Andy Thayer, representatives from Iraq Veterans Against War and NATO's Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic held a private discussion about their differing beliefs ahead of the NATO Summit, NBC Chicago has learned.
"Our message to Ambassador Grabar was that we are very aware of the immense violence and oppression that the U.S. and the U.S. in its NATO guise does to the world, and no amount of words from her or pronouncements from the summit will obscure that," Thayer said. "We view any human rights or peace rhetoric coming out of the summit as being the basest hypocrisy. We will not believe them. Their track record of violence speaks for itself."
Speaking about that meeting on Saturday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen had quite a different take.
"These allegations are unjustified and may be based on a lack of knowledge about our organization," he said. "I would call NATO the most successful peace movement you have seen. We prevented the cold war from getting hot."
Protesters Met with NATO Officials
He added: "It is a remarkable thing that we actually reach out in a proactive way to the protesters because that's part of our philosophy that we are living in a free society. NATO is here to protect a free society including the freedom of expression. It was a very positive meeting".
