"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
The following emails were sent to me mostly in response to my initiation of the TJP Human Shield Action to Iraq. I reckon that if people are deluded enough to send me threatening emails than I have the right to post them on my website. - Ken O'Keefe
"shane mallett" shanemallett@hotmail.com
Subject: here's my opinion....
i think this man's words and actions are treachery. i am also a US Marine, and I know if this man makes any attempt to compromise battlefield operations, he'll be arrested (if not shot 1st); the MP's will mail him back the US; and he'll spend the rest of his life making big rocks into little rocks in one of America's fine penitentiaries. You ingnorant fools dont realize this isnt a perfect world. We will never live in a peaceful world as long as their are scum like Saddam and Pyongyang. The Department of Defense does a great service to our country and the world by removing these varmin. I hope this man's wish is granted. i cant think of better way for him to die than to get caught in the cross-fire with US Marines and some worthless rouge nation. Tell him i said 'Have a safe trip, and try to not get shot in the head.'
"Cameron Casey" DelMarPD@aol.com
Subject: See ya
A human shield? More like a target. Here in America (as they do in the UK) we call guys like you traitors. I hope you wear a bulls eye on your back so our precision bombs can get to you while you're hugging Sadam. Bye, bye, Ken!
Cameron Casey
"Lilly White" lilly_white02@yahoo.com
Subject : Get Stuffed
Fuck off and die you worthless pieces of old hippy shit. I hope you all get your asses handed to you when the US bombs Iraq, you deserve nothing less. Just die and rid the world of your lefty worthless hides. Fuck you very much,
Lilly
"Paul Kammer" kammer.pj@verizon.net
I find your self loathing and hatred for the U.S. pathologic. Your moral arrogance destructive. You cry out for the Iraq people now that "your cause" is has reached the headlines.. - PJK
"Marc Mogil" mogilny@aol.com
Subject: Reaction to you Article;
Dear Peace Shields:
It will be many American's great satisfaction to see you bombed to hell out of any spot your anti-American socialists posing as "peace-loving people" choose to go in Iraq, the land of 12th century sheep fornicators with no education other than suicide. The people of America will of course express their official "regret," but fringe groups as yours will not stop justice from toppling from power a sadistic butcher, dictator and danger to the entire region qnd the world. Not even the liberal American press which supported those carrying Viet Cong flags ("for peace") in the 1970's will support or give much space to what you are planning to do, since they too saw (despite their inclinations) how much of a LIAR Saddam was after all of his false promises to the U.N. in 1991. Ask the dead Kurds of his country what THEIR souls feel........... Lunacy will always exist, regardless of generation, time or place......if you do what you say, your suicidal venture will be the second lunacy of the 21st Century (the first being the butchery at the World Trade Center by Osama). (Former Judge) Marc Mogil
"Ed Cottrell" emc@topsailconsulting.com
Subject: I'm sorry
Dear Mr. O'Keefe,
I'm sorry that you have such a low view of your home country and such poor information on our foreign policies that you felt compelled to renounce your citizenship. Our country has problems, yes, but it is also one of the few nations with the moral strength to defend the powerless and oppressed, at great risk to our own national security, and as you well know, the personal security of many of our citizens. I wonder, when you were in Iraq, did you talk to any of the Iraqis? Did you learn about their way of life? Though I have not been to Iraq, I have been to Jordan, Palestine, and Muslim North Africa, and have met many Iraqis. I know what their lives look like, and I know that, despite their fears, most would much rather be liberated from tyranny, even by an "infidel" nation such as ours, than left stranded by the world's greatest power.
I urge you to think twice about your plan to serve as a human shield; while the U.S. government makes every effort possible to minimize civilian casualties, the Iraqi government has no such qualms. I'm sure they will have no fear of taking and using human shields - Iraqi or American, volunteer or captive - around military targets to portray America and her allies as murderers. I pray - and I mean this - that you will not be giving your life in vain, should you decide to go to Iraq. I cannot say I support that course of action, but I will pray for your safety. Godspeed.
Sincerely, Ed Cottrell
"Dusty Rhodes" mrdustyrhodes@yahoo.com
Subject: Good luck with your mission
Hey, What a great IDEA!!
Please go to Iraq and I hope you enjoy your visits.I am sure that your efforts will prove to be a great success! Please encourage all of your associates to join you! Protection of Sadam Hussain is vital for
world peace, as I am sure you know.
Wish you could have been there when he blew up those oil fields. Or stood by his side when he invaded
kuwati.
Your friend, Bozo On the Nozo
ps be sure to paint a big fat bullseye on your ass....
"Neal Long" wlong@karnesec.net
Subject: Veteran?
