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The following news tidbits come from Democrats.com daily newsletter. __UN Majority Stands Firm for Peace, So SORE LOSER Bush Defiantly Prepares CRIMINAL W-ar AP reports, "The US, Britain and Spain on Monday ended diplomatic efforts to win UN approval for an ultimatum to Iraq, clearing the way for them to launch a [CRIMINAL] war without Security Council authority... French ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said that in one-on-one consultations in the past hours 'the majority of the council confirmed they do not want a use of force.'... Tony Blair said Sunday that British diplomats would work through the night to try to persuade France to reverse course. But clearly, the efforts didn't yield results... France was undeterred from the start and scheduled Monday's round of consultations to discuss a joint declaration by Paris, Moscow and Berlin calling for foreign ministers from the 15 council nations to meet Tuesday to discuss a 'realistic' timetable for Saddam Hussein to disarm." But Bush doesn't WANT Saddam to disarm, he wants him gone. SORE LOSER Bush lost the UN game, so he grabbed his marbles and went home to launch a CRIMINAL W-ar. __Emperor Bush Gives Saddam 72 (later changed to 48) Hours to Flee Acting in defiance of the United Nations, Emperor Bush will give Saddam Hussein 72 hours (later changed to 48) to flee Iraq before the bombing begins. This ultimatum proves that Bush's "disarmament" demand was a charade from the beginning, and his goal was always to remove Saddam and put Iraq under US control. If Bush begins bombing Iraq without UN authority, he will be a war criminal under the UN Charter. __Urgent: Tell the UN to 'Unite for Peace' Cheryl Guttman writes, "If the US threatens or attacks Iraq without support of a deadlocked UN Security Council, the General Assembly can demand an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal under a procedure called 'Uniting for Peace.'" Here is a sample letter you can e-mail or fax, including all of the e-mail addresses and fax numbers for the UN General Assembly. __Anti-Bush Protests From 3/17 to 3/24, join nonviolent direct action organized by United for Peace. On 3/19, join the national call-in to Congress to oppose further tax cuts for the rich. On 3/22 at noon, protest W-ar at Times Square in NYC. On 3/22-24, join Veterans Against Iraq War for "Operation Dire Distress" - a teach-in and lobby day in DC. If Bush launches a W-ar, converge at the main gathering place in your city or town at 12 noon. __Millions March Against War on March 15 in Over 2,000 Cities Worldwide ANSWER reports, "Well over a quarter of a million people demonstrated in the U.S. against a U.S. war with Iraq. 100,000 demonstrated in Washington, 100,000 came out in San Francisco, and 50,000 people braved the driving rain in Los Angeles in massive emergency mobilizations called on short notice by the ANSWER coalition... Demonstrations also took place in Lansing, MI; Columbus OH, Lexington, KY, Tucson, AZ; Albuquerque, NM, and scores of other cities [30-50,000 in Portland, OR]. With cities around the world responding to the call for emergency actions, March 15 was an urgent and critical day of global anti-war protest, as millions of people turned out to demonstrate against Washington's rush to war. CNN reported that protests took place today in an amazing 2,000 cities in 98 countries. Turnouts were dramatic: Millions marched in Spain and Italy, two countries whose governments have supported the U.S. war. 100,000 came out in Berlin; 150,000 in France; 40,000 marched in Brussels." __CA Dems Cheer Kucinich's Call to 'Support the Troops by Bringing them Home Alive and Healthy' Sacramento Bee reports, "The California Democratic Party overwhelmingly opposed an attack on Iraq in an official resolution Sunday... The near-unanimous vote came on the closing day of the the party's yearly convention in Sacramento... Just as Bush announced from a summit in the Azores Islands that he would make one final attempt today to win support for the war, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich took the stage in California to decry it. [He] bowed his head slightly and began to softly sing phrases from a trio of patriotic songs before delivering a rousing speech decrying what he called a war 'all in the name of eliminating phantom weapons of mass destruction.' 'Let us support the troops, but not the administration,' Kucinich said. 'Let us support the troops by bringing them home alive and healthy.' Asked if he would temper his cries against the war once American troops were in battle, Kucinich replied that 'it is a moral imperative to speak out.'" You Go, Dennis! __Dean, Sharpton, and Braun Rouse CA Dems with Antiwar Speeches Sacramento Bee reports, 'An anti-war crowd at the California Democratic Party convention erupted in cheers Saturday when presidential challenger Howard Dean took to the stage.'What I want to know,' said the former Vermont governor in his first sentence to hundreds at the Sacramento Convention Center, 'is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the president's unilateral intervention in Iraq.'... Al Sharpton also brought delegates to their feet with his anti-war remarks. 'We are not soft on American enemies,' Sharpton said. 