Although the Bush administration continues to exploit September 11 to justify domestic spying, unprecedented spending and a permanent state of war, a new Zogby poll reveals that less than half of the American public trusts the official 9/11 story or believes the attacks were adequately investigated.

911Truth.org Urges 2006 Reform Candidates to Recognize a Powerful New Constituency.

The poll is the first scientific survey of Americans' belief in a 9/11 cover up or the need to investigate possible US government complicity, and was commissioned to inform deliberations at the June 2~4 "9/11: Revealing the Truth, Reclaiming Our Future" conference in Chicago. Poll results indicate 42% believe there has indeed been a cover up (with 10% unsure) and 45% think "Congress or an International Tribunal should re-investigate the attacks, including whether any US government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success" (with 8% unsure). The poll of American residents was conducted from Friday, May 12 through Tuesday, May 16, 2004. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of +/- 2.9. All inquiries about questions, responses and demographics should be directed to Zogby International.

According to Janice Matthews, executive director of 911truth.org, "To those who have followed the mounting evidence for US government involvement in 9/11, these results are both heartening and frankly quite amazing, given the mainstream media's ongoing refusal to cover the most critical questions of that day. Our August 2004 Zogby poll of New Yorkers showed nearly half believe certain US officials 'consciously' allowed the attacks to happen and 66% want a fresh investigation, but these were people closest to the tragedy and most familiar with facts refuting the official account. This revelation that so many millions nationwide now also recognize a 9/11 cover up and the need for a new inquiry should be a wake up call for all 2006 political candidates hoping to turn this country around. We think it also indicates Americans are awakening to the larger pattern of deceit that led us into Constitutional twilight and endless war, and that our independent media may have finally come of age."

Poll co-author, W. David Kubiak concurs, saying: "Despite years of relentless media promotion, whitewash and 9/11 Commission propaganda, the official 9/11 story still can't even muster 50% popular support. Since this myth has been the administration's primary source of political and war-making power, this level of distrust has revolutionary implications for everyone working for peace, justice and civil liberties. If we ever hope to reclaim this country, end aggression and restore international respect, we all must finally scrutinize that day when things started to go so terribly wrong. The media and movement leaders ignore this call at their peril, because tens of millions are clearly telling us here they are ready for 9/11 truth."

SCOPE: The poll covered five related areas: 1) Iraq - do Americans think the Bush administration exploited 9/11 to attack Iraq? (44% do, 44% don't); 2) Cover up - did the government and its 9/11 Commission conceal or refuse to investigate evidence that contradicts their official story? (only 48% said no); 3) the collapse of WTC 7, which was not even mentioned by the 9/11 Commission and has seldom been reported in the media---had respondents been aware of this collapse and, if so, did they think it should be investigated (only 52% had known about it, but over 70% of this group believe it should have been investigated); 4) new investigation of official complicity - do respondents think we need one? (only 48% said no); and 5) mass media - how do people rate its performance, including its coverage of alternative 9/11 theories, unanswered questions and inquiry issues? (43% rate it positively, 55% negatively).

(The poll sponsors see knowledge of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 as a bellwether issue, because if people do not know this elementary fact, they have probably not been exposed to any independent 9/11 research at all. Because the number of respondents who support a new investigation of 9/11 (45%)) is roughly the same as the number who knew about the collapse of Building 7 (52%), it can reasonably be extrapolated that if the entire public were exposed to independent 9/11 research, about 90 percent would support a new investigation of the events of that fateful day.)

SPONSOR: 911truth.org is a coalition of researchers, journalists and victim family members working to expose and answer the hundreds of still unresolved questions concerning 9/11, especially the nearly 400 questions that the Family Steering Committee filed with the 9/11 Commission. Initially welcomed by the commissioners as their "road map," these queries cut to the heart of 9/11 crimes and accountability, specifically raising the central issues of motive, means and cui bono (who profited?). The Commission ultimately ignored 80% of these issues, however, opting only to explore system failures, miscommunications and incompetence. The victim families' most incisive questions remain unaddressed to this day.

