Bush Plans Long Escalating Wars

As Robert Parry points out, Bush plans long wars, is purging any doubters like Colin Powell and installing sycophants who will support his every wish. So rather than have a more moderate second term, Bush plans on more wars. I think he will decide to use nuclear weapons and believe that nuclear weapons use has been built into the neocon middle-east plan. Otherwise why would he lower the nuclear barrier in his new preemptive war doctrines, make new nuclear weapons and plan to resume testing?

George W. Bush’s vision for America’s future is coming into clearer focus following Election 2004: For the next generation or more, it appears the American people will be asked to sacrifice their children, their tax dollars and possibly the remnants of their democracy to what a top U.S. commander now candidly calls the “Long War.”

Will Bush Empire Go Nuclear in 2005

The US will not accept defeat in Iraq, and is likely to militarily over extend itself there, and with their other neocon-planned conquests in the Middle East. That will place them in what I believe is a pre-planned position: of either accepting defeat, or using nuclear weapons "to avoid defeat of freedom and democracy". The mass media in the US has demonstrated that it can be relied on to back Bush - and deliver a propagandised US public, that will mainly support nuclear weapons use to avoid defeat in "the war on terrorism".

The Empire in the Year 2005

The Iraqi resistance has proven that the US Empire is not invincible. With over 1500 combat deaths, close to 25,000 disabled soldiers and over 35,000 suffering severe "mental illnesses", the US occupation army is incapable of bringing the colonial war to a victorious conclusion.
...The logic of Washington for 2005 is that the War must continue, victory must be secured – no matter what the cost in human lives, Iraqi or US. The treasury and the budget is hostage to the Logic of War: to defend the image of imperial invincibility, the empire will be brought to its knees.

New Israeli/US Offensives in Mid-East

Uri Avnery is one of the leading Israeli writers opposing Sharon's murderous actions, exposing his lies and real plans. The following is an excellent example of Avnery's work.
See: http://www.globalresearch.ca for more excellent articles by top journalists and writers.

When the fruit sellers at the Tel Aviv market shout "the boss has gone crazy!" they mean that they are selling their merchandise at ridiculously low prices.
In the world’s capitals, a similar cry is now being heard: "The boss has gone crazy!" – but it is not about the price of tomatoes.
It refers to the new situation, after the reelection of George W. Bush for four more years.

There are thousands of nuclear weapons at Bush's command, including those of Tony Blair's UK and Sharon's Israel. Bush's new permissive nuclear doctrines, and his enthusiastic neocon administration, have set the stage for nuclear wars. Americans accept that, as easily as Jim Jones loyal followers accepted his leadership (and poisoning) in order to go to a heavenly world. That's the prospect at this time. It is possible, but looks unlikely, that there will be enough sane Americans left with the power to stop Bush before he commits his arsenals to the unthinkable.
If the worst happens, that's the end of our existance. No second chances.

...Whether through self-censorship or junk education, our country's children are paying the price for the political aggression of the far right. Robert Frost once wrote, "Education is the ability listen to almost anything without losing your temper."

Fallujah Bombed by US to Rubble

Under the slogan of "bringing liberation, Democracy and freedom to grateful Iraqis" the US is laying waste to the country. 60-70% of Fallujah destroyed by bombing is an example of how the US is making war on the people while purporting to be making war on terrorism. They are likely to use the same "bombing to rubble" tactic on other Iraq cities.

Scenes of widespread destruction have greeted residents allowed back into the Iraqi city of Falluja following the US assault in November. BBC News spoke to Dr Saleh Hussein Isawi, the acting director of the Falluja general hospital, who accompanied some of the refugees to the city.