'We are just not ones that believe that we should be cavalier about spilling American blood.'... [Carol Moseley] Braun -- a former Illinois senator and ambassador to New Zealand -- joined about 400 protesters gathered a few blocks away at the state Capitol. 'What you do may be the only thing that stops us from going into this ill-considered, wrong war,' she said." You go, Howard, Al & Carol! __Bill Blasts 'Political Mess' by W NYDN reports, "Bill Clinton double-dissed Bush last night, saying his successor in the White House has bungled handling the US economy and the crisis over Iraq. Clinton, who drew standing ovations from a packed auditorium at the 92nd Street Y on the upper East Side, criticized the administration's economic policies as 'wrongheaded' and getting worse. He said the 2001 tax cut turned the surplus he left into a 'massive deficit... And now they want to give another tax cut. It doesn't make sense. We shouldn't do it now. It's against arithmetic.'... Right after winning UN Security Council support in November for weapons inspections, the White House 'sent 150,000 troops to the gulf, which convinced everybody we weren't serious about UN inspections. That's how we got into this political mess.' The US should be strengthening the UN and other 'mechanisms of cooperation,' Clinton said. 'We need to be creating a world that we would like to live in when we're not the biggest power on the block.'" __In 1992, VP Candidate Al Gore Exposed BushDaddy's Support for Saddam Erik Sorensen writes, "In September 1992 Senator and Vice Presidential candidate Al Gore addressed the Center for International Policy and articulated a comprehensive dissertation on the inconsistencies, fabrications and collaboration between the Reagan/Bush I administrations and Saddam Hussein. Republicons.org has acquired a transcript of the speech delivered by Gore and it exhaustively details, in classic Gore fashion, a twelve year history of politically expedience, appeasement and clandestine cooperation with Iraq." Gore's speech helped throw BushDaddy out of the White House - but he should have gone to jail! __Cuomo Says Bush's W-ar Will Ensure Defeat in 2004 Mario Cuomo writes, "And what of his political future if Bush's war becomes his proudest boast in 2004? I think he will face the same fate Winston Churchill did in 1945 ... and his father did in 1992. The majority of the United Nations and world opinion comes closer to the truth than does Bush, and by November 2004, that will be clear to a majority of the American voters. After the music of the victory parades fade, we will reflect upon the sober truth of the war. We will remember the death and destruction, the debilitated economy, the increased terrorism, the deteriorated world unity and the ugly irony of a nation which says it is too poor to provide its people the health care, education and old age security they need, but rich enough to fight wars, reconstruct other nations and give its wealthiest taxpayers huge tax cuts. Why then, would we want to vote for more of the same?" __74 Former Representatives Denounce W-ar CNN reports, "Warning of the potential for more terrorist attacks and a 'tarnished reputation' for the United States, 74 former members of Congress sent a letter to the White House Friday urging the Bush administration to 'hold off' on any war plans with Iraq. The signatories, all but four of them Democrats, urged the administration to give U.N. weapons inspectors more time to do their job... The former lawmakers said they believed a war against Iraq would kill innocent people, precipitate terrorist attacks, weaken the United Nations, exacerbate conflicts throughout the Middle East and hurt the U.S. standing as a 'world citizen.' ... 'The doctrine of pre-emption, the Japanese used it against us. It was called Pearl Harbor,' said Democrat Elizabeth Holtzman, who represented New York City in the House. The letter campaign was organized by former Maine congressman Tom Andrews, who started the Win Without War coalition, which is organizing candlelight vigils for Sunday." __President Bartlet Blasts W-ar Martin Sheen is under tremendous pressure from NBC to stop denouncing W-ar - or face cancellation of the West Wing. But Sheen ignored the corporate threats and delivered a passionate prayer for peace at the San Francisco rally on 3-15-03. And what a speech! Martin Sheen for President!!!(Note: this huge 12MB MP3 file is primarily for broadband users). __Antiwar Veterans Launch for 'Operation Dire Distress' From March 22-24, veterans who oppose Bush's W-ar will gather in DC for several important events: TEACH-IN & SPEAKOUT - Saturday, at American University, Anderson Hall, from 1-5 PM. DEMONSTRATION - Sunday, assemble at Constitution Gardens on Mall at 12 noon. A solemn procession to Vietnam, Korea, WW II Memorials, march to VA and White House with rally on the Ellipse. LOBBYING - Monday, meetings with Senators & Representatives. Briefing at the offices of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, 245 2nd Ave. NE (corner of C St., NE), at 9AM. All military veterans, active-duty GI's, reservists, and family members are encouraged to attend. Veterans and active-duty personnel should wear medals, ribbons, uniforms, etc., and all need to bring American flags, banners, and protest signs. And remember, endorse our Statement below, get other veterans and family members to endorse the Statement, which we will deliver to the White House and Congress during Operation Dire Distress. __Conscientious Objection an Option to Being Sent Home in a Box "When 18-year-old Johnny Smith registered with the Selective Service last summer, he wrote 'conscientious objector' all over the form before mailing it in. At a time when the United States is positioned for war in Iraq, Smith is laying the foundation for an exemption from military service based on moral or religious objections to war, on the remote chance a draft is reinstated. 