What outfit, when and at what MOS. Duty very doubtful, name being checked for actual combat experience. Promise you the "combat" experience if you get in the way of the "sight" if there is a war.
"Szii" szii@sziisoft.com
Subject: Iraq shields
The US is nuclear. Iraq is not. The US shows restraint in the use of those weapons. The US has a stockpile of various WMDs that are slowly deteriorating. The US has shown restraint in the use of those weapons. Iraq had (has?) a stockpile of such weapons and had ZERO problem using them against it's own people, the Kurds.
Look to the north and south. Look to the no-fly zones. Why are they there? Protecting a country from it's own leader. Saddam's shown no problem invading Kuwait...gassing his own people...destroying oil refineries and poisoning the atmosphere.
Yet you support him? There are now reports of the "Gulf War Syndrome" being linked to the long-term effects of Sarin gas. Varios WMDs were destroyed in Iraq, including Sarin. Coincidence? You'd rather paint the bleak picture of the US as a bully, the global opressor. That is your own opinion, and you're welcome to it. Not everyone has the same restraint that the US does in it's operations (re: random terrorist organisations.) Do you really believe that they would NOT use WMDs if available? The people who piloted those planes into the WTC did so seeking to take out as many innocent lives as possible. Do you REALLY think that they would hesitate?
You cast blame on the US for the Gulf War Syndrome (which you don't even know where it came from), yet you travel to Iraq to support a leader who's WILLINGLY and OPENLY gassed his own people? A leader who's openly used WMDs in their war with Iran?
We protect Saudi Arabia from Iraq. We protect Kuwait..from Iraq. We protect the Iraqi people...from Iraq.
Were you travelling to Iraq to sit with the people in resisting the oppressive government, I would applaud you. Were you travelling to North Korea to sit with the people in resisting the oppression and the building of nuclear power and weapons, I would salute you.
To travel to Iraq and support the in-place regime...I can only wish you good luck and hope that the munitions (should they fall) fly true and minimize the innocent lives (including the soldiers who may have simply been following orders.)
Your cause, noble as it may be in the pure pursuit of peace, is critically flawed in it's time and place. Mike
"zelmerj" jzelmer@bellsouth.net
Subject: Good luck my friend
Because no one cares whether you get blown up or not, if you're chained to a Surface-to-air site, you're going to die.
What a waste. When you die, you're dead. You don't go to Heaven. You don't go to Hell. You just die, the worms eat you and 2 months from now you will be forgotten forever.
Take my advice, start a family or spend the most time with your loved ones you can. Do something constructive with yourself, don't be the martyr, because no one cares about you at all...
Get away from everyone, live a humble life and get back to a tribal existence. I believe you and your friends will find solace taking that approach. Forget about the USA, forget about Iraq, forget about world welfare and politics. Go somewhere isolated, find your Nirvana and live a peaceful, happy life.
regards, j. m. zelmer
"Howard Lee Wilder" wilderhl@hotmail
Mr. O'Keefe;
I read an article attributed to you, in which you announce that you intend to act as a human shield against the policy of an attack on Iraq. Where exactly do you operate out of? Since you've seen fit to renounce
your US citizenship, then I'm going on the assumption that you don't live in this country, whether in the continental United States, or in Hawaii.
Of course, reading between the lines, it seems that you actually seem to be living in Hawaii, which means that you're actually an illegal alien, or maybe you just wanted some sort of way to avoid paying US taxes. In any event, you seem remarkably free to say whatever you like, and since there are very few other places in the world where a person can do that, I'm venturing a guess that you're still living in the United States.
I have difficulty understanding somebody like you. The Internet has given you a voice outsized for actual presence and organization. You're also seem to have a rich fantasy life. I get the impression that you'd like to add your picture to the row of 'heroes' on your web site; Ghandi, Schweitzer, Malcolm X and now O'Keefe.
If you're maimed, whether by Allied weapons while you stand arm in arm with other so-called 'world citizens' in front of a chemical weapons lab, you may get your wish. A wheelchair is a small price to pay for media exposure and possible book sales. You strike me as the sort of fellow who's going
to have a wound of some sort when he gets back, whether or not he actually has one and play that up to the hilt.
Here's what I think will happen: You're going to be far away from the rough stuff, because I don't really think that you're that stupid. Upon your return, however, you'll be trying to line up gigs on 20/20 or Larry
King to talk in hushed tones about the "horror of war". Hey, that ought to be good for book sales, eh?
The bottom line, is though, if you renounced your US citizenship (something that people have died trying to get) then you're not an American, nor do you have the right to claim that you ever were. There's a basic formula at work here: 1,500 foreign lives for each American soldier, and you're a foreigner, pal.
