BOY BOMB VICTIM STRUGGLES AGAINST DESPAIR,
by Samia Nakhoul, Daily Mirror (UK), Apr 8 2003
"Ali Ismaeel Abbas, 12, was fast asleep when war shattered his life. A missile obliterated his home and most of his family, leaving him orphaned, badly burned - and blowing off both his arms. With tears running down his face he asked: 'Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors can get me another pair of hands? If I don't get a pair of hands I will commit suicide. I wanted to be an army officer when I grow up but not any more. Now I want to be a doctor - but how can I? I don't have hands.' Lying in a Baghdad hospital, an improvised metal cage over his chest to stop his burned flesh touching the bedclothes, he said: 'It was midnight when the missile fell on us. My father, my mother and my brother died. My mother was five months pregnant. Our neighbours pulled me out and brought me here unconscious. Our house was just a poor shack. Why did they want to bomb us?'"

A nation divided, with no bridges left to build In Austin, Texas, Robert Fisk sees at first hand the vast gulf between the pro- and anti-war movements in the United States,
Independent (UK), February 16, 2003
"The show was over, recorded for one of those nice liberal local American TV cable channels – this time in Texas – where everyone agrees that war is wrong, that George Bush is in the hands of right-wing Christian fundamentalists and pro-Israeli neo- conservatives. Don Darling, the TV host, had just turned to thank me for my long and flu-laden contribution. Then it happened. Cameraman number two came striding towards us through the studio lights. 'I want to thank you, sir, for reminding us that the British had a lot to do with the chaos in the Middle East, he said. 'But I have something else to say.' His voice rose 10 decibels, his bare arms bouncing up and down at his sides, his shaven head struck forward pugnaciously. 'Yeah, I wanna tell you that the cause of this problem is the fucking medieval Arabs and their wish to enslave us all – and I tell you that it is because we want to save the Jews from the fucking savage Arabs who want to throw them into the sea that we are about to fuck Saddam.' There was a pause as Don Darling looked at the man, aghast. 'And that,' cameraman number two concluded, 'is the fucking truth.' Darling called to the studio manager. 'Where does this man come from?' he demanded to know. The lady from the University of Texas – organiser of this gentle little pow-wow – advanced on to the studio floor in horror: 'Who is this person?' I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. All of a sudden, our nice anti-war chat had been brought to a halt by a spot of redneck reality ... The people with whom these liberal academics should be building bridges are the truck-drivers and bell-hops and Amtrak crews, the poor blacks and the cops whose families provide the cannon fodder for America's overseas military adventures. But that, of course, would force intellectuals to emerge from the sheltered, tenured world of seminars and sit-ins and deal directly with those whose opinions they wish to change."

One US rule for Israel, another for Saddam. For 30 years, America has acted hypocritically in wielding its UN veto,
Observer (UK), February 16, 2003
"Britain and America may have to dilute their demands if they are to persuade the Security Council to consider a new resolution. Britain's Ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, talked of 'offering new language', an altogether less belligerent approach than the run-up to the meeting in November when resolution 1441 was adopted. It seems likely that the US-UK strategy will rely on the threat in a paragraph at the end of 1441: 'The council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violation of its obligations.' All members of the council have already voted in favour of this. Whatever the form of words eventually accepted, the US and UK are still certain to meet opposition from Europe and in turn the hawks in the US government will condemn those urging a veto of early action in Iraq. So it is a good moment to remember America's own record of vetoing resolutions critical of Israel. To raise this at any time, but especially now, will inevitably be considered to be anti-American and anti-Israeli, possibly even anti-Semitic. But it is none of these things. There is long-term legal and political inconsistency between the treatment of Israel and other countries in the region, and the greatest weakness in America's case on Iraq is that it shows no signs of acknowledging its history of favouritism. In the past 30 years, America has vetoed 34 resolutions that criticise Israel and seek to restrain its behaviour. These failed most recently in a demand for the restoration of land seized from the Palestinians and a cessation of construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Even in the relatively minor case from November 1990, when the UN wanted to send three Security Council members to Rishon Lezion, where an Israeli gunman had shot seven Palestinian workers, the US vetoed the wishes of the other 14 countries on the council. Over three decades Arabs have come to understand that the cards are stacked against them. What is important, but rarely understood, in the United States is that each case against Israel seems just as compelling in Arab eyes as the need for Saddam's disarmament is to George Bush. Now that America wants the permanent members of the Security Council to vote for a new resolution, or at least seek a definition of 'serious consequences' in 1441 as meaning military action, Europeans should remind the US of this appalling record of bias and seek to link the discussion about Iraq to the situation between Israel and the Palestinians. In a way, the resolutions stifled by Washington in the past 30 years were unnecessary because so many of the issues raised are covered by a resolution which was supported by the US in November 1967 - the famous resolution 242, which underlines that Israel must return territory acquired in war. This is still active, but 35 years on the Israelis remain in material breach of 242, a breach made all the more flagrant by continued building and settling in the occupied territories. Despite Israeli denials, the message is clear. Israel is not prepared to exchange conquered territory for peace and would appear to prefer to become embroiled in a dirty war with terrorist groups rather than give up a square inch to the Palestinians. Israeli defiance of 242 and the subsequent resolutions passed with US help that reaffirm it have been a chronic destabiliser in the Middle East. The Israelis will not shift and the US has done almost nothing to make them. In fact, its financial and military support has achieved the opposite of compliance. If France or Russia had undermined Security Council resolutions against Iraq to this degree, we can only imagine the indignation and rage of men such as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. So Americans want it both ways. That is not unusual for the world's dominant power, but to claim that a disarmament of Saddam should be undertaken primarily to secure peace in the region is to neglect the permanent threat to peace caused by Israel's intransigence. There are many good arguments for toppling Saddam, especially the treatment of his 23 million subjects, but to Arabs they will not carry much weight until the West squares up to Israel and insists on compliance of 242. Those who make policy know this is right, but say it is also unrealistic. Israel has nuclear weapons and it is a fact of life that America is forced to intervene in the Middle East to prevent challenges to Israel's regional dominance. It would, of course, be far more dangerous for Israel to act overtly on its own behalf as the great military power that it now is. If America is to be Israel's chaperone and agent, it cannot also be its policeman."