'I believe that every war in the past some way could have been prevented,' said Smith, who attends both Port Townsend High School and Peninsula College. 'I don't think the draft is going to happen anytime soon. But I have to be prepared.'...A formal request for objector status would be made only if a draft were reinstated, said Kenneth Bing of the Selective Service's regional office in Denver." This is far more honorable than what Bush did. His daddy pulled strings to get him into a Champagne unit of the National Guard during Vietnam - then Bush deserted for up to two years! (See awolbush.com) __Ex-CIA Officers Urge Whistleblowers to Expose Bush's Lies AP reports, "A small group composed mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq. Members of the group contend the Bush administration has released information on Iraq that meets only its ends -- while ignoring or withholding contrary reporting. They also say the administration's public evidence about the immediacy of Iraq's threat to the United States and its alleged ties to al-Qaida is unconvincing, and accuse policy-makers of pushing out some information that does not meet an intelligence professional's standards of proof. 'It's been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy,' said Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who briefed top Reagan administration security officials before retiring in 1990. 'That's why a lot of my former colleagues are holding their noses these days.'" __Bush Will Make Iraq our 51st State - Hello? Thomas Powers writes, "When the regime finally changes in Baghdad, and Saddam is dead, in custody or in exile, 70 years of Iraqi independence will end, political authority will pass into the hands of George W. Bush and Western rule will be planted on Arab soil for the first time since the French and British left the region in the middle of the last century. What then happens to Iraq's 23 million people, its oil and its relations with its neighbors will remain the personal responsibility of Mr. Bush and his successors in the White House until one of them chooses to surrender it. This dramatic expansion of Bush's job description, little discussed during the long months of argument at the United Nations over Iraqi weapons, will be the immediate practical result of an American military victory and the occupation of Iraq by the Army's Central Command. As the military commander in chief, the president will have virtually unlimited power to change and rebuild Iraq as he sees fit." __Bush Will Provoke Suicide Attacks with Invasion NY Times reports, "Tom Ridge joined federal law enforcement officials today in warning that suicide bombings like those that have killed hundreds in Israel are inevitable in the US and will be difficult to prevent. His warning, in a television interview, came as Mr. Ridge and his Dept. stepped up preparations to raise the nation's terrorism alert level to 'high risk' [orange] out of concern over the possibility of terrorist attacks linked to an invasion of Iraq. In his interview with Fox News, Mr. Ridge said, 'we have to prepare for the inevitability' of suicide bombings in the US. 'The No. 1 thing we seek to do is to prevent any kind of terrorist attack,' he said, 'but that lone wolf, that isolated suicide bomber might be the most difficult to protect against.' He added, 'We'll never be immune from those kinds of attacks.'" So why are we INVITING attacks by INVADING Iraq??? Impeach Bush Now! __The 'Axis of Empire' Meets in Azores to Launch the 21st Century US Empire Portugal, Spain, and England were the greatest empires of the past 5 centuries, until the US emerged from WWII as the world's dominant power. Although FDR and subsequent Presidents rejected the idea of outright US imperialism, they nevertheless used the CIA to impose semi-imperial rule by overthrowing democratic governments and imposing right-wing dictators - including Iraq's Baathist regime. So the gathering of these 4 nations in the Azores can rightly be called the "Axis of Empire." This meeting is the last act of Bush's massive charade of make-believe "negotiations" whose only object is to provide international support for the destruction of the United Nations and the formal creation of the US Empire, starting in Iraq. BushBlairAznar were forced to meet in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean because the people of the world have united behind a single word: NO! __Even the Ultimatum is Bushit! In the Azores, "Bush said that Monday would be 'a moment of truth for the world' and urged other nations to support 'the immediate and unconditional disarmament' of Saddam Hussein. But diplomats said it was not immediately clear what the US, Britain and Spain wanted from the Security Council on Monday. Washington could call for a vote on a