For more information on the Chicago "9/11: Revealing the Truth, Reclaiming our Future" conference and other developments, see http://www.911truth.org and http://911revealingthetruth.org or contact our media coordinator, Michael Berger, at 314-308-4893.

* Numerical computations conservatively based on 2000 Census data citing 174 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 64.

Survey Methodology: Zogby America, 5/12/06 through 5/16/06

This is a telephone survey of adults nationwide conducted by Zogby International. The target sample is 1,200 interviews with approximately 81 questions asked. Samples are randomly drawn from telephone cd’s of national listed sample. Zogby International surveys employ sampling strategies in which selection probabilities are proportional to population size within area codes and exchanges. As many as six calls are made to reach a sampled phone number. Cooperation rates are calculated using one of AAPOR’s approved methodologies1 and are comparable to other professional public-opinion surveys conducted using similar sampling strategies.2 Weighting by region, party, age, race, religion, and gender is used to adjust for non-response. The margin of error is +/- 2.9 percentage points. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.

Zogby International’s sampling and weighting procedures also have been validated through its political polling: more than 95% of the firm’s polls have come within 1% of actual election-day outcomes.

REMEMBER
 

by Monica Benderman

They died – but it did not make us free. 

They died because the citizens of the country for which they served would not stand to live by the principles on which their country was founded.   

They died because the citizens of the country for which they served would not stand to hold their government officials accountable to the oaths of office they took.

They died because the citizens of this country refused to accept their responsibility in preserving the freedoms they so willingly claimed to be their right.    

If we all have a right to the freedoms for which our American veterans have sacrificed, then we all have equal share in their defense.

They died for reasons as varied and as individual as the people they were when their uniforms came off.  

They died for what they believed in – which is not always what we believe in.

They died because they had the courage to take a stand to defend the principles on which their country was founded, which allowed them the right to their beliefs.   

They died because, regardless of their beliefs, they knew that it would not be by words alone that the citizens of this country could live in freedom – it would be by actions. The freedoms belong to those who are willing to fight for them – and those freedoms are as individual as the men and women who fight and who are willing to put it all on the line for what they believe.   

In the fight for true freedom weapons that kill are the weapons of last resort.   The veterans who did take a stand would have done anything in their power to avoid having to use such weapons.  The citizens of this country, by believing that the fight for their freedoms belonged to only a few, gave the veterans who served no other choice.

The respect and honor that this nation’s veterans deserve will require far more than a placing of flags and a calling of names.   

The respect and honor due the veterans who sacrificed so greatly is far more than most American citizens seem willing to pay.

The respect and honor belonging to our American veterans will come when every American citizen stands on principle and remembers that true freedom is not free – nor can it be bought on the credit of another man’s life.   

True freedom comes by earning it for ourselves – by taking a stand to defend what we believe, allowing others to do the same; realizing that in the sameness of humanity, we are none of us the same.   

If you cannot take a personal stand for your freedom equal to that of our American veterans – then you do not deserve to raise a flag and name the name of one veteran who has put his life on the line for what they believed. 

If you cannot take that stand – then the freedom you claim is nothing more than a ball and chain – and the freedom you claim is not what you believe. 

Monica is the wife of US Army Sgt. Kevin Benderman, an Iraq war veteran who is currently serving a 15 month sentence at the Regional Corrections Facility, Ft. Lewis, WA for filing a Conscientious Objector application as his legal objection to war and this current direction this country has taken.  Please visit www.BendermanDefense.org and www.BendermanTimeline.com to learn more.

Monica and Kevin may be reached at mdawnb@coastalnow.net

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

TRUTH BE TOLD

Congressional Briefing

 for

Conscientious Objection 

May 16, 2006  -  Washington D.C.

Hosted by

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney

SPEECH BY MONICA BENDERMAN 

Thank you for giving me this time today.  I would like to preface my comments to Congressional representatives by reading a statement from my husband, Kevin Benderman, a US Army Sgt. who is currently serving a 15-month sentence at the Regional Corrections Facility, Ft. Lewis, WA.

