Most days, 80-year-old Paulette Ingram is content with her daily routine: a morning stroll, lunch with friends, reading in an easy chair.
But come Saturday, the retired interior designer from Colorado Springs is heading for Crawford, Texas – a seemingly unlikely addition to the hundreds of people protesting a mile from what President Bush likes to call “the Western White House.”
If Ingram seems like an anomaly, be assured she isn’t.
Old people, young mothers, conservatives, Iraq war veterans – anyone with a conscience – are among those speaking out against this sham of a war.
Among those in a caravan taking off from Colorado Springs is 51-year-old David Therault, a Catholic and registered Republican.
“Right now I feel like Pontius Pilate just standing there and not doing anything,” Therault told me. “I’m going there to say that I am no longer complicit in what I see as the murder of our soldiers.”
Another is Kelly Dougherty, a former sergeant in the Army National Guard who served 10 months in Nasiriyah, Iraq, and now lives in Colorado Springs.
Recent polls show a turnaround in public sentiment. A majority of Americans are unhappy with the president, and a growing number are connecting the dots and realizing that Saddam Hussein was not involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
As for Iraq, a recent Newsweek poll showed only about a third of Americans approve of Bush’s handling of the war.
The anti-war movement was reinvigorated by Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother of Army Spec. Casey Sheehan, who has camped outside the president’s ranch demanding a meeting to ask Bush what “noble cause” is worth the lives of the 1,874 American soldiers who’ve died in Iraq so far.
Although Joan Baez was in Crawford on Sunday, strumming peace songs on her guitar, this is nothing like the Vietnam War protests, spearheaded largely by college students and liberals.
Ingram said if she had the opportunity to face Bush, she would tell him to resign from office and continue his five- week vacation forever.
Ingram said the U.S. never should have invaded Iraq, a country that posed no immediate threat to America, although the administration continued to twist the truth about evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We’ve yet to find those WMDs.
Therault feels just as strongly.
“It is an illegal war by the standards of international law. We were lied to. There is no connection between al Qaeda and 9/11 and Saddam Hussein,” Therault said. “Iraq was no threat to us. People know this war is a lie.”
This is why Therault is leading a caravan that leaves at the crack of dawn on Saturday from the Pikes Peak Peace and Justice Commission, 214 E. Vermijo Ave. in Colorado Springs. They will issue updates on csaction.org.
Eleven people have signed up to go so far, including Ingram, her son-in-law Andrew Braunstein and Dougherty, who is irked when someone suggests protesting the war is un-American.
“Patriotism isn’t about blindly following a leader. It is about doing what you feel is best for the people of this country,” Dougherty said.
On Thursday at noon, organizers will hold a public banner-signing at the peace commission. They want to collect as many signatures as possible and take them to Camp Casey, the site of the war protest.
Therault said “the national consciousness has evolved past the thinking of George Bush, and we are going there to present proof of that.”
Their voices are being heard by some Republicans who question our timetable for withdrawing from Iraq.
To his own detriment, Bush isn’t listening. But he is, after all, still on vacation.
Cindy Rodríguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene. Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
