Peace

Developing a common stance on dealing with Iran, North Korea and Cuba topped the foreign policy agenda at the annual U.S.-European Union summit June 21 in Vienna, Austria, where President George Bush met with Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, and other European leaders.

As the Bush administration steps up its accusations that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) is planning to test a long-range missile that could reach the United States, North Korean officials are calling for dialogue based on mutual respect.

“Sir, No Sir!” an Audience Award winner for best documentary at the Los Angeles Film Festival, tells the largely unknown story of the GI movement against the war in Vietnam.

I was a soldier once. I can almost hear myself telling that to my grandchildren with a shameful exhortation and a need to feel important to the ones I love. I sometimes wonder what stories I will end up telling them. “Everyone thought I was a hero!” Which is true. Besides the letters saying so from my family, I received letters and packages from complete strangers telling me so.

Ehren Watada is a 28-year-old first lieutenant in the United States Army. He joined the Army in 2003, during the run-up to the Iraq war, and turned in his resignation to protest that same war in January of 2006. Journalist Sarah Olson spoke with Watada in late May about his reasons for joining the military, and why he wants out.

WASHINGTON — The toll of U.S. war dead in Iraq hit 2,500 last week and Democratic lawmakers took to the floor of the Senate and House to demand that the war end and the troops be brought home. They were responding to the surging opposition to the war among their constituents in an election year.

Congressional Republicans last week killed a provision in the latest “emergency” Iraq war appropriations bill that would have blocked permanent U.S. bases in Iraq.

In the wake of the rising tide of allegations claiming that U.S. forces executed a sort of vigilante justice by staging murderous attacks on Iraqi civilians, General Chiarelli, second in command in Iraq, stated his belief that it’s important for troops to “take time to reflect on the values that separate us from our enemies.”

Moving to break the stalemate over Iran’s nuclear program, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana met in Tehran June 6 with top Iranian officials to present new proposals agreed on last week by the U.S., Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany. The proposals are contingent on Iran’s willingness to suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing — activities that are legal for peaceful nuclear power under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

A huge conventional bomb test — ironically named “Divine Strake” — has been postponed “indefinitely,” but the struggle goes on. That was the message June 3 as protesters gathered in Reno, Nev., to continue their opposition to plans to detonate 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil at the Nevada Test Site, where over 900 nuclear tests took place between 1951 and 1992.