You'd be a lot more effective if you were available to help the Iraqi people after Saddam Hussein is removed, by helping to rebuild the infrastructure of the country. You'd also get a lot more support if you didn't spew that anti-American drivel.
Howard Lee Wilder American Citizen
"Giuliano Coppini" vciwest@worldnet.att.net
Subject: War, Iraq, Islam, fools-like-you
Ken,
The biggest treat to the civilized world is Islam. It likely will destroy civilization...medicine, art, music, free speech, rule of law, humane treatment of people, tolerance, religious freedom, democracy, etc. Unless it is stopped, Canterbury, the Vatican, St. Patricks, ... will all be mosques eventually. They are already taking over Europe and the US because of the good will and tolerence of their peoples. The mechanism is the Islamic birthrate. Most Muslim women are baby factories....dumb, pregnant, barefooted, and igorant. Most of the "refugees" are parasites...accounting for far more than their share of welfare and dole. Islam is a religion of peace...while it is in the minority...in the majority, it becomes the "slayer of the infidel".
I feel sorry for you and especially the English for being so naive and stupid. The Dutch, of course, are already a lost cause. I'D RATHER BE RED THAN MUSLIM!
Regards, G. Coppini
"ken masters" kenmasters971@hotmail.com
Subject: In regards to the article on the letter by Mr. O'Keefe (human shields for iraq)
Unfortunately, that's really the bottom line with what you are doing. I have several muslim friends - from the middle east, mind you - who think differently about the situation overseas. They, unlike you, have family who is suffering and undergoing levels of pain unheard of in the cushy world you and I live in.
I sympathize with you in the current situation of our nation. The political scenario, swinging all sides of the fence, is dismal at best. He with the most cash wins, she with the most minority claims wins, he with the abuse record is found not guilty of murdering dozens of people. While it may be troubling, it is not definite; it is a situation in which, with time and effort, can change - not because the people want it, not because economy dictates, but because it must.
Likewise, Iraq. The people are unable to change their situation (although many give their lives daily to do so), lifting economic sactions will not change the situation (the hussein-supported warlords will see to that), but it must change - because the world will not idly stand by to let another genocidal madman survive. Iraq is nothing more than the 8th-grade bully who will continue to bully until he is put in his place. If you and your team go, no one will care if you die protecting people whose life has been constant agony under their current government.
I don't really care who gets the oil, I don't really care who points the finger at who in regards to money, I don't really give a rat's ass about the situation the government leaders in the middle east want to prove. All I know is that there are people dying, women being raped and sodomized, and even children turned to lives of prostitution early on (shantis, if I'm not mistaken but I may be wrong on the title).
These things are nothing of their religion. These things are nothing of their culture. These things are pollutants brought in by the perverse and vile leaders of their own country who have brought this shame and pain upon their people.
It would be best served if your group, instead of giving its life foolishly, would enlist in the peace corps or any other international aide group that would have the ability to do what will be eeded - assist the people in the areas of war with recovery, food, healing, and care. If you decide to do the human shield, you will prove yourself to be nothing more than useless cattle who by doing nothing have allied themselves with that which is evil in the world at this time.
I do not expect a reply, nor do I want one. I have no desire to continue a communique with you since your decision will more than likely not be reversed. However, I pose you this last query: The situation right now with Saddam Hussein is quite similar in many levels to the to the pre-WW2 situation with then-leader Hitler. If this situation was done during this time, would you have protected that madman as well?
"Andrew Murphy" murphy_andrew@hotmail.com
Subject: Good luck with your mission
Mr O'Keefe
Just thought I'd remind you that there is an existential battle going on in the world right now between the people and institutions that I love (liberal democracy) and the people you love (anybody who threatens liberal democracy) which at the moment seems to include a conglomoration of base anti-Semites,
racist Islamo-Fascists and ultra-violent clan based thugs ruling the country of Iraq. It is for these reasons that I view you as nothing but my mortal enemy and therefore have the following thoughts and questions for you to ponder:
1. I hope you feel great being a martyr for the cause of a maintaining the dictatorship of that murderous barbarian Saddam.
2. Have you ever spoken to an Iraqi exile (ie a living victim of Saddam) about their feelings regarding the impending doom of your latest buddy (I doubt it)? If you did, did you listen (I doubt it)?
3. What is 'universal kinship'? Is it the sort of brotherly love that saw your Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist-Trot comrades murder 100 million people last century which has now been rebranded 'compassion-based global eco-justice'?
