01/11/2012 - An area veterans group pledged to fill every seat in Babylon, a downtown Iraqi restaurant where owners feared hatred drove a man to throw a 20-pound rock through a window last Wednesday.
Instead, those veterans filled every seat twice.
Lowell police said they identified the man who threw the stone, and that he confessed. He will be charged in Lowell District Court, though police say his motive was not hatred.
"Unless this gentleman is lying to us -- and I don't believe that he is -- he didn't even know this restaurant was affiliated with people from Iraq," said Lowell police Superintendent Kenneth Lavallee.
The suspect, a New Hampshire man who will not be identified until he is arraigned, will be summonsed to court to face a charge of breaking glass in a building, a misdemeanor.
Patrick Scanlon, a Vietnam veteran and coordinator of Veterans for Peace who organized the show of support, voiced skepticism that hate wasn't involved, but said it was nonetheless important to show support for the family that had been hit hard by fear.
Scanlon was joined at 25 Merrimack St. by veterans of the Iraq war, such as former Army Sgt. Rachel McNeill, of Allston, who served from 2002 to 2010 and spent a year in Iraq serving on a gun truck that escorted convoys, and Chris Borden, of Chelmsford, who continues to serve in the Army Reserves after deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Scanlon was also joined by veterans like Paul Brailsford, 96, of Ipswich, a former captain in the Merchant Marines who served in the Pacific hauling weapons and supplies to Gen. Douglas MacArthur's troops during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. read more>>>
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Many VFP members and chapters have been not only active in Iraq, especially after the first Gulf War, but have many Iraqi friends, some I'm sure may not be with us anymore, or are now refugee's in other countries, after the past almost nine years of occupation. One of the projects some took on was the Iraq Water Project, this is an earlier posting, this one is more recent, we are one of many NGO's who tried to bring normalcy back to at least some Iraqi's after the sanctions and bombings in the first Gulf War and are still trying to help. Though now the peace for the citizens of long ago, even under the supported by us dictator, in that country is no more as the factions within now seek to control. If you click on either of the above links you can find out more on the project by a search of "Iraq Water Project" which will bring up links to other reports as well as pdf's.
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