[Rising grassroots outrage against the "pre-emptive" war for Israel.]
The great unheard finally speak out,
Observer (UK), February 16, 2003
"The age of apathy stops here, between a Thomas Cook branch and the Bloomsbury Diner, where the bodies [hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters in London] are jammed together too tightly to move. In the minutes before the march begins, anyone will tell you why protest has supplanted politics. Some of these twenty-first century Chartists with mobile phones are veterans of the Vietnam demonstrations. Some are too young to remember the Cold War. What unites them is anger against Bush and Blair, but mainly Blair. Everyone I talk to says that he will not have their vote again. It is odd to think that these are the sloths who could not be prised from their armchairs when elections rolled round and who hit the remote at the first flicker of any BBC political coverage that wasn't Have I Got News For You. These people, in New Labour's analysis, were the inert of the Earth. And here they are, out in their hundreds of thousands, quoting Hans Blix verbatim and defying a Prime Minister who longed to galvanise them and must now regret becoming the Frankenstein of the protesting classes. Political leaders hate crowds. Mass meetings have been supplanted by leaks and soundbites. In the fractious build-up to war, lonely societies are encouraged to become more solipsistic. A fearful population, hiding behind its anthrax-proofed windows, is also tractable. There is nothing threatening to government about citizens bickering over the last roll of duct tape in Wal-Mart. British marchers have spurned isolation for solidarity, and fear for fury. Their momentum came almost from nowhere. Unlike the Jubilee-trippers, the Soham mobsters and even the Countryside Alliance, they bore no social or political barcode. Theirs was, and is, a movement without a leader. Its members belong to no obvious political caste. Labour voters who march are deracinated from their leaders, and the Tories have none worth worrying about. Their mission, to halt the war, is by definition negative, and their goal unattainable, bar a miracle. Those hoping to recalibrate the Prime Minister's moral compass face disappointment, or even despair. Few predicted weeks ago that so many people would turn out to stop the unstoppable, and I was certainly not among them. The surprise has been the altruism of the protesters, and the size of the vacuum they fill. Blair's natural supporters and opponents have registered their opposition, and seen it spurned ... Today's protesters are starved of inspiration and data. In place of a charismatic leader, they have the belief that politicians are lying. They have no great freedom fighter to support; only Saddam. You could not sell washing powder on that basis, let alone a pacifist cause that may crush a Prime Minister. Yet the movement has taken off and its subscribers, on yesterday's evidence, are not a reissued set of hoary peaceniks. These are organised people with clear aims. They want a peaceful solution for Iraq. If that is not forthcoming, Blair will be punished accordingly."

HYSTERICAL? WE'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN,,
The London Daily Mirror, February 17 2003
"When the Daily Mirror launched its campaign against the war on Iraq we were dismissed as lefty peaceniks, just opposing military action for the sake of it. As the campaign continued the abuse intensified - we were accused of being 'hysterical,' of 'cynically chasing new readers, of over-reacting'. The crescendo of negativity reached a nadir with our BLOOD ON HIS HANDS front page, powerfully illustrating John Pilger's ferocious attack on Tony Blair for the impending slaughter of Iraqi civilians. This was crass, offensive and way too personal, our critics said. Yet it was the exact same phrase Mr Blair used to denigrate the 1.5 million people who protested in London on Saturday. What is now absolutely clear is that the Daily Mirror is right about this war. And Tony Blair is wrong. The Prime Minister is not a stupid man so he must realise in his astute head that he is beaten logically, politically and democratically. The only support he has in this country is from a few lapdogs in the Cabinet - take a bow, John Prescott - the Tory leadership and newspapers owned by George W Bush admirers living in America. Those one and a half million people who marched on Saturday are not the only ones who feel war would be wrong, needless and a total disaster. Each of them represents many more. It was the biggest demonstration this country has ever seen. It rivalled the magnificent anti-Vietnam marches in the United States in the 70s. In the past, protesters have been sneered at as long-haired hippies. That couldn't be said about Saturday's demonstrators. Young and old, working, middle, and upper class... Countless thousands of ordinary people united on one fundamental principle - war against Iraq at this time is wrong, wrong, wrong ... Having lost the argument, it is Tony Blair who is plunging down the road of hysteria. Playing the morality card is not just offensive and ridiculous, but dangerous. Where would it end? Having taken out Saddam, where would the US-British axis turn to next? Which other objectionable, tyrannical regimes would become targets for our bombs and invasion forces? Will they be sent in to remove Zimbabwe's President Mugabe for driving his people into starvation? How about the terrible anti-human-rights record of the Chinese Government - would we take on their immense population? Or what about the attitude of the Saudis to women and human rights? Or Israel's defiance of UN resolutions? It all smacks of one rule for Iraq and another for everyone else. We should be told if we have just heard the Blair Doctrine - coming second-hand from the dangerous men who run today's White House - which will become our foreign and military policy at the start of the 21st Century. The world has one omnipotent power, whose military spending outstrips every other nation put together. That country, unlike those in Europe, has hardly suffered from attack. Yet this White House wants to bombard Iraq and then who-knows-where next. And it wishes to take the United Kingdom along on its coat-tails, a conspirator to mass slaughter."

