Vets for Peace Arrested at the White House

Daniel Ellsberg (in video above) joined with hundreds of Veterans For Peace members from across the nation to take a message of dissent to President Obama on December 16. 

Veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan, Gulf War I, Vietnam and other overseas military actions, accompanied by military families and other peace activists, chained themselves to the White House fence or otherwise refused police orders to leave. The civil disobedience, which led to 131 arrests, was done on  the day the latest official report about the military situation in Afghanistan was released. Two members of Veterans For Peace, Chapter 21 NJ, Jules Orkin and Stefan Neustadter, were among those arrested in protest of continuing the counter-productive and wasteful wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Those arrested also included Ellsberg, the former Marine officer who leaked the Pentagon papers, retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern, FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley, and Pulitzer prize-winning war correspondent Chris Hedges, noted Examiner.com blogger Gregory Patin. "While small in numbers, this protest is significant because it was organized and led by veterans who have served their country," Patin wrote. "It is also significant that it was completely ignored by the mainstream media on a news day largely filled with sports news and holiday shopping reports."

But Veterans For Peace was determined to send a message directly to Obama by getting arrested in front of the White House while throwing piles of postcards signed by antiwar activists over the White House fence.

"We are dedicated to exposing the true costs of war and militarism," said Mike Ferner, national president of Veterans for Peace, as reported in The Huffington Post. "We've killed well over a million people. We've orphaned and displaced five times that number at least. And here in our own country, we've managed to throw millions of people of out work and out of their homes," Ferner said at a press conference. "There is a connection there. That connection is the true cost of war."

"Citing information available for every city and state in America on the Cost of War website," The Huffington Post report by Dan Froomkin added, "the former Navy hospital corpsman noted that his hometown of Toledo alone has sent almost a billion dollars into the war effort."