INTEGRATE THIS! Ann Wright

Ann Wright

Ann Wright resigned from the U.S. Foreign Service on March 19, 2003, while serving as Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Mongolia. She resigned due to her disagreement with the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq without the authorization of the UN Security Council, the lack of effort in resolving the Israel-Palestinian situation, the lack of policy on North Korea and unnecessary curtailment of civil liberties in the United States.

Ms. Wright joined the Foreign Service in 1987 and served as Deputy Chief of Mission of US Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia and briefly in Afghanistan. She received the State Department’s Award for Heroism for her actions during the evacuation of 2500 persons from the civil war in Sierra Leone, the largest evacuation since the evacuation of Saigon in 1974.

Ms. Wright was on the first State Department team to go to Kabul, Afghanistan. She helped reopen the US Embassy in Kabul in December, 2001 and worked in Afghanistan for five months, serving in the last month as Deputy Chief of Mission (Deputy Ambassador).

Ms. Wright’s was also assigned in Somalia with both the US mission and as chief of the United Nations Mission to Somalia’s (UNOSOM) Justice Division and worked on reconstituting the Somali police, judicial and prison systems. She also served in US Embassies in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada, Micronesia and Nicaragua.

Before entering the Foreign Service, she served in the Army and has a combined regular Army/Army Reserve service time of 29 years. She worked primarily in special operations units and attained the rank of colonel. While on military duty in 1983 and 1984 in Grenada, she was on the US Army’s International Law team and participated in civil reconstruction work following the US “rescue” mission. Colonel Wright is airborne qualified.

Ms. Wright has Master’s and Law Degrees from the University of Arkansas and a Master’s Degree in National Security Affairs from the US Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. Ms. Wright has been featured in articles in the Washington Post magazine, Government Executive magazine, Foreign Service Journal, Ms magazine and has been interviewed by radio and TV networks. In 2003, she participated in the documentary film “ Uncovered: The Truth About the Iraq War” and in June, 2005 provided oral and written testimony to the US Congressional hearing on the importance of the Downing Street memos.

In August, 2005 Ms. Wright spent 26 days in the ditches at Camp Casey, Crawford, Texas with Cindy Sheehan putting pressure on President Bush to answer the question of why the war on Iraq is a “noble” cause. She was a speaker on one of three buses that left Crawford traveling though the eastern United States that met in Washington, DC for the September 24-26 anti-war weekend.

Ms. Wright has participated in numerous peaceful, non-violent acts of civil disobedience to end the war on Iraq. She was arrested on September 27, 2005 with 372 others for demonstrating without a permit in front of the White House and on October 26, 2005 during the commemoration of the deaths of 2000 US service members and over 100,000 Iraqis. She was also arrested on November 23, 2005 in Crawford, TX to challenge a restrictive ordinance that prohibited use of the ditches for camping; and July 11, 2006 to protest the nomination of one of the Bush administration’s architects of torture, Department of Defense General Counsel, William Haynes, for a life-long appointment as a judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Most recently she was arrested on July 23, 2007 inside the office of US Congressman John Conyers for his refusal to consider hearings for the possible impeachment of President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney for the war of aggression on Iraq and other criminal acts.

Ms. Wright traveled with a delegation to Amman, Jordan in August, 2006 to talk with Iraqi parliamentarians about their peace plan. She was on the Close Guantanamo delegation that traveled to Cuba in January 2007 to protest outside the US Naval Base five years of prisoners being held in Guantanamo without a trial.

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