Congratulations on your May 13 article by Irene Chapple on Justice Thomas's statements on Blair as a war criminal, as by association are others, such as the George Bush Administration. The Bush/Blair deceptions to gain support before launching their illegal war on Iraq are one of the major crimes of our era.

- Cindy Sheehan Says She Will Return After Stepping Back as Antiwar Leader
Cindy Sheehan has been the face of the US antiwar movement for the past two years. In August 2005, she set up Camp Casey outside President Bush's Crawford estate in memory of her son Casey, who was killed in Iraq. Now Cindy says she is stepping back from her role as a leading campaigner against the Iraq war. In this Democracy Now! special, Cindy Sheehan joins us for the hour to talk about her decision. [includes rush transcript]

Every dictatorship depends on apathy, ignorance, confusion created by pro-dictatorship propaganda, disinterest, gullibility, criminal or and/or self-interest of its victims, and fear of reprisals by people if they openly oppose the emerging or established dictatorship. These factors are enough to silence and/or prevent most opposition. The recent Fiji military dictatorship is a good example. It was a simple military takeover, using a flimsy excuse of combating corruption.
Another emerging dictatorship is the Bush Administration. It is far more complex and sophisticated as one of its objects is to convert the world's greatest democracy into a tightly-controlled military state while never admitting what its true objectives are. It's major cover story and justification is the 9/11 attack and their response "wars on terror". So far, that simple formula has worked well, and allowed the Bush regime to achieve a formidable success. It has all the elements mentioned above.

US Using Nuclear Weapons in Iraq

DU weapons spread toxic radioactive dust wherever they are used. With a half life of 4 billion years, the poisonous effects are gradually spreading around the world causing death and disease. It is like a slow motion form of nuclear war against all humanity, insidiously and secretly drifting world-wide, infecting millions. The US has slyly introduced a form of nuclear weapon and then lied. They claim DU weapons are harmless. The poisonous effects may manifest years later in the form of cancer, genetic mutations in the children of exposed people and a range of other diseases.
Remember!
Present and increasing DU dust in our global environment can cause mutations in anyone's children, grandchildren and future generations forever. Banning DU weapons and educating others about DU is everyone's responsibility.

POISON DUst

..... Today, half of the 697,000 U.S. Gulf War troops from the 1991 war have reported serious medical problems and a significant increase in birth defects among their newborn children.

One of the best Articles on Nuclear War On Iran

Created In May 2005, Chossudovsky's article remains one of the best I have seen on the US planned nuclear war on Iran. I therefore recommend that people read, or reread this article. Its message is re-enforced by millions of other articles, some by world experts if you Google search "US Nuclear War On Iran". Consider it and what you could do to help prevent such a holocaust, and reverse the machinery of war and deception, that is creating these doomsday scenarios. This article deals with the facts, not with the implications and some of the deeper, darker evil machinations of the Bush hierarchy. I will outline a few of these.

At the outset of Bush's second term, Vice President Dick Cheney dropped a bombshell. He hinted, in no uncertain terms, that Iran was "right at the top of the list" of the rogue enemies of America, and that Israel would, so to speak, "be doing the bombing for us", without US military involvement and without us putting pressure on them "to do it":

Chris Hedges, former Middle East Bureau Chief of The New York Times, gives us valuable insights into how 'Coalition of the Willing' troops have become murderers of some 600, 000 innocent Iraqis since the US invasion in 2003. It is little wonder that the Bush regime and the Iraqi puppet government are suppressing this information. These trained murderers, disturbed, resentful, bitter and often wounded and infected with DU poisoning are returned and turned loose on US society. The costs of these damaged human beings, and their genetically damaged offspring, will be felt at many levels of American society for generations to come.

A Culture of Atrocity: U.S. Troops Feel the Effect of Prolonged Combat

After four years of war, our troops in Iraq have become acclimated to atrocity. The rage that soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians -- a short psychological leap, but a massive moral one.

