During the Vietnam War, Stanford
students succeeded in banning secret military research from campus. Last
weekend, 150 activist alumni and present Stanford students targeted Condoleezza
Rice for authorizing torture and misleading Americans into the illegal Iraq
War.
Veterans of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement had
gathered for a 40th anniversary reunion during the weekend. The gathering
featured panels on foreign policy, the economy, political and social movements,
science and technology, media, energy and the environment, and strategies for
aging activists.
On Sunday, surrounded by alumni and students,
Lenny Siegel and I nailed a petition to the University President's office door.
The petition, circulated by Stanford Say No to War, reads:
"We the
undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other concerned members of the
Stanford community, believe that high officials of the U.S. Government,
including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover
Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any
serious violations of the Law (included ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the
U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution,
by appropriate legal authorities."
I stated, "By nailing this
petition to the door of the President's office, we are telling Stanford that the
university should not have war criminals on its faculty. There is prima facie
evidence that Rice approved torture and misled the country into the Iraq War.
Stanford has an obligation to investigate those charges."
After the
petition nailing, I cited the law and evidence of Condoleezza Rice's
responsibility for war crimes - including torture - and for selling the illegal
Iraq War:
As National Security Advisor, Rice authorized waterboarding in July
2002, according to a newly released report of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Less than two months later, she hyped the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying,
"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Her ominous warning was
part of the Bush administration's campaign to sell the Iraq war, in
spite of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency's assurances that Saddam
Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons.
A week before the nailing
of the petition, Rice made some Nixonian admissions in response to questions from Stanford students during a campus dinner
designed to burnish Rice's image on campus.
In October
1968, Stanford anti-war activists had nailed a document to the door of the
trustees' office which demanded that Stanford "halt all military and economic
projects concerned with Southeast Asia."