[Bolton, like so many high level war-mongers for Israel in the Bush administration, is Jewish]
U.S. OFFICIAL SAYS SYRIA, IRAN WILL BE DEALT WITH AFTER IRAQ WAR,
Ha'aretz (Israel), February 18, 2003
"U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials on Monday that he has no doubt America will attack Iraq, and that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterwards. Bolton, who is undersecretary for arms control and international security, is in Israel for meetings about preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. In a meeting with Bolton on Monday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that Israel is concerned about the security threat posed by Iran. It's important to deal with Iran even while American attention is turned toward Iraq, Sharon said."

A Seattle 'Outlaw' Activist Brings Medicine to Iraqis,
[Jewish] Forward, July 26, 2002
"In November 1997, Bert Sacks felt he needed to spend several days in Auschwitz. Like most Jewish visitors, the 60-year-old Boston native wanted to understand, in whatever way possible, the fate that befell his European brethren. But it is reasonable to guess that he was one of the few Jewish visitors who, while walking past the lagers and crematoria, began to think about the children of Iraq ... Of course, at a time when a seemingly imminent war on Iraq tops the political and media agenda, Sacks is pretty much on his own in his crusade against what he calls 'one of the greatest humanitarian violations of our time.' He is even an outlaw, according to the administration. Sacks has made eight trips to Iraq since 1996 with fellow activists, each time bringing thousands of dollars worth of medicines. In 1998, the Treasury Department accused him of violating American sanctions against Iraq, under which it is illegal to take any aid into the country without government approval ... He then came across a June 1991 front-page article in the Washington Post in which Pentagon officials were quoted as saying American forces had purposefully destroyed the Iraqi civilian infrastructure, including the electric grid, in order to further the effect of the sanctions. The article also cited a study by a Harvard group concluding that 170,000 Iraqi children were going to die as a result ... He believes American Jews should be especially sensitive to the suffering of the Iraqi population. Instead, he contended, the American Jewish lobby is one of the main reasons — along with the presence of oilmen at the helm of the government and the Bush family legacy with Saddam — that the campaign to oust the Iraqi dictator has suddenly picked up so much steam after years of inertia. 'The pro-Israel lobby does not see that it is dangerous for Israel,' he said. 'An American strike will be seen in the Arab world as done on behalf of Israel.'"

[Typical Jewish political effort to toxify the anti-war, anti-Jewish racism, and anti-Israel movement as itself "hate."]
German peace movement criticized, [in the "Breaking News" section],
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 18, 2003
"The Berlin Association Against Anti-Semitism accused the German peace movement of anti-Semitism. The group issued the criticism following a demonstration Saturday of some 500,000 anti-war protesters in Berlin. 'From the start of the demonstration, it became clear that groups were involved whose worldview includes nationalism, racism and anti-Semitism,' said the letter, signed by about 100 scholars, Jewish religious and communal leaders, and activist groups from Germany and abroad. 'Revisionist banners and anti-Israel chants were heard. Israel was depicted as pulling the strings in the Iraq conflict; its politicians were cursed as ‘child killers,’ and a few flags of the Islamic extremist Hamas and Hezbollah groups were waved,” the letter added."

EX-PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER BACKS OUR FIGHT,
Daily Mirror (UK), Feb 18 2003
"Former US President Jimmy Carter is backing the Daily Mirror's Not in My Name campaign. The Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the only US president since 1945 never to order American soldiers into war, endorsed our stance on war with Iraq, saying: 'You're doing a good job. I am glad about that. War is evil.' Carter, who will be 79 this year, is a pariah among hawkish Republicans and a hero for doveish Democrats, frequently denouncing wars and conflict whenever they flare ... Carter said an opinion poll which rated the US as the country posing greatest danger to world peace was a 'very embarrassing thing' ... He said: 'Some very embarrassing things have happened in this country. Time magazine in Europe did a public opinion poll on its website and over 350,000 people responded to the question, 'Which country poses the greatest threat to world peace?' North Korea received seven per cent of the votes, Iraq received eight per cent and the United States received 84 per cent' ... [H]e has described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the 'festering cancer and root cause of much anti-American sentiment'."

