One More Reason to Get on the Bus on September 15 to March on Washington: Bush Vows to "Fight to Win" in Iraq, Says U.S. Should Never Have Left Vietnam Plus: Update on the struggle to defend free speech Col. Ann Wright on Sept. 15 "September 15, 2007, will be a crucial date in the peace movement and the history of our country. It is the day 'We the People' tell Congress and the Bush administration we mean business about stopping this War Now. We need everyone in Washington DC to close this city down." Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army and retired as a colonel. She resigned from the US diplomatic corps in March 2003 in opposition to the war in Iraq. Get on the bus! 100 transportation centers! Find the closest bus to you Click to get an online ticket On a day (August 22) when 14 more U.S. soldiers and at least 100 Iraqis died, President Bush vowed war without end in Iraq. "As long as I am commander in chief we will fight to win," Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference in Kansas City. "I'm confident that we will prevail." Illustrating just how endless a war he has in mind, Bush expressed regret that the U.S. had ever pulled out of Vietnam, and hailed the fact that the Pentagon still has tens of thousands of troops occupying South Korea. For Bush, Cheney & Co., the only bad thing about the Vietnam war was that it ended too soon. In their imaginations, had they been in charge back in 1975 when the Vietnamese finally ended a century of foreign occupation, the war would still be going on today. After all, having already fought for so long, the Vietnamese were certainly not about to give up, even if the U.S. had not been forced to withdraw. In a bizarre reworking of history, the two million people who were killed in Indochina during the U.S. war are presented by the president as the victims of the Vietnamese forces that were resisting the U.S. invasion. The immense destruction and millions of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian casualties inflicted during a decade of U.S. mass bombing and military intervention have been magically disappeared by the White House propagandists. The Bush-Cheney fantasy reinterpretation of history is just that: fantasy. Nixon and Ford were as equally dedicated to winning the war in Southeast Asia as the present administration is to achieving victory in the Middle East. The U.S. leaders were forced to withdraw from Vietnam because they lost the war. Update on the struggle to defend free speech The fines keep rolling in. Since ANSWER received $10,000 in fines for September 15 posters a week ago, an additional $1,200 in fines have been levied by the government. We have refused to take our lawfully-posted posters down until after September 15 March on Washington. The government has even gone so far as to try to intimidate us and disrupt our anti-war organizing by fining our landlord for the posters. You can see the free speech lawsuit filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice on Monday by clicking this link. To see video and audio from Monday's press conference announcing the lawsuit, click on this link. The world’s mightiest military power was defeated by a combination of forces: the willingness of the Vietnamese people to fight for decades in order to free their country from foreign domination, a massive anti-war movement of millions of people in the U.S. and around the world, and rebellion inside the U.S. military against the war. It was not Congress, not the United Nations, not a "comprehensive and balanced peace plan," that ended the war. Nixon terminated the war when it had become clear that victory was impossible and that the people of the United States would rise up rather than continue to let their sons and daughters be sent to kill and be killed in the war. Ending the war and getting the U.S. out of Iraq and the Middle East will require the streets of this country to fill up with anti-war protest and for the anti-war message to be given voice by the soldiers and marines themselves. It will be Iraq war veterans, their families and other veterans who will be in the front ranks of the September 15 march. Iraq war veterans will lead a dramatic die-in at the conclusion of the march. Join Iraq war veterans in DC on September 15 - get your bus ticket today and find or organize local transportation now by clicking here. If you are coming from Boston, New York City, or Connecticut, click to get an online ticket. This is what makes the September 15 March on Washington and the actions in the following days so important. On Sept. 15, a report is due from the two most powerful officials in Iraq - military commander Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker - on "progress" in the war. It will call for "staying the course," just as Presidents Johnson and Nixon repeatedly advocated year after year as the death toll soared during the Vietnam War. In the week that follows the Petraeus-Crocker report, Congress must debate and vote on funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the tune of $145 billion for the next year - $275,000 per minute! On September 15, the eyes of the world will be on Washington DC. Everyone opposed to the criminal war in Iraq should join the march from the White House to Congress on that day. Please make an urgently needed donation today. In the next few weeks we have to raise tens of thousands of dollars for buses, posters, leaflets, stage, sound and all the other expenses associated with a mass mobilization. Please make a tax-deductible donation today by clicking this link. This Saturday: People's March in Newark, NJ If you live in the New York/New Jersey area, be sure to join the important People's March for Peace, Equality, Jobs and Justice on Saturday, August 25 in Newark, New Jersey. The march begins at Lincoln Park at 12 noon. Calendar of September 15-21 Days of Action The September 15 Mass March on Washington kicks off days of action inside Washington, D.C. including: Sunday, September 16 -National Training Session for the other Days of Action Monday, September 17 -Peoples March Inside Congress (lead group: Code Pink) -National Truth in Recruiting Day (lead group: Iraq Veterans Against the War - IVAW) Tuesday, September 18 - National Congressional Challenge Day (lead group: Grassroots America) Wednesday, September 19 -Direct Action (details coming soon) Thursday, September 20 -Veterans lobbying day (lead group: Iraq Veterans Against the War - IVAW) Friday, September 21 -National Moratorium Day with actions around the country (Information: IraqMoratorium.org) Other supporters of the march include: Veterans For Peace (VFP), USLAW (U.S. Labor Against the War), ImpeachBush.org, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, Campus Anti-War Network (CAN); Pam Africa; Hip Hop Caucus; Democracy Rising; Howard Zinn, Ramsey Clark, Cindy Sheehan, Mounzer Sleiman of the National Council of Arab Americans, Cynthia McKinney, Father Roy Bourgeois and Eric LeCompte of the School of Americas Watch, Jonathan Hutto and Liam Madden of Appeal for Redress, Malik Rahim, National Lawyers Guild, Latino Movement USA, and hundreds of others.