Peace activists met at Ballard's Trinity United Methodist Church on Monday, March 20, to read aloud grim, often-contradictory descriptions of the war with Iraq. The meeting was one of 42 held in cities around the world to coincide with the third anniversary of the invasion and subsequent occupation of that country by the United States and its allies.

Readers signed up to take turns reading passages from Eliot Weinberger's book "What I heard about Iraq," a collection of published quotes from U.S. and British officials, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Each of the quotes began with the phrase "I heard," and, taken out of context, were often ironic statements of supposed fact, pre-war predictions and glib summaries of the war's success. Most were sourced from President Bush and his cabinet members. Other quotes, from ordinary soldiers and civilians in Iraq, were starkly violent.

"I hope it makes people angry," Rich Lang said about the reason for the gathering. Lang, the church pastor, frequently hosts community events and stands squarely in opposition to the conflict in Iraq.

"I would hope this [event] would steel their determination to resist these lies," he said.

For Lang, and at least some of the attendees, anger came from not just the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but from a perceived public indifference or perhaps denial to the war, fostered by a dishonest government and an impotent news media.

"The most effective way to show someone's not telling the truth is to quote them," said Hank Davis, one of the readers and a member of PoetsWest, the group that organized the event. Davis, who also opposes the war and occupation, sees the mainstream media no longer seeing informing the public as a top priority.

"In this country, journalism is largely entertainment," he said.

Bert Sacks, a guest speaker, also believed the media bore much of the blame. He said the press essentially amplifies the government's subterfuge of red-meat realities in Iraq, by parroting patriotic slogans instead of asking hard questions.

Sacks, a peace activist and retired engineer who introduced the reading, gained notoriety when he was fined by the U.S. Department of State for taking medicine to Iraqi children during the decade long sanctions of that country after the first gulf war. A thin, gray-haired man, Sacks spoke calmly, but with emotion in his voice, about the children who perished during the sanctions - half a million by United Nations estimates - and the vague rhetoric that came from those sanctions.

"We shouldn't say 'sanctions cause suffering'. We should say 'sanctions kill,'" he said.

About 8 p.m., the reading began. By that time, the room was crowded with almost 70 people. Most came to listen to the performance by the dozen or so readers. Many of them wore anti-war buttons. A few people sat on couches, most on folding metal chairs, arranged around the room's furniture in a rough circle. The parlor was decorated with religious symbols. One man read quotes about the surety of finding weapons of mass destruction with a large wooden crucifix directly behind his head. Another reader, a man with curly white hair and a Polish accent, read a quote about precision bombing standing by a sepia tone painting of Jesus Christ. A big man in a leather jacket sat in front of a grand piano, quoting a U.S. soldier who was frustrated because he couldn't shoot Iraqi children who threw rocks. A woman beside a grandfather clock read in an unsteady voice about Iraqi prisoners being forcibly sodomized. During her reading, the only child in attendance, a young girl, was lead from the room.

The reading ended after 230 quotes. About a dozen people stayed behind to join Sacks in an informal discussion on truth and the history of atrocities. Eventually, the conversation to what could be done to address perceived current atrocities.

"The moral fiber of the U.S. has atrophied," Lang said, arguing for urgency on the part of the peace movement, because duplicity from the current administration was eroding democracy. He asked Sacks how long it would be before protests and marches would need to be supplanted by "gestures of civil disobedience."

Sacks - whose own civil disobedience against the State Department is still being considered by a circuit court - sidestepped the answer, but Marsha Morgan, another attendee, did not.

"It doesn't do any good to have a march. What we need to do is shut down the freeway," she said.

Morgan, a member of Peace Action of Snohomish County, who walked with a cane, drew applause during her self introduction about her organization of "old women and retired teachers" being subversive enough to warrant their own FBI file.

Calls for civil disobedience came from a number of people, using a justification similar to Lang's observation of American moral torpor. How could peace placards and rallies compete with mortgage worries, commute times and televisions? How could so few voices sound anything but shrill?

But Sacks disputed that peace activists were isolated. It was, he said, another manifestation of failed reporting.

"How many grass roots meetings like this are taking place all around the world? We'll never know because the New York Times isn't going to tell us," he said.

By 10 p.m. the meeting ended and the remaining participants quietly left the church.