Robert Fisk shows how our media completely misrepresent the situation in Palestine and the Middle East generally. The media's aim is to please the US-Israeli war machine by repeating their lies and propaganda, thus facilitating further Israeli conquest of Palestinian lands - such as levelling Arab homes and building new Jewish settlements on Arab lands, and generally oppressing the Arab citizens of the Israeli-occupied territory.  With their discreditted Abbas regime now installed in the Western Bank, the US-Israeli war machine, and their media can portray it as ' the Government' . They can now increase their war on the popular elected Hamas-controlled Gaza by aiding the Abbas regime militarily, and  oppressing the Arab citizens of the Hamas-controlled area. As Washington's Israeli-influenced neocons might say, from now on it's going to be a 'cakewalk' to gain complete Israeli control of the area.

Welcome to 'Palestine'

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

The Battle of Gaza

In less than 24 hours of fierce street-fighting, Bush's proxy-army in Gaza was routed by armed units of Hamas. It was a stunning defeat for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and for US-Israeli policymakers who have done everything in their power to overturn the “free and fair” election of the Hamas government. For now, Hamas has reestablished its authority in Gaza although Abbas is still working frantically with Bush and Olmert to consolidate his power in the West Bank. ...
The forces that Bush has put in motion will inexorably lead to the decline of “superpower rule” and the dismantling of the US imperium. The transition is already visible. The battle of Gaza is just a macrocosm of a much larger phenomenon which now extends from Mogadishu to Kabul.

The new surge to 200,000 US troops in Iraq plus thousands of mercenary contractor-soldiers, the biggest US Embassy in the world, permanent US military bases and the Bush administration's new admission that they may occupy Iraq for as long as they occupied South Korea, 60 years, are all hard evidence that the Bush neocon administration never intended to leave Iraq . As seen below the US Democrats reinforce the Bush regime on this, and will keep on funding the war for as long as it takes.
The US and UK may soon make war on Iran to try and add this country to their joint imperial conquest.

Iraq Occupation Coming to a Head Over Oil

The situation in Iraq is coming to a head. Oil workers have been on strike for three days and are being threatened by the Iraqi government and surrounded by the Iraqi military. The Parliament passed a resolution urging an end to the U.S. occupation and has refused to act on the oil law the U.S. is demanding. Both the Democrats in Congress and the Bush Administration have united around the passage of the oil law as the top benchmark for the Iraqi government.

... Americans will be fooled again and swallow any accusation Bush offers, as they did with his litany of lies to justify the war on Iraq. They have not been educated about how the US and other states have used covert 'false flag' operations and then blamed the nation they wish to attack. They have been conditioned to believe a similar litany of lies about Iran and most now regard Iran with fear and hate, as do the Republicans below. The 'false flag' provides them with phony 'justification' for an attack and they will believe Iran did it.

The Real Reason for Bush's Invasion of Iraq is a National Security Secret

American soldiers have been fighting and dying in Iraq since 2003, and Americans do not know why.
All the reasons President Bush gave us for his war are false. Bush said he invaded Iraq “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.”
.... War without cause is murder, not war.

From an email to Dahr Jamail: "May 27, 2007
Baghdad is a smashed city..."Below is an email I have just received from my close friend and translator Abu Talat.
While he has fled Baghdad with his family and is now a refugee in Syria, he recently had to return to Baghdad in order to try to salvage what is left of his former life (his car, belongings from his house, etc.) before returning back to Syria.
His note is instructive as to the current living conditions in the capital city of Iraq. n the Bible

Decide as soon as Bush Has Set the Stage for a 'False Flag'. Bush's 'National Security Presidential Directive' (below) sets the stage for Bush to impose harsh fascist controls on what's left of American Democracy, after there is another US disaster like the 9/11 attack.