It is time to invade Cuba and put an end to what has become another Devil's Island in the annals of government-sanctioned torture. The barbaric treatment of political prisoners on the island is made no more palatable by being conducted in the name of an ideology that claims to be liberating the world from its shackles.
...."Now there is no question that these guys have been tortured," said Brent Mickum, a Washington attorney for one of the roughly 10 percent of detainees at the camp who have finally secured legal representation. "Every allegation that I've heard has now come to pass and been confirmed by the government's own papers."
Even more troubling is that the FBI agents make it clear this is not the work of a few poorly supervised sadists. Their reports refer to what they described as a new--and very much secret--executive order on prisoner treatment by the President at the top of the camp's chain of command, which allowed for severe interrogation tactics, including "sleep deprivation and stress positions" combined with "loud music, interrogators yelling at subjects and prisoners with hoods on their heads."

....And American troops are sending home increasingly terrible stories of the wanton killing of civilians by US forces in the towns and cities of Iraq. Here, for example, is the evidence of ex-Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey, testifying at a refugee hearing in Canada earlier this month. Massey told the Canadian board that he and his fellow Marines shot and killed more than 30 unarmed men, women and children, including a young Iraqi who got out of his car with his arms up. “We killed the man,” Massey said. “We fired at a cyclic rate of 500 bullets per vehicle.” Massey assumed that the dead Iraqis didn’t understand the hand signals to stop. On another occasion, according to Massey, Marines — in reaction to a stray bullet — opened fire and killed a group of unarmed protesters and bystanders. The defector from the 82nd Airborne, Jeremy Hinzman, told the court that “we were told to consider all Arabs as potential terrorists... to foster an attitude of hatred that gets your blood boiling”.

War Is Peace:

The Pax Americana Imperium Wishes You An Orwellian Christmas!
Americans have run the entire cycle of Christmas-deconstruction by spiritualizing, sentimentalizing, universalizing, and -- ultimately -- commercializing the holiday. Today, our version of Christmas bears almost no relationship to the nativity story in the synoptic Gospels.

FASCISM ENDS FREEDOM

The 615 page Intelligence Reform legislation is "a more stunning attack on the Bill Of Rights than the Patriot Act" as Mike Whitney points out below.

The new Intelligence reform bill is a more stunning attack on the Bill of Rights than the Patriot Act. Most people have no idea how dramatically their "inalienable" rights have been savaged, or to what extent the Congress has sold them out. It's no exaggeration to say that the foundation of personal liberty, guaranteed in the law, is cracking at the base. It'll be a miracle if we can put it back together in time to pass it on to our children.
As usual, the role of the media has been pivotal in obfuscating the details of the bill. They've fed the hysteria over the establishment of a NID; (National Intelligence Director) a glamour position that has been represented as vital to stopping another 9-11. What rubbish. Teaching Condi Rice how to read a simple e-mail from bin Laden would be twice as effective.

Iran's relentless pursuit of a nuclear weapon is the biggest danger facing Israel, the Middle East and the world, a senior foreign-policy adviser to the Israeli government said yesterday.
"We have no doubt that Iran is trying to move ahead on building nuclear capability," Zalman Shoval, a former ambassador to the United States, said in a luncheon meeting with reporters and editors at The Washington Times yesterday.
Since January 2002, when President Bush declared that Iran was part of an "axis of evil," Iran — with Russian help — has been pursuing what it describes as a peaceful nuclear program. But the United States and others suspect that the nation's real goal is to develop nuclear weapons.

WHY DON'T we Americans look directly at the war? We avert our gaze, knowing that the situation in Iraq grows more desperate by the day. Vaunted "coalition" efforts to "break the back" of the "insurgency" have only strengthened it. The violence among Iraqis would surely qualify as civil war -- except that only one side is fighting. The structures of relief and repair are gone. Whole cities are destroyed, populations displaced. The hope of Iraqi elections is mortally compromised. "Coalition" members are dropping out. The mission of American force is to secure the country, but it can't secure itself. The performance of US intelligence has been consistent: Its strategic failures caused the war, and its tactical ignorance of the enemy is losing the war. ICH    Review of the book "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War."

