http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_medea_be_071102_george_bush_and_code.htmNovember 2, 2007 at 18:14:30
George Bush and CODEPINK: Women for Peace
by Medea Benjamin
http://www.opednews.com On November 1, while CODEPINK was outside the Heritage Foundation protesting the appearance of George Bush, Bush himself was inside talking about CODEPINK. “When it comes to funding our troops, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters,” he said. It’s curious that Bush, who once declared that “Osama bin Laden isn’t going to determine how we defend ourselves” wants Congress to pay more attention to Osama bin Laden than groups like MoveOn and CODEPINK that represent the majority of Americans.
In any case, we take Bush’s acknowledgment of CODEPINK as a great victory. We only wish he had listened to us back in 2002 when we warned that attacking Iraq would be a disaster. And we certainly wish that Bush - and Congress - would listen to us when we say, “Bring the troops home and don’t start a war with Iran!”
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On October 24, White House Spokeswoman Dana Perino made the hilarious statement that “Unfortunately, it seems that increasingly Congress is being run by CODEPINK.” On September 11, the day after the General Petraeus hearing, Spokesman Tony Snow said, “I don’t think it can have been good for Democrats yesterday to have had the MoveOn ad or to have had the CODEPINK demonstrators … trying preemptively to smear General Petraeus.”
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So while the Republicans are trying to falsely associate the Democratic leadership with CODEPINK, we’ve come a long way since the days when the Bush Administration refused to even acknowledge the anti-war movement. When we mobilized millions of people out in the streets on February 15, 2003, in the largest anti-war rallies in history, Bush dismissed us a “focus group” and charged ahead with his war plans.
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The greater national recognition of CODEPINK has produced its own backlash. Conservative groups are now coming out every Wednesday night in Washington DC to picket our CODEPINK DC house and have launched a campaign to try to get us evicted. The hate mail and violent phone calls have increased. The police on Capitol Hill are cracking down on CODEPINK activists and judges are issuing us “stay-away orders” to keep us away from the Capitol. Some of us have discovered our names on an FBI criminal database and have found ourselves banned from entering Canada.
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