With scarcely a mention in the mainstream media, President Bush has ordered up a plan for responding to a catastrophic attack.
In a new National Security Presidential Directive, Bush lays out his plans for dealing with a “catastrophic emergency.”
Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch.
And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government.”
He laid this all out in a document entitled " National Security Presidential Directive /NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20."

Hartung and Berrigan document that Bush is increasing nuclear weapon expenditures, and developing nuclear war-fighting doctrines and new nuclear weapons while he portrays his chosen target (Iran) as being a nuclear threat. But Iran is within the NPT agreements by enriching uranium to power Iran's nuclear reactors.
Again Bush is lying to lay the groundwork and justification for war with Iran, as he did in preparation for his war with Iraq. The authors have assembled an impressive array of facts in the following article which supports this.

Is Bush Leading Us to Nuclear War?

Only days before the fifth anniversary of September 11, President George W. Bush addressed military officers in Washington to warn that nuclear-armed terrorists could "blackmail the free world and spread their ideologies of hate and raise a moral threat to America."
This alarmist vision was accompanied by the White House's release of "A National Strategy for Combating Terrorism," which painted a picture of a "troubling potential WMD terrorism nexus emanating from Tehran." The administration is building the case for war against Iran - a job made easier by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent announcement that Iran can now enrich uranium on an industrial scale - despite the fact that many Iran-watchers and nuclear experts consider their claims of enrichment capacity to be an overblown boast.

If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran

The war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized by American military officers and has been recently expressed forcefully by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq during the first year of the attempted occupation. Winning is no longer an option. Our best hope, Sanchez says, is "to stave off defeat," and that requires more intelligence and leadership than Sanchez sees in the entirety of our national political leadership: "I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time."

This excellent article is full of useful facts about Iran and its history as well as today's war threats against it from the Bush regime.
There are many things people can do to help prevent a war which could have disastrous long-term effects on the world.
These are listed in the article.
Larry will speak on the threats of a US war on Iran and its effects anywhere in New Zealand if sponsors look after any travel and accommodation costs. email Larry at nuclearfreenz@lynx.co.nz Or call him at 03-337-0118.

Oil and social gains: Why the U.S. is targeting Iran

Why is Iran increasingly a target of U.S. threats? Who in Iran will be affected if the Pentagon implements plans, already drawn up, to strike more than 10,000 targets in the first hours of a U.S. air barrage on Iran?

Here is another classic case of US demonising and subverting a small oil-producing country - Venezuela.
Iraq is suffering from a completely unjustified illegal US war based on lies and similar demonisation before the US bombing and invasion. Is Venezuela also on the Bush military hit list and soon to suffer from similar covert or overt military US action?
Pelosi demonstrates that whoever Bush chooses as an enemy, the US Democrats also adopt as an enemy. They justified the war on Iraq, and the Democratically-controlled Congress is continuing to fund it. Most Democrats have indicated that they back a US war on Iran which would spark a series of disasters. The US Democrats don't seem concerned about that, or the lies upon which it is based.
It will be a sad day for humanity if Bush tries to subvert and/or invade this small South American Democracy.

Letter to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House

Madam Speaker Pelosi,
I am writing in the opportunity to respond to your May 30 statement on Venezuela's decision not to renew the broadcast license of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV). In it, you accused President Hugo Chávez of engaging in efforts to “suppress the media.” I would like to assure you that the decision was made in full accordance with Venezuela's laws and does not represent a threat to the country's vibrant media or the ability of the Venezuelan people to receive information and opinion that is critical of the government. Equally, and as many observers have pointed out, since President Chavez came to power the government has tried to democratize the media to foster a diversity of voices to combat the historical monopoly on the broadcasting of information that causes so much harm to any democracy.