The US selected Iyad Allawi, who served the interests of the USA for many years as a clandestine CIA agent staging explosions in Iraq, as their interim Prime Minister of Iraq.
The US empowered Allawi, who assassinated suspected "terrorists" in police custody, to rule Iraq and "authorise" the US destruction of Fallujah. Thus he is directly involved in the killing of thousands of his fellow countrymen, both ordinary men, women and children, and anyone thought to be resisting the US invader. Basically Allawi is the US mouthpiece, trying to give legitimacy to war crimes and the criminal US invasion, occupation and continuing murder of opponents. This man can in no way represent the Iraqi people.

Iyad Allawi, now the designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization intent on deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990's to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the C.I.A., several former intelligence officials say.
Dr. Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, used car bombs and other explosive devices... Ex-CIA officer Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed."

There Has Been A Fascist Coup in This Country With Media Complicity

Noam Chomsky has lucidly explicated the imperial consensus adhered to by both parties since the US became No I after WW11. However he has also pointed out that the Bush National Security Strategy scared even the mainstream foreign policy elite. It bodes an escalation of the international arms race and all kinds of unprecedented threats to our survival.
I see major differences between what the Kerry Administration would have done and what the Bush agenda is. However considering the fecklessness of Kerry and the Democrats they of course are morally complicit in a fascist coup.
I say a fascist coup-one must realize that the neo-cons wielding the power in the Bush Administration had been out of power since Reagan. One must also remember that all indications are that neither the military nor the CIA wanted the war in Iraq. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had testified before Congress in the summer of 2002 that war on Iraq would be a bad idea. So did Scowcroft, Eagleburger, etc. The CIA reported at that time--front page of NY Times--that Saddam was contained. The Bush Junta prevailed because of its fanaticism and determination--just as Hitler did. (Clinton endorsed "regime change"--he was far too cautious to go ahead with this crazy war.)

Bush's various extreme actions and desire for more wars in the Middle East may be one reason why Bush is using such extraordinary cruel tactics. He is waging a war mainly on Iraqi civilians that will make people hate and resist the US . Then Bush again fools the US people by telling them that this proves the people are really terrorists and the US duty is to make war on them - any kind of foul war he chooses and forget international law.

November 9th, 2004 was Fallujah's 9/11 Tuesday. It marked the peak of three days of indiscriminate bombing of Fallujah by US forces.
Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Al-Shaalan promised that the day would be decisive. It wasn't. It was inhumane beyond belief, almost beyond comprehension.
The bomb blitz featured weapons of mass destruction: banned napalm-type munitions, chemical poison gas and super-bombs of up to 2,000-pounds. The ground assault was indiscriminate. The target was a city where at least 60,000 civilians outnumbered rebel fighters by over thirty to one.
The US Prevented Aid Entering the City for Weeks

An exclusive, in-depth interview with journalist Dahr Jamail on what is really going on in Iraq
Newtopia: The US Corporate media consistently characterizes the Iraqi resistance as "foreign terrorists and former Ba’athist insurgents". Is this accurate?
Dahr Jamail: This is propaganda of the worst kind. Most Iraqis refer to the Iraqi Resistance as "patriots." They are people who have had family members killed, detained, tortured and humiliated by the illegal occupiers of their shattered country. Calling them "foreign terrorists" and "Ba’athist insurgents" is simply a lie.

Known as the "city of mosques" for its more than 200 mosques, Fallujah is also known for refusing to add Saddam’s name to the call for prayers from its ancient minarets. It is located on the banks of river Euphrates, the largest river in Southwest Asia. The 1700 miles long Euphrates is linked with some of the most important events in olden history.
The city of Ur, found at its mouth, was the birthplace of Abraham. On its banks stood the city of Babylon. In the past, the army of Necho was defeated on its banks by Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus the Younger and Crassus perished after crossing it. Alexander traversed it and continued his journey eastward. Presently, George Bush’s forces are crossing and re-crossing it making its waters redder each time with the blood of Fallujah’s citizens.