resolution that would set an ultimatum for Iraq to disarm within days or face war. The current resolution would set the deadline for Monday, but U.S. officials said that could be extended briefly. The US also could abandon the initiative... U.S. and British diplomats were doubtful their resolution would be put to a vote Monday... Bush made no commitment to call a vote, change the deadline or withdraw the resolution. Bush said last week he would seek a council vote even if it appeared doomed to defeat. Under U.N. rules, the US and Britain must give a 24-hour notice before calling a Security Council vote." __Bush Wants to Tear Up the UN Charter, Just Like He Tore Up the U.S. Constitution The UN Charter begins: "WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED - to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and - to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and - to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, AND FOR THESE ENDS - to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and - to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and - to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest..." Which part of PEACE does Bush not understand? __Bush's W-ar on the UN Has Made it More Relevant, Not Less William Pfaff writes, "Iraq is a crisis for the US because UN members see this prospect of unchecked American world power being tested. What they have seen is a US that insists on its way and no other. They have seen it unable to provide a rationale for its Iraq policy that can convince the majority of the democracies, its natural supporters. They have seen it intemperately denounce those who criticize it, and threaten serious and damaging material retaliation against the democracies that actively oppose it on the Iraq issue - France, Germany, Belgium, and Turkey. They have, in short, seen Washington demand submission, and take steps to obtain this through force... Unchecked American global power has precipitously lost appeal... [Bush] has managed in this Iraq affair to undermine if not destroy the American offer of benevolent and responsible international hegemony. It has made the UN seem more relevant than ever." __When Bombs Fall, U.S. Will Join Ranks of War Criminals Robert Scheer: "The maiming or killing of a single Iraqi civilian in an attack by the US would constitute a war crime, as well as a profound violation of the Christian notion of just war. That is because the report of the UN inspectors has made indelibly clear that disarmament is working... Terrifyingly, we are hours away from doing irreparable harm to our democratic heritage by launching a risky, arrogant crusade that most of the world opposes, all at the behest of a small coterie of neoconservative ideologues plotting to remake the world in their image and who unfortunately have the ear of our accidental resident. All this in the name of the victims of 9/11, an attack carried out by Muslim fanatics originally embraced and trained by the US during the Cold War and whose proven ties have been with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. If we pursue this unjust war in the coming weeks, we can surely add the desecration of the victims' memory to the list of outrages we will perpetrate." __National Guard Deserter Bush's 'Double Jeopardy' for U.S. Troops Robert Parry writes for Consortium News: "George W. Bush orders U.S. forces to unleash his 'shock and awe' onslaught against Iraq without United Nations sanctions, he will be opening American servicemen to a kind of double jeopardy. First, they will be risking their lives in a combat strategy far riskier than is publicly acknowledged. Second, any significant taking of civilian life could leave both officers and enlisted men liable for future war-crimes charges. Bush, who himself avoided military service in Vietnam and appears to have gone AWOL from his Vietnam-era National Guard duty, is putting young American soldiers and their officers in an unprecedented predicament. They are being told to invade and to conquer a country that is in the process of disarming under U.N. supervision." __Why the World Opposes Bush's W-ar LA Times writes, "What Americans see largely as a campaign to eliminate one Middle Eastern dictator -- Saddam Hussein -- is viewed by many in Europe and especially the Arab world as nothing less than a watershed in global affairs. They worry that America's self-declared right to launch preemptive wars, its willingness to dismiss the UN, to shuck allies and make plans to invade and occupy another country -- all amid talk of remaking the Mideast -- are the beginning of the end of the post-World War II order and the start of an American Imperium. Indeed, for a growing number of observers outside the US, the central issue in the crisis is no longer Iraq or Hussein. It is America and how to deal with its disproportionate strength as a world power. What the Bush administration describes as a war of liberation is widely seen abroad -- even by those who condemn the Iraqi president -- as a war of occupation." __Bush's W-ar Could Rank with Pol Pot's Genocide Marc Ash writes, "What George W. Bush and Tony Blair are planning is the greatest act of human slaughter since Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge orchestrated the Cambodian genocide in the mid 1970s. That act killing some 1.5 to 2 