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Dissent: Voices of Conscience

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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President or that we are to stand by the President right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918.

"Dissent: Voices of Conscience" is about people who have witnessed first hand the deceit and deception on the part of the Bush administration and how they carefully crafted intelligence to fit their plan to invade Iraq. For those who don't know, they were planning to do so from before Inauguration Day 2001. September 11th gave them all the excuse they needed to hatch the plan.

The voices were people in our government who were privy to illegal and immoral acts that were being committed in violation of our Constitutional rights, and in the name of security. They were FBI agents, justice department attorneys, diplomats, and active duty military who witnessed the tortures, the propaganda, and the eavesdropping on American citizens for political purposes rather than for national security. There is also an extensive list of generals and admirals who have spoken out against our policies, and have written Congress and the President.

What really surprised me was what I didn't know because the "mainstream-drive-by-left-leaning" press did not report it here, or else they gave it very little play. It was the outright collusion of British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and Australian Prime Minister, John Howard who was censured by the Australian Senate in October 2003, for misleading the public in justifying sending troops off to war with one senator even accusing Howard of unprecedented deceit. Numerous diplomats in Her Majesty's government spoke out, leaked information, resigned, or were arrested for following their consciences. These revelations almost brought down the Blair government, and Howard was defeated in the next election. Even the Danish prime minister, who was one of the first to volunteer his forces, denied intelligence information to his Parliament which would not have supported their participation.

One of the more disgusting revelations of this book was our silence over the barbarism that is occurring in Uzbekistan against its citizens by their brutal leader, Karimov. The U.S. while all for bringing democracy to Iraq turned a blind eye to the tortures that were occurring in that country so long as we had an air base for our operations. It didn't matter even when two people were actually boiled to death. We only spoke out about the human rights abuses AFTER that government honored a new agreement with Russia's Vladimir Putin who insisted that the US base and our operations be closed.

We also learn what kind of people these people really were. They weren't radicals, malcontents, or non-conformists. These were people who really believed in the system and its ideals. When the system was perverted by their superiors, they faced a moral dilemma. Most them were forced to resign or retire, or were demoted or transferred, in spite of statutory protections for whistle blowers that were ignored. Katherine Gunn, a translator for the British government leaked to the press that our government was eavesdropping on members of the U.N. Security Council to attempt to pressure them to go along with a U.S. sponsored resolution against Iraq. She readily admitted what she did. She was fired and arrested. The U.S. wanted her tried. The day of the trial, her Majesty's government dropped all charges. Her barrister made it clear that he would spill the beans on everything. The stories of Colleen Rowley (FBI agent, Minneapolis office), and Sible Edmonds (FBI translator) were particularly powerful and poignant.

Much of the book is a brief story about these voices of conscience, which was usually followed by their letters of resignation or whistle-blowing. While some of the letters were quite interesting, I began to pass by many of them. I was and still am in a moral quandary when I read about officers and enlisted who deserted or refused to deploy or fight because of policy. (Neither group gets to decide that). Nevertheless, the book is surprising in the new information I learned, and what people of conscience sacrificed to right wrongs and injustice, and bring the truth to light.


May 7, 2008--ninety years later.


It is 257 days and a wake-up until the Bush tyranny is over.


Additional References:

Cook, Robin, "The Point of Departure: Why One of Britain's Leading Politicians Resigned over Tony Blair's Decision to Go to War in Iraq."

Willmshurst, Elizabeth, "Rules of Engagement. Newspaper article in "The Guardian.

Short, Clare, "An Honorable Deception?: New Labour, Iraq and the Misuse of Power."

Carne, Ross, "Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite."

"The Butler Inquiry."

Murray, Craig, "Murder in Samarkand." 2006 in the United Kingdom

"Axis of Deceit: The Story of the Intelligence Officer Who Risked All to Tell the Truth About WMD and Iraq."

Alford, C. Fred, "Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power."

Radack, Jesselyn, "The Canary in the Coalmine: Blowing the Whistle in the Case of `American Taliban' John Walker Lindh." Self-published, 2006

Edmonds, Sibel, www.JustACitizen.org. This lady was a translator for the FBI. She was fired in 2002 after she blew the whistle on the lack of proper supervision of supervisors and shoddy translation. She has been featured on "60 Minutes."

Zinni, Anthony, General (Ret.), "Battle Ready."

Rarely do we get an insider's look at a controversial historic event from so many different angles while the event is still going on. Ann Wright and Susan Dixon present the viewpoints of government insiders and active-duty military personnel, all with attribution, on the Iraq War. This is an angry book, rightly so, when you learn what the contributors have to say. And the role of British Prime Minister (at the time) Tony Blair surprised me. Democracy requires openness in government and military affaris. "Dissent" is a welcome effort in that direction.

Ann Wright and Susan Dixon have turned up the volume on the voices of dissent, according them the credibility and urgency denied them by mainstream media.

This is an essential work. The citizens who put their careers and reputations on the line to inform a nation, a world, of the facts surrounding the most important decisions of our lifetimes, not only need to be honored, but listened to. And any citizen worthy of the claim needs to read and reflect on the selflessness that prompted these men and women to act completely outside their zones of comforts and personal interest.