4. By comparing George W Bush to Hitler on your idiotic website you are belittling the death, destruction and evil thrust upon the world by the Nazi regime. It doesn't surprise me because, after all, people like you
only hate Hitler because he stabbed Stalin and your Worker's Paradise in the back with Barbarossa. In reality you have no moral objection with Hitler, he's just your political enemy. Furthermore, your comparisons are nonsensical and irrelevent.
5. You are a loser. Have fun. Take lots of your mates with you. Strap yourself in nice and tight. I hope the Yanks don't miss.
Andrew Murphy
Back to Iraq as a human shield by Ken Nichols O'Keefe - Sunday December 29, 2002
Today's Observer reports plans by peace activists to go to Iraq as human shields. In this online commentary, protest organiser and former US veteran Ken Nichols O'Keefe explains why he believes that this is the most effective way to oppose the war
Day by day, the latest headlines tell us that we are moving ever closer to war with Iraq. So many people around the world are ashamed and outraged by this prospect and yet feel powerless to make their voices heard. Large rallies for peace have been held in cities around the world. Yet the bulletins quickly return to the war drums beating ever faster for what must be one of the most choreographed and longest-planned wars in history.
Those who suffer most will of course be the innocent and victimized men, women and children in Iraq who are set to endure yet another war and unknown loss of life. Their crime? Simply to be the powerless citizens of an oil rich nation with a violent dictator who no longer fulfils the needs of Western powers who supported and armed him in the past.
Yet we need not be powerless. Gandhi said that "peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds." So what would happen if several thousand Western citizens migrated to Iraq to stand side by side with the Iraqi people? Along with at first just a few hundred people - from hundreds of millions in the west - I will be going to Iraq to volunteer to act as a human shield in the interests of protecting human life. We will join our fellow citizens of the world in Iraq to bear witness for peace and justice.
We will run the risk of being maimed or killed - but it is simply the same risk that innocent Iraqis will themselves face. I would rather die in defense of justice and peace than "prosper" in complicity with mass murder and war. This is not about supporting Saddam Hussein, as our governments did in the past. It is about saving the lives of those in our human family. We will be expressing to the Iraqi people the reality that most people in the West do not support this criminal war. And we will bring home to western publics the human cost of war because, unfortunately, the death and destruction faced daily by countless millions of our fellow human beings seems somehow an unfathomable abstraction unless western lives are at stake as well.
For me, this is also an act of personal penance. In 1989, at the age of nineteen I committed the most ignorant act of my life, I joined the United States Marine Corps. In 1991 I went beyond ignorance into criminal participation in a war against the Iraqi people which ultimately included the use of depleted uranium against the civilian population. My reward as an "American Hero" was to be used by Bush Sr. as a human guinea pig along with several hundred thousand other "heroes". We have still not been told the full story about "Gulf War syndrome" or how many of my fellow soldiers died as a result, but we do know the value our own leaders put on our lives. When a nation's leaders do not even respect the lives of their own "sons and daughters," the enemy will never enter into the realm of consideration. The hundreds of thousands killed by sanctions against Iraq are seen as a price worth paying. The human costs of another war in Iraq barely seem to register with our political leaders.
But, as I understand it, we the "citizens" are responsible for the actions of "our" governments. It is we who are privileged to live in so-called "democracies" and so we are collectively guilty for what we allow to be done in our name, to both to the civilian population of Iraq and to others around the world. Ignorance is no defence. The existence of other tyrants, worse or not, is no defence.
In 1999 I renounced my US citizenship in shame and disgust having arrived at the logical, albeit belated, conclusion that my government was not worthy of my funding - through taxes - and certainly not my allegiance. Paying for roads and schools is one thing, paying for "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to the point of insanity and nurturing global oppression is another thing all together. No moral being can be compelled to fund war, death and murder.
Only the most indoctrinated can not see the irony in the United States, with its long record of intervention and around the world, prosecuting this war on terrorism. A leader of a nation with thousands of nuclear weapons - and who has declared his right to use them - is ready to pulverize one of the poorest nations on the planet on the grounds that they may be planning to develop similar weapons themselves.
This "War on Terror" is becoming the ultimate "War on Freedom", in the United States and around the world. George Bush has said that "every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make, either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
But we do not only have two choices, For the record, I am not with George Bush or with the terrorists. And that is why, when this war finally begins, I will be in Iraq - with the people of Iraq. I invite everybody to join me in declaring themselves not citizens of nations but world citizens prepared to act in solidarity with the most wretched on our planet and to join us or to support our efforts in other ways. In doing so I honour the principles and laws of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And if I should die in Iraq, it will be as a man at peace with himself because he saw the truth and acted on it.