*****please sign and circulate widely****

Why we stand for immediate withdrawal of all U.S.
troops from Iraq

<http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/OutNow/>http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/OutNow/

THE U.S. occupation of Iraq has not liberated the
Iraqi people, but has made life worse for most Iraqis.

Tens of thousands of U.S. service people have been
killed or maimed, and hundreds of thousands of
innocent Iraqis have lost their lives as a result of
the U.S. invasion in 2003, the ongoing occupation, and
the violence unleashed by them.

Iraq's infrastructure has been destroyed, and U.S.
plans for reconstruction abandoned. There is less
electricity, less clean drinking water, and more
unemployment today than before the U.S. invasion.

All of the justifications initially provided by the
U.S. for waging war on Iraq have been exposed as lies;
the real reasons for the invasion - to control Iraq's
oil reserves and to increase U.S. strategic influence
in the region - now stand revealed.

The Bush administration has insisted again and again
that stability, democracy, and prosperity are around
the next bend in the road. But with each day that the
U.S. stays, the violence and lack of security facing
Iraqis worsen. The U.S. says that it cannot withdraw
its military because Iraq will collapse into civil war
if it does. But the U.S. has deliberately stoked
sectarian divisions in its ongoing attempt to install
a U.S.-friendly regime, thus driving Iraq towards
civil war.

The November elections in the United States sent a
clear message that voters reject the Iraq war, and
opinion polls show that seven in 10 Iraqis want the
U.S. to leave sooner rather than later. Even most U.S.
military and political leaders agree that staying the
course in Iraq is a policy that is bound to fail.

Yet all the various alternative plans for Iraq now
being discussed in Washington, including those
proposed by House and Senate Democrats, aren't about
withdrawing the U.S. military from Iraq. Rather, these
strategies are about continuing the pursuit of U.S.
goals in Iraq and the larger Middle East using
different means.

Even the proposal to redeploy U.S. troops outside of
Iraq, a plan favored by many Democratic Party leaders,
envisions continued U.S. intervention inside Iraq.

With former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
insisting that a military victory in Iraq is no longer
possible and (Ret.) Lt. Gen. William Odom calling for
"complete withdrawal" of all U.S. troops, the antiwar
movement should demand no less than the immediate
withdrawal of the U.S. military - as well as
reparations to the Iraqi people, so they can rebuild
their own society and genuinely determine their own
future.

We call on the U.S. to get out of Iraq - not in six
months, not in a year, but now.

       Ali Abunimah
       ElectronicIraq.net

       Gilbert Achcar
       Author
       Clash of Barbarisms

       Michael Albert
       Znet

       Tariq Ali
       Author
       Bush in Babylon

       Anthony Arnove
       Author
       Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal

       Noam Chomsky
       Author
       Hegemony or Survival

       Kelly Dougherty
       Executive Director
       Iraq Veterans Against the War*

       Eve Ensler
       Playwright
       The Vagina Monologues

       Eduardo Galeano
       Author
       The Open Veins of Latin America

       Rashid Khalidi
       Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies
       Columbia University

       Camilo Mejía
       First Iraq War resister to refuse deployment

       Arundhati Roy
       Author
       God of Small Things

       Howard Zinn
       Author
       A People's History of the United States

* for identification purposes only

<http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/OutNow/>http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/OutNow/