This chink in the neocon armour, is of fundamental importance and well worth a read. The neocons have been singularly successful in foisting a litany of lies about Iraq WMD, links to al-Qaeda, links to 9/11 attacks, links to terrorism and future attacks. They continue their buoyant attitudes as their killing, bombing and general mass destruction increases. Now they are claiming that the American people have given them, and their spokesman Bush, a mandate to continue, and impose the rest of their agenda on the world.

The Iraq war opened a fratricidal split among United States neo–conservatives. Danny Postel examines the bitter dispute between two leading neocons, Francis Fukuyama and Charles Krauthammer, and suggests that Fukuyama’s critique of the Iraq war and decision not to vote for George W Bush is a significant political as well as intellectual moment.

There is intense speculation in the corridors of Washington over where foreign policy might head in the next four years.
But while Iraq and Iran may top the list, you hear almost no talk - at least at the moment - about Washington's "war on terror" against al-Qaeda.

"Doctors in Fallujah are reporting there are patients in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans," says Mehdi Abdulla, a 33-year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in Baghdad. "Some doctors there told me they had a major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to die." He looks at the ground, then away to the distance.
More articles from antiwar.com

This superlatively excellent Canadian lawyers call for a ban on Bush visits, and Bush's indictment for war crimes, deserves to be put on the agenda of every peace group everywhere.
They could do a peace action and send it to all their politicians, perhaps more than once, and lobby them as well.
Repeated emphasis is effective, as Bush continually demonstrates.
It could be applied in every country, widely publicised, and forwarded to others.
Surely this kind of effective action is better than letting Bush continue to create his new “truths” and self-serving pre-emptive nuclear war doctrines. Most people and most mass media remain silent while Bush and his neo-cons build their “1984 perpetual wars” type of world over the next 4 years, maybe longer. The Canadian lawyer's letter can be used to express a peace action which communicates that Bush and accomplices are increasingly perceived as war criminals.

There was a bipartisan consensus on last Sunday's televised political talk-shows that the US Senate will confirm, with relative ease, Mr. Bush's appointment of Alberto R. Gonzales as the next Attorney General ("AG").  However, if our Senators retain any respect for universal human rights and the rule of constitutional and international law, they will vigorously oppose Mr. Gonzales' appointment as our new AG. [1] [2]  Furthermore, it's imperative that our Senators, both left and right, defeat this unwise appointment for the following five reasons. 

We condemn the unjust, immoral and brutal killing of Mrs. Margaret Hassan in Iraq. This woman was an angel of mercy, a shining light to those who needed help for decades in Iraq. She stood up to Saddam Hussein and to the U.S.military, she wanted only to help the people of her adopted country.
We also do not believe any Muslims did this. There is an dictum in the Qur'an which forbids the killing of women; also, the killing of hostages. Also, Muslims and Iraqis had nothing to gain by killing this innocent, God-like, saint of a woman.

"It has never happened in history that a nation that has won a war has been held accountable for atrocities committed in preparing for and waging that war. We intend to make this one different. What took place was the use of technological material to destroy a defenseless country. From 125,000 to 300,000 people were killed... We recognize our role in history is to bring the transgressors to justice." Ramsey Clark

The worst nightmare scenario has come true. The neo-conservatives claim they have just had a mandate to continue creating a new American version of reality. Kerry won the US Presidential election, but like Gore in 2000, was cheated out of his victory by the machinations of the neo-conservatives and their Republican allies and others in the voting machine industry.
(see: http://www.nuclearfreenz.org.nz/ohio.htm )

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world.Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.
The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network.But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares. Go to http://207.44.245.159/video1037.htm and look for Transcript

The Power of Nightmares continues its assessment of whether the threat from a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion. Part two, the Phantom Victory looks at how two groups, radical Islamists and neo-conservatives with seemingly opposing ideologies came together to defeat a common enemy. Go to http://207.44.245.159/video1038.htm and look for Transcript

The Power of Nightmares assesses whether the threat from a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion. In the concluding part of the series, the programme explains how the illusion was created and who benefits from it.
Go to http://207.44.245.159/video1040.htm and look for Transcript

.....A medical dispensary in the city centre was bombed earlier.
I don't know what has happened to the doctors and patients who were there.
It was last place you could get medical attention because the big hospital on the outskirts of Falluja was captured by the Americans on Monday. ......