From Kevin:

I have prepared this statement to address the injustice I have been dealt by the US Army after I made the decision to apply for Conscientious Objector status.  I made this decision after my return from Iraq where I witnessed and experienced for myself the insanity of war. What I learned from my experience is that war is a waste of humanity.  We kill many people in the name of keeping the peace – an oxymoron if there ever was one.  After many months of contemplation I reached the conclusion that I no longer wanted to contribute to the ultimate violence toward other human beings that war is.

 I attempted to discuss my feelings with a chaplain assigned to my military unit, but I got the sense that talking with him would be a less than worthwhile way to cope with these feelings.  Ultimately, my initial impression of him proved correct when I received an email from him stating how ashamed of me he felt, and that I had displayed little moral fortitude in my decision. 

The command structure of my unit was hostile towards me in their zealous need to have me prosecuted for having developed a desire to live a more peaceful, humane existence.  I was ridiculed publicly, called a coward, subjected to a farce of a general court martial, and falsely imprisoned.

The company commander refused to follow military regulations in regard to my Conscientious Objector application and the battalion commander blatantly disregarded a request from a congressional representative to examine my application in an unbiased manner. 

The General Court Martial Convening Authority blatantly abused his position of authority when he told the Ft. Stewart JAG office and the prosecuting attorneys how long my sentence would be prior to an investigation into charges they were considering against me.  This action is a flagrant violation of my right to a fair and unbiased hearing accorded me by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The Rear Detachment commander also tried to dredge up any other groundless charges to press against me that he could.  Two charges of Larceny were brought in to try to further tarnish my reputation, which eventually proved groundless, but not before they were used as a threat to encourage me to plead guilty to an act I did not commit. 

It is my desire to prevent other soldiers from having to deal with corrupt and unethical individuals like these commanders.  I would like to see legislation passed that would prevent any type of abuses from those serving in positions of authority within the military system.  The people who voluntarily decide to wear this nation’s uniform already sacrifice far more than the average citizen.  Their basic civil rights should not be sacrificed as well to the unethical whims of corrupt individuals who may hold a higher rank, but exhibit far less humanity.  Any assistance in rectifying this situation would be greatly appreciated, and I would like to thank those who made it possible for me to present my remarks here today.  I would also like to thank those of you who have taken time to hear what I have had to say.

Sincerely – Sgt. Kevin Benderman

I (Monica Benderman) will address my comments to the Members of Congress:

Each one of you is in office having been elected on the basis of promises you made.  In taking that office, each one of you took an oath to honor the Constitution of this country, and you did so by swearing to your God.

An American soldier, a volunteer, takes the same oath.  His commitment to that oath is based on the promises of our elected leaders.  But a true leader is not someone who blindly follows laws written by men.  A true leader is someone who leads with adherence to his own obligation to humanity.

If you, during your tenure and contract to serve as Congressional leaders, were asked to participate in an action that violated your own conscience and your own principles of humanity, would you take a stand against that action?  

If you were to step down, no longer willing to participate in an immoral, illegal action, would you have charges brought against you?

Would you be sent to jail for your beliefs?  Would you go willingly? 

Would you allow this to happen to any member who serves with you who also acted on their conscience?

As a volunteer, an American soldier has every right to question the purpose of his sacrifice, and to expect that sacrifice to be honored with integrity and honesty, and to be allowed to follow his conscience when orders given violate his own principles of humanity.

Freedom of Choice is one of the most significant principles on which our country was founded.  Conscientious Objection is the true exercise of a soldier’s right to choose.

Do you understand what it takes to publicly declare yourself a Conscientious Objector today?

Are you aware of the process an American soldier must go through to be granted Conscientious Objector status in today’s volunteer army?

My husband, Sgt. Kevin Benderman, is a ten year veteran of the US Army, and has served with distinction.  He served a combat tour in Iraq and was awarded two commendation medals for his service there.  While in Iraq, my husband’s firsthand experiences changed him.