million largely defenseless and quite peaceful Cambodians. Civilian Iraq is utterly defenseless and totally unprepared for the carnage that is about to be visited upon them. It is murder plain and simple, murder on an unimaginable scale. There is no 'war' looming, no 'conflict' with Iraq, and no 'standoff.' What exists is a vast military force poised to inflict death and destruction on a major population center. Those who live there will attempt to defend themselves, but they will fail, and the dead will cover the ground like a fallen forest. Should this act of insanity proceed, it will stand as one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever recorded." __W's Wanton W-ar of Lies Michael Hammerschlag writes, "Again and again GB2 has tried to tie Saddam with Osama: Saddam supports him, he gives Al Qaida refuge, he's about to finish a nuclear bomb. Lies, damned lies, and whatever the third one is. OBL hates Saddam, he is an unbeliever who's annihilated Moslem leaders along with any others who could lift a finger in opposition... OBL would boil him in oil, if given his druthers. Trumped up evidence, repackaged long past its freshness date, till it stinks with the corruption of this regime. The truth is- Bush planned to invade Iraq, to outdo and avenge his father, to kill a persistent irritant, to guarantee a stable source of oil, to cow the worldâ?¦ before he became President. All rationales, all reasons, all explanations, are window dressing on a clumsy thuggish foreign policy, one opposed by 98% of the world. If Saddam was stripped naked and staked to the ground in the western Iraq desert, it wouldn't be enough to stop Bush's Wanton War." __Daniel Ellsberg on British Whistleblower Arrest in U.N. Spying Scandal "The arrest came shortly after the Observer newspaper in London revealed a top-secret memo from the U.S. National Security Agency outlining plans for spying on U.N. delegates, part of U.S. efforts to gain approval for a new Security Council resolution on Iraq. Daniel Ellsberg, who authored the new book 'Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers,' said today: 'This leak is potentially more significant than the release of the Pentagon Papers, since it is extraordinarily timely. More officials who know -- as I did in 1964-65 -- that the president [sic] , and their bosses, are lying us into a wrongful, reckless, unnecessary war should consider doing right now, before the bombs are falling, what I wish I had done at a comparable point, in the months before the onset of the Rolling Thunder bombing: going to Congress and the press with documents that undercut official lies. There is still time to avert this invasion with sufficiently comprehensive truth-telling." __Cheney's W-ar is a BIG LIE about WMD Vice Emperor Cheney spent a full hour on Meet the Press justifying the US conquest of Iraq. When pressed, Cheney's reason for W-ar was his claim that Saddam is "REBUILDING" his WMD arsenal - chemical, biological, and nuclear - and would share it with Al Qaeda. For 4 months, UN inspectors have combed Iraq and found ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE of any active WMD program. Every shred of "evidence" that Bush's CIA has provided has been proved to be a manufactured fraud. Mohamed ElBaradei has flatly declared that Iraq has no nuclear program, and evidence to the contrary was forged - which Cheney simply denied. Hans Blix has reported no active chemical or biological program, and is working with Iraq to account for pre-1991 stocks. Nevertheless, Tim Russert never once challenged Cheney's BIG LIE that Saddam is "REBUILDING" WMD's. We MUST stop Bush's Big Lie W-ar! __15 Reasons Why Karl Rove Wants W-ar BuzzFlash writes, "1. The permanent war public relations strategy is, in large part, aimed at keeping any of the numerous Bush domestic disasters off of the political table. War supersedes even an economy down the tubes. 2. Keeping the threat of terror simmering on the burner through ginned up and meaningless terror alerts scares Americans into supporting Bush, because they seemingly have no option, since they believe they are under a constant terrorist threat. This leads to a sort of 'Stockholm Syndrome' for the nation as a whole. Most Americans look to their psychological tormentor for protection from an outside threat perceived as the more serious of two evils... [But] the number one reason is that it has no Plan 'B.' In a just-published book about Karl Rove, 'Bush's Brain,' a Democratic political consultant is quoted as saying about the Bush Cartel: 'They just picked a war they could win....It has to be the most evil political calculation in American history.'" PentaPost Champions US Imperialism The Pentagon Post is mad at Bush - not for launching a criminal W-ar of aggression in Iraq, but for doing it so clumsily that we have just two allies. PentaPost insists the W-ar is about "disarming" Iraq, thus ignoring the proven fact that Iraq has no nuclear program left, and the nearly-proven fact that Iraq has no chemical or biological weapons either. Iraq is the first application of the PentaPost doctrine, which declares: "The United States is ready to use its strength to face threats to world peace that it tried to contain or ignore in the first decade after the Cold War." In other words, the entire world belongs to the US, and our military can