MoD still publicly claims DU weapons are safe. However the UK army has issued a card to soldiers saying it can cause ill-health.
“A UN subcommission has ruled that the use of DU breaches the Geneva Convention and the Genocide Convention. DU has also been blamed for the effect of Gulf War syndrome among some 200,000 US troops.” About 29,000 UK troops could also be contaminated.

CLAIMS by the Ministry of Defence that depleted uranium (DU) is not a risk to life have been undermined by a Sunday Herald investigation that found the British army is telling soldiers in Iraq that it can cause ill-health.
The revelation has outraged the military, scientists and politicians. Studies have shown DU leads to cancers, birth defects, memory loss, damage to the immune system and neuro-psychotic disorders. But the MoD has claimed since the first Gulf war that “DU does not pose a risk to health or the environment”.
However, military sources have passed an MoD card to the Sunday Herald which is being handed to troops on active service in Iraq. It reads: “You have been deployed to a theatre where depleted uranium (DU) munitions have been used. DU is a weakly radioactive heavy metal which has the potential to cause ill-health. You may have been exposed to dust containing DU during your deployment.

This DU-PLICITY article shows how the US and UK have lied about the long-lingering killing properties, about 4.5 billion years, of the radioactive Depleted Uranium weapons. Both countries have used them Iraq and in 5 previous conflicts.

.......The Conference called for the abolition of all uranium weapons and confirmed acceptance of the United Nations Sub-commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights finding, that Depleted Uranium weapons are illegal. Accordingly, the Hamburg officially called for the abolition of the use of and halt to the proliferation of these weapons.
The Hamburg Conference concluded: “The evidence from scientists, medical professionals and legal experts at this conference is clear: DU is causing significant health effects worldwide... is illegal under existing International Law and Conventions” The Conference also called for the cessation of the manufacture testing, or use of these weapons. This was the final and unanimous agreement of Conference.

Weapons Dust Worries Iraqis
Despite assurances from the U.S. military that depleted uranium from exploded munitions does not pose a significant health threat, Iraq's provisional government is asking the United Nations for help cleaning up the low-level radioactive, metal dust spread across local battlefields by U.S. and British forces during the Persian Gulf wars.
The request comes as the United States continues to defend depleted uranium weaponry - prized for its tank-piercing and bunker- or cave-smashing ability - against strong opposition by other countries, scientists and veterans organizations.
Great Britain, a major partner in the coalition now fighting in Iraq, has provided the U.N. with the coordinates where its forces used depleted uranium, also known as DU, in southern Iraq, but the United States has not. Britain and Germany are supplying money to train Iraqis in environmental science. The United Nations plans to survey for DU hot spots from both wars in Iraq and says it needs the coordinates for an effective survey.

President George W Bush's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been a world-wide campaign to kill or capture the Muslim enemies of America - his so-called "global war on terror." It is an ambitious but, in my view, a profoundly misguided affair which has left the United States more hated, more isolated, and certainly no safer than before. Everything that could go wrong with Bush's "war" has gone wrong.
The biggest blunder was, of course, to switch the focus of America's military effort from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein - from Al-Qaeda to Iraq - although there was no connection between the two and no credible evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction or posed any sort of immediate threat to anyone. The result was the catastrophic war in Iraq which has drained America's resources, destroyed its reputation and brought untold miseries to the Iraqis. There is, as yet, no clear outcome in sight.

If Bush gets a second term, he may launch more and wider wars (Iran, Syria etc), provoke retaliation and 'terrorism' and probable use of nuclear weapons and a potential general disaster from which the world as we know it, may never recover.

