"I was blushing in Baghdad as we hovered over a shortwave radio listening to the long list of weapons of mass destruction," Kathy Kelly says, with the intensity and ease of a Nobel Peace Prize nominee who's been to Iraq nearly two dozen times.

Over the past two decades, the behavior of her country has made Kelly red in the face more times than she can count. The co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness - a Chicago-based organization created in 1996 to end the economic and military warfare against the people of Iraq - Kelly has spent the past 15 years traveling between her Midwest home and the Middle East, attempting to cut through the static and set the record straight by bearing witness to American policy in action and bringing the truth of Iraqi's daily lives back to U.S. citizens. It's the kind of work that has earned both nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and federal indictments for violating international law. And next week, Kelly will bring her experiences to Central Iowa for a host of speaking engagements focused on "Putting an end to war."

A Chicago native, Kelly first packed her bags in 1991, when an American invasion of Iraq seemed imminent and she couldn't help but ask herself, "When warfare looms, why aren't the pacifists ready to take the same risks expected of soldiers?" So, determined to take a risk to show her opposition, she joined a peace team camping out on the border of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, placing herself in the line of fire. When the conflict ended, however, the war continued in the form of devastating economic sanctions against Iraq, Kelly says. And though Iraq "wasn't really a popular issue in the U.S., I couldn't walk away from the bedside of a mother whose children were dying in her arms." Especially among people who she says opened their homes and embraced her as family.

"Two young, playful boys shared an orange with me on the street and then begged me to come and meet their mother and their baby brother," she recalls of a 1996 trip to Iraq. "For hours, they entertained me, a complete stranger. They owned almost no furniture, had almost no income other than the ration basket. I'm still very close to that family and want very much to see those young boys thrive. In several neighborhoods of Baghdad and Basra, among families fighting against destitution, hospitality overwhelmed me."

But hostility met her when she returned home to the United States She describes those trips under sanctions as "a handful of people bringing Tylenol and vitamins in duffel bags to people who were utterly desperate." The federal government, on the other hand, defined their actions as "exporting medicines" in violations of United Nations sanctions. And, after three years of litigation (which unveiled stunning violations on the part of two Texas-based oil companies, Kelly emphasizes) Voices in the Wilderness was ordered to pay a $20,000 penalty this summer. But Kelly says the government won't get one penny.

"These children were writhing in pain," she says intensely of the consequences of economic sanctions. "It was grotesque, it was hideous. And when normal, average people, after dipping into their own pockets, came back to their communities and said, 'Please, look at this,' they were viewed as criminals. Of course, we won't pay the fine. We're not criminals and we won't turn over one dime to the war criminals running this country."

And when the "war criminals" were mounting another military campaign in late 2002, Kelly returned to Iraq and listened as officials made the case for war and personally endured the bombardment of Baghdad alongside the Iraqis to physically attest her opposition to the aggression. Since the days of "shock and awe," she's returned twice to the embattled country, most recently in January of 2004. But while "I thought I'd be coming back again fairly soon," she says. "We had to ask ourselves, is whatever we might accomplish so important, so necessary, so vital that it would justify the risk that I might be someone whose abduction could contribute to even more hatred?" Even so, her commitment is so complete that she wonders aloud if the "risk of possible abduction and being beheaded" might be worth it.

"I do easily have in mind any number of children I first met in 1996 who are really teenagers now," she says, "and parents now moving toward being grandparents. These are very real people who have always, always offered me hospitality. It's the same as if you had siblings facing some severe problems; their concerns are my concerns. I care a lot more about what happens to those kids than I care for my own nieces and nephews, who have everything in the world they need to start a good life."

So Kelly has been tireless in keeping a watchdog's eye on events in Iraq, worrying not about how much the war will cost, but about how many projects have been left unfinished and how much Americans should pay in reparations to make up for the harm the United States has caused the Iraqi people. To advocate for an equitable end to the aggression and a more peace-focused foreign policy, she's fasted outside the World Bank in Geneva and, after a week's worth of engagements throughout Iowa, she'll head to Washington for an extended campaign of fasting and vigils outside key government institutions this month. And, while she's away, volunteers for her organization back home in Chicago will begin a 30-day electricity fast in an attempt to highlight the hardships Iraqis face everyday.

"That's only a tiny slice of the reality in Iraqis' lives," she says of living with on restricted diet or without the convenience of a computer. "It doesn't come near what Iraqis experience, but this kind of thing is important, because we can't just be armchair speculators. We have to try as best we can to help people the in U.S. understand that they're people just like us in every way. And not having those minimum conveniences, that constant frustration can turn into rage. We're doing a favor to the U.S. people by helping them become more sensitized; we need to drag people to the mirror and look at ourselves as we really are."

"But I think, there's a sense in the U.S. of frustration and perhaps a sense of guilt or uneasiness," she adds pensively. "I wonder if it isn't a bit like the civil rights movement when people knew that people were being lynched in the south; they knew there was terrific racism in the northern cities; they knew something wrong when Bull Connor aimed that fire hose, but when they saw that image of young children being caught up in that hurtful spray of water, that's what stayed in people's minds. I think we need those kind of moments - horrific as they are - to define ourselves as people who can switch massively to refusal."
And by being on the ground to witness those moments and returning to the United States, dogged in their determination to tell the unfiltered truth, Kelly believes the modern peace movement is beginning to define that refusal.

"I think in 1991, when we went to Iraq, hardly anyone knew anything about Iraq," she says. "But in the build up to 2003, the U.S. and the world came closer to stopping a war before it started than ever before. And that was because the grassroots knew a lot. And not because the mainstream media had informed them, by any means. But because people had gone over to Iraq and had come back and hit the ground running."

For Kelly, hitting the ground running has meant not only a tireless touring schedule - traveling constantly to college campuses, church basements and activists' living rooms - but also documenting her experiences and philosophies in writing, a number of which were published last year in her first book, "Other Lands have Dreams, Too: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison." And, though she derides the nightmare scenario of waging a foreign policy that "creates terrorists faster than we can kill them," her travels from the Middle East to the Midwest have convinced her that an increasing number of Americans are waking up, demanding that the U.S. be a global power for peace.

"I think the moment will come," she says. "Meanwhile, we're building the infrastructure for that swell, for that sea change. I grew up in the '50s, and you can't imagine a more bland atmosphere. But out of the '50s, came the '60s, and I think the pendulum is about to unhinge and swing in that direction." - Carolyn Szczepanski

To find out more about Kathy Kelly's work, visit Voices in the Wilderness at www.vitw.org or Voices for Creative Non-violence at www.vcnv.org. Her book, "Other Lands have Dreams, too" can be purchased at www.counterpunch.org. CV

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