The book is imminently readable, accessible, supportable. It is a primer on good citizenship as well as an eye-opening revelation of the inner workings of self-interest in government.

Wilson (Woody) Powell

Ann Wright presents stories of many who have taken courageous actions in disagreeing with their countries' actions in invading Iraq. Not the least of these is her own action in resigning from the US diplomatic corps after nearly 40 years of service to her country. This new way of service to the United States of America and all fellow/sister human beings is at least as powerful as all she has accomplished in a long and distinguished career as an Army officer and a diplomat.

This is a great book and every American needs to read it now. We have had enough lies and deceit for the past seven years. Kudos to those who stand up and do the right thing.

Everyone who felt inpired by John F. Kennedy's book, "Profiles in Courage", or John McCain's "Character is Destiny" will find "Dissent: Voices of Conscience" to be a most worthy sequel. Although all those persons presented are Iraq War dissidents, the real issue is not the Iraq War, or even war in general. Rather it is the recognition of humanity's noblest pursuit - the personal courage to stand by one's conscience, come what may.

Character matters. Honor matters. Integrity matters. The reader who agrees with these sentences will find this book inspiring and reinforcing of one's own pursuit of inner greatness in the midst of overwhelming criticism and negative consequences.

Whether the reader is for the Iraq War or against it, this book will allow the reader to conjure up in the mind others who have shown great courage and self-sacrifice for a noble cause.

As the author of two books, "Christian Chess" and "Early Maxims and Aphorisms", I am very impressed with the authors' consistently high quality of writing style, documentation, and breath of topic. I eagerly await future sequels to this book.

Those against the Iraq War should seriously consider introducing this book to elected officials, whether state legislators or Members of Congress. Those in favor of the war should bring it to the attention of pastors and friends.

Good people can differ on perceptions of the rightness or wrongness of a war or any policy. Most, however, will agree in the rock-solid principles of being men and women of conscience.

This book was very, VERY, hard to read, not because it was technical or dry, but because of the content of the book. I had to stop reading numerous times because I found myself getting too angry or too upset to continue. This book is for those people who want to know how we end up in Iraq after 9/11 from someone who was there. How did we end up going after al Qaeda in Afghanistan to Iraq? How did the Bush Administration convinced the public that Iraq had weapon of mass destruction (WMD), even though US (under Bush, Sr.) and NATO had put the region under heavy military surveillence and had also enforced trade embargo in place (with special emphasis on machinery parts)? You need to read this book to find out. We owe it to the 4,146 US soldiers who died (as of today) and thousands of Iraqi citizens who were killed or displaced. Reading this book is NOT going to make you unpatriotic; rather, it is to find out how a gov't can so easily manipulate policies for its own private agenda. This episode may go down in history as one of the biggest HOAX any gov't had ever played on its people.

More than a few serve the state and resist its abuses, at significant risk to themselves. But very few of us know all of their stories. Resisters of the occupation of Iraq in the U.S., British, and Australian governments and militaries are plentiful enough to fill a book, and they've filled a good one.

"Dissent: Voices of Conscience: Government Insiders Speak Out Against the War in Iraq" is the forthcoming work of U.S. Army Colonel (Ret.) Ann Wright and Susan Dixon (forthcoming after a long delay imposed by the State Department). Wright is herself one of the many heroes whose stories are told in the book. Many of us who follow the war and the peace movement know Ann and know that she resigned from the U.S. diplomatic corps in protest of the invasion of Iraq. But can you name the other two U.S. diplomats who had already done the same thing? Do you know their stories?

What about the stories of the high level resisters in the British government? We've heard some of their names before, but here are the stories and statements of people like Katherine Gunn, Robin Cook, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Clare Short, Carne Ross, and Craig Murray. Here is Frank Grevil, a Danish military intelligence officer who revealed how early his government knew of U.S. plans for war and how clearly his government knew there was no solid evidence of weapons in Iraq. Here, too, is Andrew Wilkie, an retired Australian Lieutenant Colonel and a civilian analyst who resigned in protest of his government's lies about Iraqi weapons, leading to censurein the Senate of Prime Minister John Howard, who recently lost a bid for reelection.

And what of whistleblowers in Washington? Do you know what Bunnatine Greenhouse, Jesselyn Radack, Mary Ryan, Sibel Edmonds, Russell Tice, and Coleen Rowley, among others, did, and what their government did to them to express its gratitude? These are our heroes. And like all heroes, they are often flawed. They knew about evil deeds because they were working for organizations some of us would never choose to work for, or because they went along with things they shouldn't have. And in some cases it took them a long time before they found the courage to speak out. The same can be said, of course, of members of the U.S. military who have resisted this illegal invasion and occupation.

But military heroes fill much of this book: officers, lawyers, whistleblowers, resisters and deserters, those facing court martial, those fled to Canada. Here are collected the stories and statements of those who spoke some bit of unpermitted truth

Ann Wright and Susan Dixion have shown that there are, indeed, people who are willing to stand up against the foolhardy military ventures of the United States Government. They have demonstrated their understanding of how a group of individuals have spoken out against a militaristic govenment that spends much more than is reasonable to defend this country.