Be sure to read this great article from the former dean of the White House Press corps, Helen Thomas.
"It turns out ...that even Arabs will fight for their own land.
They are what we call the insurgents, or terrorists, or even the enemy."

"Press Failed to Hold White House Accountable"
........I believe that if he is reelected, we have doomed ourselves to perpetual war in the 21st century. We will have a repetition of the 20th Century. Two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and every thing that happened at the turn of the century before. Of course he will re-institute the draft. He has to, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel now for ready reserves. He will dismantle the Social Security system little by little with privatizing. He will continue to erode labor rights. He has already practically wiped out overtime. If he makes you a vice president or a supervisor, you won’t get any overtime. Or he’ll give you comp time, even if you don’t want comp time – even if you want to support and feed your kids… He will continue to move jobs to the Third World where multi-millionaires can fatten their pocketbooks from sweatshops and child labor. And, of course, the richest people in the country will continue to get the biggest tax cuts.
So through Bush policies, we have lost most of our friends and allies in the world. At the least, we have lost their respect. And domestically, the poor, the sick, and the maimed will be forgotten. I believe, like Abraham Lincoln, that government should do for people what people cannot do for themselves. I will conclude my rant by quoting John F. Kennedy after the Cuban Crisis. In 1962 he went to American University and made a speech where he said “America would never start a war. We want a world where the weak are secure and the strong are just.”
The other quote that I like so much is “The only way for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.”
Finally, from early in our Colonial era, was the observation by Alexis De Tocqueville, who said “America is great because it is good. When it ceases to be good, it will no longer be great.”
We can change all that if we give peace a chance.

Any Iraqi resistance to US slaughter is called "terrorism" and used by the US to justify even more violence.
The US is prepared to use "shock and awe" tactics in their efforts to annihilate any resistance in Fallujah.

British Study Concludes That 100,000 Civilian Deaths Have Been Caused By Iraq War's Violence 
"...it is clear that whatever planning did take place was grievously in error.  The invasion of Iraq, the displacement of a cruel dictator, and the attempt to impose a liberal democracy by force have, by themselves, been insufficient to bring peace and security to the civilian population. ... [I]mperialism has resulted in more deaths, not fewer.  This political failure continues to cause scores of casualties among non-combatants. ... The lives of Iraqis are currently being shaped by the policies of the occupying forces and the military insurgents.  For the occupiers, winning the peace now demands a thorough reappraisal of strategy and tactics to prevent further unnecessary casualties.  -Dr. Richard Horton's commentary, "The War In Iraq: Civilian Casualties, Political Responsibilities," in The Lancet, Vol. 364, No. 9445. [1]

Revelations contained in last months final report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction should make every American shudder in shame.
According to this report, written by Charles Duelfer, Saddam Hussein's regime destroyed their entire stockpile of WMD and their prohibited missiles over a decade ago.

"In August 2004, the United States Congress unanimously adopted a resolution labeling the situation in Darfur as genocide. On September 9, American Secretary of State Colin Powell in turn declared before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, "[that] genocide has taken place and may still be continuing in Darfur". These declarations echoed attempts to compare events in Darfur with Rwanda in 1994. Observers almost immediately claimed that the American "genocide" declaration had more to do with the US elections than the reality of events in Darfur."
Today a report by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland published in the Lancet estimates (conservatively) 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the (primarily) USA and the UK. Most of these are civilians, women and children.

The Pentagon is collecting figures on local casualties in Iraq, contrary to its public claims, but the results are classified, according to one of the authors of an independent study which reported last week that the war has killed at least 100,000 Iraqis.
"Despite the claim of the head of US Central Command at the time, General Tommy Franks, that 'We don't do body counts', the US military does collect casualty figures in Iraq," said Professor Richard Garfield, an expert on the effects of conflict on civilians. "But since 1991, when Colin Powell was head of the joint chiefs of staff, the figures have been kept secret."

