[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: Navajo President, Puerto Rican Governor Urge US Out of Iraq

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>
>1 Navajo President Blasts War in Iraq
>2 Puerto Rico Leader: Get U.S. Out of Iraq
>
>Shirley blasts war in Iraq
>
>By Bill Donovan Special to the Times
>Navajo Times - 12/30/04
>http://www.navajotimes.com/main.php
>
>GALLUP - Calling it a waste of life and money,
>President Joe Shirley Jr. lashed out Monday against the
>war in Iraq.
>
>"I ask myself why (we are fighting the war)," Shirley
>said during a year-end press conference in his office.
>
>This has become tragic for the Navajo Nation as several
>times during the past year, the nation has mourned the
>death or injury of a tribal member who had been
>fighting the war, he said.
>
>So far, three Navajo soldiers have died in the war and
>several have been injured. Shirley said that one Hopi
>soldier has also been killed.
>
>And as the injury and death toll has mounted, Shirley
>said the only thing he can do is ask why.
>
>"What was the rush (to go into the war)?" he said.
>
>Not only has the war caused misery to Navajo families
>who have lost a loved one but it also affects all
>members of the Navajo Nation directly because the
>federal government is taking money from existing Navajo
>programs and diverting it to the war effort.
>
>As domestic programs take a back seat to the war
>effort, Shirley said he is seeing federal officials
>raid the Native American programs because that causes
>less political dissension across the country.
>
>He pointed out that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is
>currently budgeted at 60 percent of need. The Indian
>Health Service is even worse, with only 50 percent of
>needed funds budgeted. As the war continues, the
>shortage will only get worse, Shirley predicted.
>
>But there's something else that tugs at Shirley's
>heartstrings - the photos that appear in newspapers and
>on television of the war's effects on the civilian
>population in Iraq.
>
>He said that it sickens him to see the photos of
>grandmothers and children lying on the road dead or
>severely injured.
>
>"That really concerns me," he said. Grandmothers are
>the ones who hold the stories of the people and as they
>die off, the stories are lost, he said. And the death
>and suffering of the children is just as bad.
>
>"I look at all of this as a waste," he said.
>
>Shirley said he couldn't understand why leaders in
>Washington can't understand what this war is costing
>the American people. "Except for England, we have no
>allies. The (other nations) have all come out against
>us," he said.
>
>But as Shirley and other Native American leaders speak
>out against the war, more and more young Navajos seem
>eager to join it. In fact, recruiting stations in the
>border towns near the reservation all report increased
>enlistments since the war began - in contrast to the
>national trend of plummeting enlistment numbers.
>
>Local recruiters point out that Navajo youth are very
>patriotic and come from a society that does not shirk
>its duties to its country.
>
>But Shirley can only shake his head and hope the war
>ends soon.
>
>He said, however, that despite his feelings about the
>war, he would not urge Navajo young men and women not
>to enlist.
>
>"That's a personal choice," Shirley said. "Each person
>should make their own choice."
>
>===
>
>Puerto Rico leader: Get U.S. out of Iraq
>
>AnÌbal Acevedo Vil·, Puerto Rico's governor-elect,
>criticized the war in Iraq and urged U.S. troop
>withdrawal.
>
>BY FRANK GRIFFITHS - Miami Herald - Dec. 30, 2004
>
>Associated Press
>http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/10527095.htm?1c
>
>SAN JUAN - Puerto Rico's governor-elect said Wednesday
>he is against the war in Iraq and wants all troops --
>including islanders -- pulled out of the troubled
>country.
>
>Speaking the day after he was officially certified as
>winner of the Nov. 2 election following a recount and
>legal battle over disputed ballots that dragged on for
>nearly two months, AnÌbal Acevedo Vil· also called for
>a U.S. troop withdrawal plan within six months.
>
>"In terms of the reasons given for the war and where
>we are right now, I don't think it was the right
>decision," Acevedo Vil·, 42, told The Associated Press
>on Wednesday. "There were no weapons of mass
>destruction. Almost everybody agrees that Iraq was not
>a real threat even to their neighbors. And now we have
>learned there is no real exit strategy."
>
>"If it's an unfair war, it's unfair to everybody," he
>said. "I would love to see a plan that within six
>months we have a real international force and that the
>level of all U.S. troops including Puerto Ricans will
>go down."
>
>At least 23 Puerto Ricans have been killed in the U.S.-
>led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including an Army
>specialist killed by a roadside bomb on Monday in
>Baghdad. Nearly 54,000 Puerto Ricans serve in the armed
>forces, although the U.S. Caribbean territory's 4
>million people cannot vote for U.S. president and have
>no vote in U.S. Congress.
>
>At least 1,325 U.S. service members have died since the
>beginning of the Iraq war.
>
>Acevedo Vil·, who received 963,303 votes (48.4 percent)
>and supports keeping the island a U.S. commonwealth,
>beat Pedro Rossello, who was Puerto Rico's pro-
>statehood governor from 1993-2001 and won 959,737 votes
>(48.22 percent), election officials said after a fierce
>recount.
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand