Four years later, what is this war about?

Letter from Karen Williams scroll to the right. War is not a computer generated missile striking a digital map.War is the color of earth as it explodes in our faces, the sound of your child pleading, the smell of smoke and fear. Women survivors of war are not the single images portrayed on a television screen,but the glue that holds families and countries together. Perhaps by understanding women, and the other side of war... We will have more humility in our discussions of wars perhaps it is time to listen to women's side of history. -Zainab Salbi Author of Between the worlds:Escape from Tyranny:Growing up in the shadow of Saddam and The other side of war women's stories of suvival and hope.

The real power, as you and I well know, is collective. I can't affored to be afraid of you, nor you of me. If it takes head-on collisions,let's do it: This polite timidity is killing us. Cherri'e Moraga check out the videos @ peacetakescourage.com Women's International League for Peace and Freedom wilpf.org

WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Smedley Darlington Butler Major General - United States Marine Corps [Retired]