep from the "human rights" champions of the Left over Iraq until Hussein was driven out. HIS rights and the rights of his henchmen mattered, and still do, as is obvious from your picture.

You are beyond stupid, beyond ignorant, beyond uneducated, beyond childish.

Try to remember that you are an American citizen. As such, you have a responsibility for what your nation does in your name.

Do you want to stop torture? Our government is torturing people right now, in Iraq and in Guantanamo. Vice President Cheney explicitly asked for a CIA exemption to the rules against torture recently passed by the Congress. There is no doubt whatever that your government presently engages in torture. What are you going to do about it, point the finger as past torture by Saddam Hussein? I'm sure that people presently being tortured by your country will be very grateful to you for pointing our Saddam's past crimes.

That is the fundamental point. A secondary point is that Saddam's past torture was not opposed by the United States at the time it was occurring. The U.S. sold weapons to Saddam shortly after he gassed the Kurds. The present Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, had a friendly meeting with Hussein around that time. So, in many ways, the past torture crimes of Saddam Hussein were also supported by your government.

You live in a nation whose government commits crimes against humanity. What are you going to do about it?

None of you asswipes seemed to care about Hussein's human rights violations. I never saw an A.N.S.W.E.R. march about it. So please, lecture me some more. Your "credibility" sings like an angel out your wazoo.

Very good point hypocrite-spotter.

"You live in a nation whose government commits crimes against humanity. What are you going to do about it?"

I agree, I know. Currently I'm encouraging people to vote for Jim Gilchrist for Congress, 48th district. Then Tan Nguyen, 41st district. Believe me, we're going up against the government as much as you want to.

Just before Saddam ran into hiding, he withdrew almost a billion dollars, in $100 bills, to fund his faction and any allies. It's the true miracle of capitalism that his money is as green as anyone else's. If you think about it, Saddam Hussein was a player in the American capitalist system.

Look it up. Reagan and Bush Sr. were selling him arms and looking the other way about how he ran things in Iraq. Rummy went to Iraq and shook his hand.

He was buying stuff with that money, like weapons. Our currency is like a little goodwill ambassador, globalizing us, and establishing trade relationships. Through this trade, we encourage repressive dictatorships to become less repressive. At least that's what the neoliberals tell us.

Or told us, until it was pretty obvious that NAFTA and all that wasn't going to turn out the way the DLC said.

Of course, the dollars *do* help us leverage our comparative advantage in producing weapons of mass destruction. When a country gets enough dollars, they can afford to buy weapons from our military industrial complex, if the nation is classified as an ally.

I love it when hippies post that picture. What's the point? We saw our mistake, and when we wanted to remedy that mistake, to take the scumbag out, then all the Appeasers pour into the streets to protect him and "belittle" us.

You'd better be nice, nessie, or I'll belittle you with some of that "Global Justice" stuff you mewl about, such as No Food for Oil! or the comedy over the human panty shields who shagged ass when they were told to hang around true military targets.