August 6th: This Day in (Camp Casey) History, 18 Years Ago, Today!

Originally Posted on 8/6/2015

Aug 06, 2023

Today is the 18th anniversary when about five-dozen of us intrepid peace activists marched down Prairie Chapel Road in Crawford Tx so I could demand a meeting with then President Bush to ask “What Noble Cause” my son and tens of thousands of others had been killed in Iraq.

Unfortunately, it seems like things have only gotten worse because of the two-party slimeballs of war AND the culture wars that only serve to divide us. How can we unclog the moments and strip them bare to existential matters? That’s the question.

Undoubtedly, the most notorious event that occurred on 8/6 was the 1945 US a-bombing of Hiroshima followed closely by the bombing of Nagasaki. The tragedy of those war crimes still has have many repercussions to this day.

I was honored to be invited to visit Japan on the anniversaries and I met survivors and the family members of those that were obliterated. I met a Japanese woman who was in Havana and she had lost a young daughter to cancer because of the never-ending after effects of radiation. What the US did on that day was beyond shameful, but what is even more shameful is the vast number of USAians who still consider those bombings justified.

Now, let’s jump over about 56 August 6ths to the year 2001. Remember this is one month and five days before the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

A little known, or remembered event happened on 8/6/2001 in teeny, tiny Crawford, Texas—a place I was to become very familiar with in a few more years.

On that day, Bush was on the longest recorded vacation of any POTUS in US history and he was handed a PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) titled: Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US. This, according to The History Commons:

“According to journalist and author Ron Suskind, just after a CIA briefer presents President Bush with the later infamous PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) item entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” Bush tells the briefer, “You’ve covered your ass, now.” This account is from Suskind’s 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine, which is based largely on anonymous accounts from political insiders. In the book, after describing the presentation of the PDB, Suskind will write: “And, at an eyeball-to-eyeball intelligence briefing during this urgent summer, George W. Bush seems to have made the wrong choice. He looked hard at the panicked CIA briefer. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’ve covered your ass, now.’”

Like I said, today, there will be commemorations that get it right, or get it wrong about Hiroshima, but I bet none will mention the PDB in 2001, or my little contribution to that day’s history in 2005 that came to be known as “Camp Casey.”

On August 3 of that year, I was at my home in Vacaville, Ca (still in deep pain from the murder of my son Casey in Iraq) watching some news broadcast, or the other, and my nemesis George Bush came on. He was, once again, on vacation at his pig ranch in Crawford, but this day he was somewhere in Texas doing something. That day, 11 Marines from the same reserve unit in Ohio were killed in the same incident in Iraq. Bush was asked about that and he said, “The families of the fallen can rest assured their loved ones died for a noble cause.”

Of course, since my son Casey died in Iraq in another long line of Imperial wars based on lies and for profit, my ears pricked up at this “Noble Cause” bullshit! At the time George was clearly at a press availability, so I waited for someone from the “press” (really, White House stenographers) to ask him what the “Noble Cause” was, since the mission-lie had already changed several times by then. Predictably, not one of the stenographers asked George that question.

Downing Street Memo Hearing. 6/16/2005

This was the first in a string of coincidences that led me to Crawford that year—well, really the second. The first one was that I was supposed to be in London the following week to go to an impeachment conference with Congressman John Conyers—my plane ticket had already been purchased by the London activists. I was very excited because I had never been anywhere in Europe before, but Conyers’ (he of impeachment fame before he became chair of the House Judiciary Committee in 2007) plans changed and the event was postponed, so I had my entire August free.

That was, I had my August free AFTER I went to Dallas, Texas on

August 4^th to participate in the annual Veterans for Peace convention. So, the day after George openly told another lie he was not held accountable for (except for by the people), I was scheduled to go to Texas. At that point, I had a brainstorm. After I give my speech in Dallas at the VFP conference on August 5, why don’t I drive to Crawford (at that point I didn’t even know where Crawford was in relation to Dallas—Texas is one big-ass state) and try to demand a meeting with George to ask him “What Noble Cause” myself?

I had scheduled an event in Sacramento that night, so I wrote a quick email to my email list at the time (probably about 300-400 people. There was no Twitter, Facebook, or even Myspace back then) telling my contacts about my plan, and I left for Sacramento. On the way, I called my sister Dede Miller who was meeting me in Dallas the next day to tell her that we were driving to Crawford from Dallas on Saturday to ask Bush “What Noble Cause” and she said, “okay.” Then I called Andrea Buffa who was working PR for CODEPINK at the time and asked her if she would help me spread the word and she said, “Okay.”

By the time I arrived back home that evening, my AOL (remember AOL?) inbox had overflowed. Apparently, my email had traveled around the world and many people were excited about the impending action.

Camp Casey I

The so-called right-wing in this country wanted to paint Camp Casey as a long planned out and well-funded venture and me as the "front person" in an effort that was politically motivated. Gasbag Rush Limbaugh claimed that my "story" was contrived and based on "false documents" like that of Bill Burkett who accused George Bush of being AWOL from the Texas National Guard. Of course, that's true and what did I do? Bury an empty coffin just so I could camp in 110 degree weather in Crawford 16 months later? Hell, even my own in-laws accused my protest of being motivated by my political leanings even though I had always been against wars in general and Iraq in particular. However, I don't think one brainstorm, no endless stream of conference calls/emails, and three days planning can truthfully be construed by anyone with any intellectual integrity as being nothing but completely spontaneous. And, NO George Soros did not personally fund Camp Casey. It was funded by people from all over sending us their contributions and other kinds of donations.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF MY STORY

I Was Met at Crawford Peace House by the Sheriff of McCleelan County

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