The Puget Spund Chapter & other orgs will be having a rally on March 1.It appears that they ALSO had a pro-USA rally YESTERDAY, from the Seattle Times:
Sunday, February 09, 2003 - 12:00 a.m. PacificHundreds rally to support U.S. troops
By Janet I. Tu
Seattle Times staff reporterSaying it's about time U.S. military troops realized that many Americans support them in a possible war with Iraq, hundreds of Puget Sound-area residents waved American flags and "Support Our Troops" signs yesterday at rallies in Bellevue and outside McChord Air Force Base."We want our soldiers, our airmen to know as they're being deployed that Americans support them," said Sheryl Sheaffer, 49, of Sammamish, whose son is in the Army. "We don't want their last image to be that of the anti-war protesters."
Demonstrators waving "Free Iraq" signs and a "Land of the Free/Because of the Brave" banner, packed four corners at a busy downtown intersection near Bellevue Square. A constant stream of cars blared horns.
Sheaffer and her mother, Nadine Gulit, helped form Support Our Troops, a grass-roots organization in Western Washington, about four weeks ago. They were frustrated after watching another anti-war protest on television, Sheaffer said. "We have to get out and speak for ourselves," they decided.
Now, Sheaffer says, they're speaking on national radio shows and getting e-mails from around the country asking how to form other such groups. They hope their efforts will start a groundswell of national support for the troops and for President Bush.
"I believe in my country," Sheaffer says. "I believe in my president. Sometimes for the sake of all we have to stand up and be strong."
A Newsweek magazine poll of 1,003 American adults last week found 70 percent would support military force against Iraq, with 60 percent supporting a U.S. strike even if inspectors don't find evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Still, Claudia Joines, 52, of North Bend said she feels U.S. troops in the Middle East are "getting the message that most of America is against the war. We are trying to send the message that regardless of politics, we support you."
That doesn't mean that they want a war, said Joines, one of several members of Marine Moms Online who attended yesterday's Bellevue rally. "We are extraordinarily proud of our kids," she said. "Many people misinterpret that pride as us being warmongers. We're military moms. We don't want our kids to be shot."
A few anti-war protesters also showed up yesterday, some debating with those who support a war with Iraq. "It's just like in Vietnam," said Janice Faris, 60, of Newcastle. "You get the troops over there so you have to support them."
Chuck Lawrence, 52, of Sumner says that as a Vietnam War veteran, he knows firsthand what it's like to come back to a country in which veterans were ostracized, and in which friends he grew up with didn't want to have anything to do with him.
"I want to make sure that what happened to me doesn't happen to this generation," he said.
He doesn't take lightly his decision to support a war to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "I want to see the people there freed," Lawrence said.
Outside McChord Air Force Base, about two dozen people showed up at a rally organized by Operation Support Our Troops-Pierce County.
Carolyn Verone, 56, of Puyallup said she never wants her Army son to see the kind of lack of support that Vietnam veterans got both during and after the war. Her son called her yesterday to say he was being deployed to the Middle East.
"I had friends who were killed (in Vietnam)," said Verone. "My brother and husband fought there. What I saw from the soldiers that came back — it was very depleting in my heart to think that nobody cared for them."
She said she doesn't believe that all those who are against the war are against the troops. And she herself expressed some ambivalence about whether the United States should go to war against Iraq now.
But she says her participation yesterday was "not for the war and not against the war. It's to support our troops."
Janet I. Tu: 206-464-2272 or jtu@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company