[Pro-Israel, Jewish toxification of the anti-war movement:]
London Peace Marchers Say: Long Live the Intifada,
By Julia Magnet, Front Page Magazine, February 19, 2003
“I was marching as an observer only, trying to gauge the mood of the 1 million or so who filled the streets from Haymarket to Hyde Park Corner [to protest an Iraq war]. Till now, I had always gotten a civil—if ill informed or garbled—answer. Dressed in a beautiful camelhair coat, with an opulent fur hat and Gucci shades, this lady interested me: her—at least to my NYC-bred mind—anti-Semitic placard hardly fit the refined figure she cut ... But the defaced flag of Israel carried by a bearded, middle-aged Scot took my breath away: a tank, dripping blood, was superimposed over the Star of David. I’d never seen that at a NYC student rally, and I never hope to ... Curiouser still was the weird amalgam of chants and slogans, the trivial next to the libelous: a BAGELS NOT BOMBS next to ZIONISM EQUALS RACISM. DOWN WITH ISRAEL/ BLIX LOOK INTO ISRAEL/ LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA. ISRAEL BROKE 69 UN RESOLUTIONS and JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE FIRST jostled with MAKE TEA NOT WAR and TWAT: THE WAR AGAINST TERROR. A group of veiled girls in black chadors chanted, 'Bush, Bush we know you; Daddy was a killer, too,' next to trust-fund trendies in specially made T-shirts: MY BUSH MAKES LOVE NOT WAR. Where else would full-bearded Muslims, in hajji caps and white traditional dress, march next to the gay alliance, Iraqi flags vying with rainbow flags? But one thing unified the march: a rabid hatred of Israel."

A 'TOXIC' MEME? Israel's 'amen corner' is cornered,
by Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, February 19, 2003
"Who benefits from our rush to war?... The answer is clearly Israel ... The American conquest of Iraq will eliminate a threat to Israeli security, and pave the way for the extension of the war against Israel's other enemies in the region, notably Syria. This strategic perspective was clearly outlined in a 1996 paper prepared for the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies' 'Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000,' entitled 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.' The ideas put forward in this remarkable document emerged from a collaborative effort that included Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser. The idea was to dissuade the Israelis from going along with the Oslo accord, and outline a new Israeli strategic vision that would not only rid them of their Palestinian problem, but give them 'breathing space' ... The authors of this paper were addressing themselves to then Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, but their prescription for a new Israeli policy bears an eerie resemblance to America's post-9/11 stance in the Middle East, and the world at large. And no wonder. Richard Perle, from his perch at the Pentagon Defense Policy Board, is the Lenin of the War Party. Douglas Feith is an Undersecretary of Defense, and David Wurmser is a special assistant to Undersecretary of State for arms control and international security affairs John Bolton. Bolton's recent visit to Israel shows us how far advanced the ideas presented in that 1996 paper have come. Ha'aretz reports: 'U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials on Monday that he has no doubt America will attack Iraq, and that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterwards.' Phase one of Operation 'Clean Break' seems to be well underway, with its authors ensconced in the top echelons of the U.S. national security bureaucracy – and American troops circling Iraq in a ring of steel. Now the second phase is being cranked up, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon demands action against Syria and Iran. At a meeting with a delegation of U.S. congressmen the other day, Sharon handed the Americans their marching orders: 'Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday that Iran, Libya and Syria should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq.'"

Peres Questions France's U.N. Status,
macon.com, (Georgia), from Associated Press, February 20, 2003
"Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres on Thursday criticized France and Germany for their opposition to a U.S.-led attack on Iraq, and questioned France's status as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, also criticized recent mass demonstrations around the world against a possible U.S. attack on Iraq ... Peres also suggested another country replace France as a permanent member of the Security Council."