My husband went to war.  He saw mass graves filled with dead bodies of old people, women and children.  He watched dogs feeding on their bodies.  How would that affect you?

He saw a young girl badly burned because of the actions of war and rather than stop to help her, war dictated that he must drive on by.  How would that tear at your heart?

As he helped set up camp, his commander gave his unit an order to shoot small children if they continued to return to the top of a retaining wall to watch what the soldiers were doing.   At what point would you draw the line?

What he saw and experienced appalled him, and he was angry.  My husband left Iraq cold and furious at what he had been asked to do for an unjust, undefined cause, and a dedicated soldier turned against war for moral and ethical reasons as his conscience would not allow him to violate his own principles of humanity.

When he returned home, my husband and I wrote publicly about our feelings for this and all war. 

We spoke of the horrors, the senseless inhumanity, and the disrespect shown to the sacrifice our soldiers had  made.                                                               

My husband took the course available to him and filed a Conscientious Objector application as his legal show of refusal to participate further in an immoral, inhumane action.

His command, in an effort to punish him for his humanity, and because they could not do so for the public comments that he and I had made, chose to disregard his application, and in the confusion their incompetence created found a way to put him in prison for his actions. 

Kevin was found guilty of missing movement, or not getting on a plane, and sentenced to 15 months in jail, loss of all pay, reduction in rank and dishonorable discharge. According to the lead prosecutor, the military spokesperson, and my husband’s commander – “a stiff sentence was called for to send a message to other soldiers that they could not use Conscientious Objection to get out of going to war.” 

My husband violated no regulations. His command violated many.  The command’s flagrant disregard for military regulations and laws of humanity sent my husband to jail as a prisoner of conscience.

Times have changed – and so has Conscientious Objection.  What has not changed is the constitution, the oath our volunteer soldiers take to defend it, and every American citizen’s right to Freedom of Choice. 

This Conscientious Objection goes beyond religious teaching.  It is not dramatic. There is no epiphany.  There is reality.  Death is final, whether it is your own, or you cause the death of another.  No amount of field training can make up for the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of a real battlefield, and no amount of threats, intimidation and abuse from a command can change a soldier’s mind when the cold hard truth of an immoral, unethical justification for war is coupled with real life sensations.

Who among us has the authority to sit in judgment of another man’s conscious decision to no longer participate in killing when he has been on the frontlines of death and destruction?

Simply by being born we each have an obligation to respect the authority of life; as individual human beings with an allegiance to what is RIGHT, not an allegiance to a flag, a country, or another human being elected to a temporary position of leadership they may not have earned.

When a soldier realizes that his conscience no longer supports the oath he gave to serve in the military, it is because he has learned that what he was asked to do as a soldier violates his obligation to himself and his humanity.

My husband was scheduled for a parole hearing in February 2006.  The parole board denied my husband’s request for parole.  The reason cited – my husband had not been “sufficiently rehabilitated.”  My husband is a Conscientious Objector.  What is the rehabilitation needed for someone who says he no longer will participate in war?

The right to choose life over the taking of life is every man’s right.  Regardless if that man has volunteered to defend his country in time of war, he did not volunteer to participate in wanton, irreverent killing at the whim of a government whose leadership is quick to “pull the trigger” without giving thought to the authority of the sanctity of life. 

A true American leader will stand up to laws and orders given that violate the sanctity of life and call the principles of our Constitution into question.  A true American leader will let his conscience be his guide when asked to participate in actions that violate his own high standards of morality.  When this leader is a soldier who has made a choice to stand against the inhumanity he has seen firsthand in a combat zone, it is up to those in Congress to see that laws are in place which give his right to conscience the respect it deserves. 

I am here on behalf of my husband, Sgt. Kevin Benderman; American soldier, Prisoner of Conscience, someone I am very proud of.

My husband and others like him are in prison because our country’s leaders have refused to acknowledge their responsibility to act as human beings first.  My husband, a volunteer soldier, after a combat tour in Iraq, chose to put his humanity first.  It is beyond my comprehension why, in this great country, my husband is in jail for simply exercising his human rights. 