conquer any nation it pleases as long as it incants the magic words "world peace." Excuse us, but that's exactly the reason the United Nations was created. There's only one word for such a unilateralist doctrine - Imperialism. __French TV Exposes the 'Triumph of Wolfowitz' Le Monde reports on "The Triumph of Wolfowitz," which was broadcast on France's Arte TV channel - and would never been shown on the censored US media. "The central figure of this upheaval is Paul Wolfowitz, number two in the Pentagon, whose ideas won out among the top American administrators, during the winter 2001-2002. Wolfowitz had put them in writing, in 1992, in a memorandum from the time of the first Gulf war. They had then been considered dangereous by the 41st president, George Bush Senior, and publicly rejected. Wolfowitz affirms that it is time to give up on the doctrines of "containment", characteristic of the cold war, and to resort to "preemptive" actions against the new enemies of America, perceived like an "axis of Evil" (Iraq, Iran, North Korea). It is even necessary to go further, since the disappearance of the USSR allows it. It is no more a question of managing the crises, but of reorganizing the world, by imposing the American values everywhere." __Bush Started Iraq Invasion Planning at First NSC Meeting Bush campaigned on a "humble" foreign policy. But at his very first National Security Council meeting, he ordered the Pentagon to begin planning an invasion of Iraq, according to Mark Matthews of the Baltimore Sun. The younger Bush entered office "determined to do something about the Saddam problem," a White House official agrees. "Those around the table, including the president [sic], were clearly regime-change supporters," said another official at the meeting, who declined to be identified. "On Sept. 17 2001, Wolfowitz pushed the idea [of invading Iraq] at a Camp David meeting Bush held with top aides, according to Woodward and others. But Powell said it would unsettle the anti-terror coalition he was building. Cheney said the timing was not right." Thus, any link to 9-11 is utter Bushit. __CIA Put Saddam's Brutal Baathist Party in Power in 1963 Roger Morris writes, "Both supporters and critics of US policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass: America's dealings with Saddam Hussein... began some two decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's. Both sides are mistaken. Washington's policy traces an even longer, more shrouded and fateful history. Forty years ago, the CIA, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein... As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958." __Reagan-Bush Gave Green Light for US Company to Sell Biological Weapons to Saddam In December, the Berlin daily Die Tageszeitung published the scrubbed portions of Iraq's WMD report, which identified the US and European companies that supplied Saddam with all of his weapons. Three months later, the NY Times is catching up on the biological weapons that were supplied by American Type Culture Collection of Manassas VA, and the Pasteur Institute in Paris. What excuse do the companies offer? "A.T.C.C. could never have shipped these samples to Iraq without the Department of Commerce's approval for all requests," said VP Nancy J. Wysocki. It's convenient to blame anonymous bureaucrats, but a decision to sell lethal biological weapons to Iraq - at the very time Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iran - had to be made at the VERY TOP of the Reagan-Bush administration. We demand an investigation of ALL top Reagan-Bush officials - including Bush Sr., SecDef Dick Cheney, Iraq Special Envoy Donald Rumsfeld, and SecState James Baker! __Blast From the Past - IRAQGATE The Big One That (Almost) Got Away From the Columbia Journalism Review 1993: "'It is becoming increasingly clear,' said a grave Ted Koppel, 'that George Bush [Sr.], operating largely behind the scenes throughout the '80s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam into the aggressive power that the US ultimately had to destroy.' Is this accurate? Just about every reporter following the story thinks so. Most say that the so-called Iraqgate scandal is far more significant then either Watergate or Iran-contra, both in its scope and its consequences. And all believe that, with investigations continuing, it is bound to get bigger. Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage? Certainly, if you watched Nightline or read the London Financial Times or the Los Angeles Times, you saw this monster grow. But if you studied the news columns of The Washington Post or, especially, The New York Times, you practically missed the whole thing." __Russian Expert Predicts 500,000 Iraqi Dead in War Designed To Test Weapons The main purpose of the war is indeed being left out of the picture and nobody is saying anything about it. It's main purpose is the large-scale real-life testing by the United States of sophisticated models of precision weapons. That is the objective that they place first All the other aims are either incidental, or outright disinformation. For more than 10 years now the United States has conducted exclusively no-contact wars. In May 2001 George Bush Jr., delivering his first presidential speech to students at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, spoke of the need for