The first scientific study of the human cost of the Iraq war suggests that at least 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since their country was invaded in March 2003.
More than half of those who died were women and children killed in air strikes, researchers say. Previous estimates have put the Iraqi death toll at around 10,000 - ten times the 1,000 members of the British, American and multi-national forces who have died so far. But the study, published in The Lancet, suggested that Iraqi casualties could be as much as 100 times the coalition losses. It was also savagely critical of the failure by coalition forces to count Iraqi casualties.

The staggering research reported in the British journal Lancet shows the magnitude of the Bush administration’s war crimes: 98,000 Iraqi civilians dead, including 40,000 children. And that’s not even counting Fallujah.
I don’t think most Americans care a lot about dead Iraqis. I hope I’m wrong.

About 100,000 Iraqi civilians - half of them women and children - have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.
[Bin Laden killed almost 3,000 people and its terrorism. We kill 100,000 and its Democracy? ]

There is a surreal quality about visiting the United States in the last days of the presidential campaign. If George W Bush wins, according to a scientist I met, who escaped Nazi-dominated Europe, America will surrender many of its democratic trappings and succumb to its totalitarian impulses. If John Kerry wins, according to most Democrat voters, the only mandate he will have is that he is not Bush.

..... These forces are not based on lunatic religious beliefs, but rationally-based on the profits, power and prestige that draw people into the 'military - industrial - political - academic - corporate - media' complex. This is a hugely powerful force. Although it is rationally-based, it is blind to the trends and disastrous consequences of it's own behaviour or how it is used to implement the lunatic religious agenda.

We are moving toward a key fiery moment, and one that carries within it the potential for conflagration. 
As I see them, the key issues are:  Little Men and Power at All Cost
You will add you own realisations here, but the two \'little men\' of the moment are Bush and Putin. 
Small physically and with very different personalities, they have highly significant features in common:
-  They rule using fear

Mike Ruppert, is the author of this article which was delivered to San francisco's prestigious Commonwealth Club on August 31, 2004. He has just published a book "Crossing The Rubicon" in which he presents more details of his 9/11 charges and also on the world's 'Peak Oil' consumption.
Ruppert convincingly establishes that the Bush Administration planned and authorised the 9/11 attacks.

"The 9/11 attacks were the result of deliberate planning and orchestrated efforts by identifiable leaders within the U.S. Government, and the energy and financial sectors, to see a Pearl Harbor-like attack which would provide the American Empire with a pretext for war, invasion and the sequential confiscation of oil and natural gas reserves, or the key transportation routes through which they pass. 9-11 was a premeditated murder and in my book, and here tonight, I will name some of the suspects who committed the crime. In my book I will show you overwhelming evidence of their guilt, which I would be proud and confident to place either before a district attorney or a jury."

I shall cast my vote for John Kerry come Nov 2.
I have been, and will continue to be, a Republican. But when we as a party send the wrong person to the White House, then it is our responsibility to send him home if our nation suffers as a result of his actions. I fall in the category of good conservative thinkers, like George F. Will, for instance, who wrote: "This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and having thought, to have second thoughts."

The absolute last straw for me took place at the Bush rally, held in Central Point, Oregon on October 14th. President Bush stayed in Jacksonville, Oregon overnight after the rally, and protesters and police clashed on the streets. I sent out a photo of a Jackson County Sheriff's Deputy, all Nazi'd up in black leather riot control gear and grinning evilly as he shoved a woman holding her 5 year-old daughter. It wasn't the finest hour for local law enforcement, but even that wasn't the last straw for me. No, the last straw for me happened just before the Bush rally itself.

The Bushites Are Given A Failing Grade In An Open Letter From 729 "Security Scholars For A Sensible Foreign Policy"
Just when Mr. Bush thought he'd sailed by the Scylla of a potentially devastating foreign-policy critique from John Kerry during the presidential debates, he was hit by the Charybdis of an actually devastating foreign-policy critique from 729 scholars.