This vitally important article in the US Congressional Quarterly is a very important revelation of how close the world came to a major US nuclear war with China . This almost happened because Taiwanese politicians were encouraged by US Defence Department highly-placed necons to declare independence from China. This was clandestinely encouraged by top neocon members of the Bush regime, such as Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cambora and right wing Republicans in particular. We can thank Colin Powell, and the US State department at that time, for correcting this impression with independence-minded Taiwanese politicians, saying the US may not defend Taiwan if it declares independence.

Defense Officials Tried to Reverse China Policy, Says Powell Aide

The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington's foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations—creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says.

Mohammed El Baradei is head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. One of his jobs is to oversee that all states are obeying the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. His inspectors go into countries like Iran, inspect all nuclear facilities and issue reports as to whether Iran is complying with NPT terms and whether or not it has nuclear weapons, or are developing nuclear weapons. They reported that Iran has no nuclear weapons and has no nuclear weapons development programme.

IAEA chief warns of "crazies" seeking Iran war

The United Nations nuclear watchdog chief warned on Friday against the "new crazies" advocating military action to halt Iran's nuclear programme and said he did not want to see another war like that in Iraq.
"I wake every morning and see 100 Iraqis, innocent civilians, are dying," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Mohamed ElBaradei said in an interview for BBC Radio.
"I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran'," he said in a documentary, excerpts from which were published on the BBC's Web site in advance.

While the polls show that most Americans reject Bushism, there is little questioning, action against, or even awareness of the obvious fascist trends and what might follow.

Dark Secrets at the Front

Prisoners and interrogators are both brutalized in a war that changes who we are.
..."Less than half of other soldiers and Marines (in Iraq) believed that non- combatants should be treated with dignity and respect and well over a third believed that torture should be allowed to save the life of a fellow team member.

Vonnegut accurately names the Bush medical ailment as that of having a psychopathic personality. This fits Bush and his associates and their behaviour like a glove. They have no guilt for their many lies and no remorse for their crimes. They feel justified in whatever they do. Thus Bush claims he is in communication with God who advises him. This kind of delusion in a 'so-called' Christian country like the US is accepted as perfectly normal. To the true believers this delusion is real and meritorious. It proves Bush is a man of God and is therefore virtuous and heavenly inspired. Bush's followers show that belief reinforces the Bush delusion, thus helping immunize Bush against advice contrary to his own psychopathic wishes and impulses.
Enlightened Americans will have to stop Bush and his associates with impeachment before he can destroy more countries and trigger a World War III.

Book - A Man without a Country

... He's direct in saying what he thinks about the president and his pals ("George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, . . . plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, . . . the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences"), ...

The more I read, the more convinced I am that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job engineered by the Bush Administration. But I would be relieved to be able to change my mind if anyone was able to answer the many questions on our site. They can start with the amazing facts and questions below. This was a major false flag operation that worked well and was believed. It still serves as a launch pad for Bush's 'wars on terror'. Because of his very low popularity and growing public doubts, the Bush Administration will probably launch another convincing 'false flag' like 9/11, then blame Iran as justification to launch his much rumoured attack on Iran. He has marshalled a huge naval strike force of ships and planes off Iran's coast for this purpose.

From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Expanded Paperback Edition Greg Palast
BuzzFlash and Greg Palast go back a long way, right back to the stolen 2000 election.
Palast was the only journalist who did the hard work of proving how the Bushevik felon purge in Florida stole tens of thousands votes from Gore. You see, Palast is University of Chicago trained and knows statistics. He was dead on accurate about the theft of the 2000 election from Gore -- and he's been on the heels of the corrupt Republicans, robber barons, and Enron-inspired corporate thieves, among others, throughout the seven year history of BuzzFlash.

The continuous destruction and killing of Iraqis (655,000 so far) by the Americans both openly and covertly through their militias is yet more evidence of the scale of the war crimes being committed by the Bush Administration and their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq since 2003. All the excuses and lies of the Bush Administration to justify this illegal behaviour have been exposed again and again. There is no reason whatsoever for the Bush Administration to continue to impose this genocide on the Iraqi people. But Instead of leaving, Bush is spinning endless new lies to justify continuing his butchery of the innocents.