[Propaganda from the Left: A Jew admits the Israeli root of the Bush administration's planned war with Iraq and declares Jewish domination of the "anti-war" movement, but completely dissimulates about Jewish hegemony throughout American culture. The Jewish Left forbids critical inquiry into the "J" word which, of course, is too close to home for comfort.]
It's Not Just the Oil,
by Stanley Heller, February 20, 2003
"Does a boxer fight with one hand tied behind his back? Why is the anti-war movement reluctant to talk about all the reasons for the drive to invade Iraq? Yes, major reasons for the permanent war drive are corporate greed for oil, dreams of political domination, and the lust to test weapons. But there's another one. Extreme right-wing forces from a foreign country and their powerful American backers are pushing the U.S. to invade Iraq and many other countries. I'm, of course, talking about Israel. On November 12 Zev Chafets wrote an incredibly revealing article in the New Haven Register. In an article headlined,'Disarming Iraq is only a start in Middle East' he explained that the Arab and Iranian cultures were 'irrational' and that nothing could be done to 'improve the collective mental health of Arab societies'. He proposed 'giving the Arabs and Iran a stark choice: they can have sovereignty or jihad (in its secular or religious forms), but not both.' He says 'disarming' but of course he means invading the 'Middle East's most hostile and deranged regimes.' Now, who is Zev Chafets? He was originally from Michigan, but went to Israel in 1967 and fought in their army and became director of the government press office under Prime Minister Menachem Begin. He's now a columnist for the New York Daily News. His ideas reflect the desires of Likud, the Israeli ruling party, one variant of extreme Israeli right wing opinion. The current party head, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is delirious for the war. In his mind, with Iraq leveled the Palestinians will give up hope and he then can go on to his other objectives, destroying the governments of Lebanon, Syria and Iran. How is this influencing the U.S.? It's not blatant. When you go to the Anti-Defamation League site you see nothing calling for war with Iraq. Sharon doesn't have to engage in noisy public appeals. The forces that demand the Iron Fist as the answer to all problems (the neocons) are at the highest levels of the U.S. government. When I was in Hebrew School I remember the teachers railing at the State Department for being filled with 'Arabists' who hated Israel. Nobody rational would say that today. The top officials and advisors to Bush are all rabid neocons. Some like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser actually worked for Israeli think tanks, writing grand papers for (Likud) Prime Minister Netanyahu on how the U.S. and Israel should take apart and reconstruct the Middle East. Do we have to talk about Congress? Just a few days ago the House voted near unanimously to congratulate the Israeli government on its wonderful fair election. Here's a government that is in material breach of the Security Council 'demand' that it remove its forces from the Palestinian cities and Congress offers it hugs and kisses. Is it any wonder? The Israel Apartheid lobby just knocked off a four term Congresswoman (McKinney) as it has done to Senators and Congressmen so many times in the past. Years ago a wit called Congress 'Israeli Occupied Territory.' The joke is still right on the mark. Are we giving aid to anti-Semites by denouncing Likud-neocon influence? Not at all. In no way are we advancing the loony Nazi charge that 'the Jews' run the country. Sure, many neocons are Jews. Jews are also the leaders of the U.S. anti-war movement. The biggest Jewish organizations are backing Sharon, but most Jews don't support them. According to a 1995 survey by the American Jewish Committee only 22% of American Jews consider themselves Zionists. Most American Jews don't give a dime to the ADL or any other Israel-boosting organization. A small group of U.S. Jews are fanatical supporters of Israeli Apartheid and they shower it with money. But even though they seem to have the world by a string, it isn't so. When Israeli interests clash with American ruling class interests the tail does not wag the dog. [Ask Jonathan Pollard, who's sitting out a life term in Danbury prison] The U.S. ruling class is overwhelmingly Christian and the fundamentalism that inspires it is Pat Robertson's evangelism, not Jewish Orthodoxy. Our argument is angry but precise. When the Left denounces Sharon we mean Sharon. When we assail an obvious foreign influence we're not alleging some all-powerful secret plot. When we condemn Israeli apartheid we denounce a Jewish superiority state, not the idea that Jews should live in Israel and enjoy every human right. With that said we owe it to Americans to tell them the whole truth, that part of the war drive is being fueled by a wacko militarist clique from Israel and its interlocking bands of American Jewish and Christian supporters. We're told not to bring up Israeli influence on the U.S. because it would split our supporters. Well, who would it alienate? It would tick off a certain group of Jews, those Jews who are schizophrenic politically, people who can be liberal or radical on every cause except Israel."

Whacking Our Allies,
by Joe Sobran, Sobrans, February 20, 2003
"So today our right-wing gladiators — George Will, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the boys at National Review, to mention just a few — have put on their armor and war paint and are contemptuously heaving brickbats at our no-good, gutless, appeasing 'allies' (always spelling the word with derisive quotation marks). Good patriots are now expected to boycott Perrier and avoid dropping French and German phrases, so as to teach these effete European creeps the lesson that World War II apparently failed to get through their skulls. I can’t help noticing, however, that one U.S. ally (no quote marks necessary here) is exempt from all this riotous invective. That would be our only reliable ally in the Middle East — the one that has murdered American sailors and stolen American military secrets. To our heroic conservative journalists, Israel’s treachery to the United States since 1954, unlike France’s surrender to Hitler in 1940, is ancient history — down the Memory Hole. George Will spares Israel his exquisite sarcasms. Limbaugh and Hannity, discussing Ariel Sharon, stop yelling and speak in tones of hushed reverence. National Review doesn’t do long exposés of Israeli duplicity. When it comes to Israel, these patriots’ defiant courage suddenly deserts them. No, Israel is to be loved, honored, supported, and, above all, trusted. Our right-wing patriots aren’t alarmed, or even mildly curious, about Israel’s unacknowledged 'weapons of mass destruction' (including hundreds of nuclear weapons) or about how, exactly, it came by them. In its unhappy relations with the Arabs, including the Palestinian children who seem to attract so much Israeli ammunition, Israel is always right. The motives of Israel’s critics are always suspect. (Hitler’s name is occasionally mentioned, reminding us that any criticism of Jews leads inexorably to genocide.) When I hear our ferocious hawks whaling away (if hawks can be said to whale) at France or Belgium, I try to imagine them speaking of Israel with similar scorn, fury, and ridicule. The idea is laughable. If it turned out that the most outré of recent conspiracy theories was true — that Israel had somehow arranged the 9/11 attacks — I suspect that these hawks would be only momentarily embarrassed. In due course they would explain that Israel surely had understandable reasons, that the news media were making a big sensation out of the incident because of their anti-Israel bias, and that, still and all, Israel remained our staunch ally ... Behind all this courageous excoriation of our old Arab and European allies is a thorough jumpiness about Jews. A simple, sweaty fear. Our brave boys are scared to death. It’s as if they’d read the forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, believed every word of them, and concluded that the prudent course was to stay on the good side of the Elders of Zion."

Israel Sees War in Iraq as Path to Mideast Peace,
New York Times, February 24, 2003
"Israelis once believed that the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians would usher in a new Middle East of comfortable Israeli-Arab co-existence. With Oslo in tatters, they are now putting similar hopes in an American war on Iraq. Other nations may cavil, but Israel is so certain of the rightness of a war on Iraq that it is already thinking past that conflict to urge a continued, assertive American role in the Middle East. Shaul Mofaz, Israel's defense minister, told members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations last week that after Iraq, the United States should generate 'political, economic, diplomatic pressure' on Iran. 'We have great interest in shaping the Middle East the day after' a war, he said. It may seem paradoxical that the country most vulnerable to an Iraqi attack in the event of war is most eager for that war to begin. But Israel's military intelligence has concluded that the chances of a successful Iraqi missile strike here during this war, while ever-present, are small. Israel believes that Mr. Hussein seeks devastating weapons but has far less capacity for mayhem now than he did during the first Persian Gulf war, when he fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel. The army also believes its own national defenses are much improved. Israel regards Iran and Syria as greater threats, and it is hoping that once Mr. Hussein is dispensed with, the dominoes will start to tumble. According to this hope - or evolving strategy - moderates and reformers throughout the region will be encouraged to put new pressure on their regimes, not excepting that of Yasir Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah. 'The shock waves emerging from post-Saddam Baghdad could have wide-ranging effects in Tehran, Damascus and in Ramallah,' Efraim Halevy, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national security adviser, said in a speech in Munich this month. Until recently, Mr. Halevy was the chief of Mossad, Israel's spy agency ... Mr. Sharon has been alarmed by the recent efforts of the so-called Quartet - the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia - to intervene in the conflict here. Mr. Sharon would much prefer to deal only with the United States, regarding the other players as less supportive of Israel's interests. The top Israeli official said that the Quartet may prove a 'casualty' of an Iraqi war. 'The idea of using the Quartet as the great instrument of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - there are people in Washington who are going to say, 'What do we need these people for?' he said."

Arafat warns Israel will exploit any war,
Gulf News [from |Reuters | February 26, 2003
"Israel will use a war on Iraq as cover to evict Palestinians and destroy holy sites, Yasser Arafat warned yesterday. Arafat, addressing the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit by videolink, warned his people would pay a 'heavy price' for any war. 'The Palestinian people, who are suffering the greatest hardships as a result of the Israeli aggression against and occupation of their land and properties, are going to pay a heavy price if this war is waged,' the Palestinian leader told the summit in Arabic. 'The Israeli government is the first in line to push for this war in order to exploit the situation while the world is busy with Iraq,' he said. Arafat, who is unable to attend the 116-nation NAM conference here because Israel has reportedly refused to guarantee his right to return to his territory, also called for Israelis suspected of 'war crimes' to be put on trial. Arafat said certain Israelis were guilty of "the confiscation of land, the transfer of nationals of the occupying power to that land and the building of settlements, which constitute war crimes with the intensity of crimes against humanity.'"

[Consequences of the immoral war for expansionist Israel and the Jewish Lobby:]
WINNING A WAR AND LOSING THE WORLD
by William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune, February 27, 2003
"The Bush government's Phony War against Iraq now has lasted longer than the Phony War of 1939-1940. With each month of delay, opposition to the American plan to invade Iraq has intensified. The administration's manners in campaigning for war have provoked a real anti-Americanism in West European opinion, going much beyond mere dissent on this one issue. During the 11 months since the administration made public its intention to cause 'regime change' in Iraq, international markets and the international economy have foundered in uncertainty about the war. This uncertainty, which businessmen and investors hate, has smothered the international recovery previously expected to follow the bust of the high-tech bubble. The Bush people seem not to have noticed. The American Phony War is damaging the international economy, the principal international security and political institutions, and what is left of the American reputation for seriousness ... Washington's one success has been to split the European Union. The incompetence of all this is what surprises. Never before has the Iraqi despot had so many governments trying to prevent an attack on him. Never before has opinion in the liberal democracies been so alienated from the United States. The president and his men have put their own team in a hole so deep that when Washington does go to war against Iraq, as it soon will, it is unlikely to have any major allies left other than the governments of Britain, Spain and Poland. Washington says that what thus far has happened in the Security Council threatens to demonstrate the UN's 'irrelevance,' since the UN is relevant only when it endorses U.S. decisions ... Washington has quite possibly made an activist, rival Europe more, rather than less, likely."

U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation,
New York Times, February 27, 2003
"The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan." The letter is also reproduced here.

[More about the impending war on behalf of Israel:]
U.S. Diplomat Resigns, Protesting 'Our Fervent Pursuit of War',
by Felicity Barringer, New York Times, February 27, 2003
"A career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan resigned this week in protest against the country's policies on Iraq. The diplomat, John Brady Kiesling, the political counselor at the United States Embassy in Athens, said in his resignation letter, 'Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson.' Mr. Kiesling, 45, who has been a diplomat for about 20 years, said in a telephone interview tonight that he faxed the letter to Secretary of State Colin L, Powell on Monday after informing Thomas Miller, the ambassador in Athens, of his decision. He said he had acted alone, but 'I've been comforted by the expressions of support I've gotten afterward' from colleagues. 'No one has any illusions that the policy will be changed,' he said. 'Too much has been invested in the war' ... Asked if his views were widely shared among his diplomatic colleagues, Mr. Kiesling said: 'No one of my colleagues is comfortable with our policy. Everyone is moving ahead with it as good and loyal. The State Department is loaded with people who want to play the team game - we have a very strong premium on loyalty.'"

Bush lays out his “vision” for the Middle East. US imperialism’s rendezvous with disaster,
World Socialist Web Site, February 28, 2003
"According to the US president, the struggle of the Palestinians will end once Baghdad can no longer serve as 'a wealthy patron that pays for terrorist training and offers rewards to families of suicide bombers.' The arrogance and stupidity of this statement are breathtaking. Does Bush really believe that Palestinian youth go to Baghdad to learn how to blow themselves up, or that they do it to get Iraqi 'rewards' for their families? Nearly 2,300 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and Zionist settlers since the intensification of the intifada in September 2000, the great majority unarmed civilians. The population of more than 3.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is subjected to a permanent state of siege, locked in their homes on pain of death, prevented from moving freely by hundreds of roadblocks and barricades, and denied adequate food and medicine. The Bush administration is fully complicit in this naked repression ... The most right-wing government in the country’s [Israel's] history, Sharon’s coalition rests on two semi-fascist parties, one based on the settlers in the occupied territories and the other promoting a policy of 'transfer,' i.e., the expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. This Israeli regime has welcomed and encouraged a war against Iraq. It will use the US invasion as the pretext for launching its own intensified assault on the Palestinians. It enjoys the intimate collaboration of the Bush administration. Among the figures most directly involved in planning the war against Iraq are US officials who formerly functioned as advisors and lobbyists for the Israeli government and the Likud Party. Richard Perle, for example, worked as an advisor to Benyamin Netanyahu, Likud’s rightist candidate in the 1996 election. Perle championed an end to peace talks with the Palestinians and the reconquest of Gaza and the West Bank by the Israeli military. Working with him as an advisor to the Zionist right was Douglas Feith, now undersecretary of defense for policy ... Feith has now emerged as the Pentagon’s point-man for the 'postwar reconstruction' of Iraq. Tapped for the top civilian job in the planned “office of reconstruction” for the occupied country is Michael Mobbs, another Pentagon bureaucrat who was formerly Feith’s law partner. The lucrative practice run by Feith when he was out of government had essentially one client, the Israeli military-industrial complex. Last year, Mobbs was the author of a two-page sworn statement defending President Bush’s right to declare any US citizen an 'enemy combatant' and jail them indefinitely without charges, a hearing, a lawyer or bail, much less a trial. The memo was submitted in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a 21-year-old American-born Saudi captured in Afghanistan and held incommunicado in the Guantanamo, Cuba prison camp. With such personnel, the claim that the aim in Iraq is to foster a democratic revival is preposterous. What is being prepared is a brutal colonial regime that will seek to utilize as much as possible the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s own repressive apparatus while subordinating it to the interests of the US and Israel. Its principal function will be to guarantee unrestricted US exploitation of Iraqi oil and the suppression of popular revolt. What is most striking about Bush’s “vision,” however, is that it by no means ends with Iraq. With an invasion of that country, Washington is embarking on an open-ended campaign of military interventions that will bring it face to face with revolutionary explosions in the Middle East and throughout the world."

[Talk show screamer Michael "Savage" (who is Jewish, born Michael Weiner) calls for those who oppose the invasion of Iraq (unspoken subtext: on behalf of Israel) to be jailed.]
Michael Savage,
Michael Savage
"The Sedition Act - Time to Act. Time to Arrest the Leaders of the Anti-War Movement, Once we Go To War? We Must Protect Our Troops! Sponsor The Paul Revere Society!"

[Increasingly, the United States military IS the Israeli military.]
U.S. military plugs Israel into real-time war monitoring. Unprecedented access to command intelligence aims to keep IDF out of Iraq conflict,
By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz (Israel), March 4, 2003
"Israel and the United States have set up a joint command post next to the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv at which Israeli army officers will be able to view real-time pictures of the movements of American war planes over Iraq in the event of a war. In addition, an American early warning system that is hooked directly into U.S. intelligence satellites over Iraq was transferred to Israel a few weeks ago, giving Israel direct access to information on any Iraqi missile launches at its terrority, with no delays and no filtering. Both of these are unprecedented measures, according to a report in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. The aim is to prove to Israel that the U.S. is doing everything in its power to prevent Iraqi missiles from landing here, and therefore to convince it not to retaliate should any missiles nevertheless hit. According to the Journal, Israel will be the only country other than the U.S. hooked directly into the U.S. Central Command's communications system."

[Another consequence of Jewish Hollywood and the impending war for Israel].
Hollywood Actors Raise McCarthyism Specter on Iraq,
Yahoo!News (from Reuters), March 4, 2003
"Hollywood actors, facing a vitriolic backlash for their opposition to a war against Iraq, have raised the specter of Cold War McCarthyism in an appeal to avoid returning to one of the movie industry's darkest hours. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) said a slew of hate-mail directed at actors who have taken a public personal stand against war, along with calls for boycotts of movies and albums on the nation's talk radio airwaves and Internet message boards, 'suggests that the lessons of history have, for some, fallen on deaf ears.We deplore the idea that those in the public eye should suffer professionally for having the courage to give voice to their views. Even a hint of the blacklist must never again be tolerated in this nation,' SAG, the nation's largest actors' union, said in a statement. The SAG statement was issued in response to a growing tide of abuse toward American celebrities who have spoken out against a 'rush to war' on nationally televised award shows, through interviews, anti-war TV ads or by taking part in mass protests."