accelerated preparation of the US Armed Forces for future wars. He emphasized that they should be high-tech Armed Forces capable of conducting hostilities throughout the world by the no-contact method. This task is now being carried out very consistently. __Kurds Fear Turkey More than Saddam Nick Kristof writes, "'The Turkish government has been far worse to the Kurds than Saddam has,' one well-educated Kurd said bitterly. His comment stunned me, for Turkey never used poison gas or conducted mass executions as Saddam did, but one Kurd after another said the same thing. They described past Turkish military techniques like raping wives in front of husbands, or assembling villagers to watch men being tied and dragged to their death behind tanks, and they noted that Turkey had been less tolerant of Kurdish language and culture than Saddam... If our claims to be acting on behalf of the people of Iraq are to have credibility and moral legitimacy, we must try to stop Kurds from being slaughtered not only by our enemies in Baghdad, but also by our friends in Ankara. And we should certainly not acquiesce in such steps as a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq, which could trigger a new spiral of clashes and repression in Turkey." __Musharraf Regime Teeters on Brink of W-ar Vilani Peiris writes, "Large antiwar protests in Pakistani cities over the past two weekends have further undermined the increasingly shaky position of military strongman President Pervez Musharraf. His administration is caught between pressure from Washington for Pakistan to support a resolution in the UN Security Council giving the go ahead for military action, on the one hand, and the popular sentiment against any war, on the other. Over the past two Sundays - March 2 and 9 - tens of thousands have gathered in Karachi and Rawalpindi to demonstrate against the war and demand that Musharraf oppose the Bush administration's plans. While the rallies were organised by Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six Islamic fundamentalist parties, hostility to war is far broader...Qazi Hussein Ahmad, head of Jamaat-e Islami, one of the MMA partners, warned Musharraf at the time that 'the fury and anger of the people will turn on the government if they back the US war'." __Bombing His Way Into the Jaws of Armageddon Buzzflash writes, "Of all the Bush Cartel lies and betrayals, of all the breaches of faith, Bush's usurpation of God to advance his political agenda is perhaps the most heinous of his sins. By asserting that he can better discern God's will than the leaders of his own faith (Methodist), his father's faith (Episcopalian), his brother's faith (Catholic), and the leaders of virtually every denomination in the United States, short of the Southern Baptists and Evangelicals, Bush is committing the ultimate arrogance. They all oppose the war that Bush claims is being committed in the name of God and Jesus. Bush stands virtually alone in claiming that God is on the side of his little war... The issue of Bush's alleged God and faith are so intertwined with every aspect of his horrifying presidency that BuzzFlash.Com will be running a multi-part series over the next week entitled, 'Bombing His Way Into the Jaws of Armageddon.'" __Why Do 'Christians' Want to Rumble? Elisabeth Bushlover writes, "George W. Bush is turning out to be one of the most openly religious presidents in American history. He prays daily. He delivers speeches and national radio broadcasts that sound like sermons. He oversees a White House full of Bible study groups. Most important, he favors lowering the barriers between church and state by giving government money to religious charities. But in recent weeks, the leaders of the many mainline American churches opposed to a war with Iraq - including the resident's own church, the United Methodist - have grown frustrated that they have not been able to see Mr. Bush to express their anxieties. The group represents nearly every faith and denomination, including Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists and mainstream evangelicals. The Southern Baptist Convention, conservative evangelicals and some Pentecostal leaders are supporting the resident, while Jewish leaders are divided." __Bush's Religious Delusion is Symptomatic of a Dry Drunk Michael O'McCarthy writes, "In some of the more 'willful' cases, the dry drunk internalizes a concept of 'God's Will' to justify willful behavior. This mental obsession that the alcoholic now is possessed with the knowledge of God's Will allows the unrecovered alcoholic to justify ego driven, highly aggressive attitudes and behaviors... The alcoholic who does not enter a collective program of recovery, where their attitudes and behaviors are contrasted with, confronted by, or helped by those of other recovering, become more and more convinced of the righteousness of their behavior and only surround their lives with those who support, or enable them... Bush shows every sign of a mental obsession that is rendering him dysfunctional. This obsession that he alone is right in his view of the world is driven by the complex ingredients of egomania and inferiority symptomatic to that found in the medical diagnostic description of the illness of alcoholism." __George W. Queeg Paul Krugman writes, "Aboard the U.S.S. Caine, it was the business with the