It is time for each of you to remember your obligation to humanity and act in a manner that is truly worthy of my husband’s sacrifice.  I am strongly encouraging each of you to reflect on your responsibility and your conscience, and in doing so, I am advocating that my husband, Sgt. Kevin Benderman, be given the respect he deserves as a Conscientious Objector and an American leader who has taken a stand to defend the principles this country was founded on.

Support Kevin Benderman

Your in-kind support of the

 BENDERMAN DEFENSE TRUST

is very much appreciated!

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

America the Fearful

By Bob Herbert

In the dark days of the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt counseled Americans to avoid fear. George W. Bush is his polar opposite. The public's fear is this president's most potent political asset. Perhaps his only asset.

Mr. Bush wants ordinary Americans to remain in a perpetual state of fear - so terrified, in fact, that they will not object to the steady erosion of their rights and liberties, and will not notice the many ways in which their fear is being manipulated to feed an unconscionable expansion of presidential power.

If voters can be kept frightened enough of terrorism, they might even overlook the monumental incompetence of one of the worst administrations the nation has ever known.

Four marines drowned Thursday when their 60-ton tank rolled off a bridge and sank in a canal about 50 miles west of Baghdad. Three American soldiers in Iraq were killed by roadside bombs the same day. But those tragic and wholly unnecessary deaths were not the big news. The big news was the latest leak of yet another presidential power grab: the administration's collection of the telephone records of tens of millions of American citizens.

The Bush crowd, which gets together each morning to participate in a highly secret ritual of formalized ineptitude, is trying to get its creepy hands on all the telephone records of everybody in the entire country. It supposedly wants these records, which contain crucial documentation of calls for Chinese takeout in Terre Haute, Ind., and birthday greetings to Grandma in Talladega, Ala., to help in the search for Osama bin Laden.

Hey, the president has made it clear that when Al Qaeda is calling, he wants to be listening, and you never know where that lead may turn up.

The problem (besides the fact that the president has been as effective hunting bin Laden as Dick Cheney was in hunting quail) is that in its fearmongering and power-grabbing the Bush administration has trampled all over the Constitution, the democratic process and the hallowed American tradition of government checks and balances.

Short of having them taken away from us, there is probably no way to fully appreciate the wonder and the glory of our rights and liberties here in the United States, including the right to privacy.

The Constitution and the elaborate system of checks and balances were meant to protect us against the possibility of a clownish gang of small men and women amassing excessive power and behaving like tyrants or kings. But the normal safeguards have not been working since the Bush crowd came to power, starting with the hijacked presidential election in 2000.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, all bets were off. John Kennedy once said, "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war." But George W. Bush, employing an outrageous propaganda campaign ("Shock and awe," "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"), started an utterly pointless war in Iraq that he still doesn't know how to win or how to end.

If you listen to the Bush version of reality, the president is all powerful. In that version, we are fighting a war against terrorism, which is a war that will never end. And as long as we are at war (forever), there is no limit to the war-fighting powers the president can claim as commander in chief.

So we've kidnapped people and sent them off to be tortured in the extraordinary rendition program; and we've incarcerated people at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere without trial or even the right to know the charges against them; and we're allowing the C.I.A. to operate super-secret prisons where God-knows-what-all is going on; and we're listening in on the phone calls and reading the e-mail of innocent Americans without warrants; and on and on and on.

The Bushies will tell you that it is dangerous and even against the law to inquire into these nefarious activities. We just have to trust the king.

Well, I give you fair warning. This is a road map to totalitarianism. Hallmarks of totalitarian regimes have always included an excessive reliance on secrecy, the deliberate stoking of fear in the general population, a preference for military rather than diplomatic solutions in foreign policy, the promotion of blind patriotism, the denial of human rights, the curtailment of the rule of law, hostility to a free press and the systematic invasion of the privacy of ordinary people.

There are not enough pretty words in all the world to cover up the damage that George W. Bush has done to his country. If the United States could look at itself in a mirror, it would be both alarmed and ashamed at what it saw.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK