Anti-war group co-founder will speak in Cape in September

The mother of a fallen soldier will bring her crusade for peace to Cape Girardeau next month, a local anti-war activist said Thursday.

Lila Lipscomb of Salem, Mich., is a co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, a group of families who have lost relatives to the war and are pushing for an immediate pullout from Iraq.

Another co-founder, Cindy Sheehan, has set up a vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in an effort to meet with the president.

Lipscomb's son, Sgt. Michael F. Pederson, was killed in the early weeks of the war in 2003. She will speak Sept. 15 at the Osage Community Centre in an event sponsored by the Southeast Missouri Coalition for Peace and Justice.

The coalition is an incorporated organization formed by longtime community activists. Bob Polack, one the group's leaders, said he hopes that people who might dismiss activists' weekly anti-war vigils will come listen to Lipscomb with an open mind.

Lipscomb is a deeply religious woman, Polack said. She is currently enrolled in the Word of Life Bible College and active in ministries reaching out to incarcerated youth.

She is upset that her son died in a war that began because of allegations saying Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons and ties to al-Qaida terrorists, Polack said. The weapons were never found and no ties to terrorists have been proven.

"There is something really wrong about the way they went to war," Polack said.

Members of the coalition know they are outside the mainstream of political thought in the Cape Girardeau area, Polack said. But they hope to create an understanding of their view that Bush began the war in order to dominate world oil supplies, not to combat the threat of terrorists.

-- Rudy Keller