Retired Army Colonel to wage peace at WWU

2/17/2012 Mary Ann Beahon
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (573) 592-1127

 

Retired Army Colonel Ann Wright, known for her outspoken opposition to the Iraq War, will bring her message of peace to William Woods University Friday.

She has been a career military woman, a State Department diplomat, and for the past few years, an influential spokesperson in the anti-war movement.

Sponsored by the WWU department of legal studies, she will give her speech, "Grounding Drones and Ending U.S. Wars of Empire," at 3 p.m. The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the Model Courtroom on the lower level of the Burton Business Building.
 
Wright spent 29 years in the U.S. Army, reaching the rank of colonel before retiring "” then served 16 years in the Foreign Service within the U.S. State Department before resigning in 2003 to protest the  impending U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Over the course of her State Department career, Wright served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassies in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia, and also served at U.S. embassies in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada and Nicaragua.

She received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone.

Wright's eventual resignation was not the first time she had spoken out against policy. In an interview, Wright said that she spoke out against United Nations bombing tactics waged in Somalia, in the effort to kill rebel leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

Wright also says that she "held her nose" on multiple occasions, continuing her State Department work despite her own disagreements with the policy.

She's traveled twice on international flotillas urging an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza and is among 38 people arrested for nonviolently blocking the entrance at New York Air Guard's Hancock Field in April, to urge the grounding of drones flown from there for assassinations and bombing runs in central Asia. She also co-authored "Dissent: Voices of Conscience."
 
For more information on Wright's appearance at WWU, contact the legal studies department at 573-592-4293.
                                                                       
CUTLINE:
Retired Army Colonel Ann Wright, known for her outspoken opposition to the Iraq War, will bring her message of peace to William Woods University Friday.