Officer Jim Barrett is a good cop, as close to a beat cop as Hartford's Asylum Hill neighborhood will ever get.

 

Technically, he is our Community Service Officer, going to neighborhood meetings, handing out his cell phone number and listening to our concerns. But one can easily find him on the streets, too.

 

The last time I attended an Asylum Hill NRZ meeting, I saw Barrett give a crime report. The gritty portrait he painted differed from the rosy picture pitched by the higher-ups in the Mayor’s Office, the Superintendent of Schools and the Hartford Police Department.

 

I’m sure he took some heat about this, and he didn’t deserve to. That night, before the meeting, I managed to ask him a few questions about his two tours of duty in Iraq with the Connecticut Army National Guard’s 1048th Light Truck division.

 

Grant Barrett his reticence because the stakes that his statements about Iraq could be misconstrued are much higher. Upsetting Chief Daryl Roberts and Mayor Eddie Perez is one thing, pissing off Gen. David Petreus and George W. Bush is another.

 

Barrett says he remains neutral about his service in Iraq.

 

“I don’t have an opinion about the war,” Barrett said. “I don’t follow the politics of it. I care about my soldiers and the mission and I want them to be safe. My concern is bringing my guys back home safe. I do what I have to do.”

 

Read more of the Adventures of Officer Jim Barrett ...

 

En the days before the war, activists stuffed Hartford City Hall's second floor Common Council chambers. The protestors carried signs and filled the tiny room to the brim in hopes that their presence would embolden City Council to pass an anti-war resolution before the invasion of Iraq.

 

Unfortunately, then-councilor Elizabeth Horton-Sheff's resolution failed, 5-4. Mayor Eddie Perez didn't stand behind it, and some councilors, even though opposed to the war, said their duty wasn't foreign policy.

 

Fast forward to Monday, March 10, 2008, approaching the fifth anniversay of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and now Working Families Party councilmen Dr. Larry Deutsch and Luis Cotto put an anti-war resolution on the table, item #39.

 

This time, it was a normal Council meeting setting with a few dozen chairs empty in Chambers. A couple of anti-war activists like Green Party stalwart Dave Ionno sat quietly, without waving any signs.

 

But this time, the anti-war motion passed in a 6-0 vote with two abstentions.

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On the mall in Washington, D.C. last Saturday, thousands of peace protesters gathered to march to the Pentagon. Across the street, under the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, hundreds of Vietnam War veterans crowded to hurl hate at the hippies.

 

Apparently, somewhere on the blogosphere, some anonymous "peace" poster suggested that someone would defile and spray paint the Wall, the Vietnam War Memorial.

 

Conservative bloggers like Michelle Malkin began prepping us for this counter-demonstration backing late February. Funny thing, I didn't even hear about it until I was actually on the bus ride down to D.C. But word spread and the battle was on.

 

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