strawberries that finally convinced the doubters that something was amiss with the captain. Is foreign policy Bush's quart of strawberries?... More people than you would think... don't just question the competence of Mr. Bush and his inner circle; they believe that America's leadership has lost touch with reality... The administration's eagerness to believe that an Iraqi nuclear program does exist has led to a series of embarrassing debacles, capped by the case of the forged Niger papers, which supposedly supported that claim. At this point it is clear that deposing Saddam has become an obsession, detached from any real rationale. What really has the insiders panicked, however, is the irresponsibility of Mr. Bush and his team, their almost childish unwillingness to face up to problems that they don't feel like dealing with right now." __Pat Buchanan Really Wants 'a Republic, Not an Empire' - especially not Bush's! We live in strange times. One of the strongest and clearest voices against the insane Bush neoconservative war party is Pat Buchanan. The Bushies not only hijacked the election and America, they hijacked their own party: "Whose War?A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interest." __Conservatives Begin Debate over US Imperialism BuchananMag writes, "Only recently has it become commonplace (outside of the Marxist Left) to call this new policy imperialist. Bush himself still shuns the word, telling a Veterans Day audience, 'We have no territorial ambitions. We don't seek an empire.' But a surprising number of foreign policy analysts, in the neocon orbit and beyond, have picked up the 'I' word and run with it. Max Boot... writes in the Weekly Standard about 'troubled lands [that] cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.' Kristol co-author Robert Kagan prefers the term 'hegenomy' to empire, and many neoconservatives stress that the new American imperialism will differ from the bad old European sort because it will be welcomed by its subjects. The American Enterprise Institute's Joshua Muravchik has written a primer on 'exporting democracy' whose phrases now pop up regularly in Bushite rhetoric." __When Even Poppy Says Go Slow - George, You're in Trouble, Big Trouble Wayne Madsen writes: "Bush...has finally done it. He has Daddy Bush mad at him. In a recent speech at Tufts University, the elder Bush warned his son against a unilateral war against Iraq. Bush 41 must also have been on the receiving end of some heated phone calls from world leaders tired of the pomposity and bellicosity of the Junior Bush. Bush Pere called for the United States to mend fences with allies such as France and Germany...It could be that [Bush Jr.] is mentally incapable of carrying out his duties. In such case, the 25th Amendment is very clear on a course of action. But Junior's problems actually lie with his closest aides, those who manipulate him to carry out their sordid agendas...the regime in Washington has started a fire that is spreading rapidly through the corridors of power in Washington, state capitals, foreign capitals, intelligence headquarters, corporate board rooms, royal palaces, and even into the sanctified halls of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome." __Joking or JPN (Just Plan Nuts)? Bruce Willis Asked Bush if He Could Go after Saddam! "But the grand poobah of Bush backers has to be Bruce Willis, whose latest film, Tears of The Sun, has him playing a loyal veteran officer of an elite Navy S.E.A.L unit. Bruce claims he even asked the resident to dispatch him as a secret weapon to get Saddam Hussein. According to the star, he would've been the first in line if only the army would allow him. 'I thought about signing up,' Bruce said, who never really had the option, 'but my friends told me I was too old...I called the White House, called Resident Bush and asked what I could do.' Instead of getting his orders to deploy, the resident tactfully suggested that the aging actor would be better off adopting some kids instead of leading the siege. The resident has since tapped Bruce to serve as a national spokesperson for children in foster care." Maybe Geraldo can teach Bruce how to quickdraw? Also, check out Van Damme's ignorance, Kid Rock's ignorant bravado, and Rob Lowe - what the hell happened to him? __They Even Shut up the Dixie Chicks The Dixie Chicks are drawing criticism from country music fans for remarks singer Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London. Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Angry phone calls flooded Nashville radio station WKDF-FM on Thursday, some demanding a boycott of the Texas trio's music. The group released a statement saying they've been overseas for several weeks and "the anti-American sentiment that has unfolded here is astounding. While we support our troops, there is nothing more frightening than the notion of going to war with Iraq and the prospect of all the innocent lives that will be lost." Note: A huge rightwing campaign against them forced them to apologize. Let them know some people support them. ~Did You Miss These?~ Just a Reminder - Tuesday, Nov. 04, 2003 Ravyne Is Moving - Friday, Oct. 17, 2003 The Mission - Sunday, Oct. 12, 2003 Siege Heil - Thursday, Oct. 09, 2003 Litany Of Lies - Wednesday, Oct. 08, 2003 |
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