Military Families Speak Out

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Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) is a US based anti Iraq war group.

Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) was founded by two military families in November, 2002 to use our special need to speak out against a U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the unique voice with which we speak, to try to prevent the invasion.

MFSO’s first national press conference was in January, 2003 in Washington, D.C. It was televised on C-SPAN, and over 100 military families joined the organization within a week. That same month, MFSO members marched together for the first time with Veterans For Peace at a national demonstration opposing a U.S. invasion of Iraq. In February, 2003, 15 members of MFSO filed a lawsuit against President Bush and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seeking to prevent a U.S. invasion of Iraq absent a real Congressional declaration of war. The lawsuit went 2 rounds in the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, and ultimately failed on March 18, 2003. The invasion began on March 19, 2003. Within 2 weeks of the beginning of the war in Iraq, the membership of MFSO doubled – at the end of March, 2003 we had 400 member families. We have never stopped growing.

The first MFSO chapters began in 2004. MFSO chapters have organized and built the voice of military families opposing the war in Iraq locally and regionally, with speaking programs, vigils, demonstrations, press conferences, meetings with elected officials, and many different kinds of creative actions. Chapters have greatly increased our ability to reach out to new families around the country, get the voices of military families opposing the war into the media, work with local coalitions seeking to end the war in Iraq and to help move our communities – and elected officials -- to oppose the war in Iraq and take action to end it.

As of the summer of 2007, MFSO includes over 3,600 military families speaking out to end the war in Iraq, bring our troops home now, take care of them when they get here, and end the policies that allowed this unjust and unjustifiable war to happen. We now have members in every state in the U.S., in Puerto Rico, American Samoa and on bases in several other countries. Over 130 of these families have suffered the ultimate tragedy – their loved ones have died as a result of the war in Iraq. Many other MFSO member families have seen loved ones wounded in Iraq – physically, psychologically or both. Many MFSO member families currently have loved ones serving in Iraq – some for third, fourth or fifth deployments; and for most of the rest, their loved ones are eligible for deployment or redeployment to Iraq.