As local, regional, national, and worldwide demonstrations against the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq gained momentum beginning in 2002, a chief organizer of those rallies was International ANSWER, a front group for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party (WWP) and the International Action Center (IAC), a WWP creation. IAC's founder and leader is the longtime America-hater Ramsey Clark, whose curriculum vitae includes these highlights:

• During the Vietnam War, Clark traveled to Hanoi to show solidarity with the North Vietnamese who were torturing and murdering American POWs; he exhorted the Vietcong to continue their brave fight, then returned to the U.S. and told Congress that American prisoners were being treated very well.
• In January 1979, Clark traveled to France to meet with Ayatollah Khomeini. Soon thereafter, while the foot soldiers of Khomeini’s revolution held 52 Americans hostage in Iran, Clark went to Tehran to publicly denounce the “Crimes of America” for all the world to hear.
• After the U.S. had bombed terrorist training facilities in Libya in April 1986, Clark made his way to Tripoli to show support for President Muammar Qadhafi.
• Also in 1986, Clark defended PLO leaders when they were sued by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the wheelchair-bound American Jew murdered by Palestinian terrorists aboard the cruise ship Achille Lauro.
• In 1990, Clark went to Iraq to consult with Saddam Hussein, while the U.S. geared up for a military operation to drive the dictator’s invading forces out of Kuwait.
• In 1993, Clark defended the Islamist terrorists who had carried out the World Trade Center bombing earlier that year, characterizing their prosecution as the charade of a racist justice system.
• Clark was a member of the legal team that defended the four men who had helped orchestrate the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed a total of 224 people. 
• In 2002 Clark filed a court petition on behalf of more than 100 terrorism suspects who, while being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, were allegedly -- and contrary to strong evidence suggesting otherwise -- mistreated.
• In 2003, when the U.S. was on the brink of war with Iraq, Clark wrote a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, accusing America of having committed war crimes during the 1991 Gulf War.

Joining ANSWER and the IAC as major forces in the anti-war movement was Not In Our Name (NION), a self-described "peace" organization founded by the longtime Maoist activist C. Clark Kissinger, a key member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Kissinger began his public activism in the early 1960s when he served as national secretary of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a radical organization that eventually morphed into the Weather Underground, America's first terrorist cult. Kissinger also supported Mao Zedong's Communist regime in China, where he traveled extensively in China during the Cultural Revolution. In 1979 Kissinger backed the Khomeini-led revolution in Iran. In 1987 he founded the radical group Refuse & Resist to serve as a recruiting office for the RCP. Kissinger continues to enjoy strong support from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM), which, in its own words, "upholds the revolutionary communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism." Kissinger craves the destruction of America and all its institutions. "The problem in this country," he says, is "the oppressive system of capitalism that exploits people all over the world, that destroys our planet, that oppresses minority people, that sends people to the death chambers in droves. That is a problem that has to be done away with. . . . Revolution is the solution."

Another key player in the modern peace movement is the lifelong Communist operative and the founder of Global Exchange, Medea Benjamin, who views America's post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as evidence of a sinister U.S. plan for global dominance. After 9/11, Benjamin advised Americans to examine "the root causes of resentment against the United States in the Arab world – from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil to our biased policy towards Israel." Benjamin's hatred for America stands in stark contrast to her great affection for Fidel Castro 's Cuba, a place she has glowingly described as "heaven." Bitterly anti-capitalist, Benjamin was a principal organizer of the 1999 Seattle riots in which some 50,000 protesters wreaked havoc and tried to shut down the World Trade Organization meetings.

Benjamin's colleague in the peace movement is Leslie Cagan, leader of the United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) anti-war coalition. Also a strong supporter of Fidel Castro, Cagan is a former 1960s radical who, as a college student, became an activist in the Communist movement. In 1969 she joined the First Venceremos Brigade, a project initiated by the Cuban intelligence agency to recruit and train American leftists as “brigadistas” capable of waging guerrilla warfare. In the 1980s she supported the Communist movements in Central America while organizing demonstrations demanding an American nuclear freeze, and she was among the earliest supporters of solidarity efforts with Yasser Arafat 's Palestinian terrorists. In 1991 Cagan opposed the Gulf War.

In late 2004, Cagan, Medea Benjamin, and a handful of other leftist radicals delivered $600,000 worth of cash and goods to the jihadists who were fighting American troops in Fallujah, Iraq. Cagan and Benjamin also collaborated to establish Iraq Occupation Watch, whose express purpose was to persuade American troops to defect en masse as conscientious objectors, in hopes of weakening U.S. forces and causing an American defeat in Iraq.

These are some of the key people who have emerged as leaders of the modern-day peace movement. This section of DiscoverTheNetworks is dedicated to examining the agendas not only of these individuals, but also of the many others who likewise populate the “peace” movement as currently constituted.