Republican Congresswoman Heather Wilson and an Iraqi high school student joined forces Tuesday night in a show of support for President Bush.
"It's great to see there's no shame in being a college Republican," Wilson said to a few dozen students at the SUB.
Wilson gave the gathering a 10-minute pep talk on getting out the vote and energizing the Republican Party campaign effort before Election Day.
Midway through her talk, Wilson was interrupted by a few students chanting outside the room. The students were protesting Wilson's opposition to the legalization of medical marijuana.
"If I ever caught someone selling drugs near my kids' school, they would be lucky if the cops found them first," she said.
Wilson said her race against state Sen. Richard Romero is a choice that may decide if the United States is attacked by terrorists.
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"The threat is still very real," she said.
Rather than having American citizens at home using cell phones one last time to call loved ones, she said she prefers Osama bin Laden hiding in a hole in Afghanistan wondering whether he could use his phone without being detected by the American military.
"That is the choice we face," she said.
Kaeran Alo, an 18-year-old Kurdish Iraqi, spoke about his family's hardships under the Saddam Hussein regime that ruled Iraq for 24 years.
Kurds, one of the world's largest stateless nationalities, reside in an area in the Middle East that includes parts of Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Georgia and Syria.
Alo, a Catholic born in a Kurdish area in northern Iraq, fled Iraq for Syria after the 1991 Gulf War, where he studied Arabic. His native language is Kurdish.
He came to America in 2000 and is a senior at Eldorado High School. After graduation, he said he plans to attend UNM to study English and law. Eventually he said he would like to work as a translator at a U.S. embassy in the Middle East.
Alo said he is happy the U.S.-led coalition removed Hussein and the government he commanded from power, despite the cost in lives and destruction. He said the Hussein regime allowed al Qaeda to train in Iraq and still had weapons of mass destruction purchased from the United States during Iraq's eight-year war with Iran.
"Iraq became a special place for al Qaeda to practice and fly planes and attack targets," he said. "We will never forget what the United States did for Iraq and for Afghanistan, and we will never forget those people who lost their sons and daughters in Iraq."
Rodney Dunn, a director with the College Republicans, said Alo's story reinforced his belief the Iraq War was worth the cost.
"We really did need to go in here and help these people out," he said.
Alo said he hasn't been able to contact family in Iraq since the American-led invasion began in March 2003.
"We don't know if they are still alive," he said. "We hope they are still alive, and we hope that Iraq becomes a better place."
Alo said he voted for Bush in 2000 and will vote for him again on Nov. 2.
"I don't think he knows what he's doing," he said of Sen. John Kerry. "If he pulls troops from Iraq, there are going to be wars. And then we'll have to go back and save those people again."
