BBC NEWS | Americas | ‘Freedom fries’ lawmaker’s U-turn

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) has reversed his support for the Iraq war and now wants the troops brought home. He was formerly an adamant supporter of the war who led the whole Congressional “Freedom Fries” campaign to rename fried potatoes to get back at those wimpy peaceloving French bastards.

His change of heart took place when he attended the funeral of a US sergeant and listened as the widow read her husband’s last letter home. He’s attended a lot of funerals, actually, and written over 1,300 letters of condolence, and he displays the photos of service members killed in action outside his office door.

You know, I admire that he’s taken the time to attend, to condole, to publicly show his respect for the fallen. And I admire that he has this to say:

I just feel that the reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that’s all been proven that it was never there.

He comes off as a righteous Rightie – not so the commander-in-chief, who has never yet attended a funeral for someone killed in Iraq, and barely acknowledged wounded when welcoming uninjured troops home. Although according to Snope, he really did go jogging with an amputee vet. That’s a nice heartwarming story. However, it wouldn’t play well in the papers for the Resident to be associated with icky dead solders. So no funerals for you, W!

I see via various blogs (BoingBoing and others) that the Downing Street Memo still hasn’t gotten much mainstream media attention. The new website on the Memo has a lot of information on the issues surrounding the document, and also under the Take Action link, you can sign on to the letter to the President that asks the questions originally asked by Sen. John Conyers and 88 other members of Congress on May 5, 2005.

There’s a link to a PDF copy of the actual document, with the signatures in various hands and ink-colors. Then there’s a link to an alphabetized list of the signers. On checking this list, I was highly irked and annoyed that my local representative is not a signer, and neither are the two senators of Illinois!

So I used the handy “send your representative an email” forms, I sent all three of them the following missive. I’ve linked their contact forms to their names.

Dear Representative Bean / Senator Durbin / Senator Obama,

The Downing Street Memo is a document deserving wider attention from the American media and the American people. I recently visited a website, http://www.downingstreetmemo.com to find out more about the official response by the Bush administration to the issues raised by this document. I understand that 89 of your collegues signed a letter to President Bush, asking several questions about the memo.

I was surprised and disappointed to see that your name is not on the list of signers. Could you please have someone get back to me to explain why you are not participating in this very important dialogue with the administration? It may seem to you that it’s not important to the folks back home, but actually, the young men and women serving and dying in Iraq deserve to know whether they are fighting a war for the wrong reasons. And the families welcoming back the returning veterans and the flag-covered coffins need to know, too.

To Senator Barack Obama’s email, I added:

I was very proud to vote for you last fall, Senator Obama. Your victory was one of the very few bright, shining signs of hope that I took away from last fall’s election. Please consider getting on board with your 89 collegues, and ask the tough questions of the Bush administration.

We pray every Sunday for our country’s political leaders at my church (Holy Innocents Episcopal Church, Hoffman Estates) and I will make a point to pray for you by name each week.

Very sincerely yours,

Virginia “Ginny” Gibbs

Links:

See what you can do: the The Downing Street Memo :: Take Action! page has a media action section (changes frequently)

Contact your Senator or Representative.

Sign a version of the letter: Rep. John Conyers will personally deliver it to the White House once the number of signers reaches at least 500,000.

Admittedly, much of the information revealed in the memo is not new – but it’s written confirmation that at a time when the Bush administration was publically telling the American people that this country would not go to war without full justification and authorization from the UN, we were secretly lining up allies, making firm plans for mobilization, and making sure that the intelligence and facts would be “fixed” regarding policy.

I’m only one person, writing one crappy little blog, but at least I’ve done my bit.