Operation Freedom From Iraqis

"Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq . Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That's a total of some 15 percent of the population.) Save the Children reported this month that Iraq's child-survival rate is falling faster than any other nation's. Yet for all the words President Bush has lavished on Darfur and AIDS in Africa, there has been a deadly silence from him about what's happening in the country he gave 'God's gift of freedom.' It's easy to see why," says Frank Rich.

Hugh Scott's piece was a comment on the article which follows, I felt it should also be featured as it is so good and to the point.
Bush could start a war with Iran anytime with a surprise pre-emptive strike, perhaps nuclear as mentioned by several informed commentators. He may not wait until 2008. Bush will need some kind of event or manufactured provocation he can use to justify a sudden attack.

I'm convinced President Bush will order the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilties in 2008, - for three reasons. .....
....The big question then becomes, will Gen. Pace act like an American patriot instead of a White House lapdog and declare the Oval Office order unconstitutional – i.e. an act of war without the approval of Congress?  We had all better pray he does.

The hard right in the U.S. has tried to exploit the arrest of Middle East scholar Haleh Esfandiari to create a reason for America's conservatives to attack Iran.
Beyond the simple human rights considerations, there are two other aspects of this grim matter that deserve mention. First is the way in which the intellectual elite in this country pick and choose their battles. Haleh Esfandiari, whom I know, certainly deserves the protest being stirred on her behalf. But we have many cases of abuse of freedom of travel and speech -- some committed by the U.S. government -- that gain little notice. Why some and not others? To some extent, the protest in effect reflects U.S. policy preferences and the drumbeat of anti-Iran media coverage in this country.

Rep. Jim McDermott has done a great service for all Americans by exposing in Congress how the US acting through its State Department and the C.I.A. overthrew the democratically-elected Mossedagh government in Iran in 1953. He exposed that now the Bush regime has authorised the C.I.A. to do it again. I have included 3 of the very excellent comments on this article that follow this article. 

Editor's note: After a week that saw Democrats cave to the White House in the worst possible way on Iraq, we thought this speech, offered on the House floor by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wa., last Wednesday, was worth highlighting. In a brief, five-minute commentary, McDermott does something almost unheard of in Washington: He looks at an issue in its larger historical context instead of pretending it just sprung up overnight like mushrooms after a rainfall.
Mr. Speaker: This president and vice president have vowed to repeat the mistakes of history, and they have put into motion a plan to do just that in Iran, even as the House is about to send the president a box of blank checks for Iraq, against the will of the American people.

This is a great speech by Al Gore who won the popular vote for US President in 2,000 and should have been declared President.
There would have been no Iraq war, and no plans for war on Iran or other states. The terrorist threat would have been dealt with in far different and much more effective ways by co-operating with other governments, and their police to catch and punish the genuine terrorists. The enormously wasteful war expenditures would be non-existent. There would be no threat to the American people or Constitution from a power-mad Administration taking away American civil liberties while it is "trying to impose global domination" according to Al Gore.
I think if Gore ran for President in 2008, he would win many more votes than in 2000 and end up as US President. No other acceptable Democratic candidate could expect to come close to the majority Gore would get.

Moral authority, which is our greatest source of strength, has been recklessly put at risk by this wilful president.
The pursuit of "dominance" in foreign policy led the Bush administration to ignore the UN, to do serious damage to our most important alliances, to violate international law, and to cultivate the hatred and contempt of many in the rest of the world. The seductive appeal of exercising unconstrained unilateral power led this president to interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that brought to life the worst nightmare of the founders. Any policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the US and recruits for al-Qaida, but also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating terrorists who wish to harm and intimidate America. Instead of "dominance", we should be seeking pre-eminence in a world where nations respect us and seek to follow our leadership and adopt our values.

Lots of former Bush boosters have been in damage-control mode ever since the spotlights of "shock and awe" that they focused on Iraqis and American liberals began turning back on them. Some even associate themselves retroactively with the early war skepticism and genuine contrition of William F. Buckley Jr., who wrote recently, "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the [Iraq] war."

Although the majority of Americans are against the war in Iraq, and disapprove of Bush's handling of it, there are many indicators that war tragedies and perhaps much great disasters are just beginning.

Americans now view the war in Iraq more negatively than at any time since the war began, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Six in 10 Americans surveyed say the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, and more than three in four say that things are going badly there - including nearly half who say things are going very badly, the poll found.

These new US nuclear-permissive doctrines are the greatest threat to human existence ever conceived. Yet they are packaged and sold to the public by an ever-willing media, as a perfectly normal development.  Once nuclear weapons are used, escalation can quickly follow as more nuclear weapon nations become involved. A sudden, unexpected 'out-of-the-blue' nuclear weapon strike is one of the characteristics of a pre-emptive nuclear war. The theory behind it is to catch the target nation off-guard and destroy it's weapons before it can retaliate.

The extent of the United States predicament across the Middle East, and the policies being introduced to meet it, is increasing the risk of a crisis with Iran. The nature of the predicament is reflected in the decision to send additional military personnel to Afghanistan as well as Iraq, and in new priorities for equipment geared to counterinsurgency.

.....In the opening years of the 21st century the Republicans have made it clear that they are willing to sacrifice the US Constitution and Bill of Rights in order to wage “war against terrorism.” This willingness makes the Republican Party a more dangerous threat to Americans than Muslim terrorists. Muslim terrorists cannot destroy our country's reputation, trash our civil liberties and wreck our system of accountable government, but the Republican Party has done a thorough job of it.

The recent of Saddam Hussein may have turned "regime change" into a contemporary buzzword, but it's been a tactic of American foreign policy for more than 110 years. Beginning with the ouster of Hawaii's monarchy in 1893, Kinzer runs through the foreign governments the U.S. has had a hand in toppling.

Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.
The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.

Here are some valuable facts about the US defence expenditures and the rising US arms trade. As Frida Berrigan points out "The US alone spends what the rest of the world combined devotes to military expenditures"
What is the US defence budget? Is it only the $481 billion requested by the Whitehouse? Or should other defence costs be added to this total in order to give a more balanced picture? Such added costs as the US nuclear weapons program -$17 billion. Iraq and Afghanistan wars $ 142 billion. Miscellaneous defence costs $5 billion. Grand total of $647 billion. If you add more invisible costs such as cost impact of Iraq war on global oil prices and lowered consumption of US goods and services by people in other nations, and long-term health care for wounded US veterans the price can rise to between 1 trillion and $2.2 trillion.

They don't call us the sole superpower for nothing. Paul Wolfowitz might be looking for a new job right now, but the term he used to describe the pervasiveness of U.S. might back when he was a mere deputy secretary of defense – hyperpower – still fits the bill.
Face it, the United States is a proud nation of firsts. Among them:
First in Oil Consumption : First in Carbon Dioxide Emissions : First in External Debt : First in Military Expenditures : First in Weapons Sales

Two of the important US objectives in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq is to build permanent military bases in Iraq to act as a centre of US military activities in the region, and occupation of the country, and to secure a permanent share of Iraq 's oil for US corporations. By sheer brutality, wanton destruction, mass murder (655,000 dead), torture and imprisonment of Iraqis they are achieving their goals. That 26 million Iraqis live there and own the country is an inconvenient reality that the Bush Administration is dealing with in its own usual way. By the creation and use of death squads (the Salvador option) and orchestrating an Iraqi civil war, they can create the kind of chaos they need to justify to Americans that 'we must stay in Iraq to help our allies defeat the evil al-Qaeda terrorists'.

Something really momentous took place inside Iraq's Green Zone last week and if you're looking for a full report on it in the U.S. major media save yourself the trouble. As far as they are concerned, the fact that over half of Iraq's parliament joined in a call for setting a withdrawal date of the “coalition” force from their country, it was a non-event worthy of scant or belated mention. Likewise was the story of how the Senate in Afghanistan voted the same day to call for the exodus of the occupation forces from that country as well. Some major newspapers have yet to record that fact.

This article and eloquent appeal is directed at non-white people, but applies just as much to whites. That is why I've circulated it - so people can better understand some of the unsavoury aspects of so-called ' Western Civilization'. The article also helps us understand the horrific US-originated Vietnam quagmire, and today's quagmire in Iraq . The mass deception by most Western leaders today, and the war-lie propaganda of our mass media, is one reason why so few people are informed and therefore why people allow our unprovoked wars against others to continue.
Leonard Peltier is a heroic American Indian, imprisoned for 30 years for a crime he did not commit. Free Leonard Peltier Now!

Notwithstanding the unspeakable atrocities of the African holocaust, slavery, lynchings, and ongoing disenfranchisement of Black people in America, perhaps no other people have suffered such despicably horrible and repugnant exploitation, degradation and genocide as have our indigenous native "Indian" brothers and sisters at the hands of the conquering Europeans, who subsequently formed the deceitful, land thieving, and hypocritical nation which has come to be known as the United States of America. Just as the necessary and legitimate struggle by Black people in America for justice, reparations, and equality continues and intensifies, so it is that the legitimate and closely related struggles of and by Red and Brown peoples continue unabated on this continent.

Bertrand Russell has always been my favourite philosopher. I corresponded with him on war/peace issues from Canada in 1961 and continued in New Zealand from 1962, on the Vietnam War. I was honoured when he asked me to form the Australasian Branch of The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation which I did until about 1968. I admire this great man who is an example of what we can become. He was willing to act for his principles and go to jail for peace actions at age 90. He was a humanist and rationalist, who believed man evolved and was the author of his own destiny with no divine intervention. The Fight For Peace Continues

Congratulations on your May 13 article by Irene Chapple on Justice Thomas's statements on Blair as a war criminal, as by association are others, such as the George Bush Administration. The Bush/Blair deceptions to gain support before launching their illegal war on Iraq are one of the major crimes of our era.

A New Zealand Supreme Court judge has launched a blistering attack on outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, effectively calling him a war criminal for his role in the Iraq conflict.
Justice Ted Thomas, who retired last year but still presides over ongoing cases, told the Sunday Star-Times yesterday that Blair "deceived Cabinet, parliament and the British people" over the war.

‘Tony Blair's contempt for Middle Eastern lives has already been adequately demonstrated in Iraq and Lebanon . His lack of genuine concern for British servicemen is demonstrated by his steadfast refusal to meet even one parent of a dead British serviceman or woman killed in the wars he created.'

General Batiste says to Bush: "...you did not listen. You continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps....you have placed our nation in peril. Our only hope is that Congress will act now to protect our fighting men and women". He said to US Senators "protect America not George Bush".

In an act of defiance perhaps not seen since President Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur, today the anti-war veterans group VoteVets.org, which has been influential with Capitol Hill Democrats, is launching a half-million-dollar TV ad campaign featuring Maj Gen John Batiste (Ret.), former commanding general of the first infantry division in Iraq.    

This is a great interview with a long term investigative journalist who knows his Washington subject and their history going back to the 70s and 80s. It gives a new perspective on important events.
One point I question is his assertion that al-Qaeda wants US troops to stay in Iraq so they can be destroyed. I think it may be more true that the CIA and neocons may wish us to think al-Qaeda wants the US troops to stay etc. It is part of US strategy, I believe to stay in Iraq indefinitely and that's one reason they have built new permanent US military bases in Iraq and the biggest US embassy in the world in Baghdad.