[The Jewish defense of Israeli racism: criticizing the Jewish Lobby and the impending war on behalf of Israel is "hate."]
Anti-war sentiment borders hate speech. Guest commentary: Masha Katz, Joel Sokoloff, Robert Galinsky, Dan Gruber and nine co-signers,
Oregon Daily Emerald, March 04, 2003
"Free speech -- on which this country was founded -- is the right and privilege of all individuals. With this freedom comes responsibility, which was jeopardized on Feb. 18. At the intersection of 13th Avenue and University Street, a swastika, a symbol of atrocity and anti-Semitism, was depicted with 'Bush=Hitler' written nearby. As Jewish students, we feel that incident warrants commentary. First, using a swastika for political discourse is offensive and unacceptable. The swastika, as utilized by Nazi Germany, is the symbol that was used to unite a nation for the systematic extermination of our ancestors. This was not only the symbol to pool hatred solely against the Jews, but also many other minority groups which were thought to be inferior. The Nazi swastika has forever become the mark of anti-Semitism and hate. There is no denying that President George W. Bush is a controversial political leader. However, the comparison of Hitler to Bush marginalizes the horrors the Nazis committed. Any objective view of recent history and current events will show that this analogy is flawed in many ways. Those responsible should be more aware of the implications of their actions and understand that what they did forms a basis for the resurgence of hate on campus. There is already concern among many that the revitalization of the anti-war movement has brought around hateful thoughts in the masses that are hard to quell once in progress. One example of this is the subtle but strong cartoon depiction of Ariel Sharon in the Emerald ... Although this cartoon is not the specific matter in question, it is obvious that the anti-Israel movement is broadening to include anti-Jewish thought. This all goes back to the line between free speech and hate speech. This is a difficult scale to try to balance because free speech is held so dearly in this country. There is the case that any censorship is a distinct violation of free speech and will just lead to further suppression of free expression. This rationale is valid most of the time, but there must be an awareness that not all speech is conducive to critical thinking and sometimes has the reverse effect. Using hate to rally others behind your thoughts just creates more mindless following and doesn't recognize that there may be people who are deeply offended by this absurd demonstration of insensitivity."

[Jail for protesting the war for Israel.]
Man Arrested for Wearing Peace T-Shirt,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), March 5, 2003
"A man was charged with trespassing in a mall after he refused to take off a T-shirt that said 'Peace on Earth' and 'Give peace a chance.' Mall security approached Stephen Downs, 61, and his 31-year-old son, Roger, on Monday night after they were spotted wearing the T-shirts at Crossgates Mall in a suburb of Albany, the men said. The two said they were asked to remove the shirts made at a store there, or leave the mall. They refused. The guards returned with a police officer who repeated the ultimatum. The son took his T-shirt off, but the father refused. ''I said, `All right then, arrest me if you have to,'' Downs said. 'So that's what they did. They put the handcuffs on and took me away.'"

[Who is the foundation behind the new Middle East "Plan." Ted Koppel, who is Jewish, won't tell you. William Kristol, the big pusher behind the "Plan" also is Jewish. So is even counter-commentator below Ian Lustick, pro-Israel Jewish White House hawks like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and on and on. The "Plan" is Jewish, and it a new form of imperialism in the Middle East -- the United States as an extension of brutal, racist, "pre-emptive strike" Israel.]
The Plan,
ABC Nightline (posted at unansweredquestions.net), March 5, 2003
[transcript]
WILLIAM KRISTOL, PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY: If America doesn't lead, no one else will.
TED KOPPEL, ABC NEWS (Off Camera) It has been called a secret blueprint for US global domination.
WILLIAM KRISTOL America was being too timid and too weak and too unassertive in the post-Cold War era.
TED KOPPEL (Voice Over) A small group of people with a plan to remove Saddam Hussein, long before George W. Bush was elected president. PROFESSOR IAN LUSTICK, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA This group set an agenda and have made the President feel that he has to live up to their definitions of manliness and fear their definitions of failure.
TED KOPPEL (Voice Over) And 9/11 provided the opportunity to set it in motion.
WILLIAM KRISTOL One of the lessons of 9/11 is that you can't sit back and wait to be hit.
Graphics: The Plan
TED KOPPEL (Voice Over) Tonight, "The Plan", how one group and its blueprint have brought us to the brink of war ...
TED KOPPEL (Off Camera) You can watch our story tonight on at least two levels. One, the conspiracy theory, as in this excerpt from a Scottish newspaper, the Glasgow 'Sunday Herald'. 'A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure regime change even before he took power in January 2001.' And a similar, if slightly more hysterical version from a Russian paper, the 'Moscow Times'. 'Not since Mein Kampf has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed, years ahead of the blow.'
TED KOPPEL (CONTINUED) (Off Camera) Take away the somewhat hyperbolic references to conspiracy, however, and you're left with a story that has the additional advantage of being true. Back in 1997, a group of Washington heavyweights, almost all of them neo-conservatives, formed an organization called the Project for the New American Century. They did what former government officials and politicians frequently do when they're out of power, they began formulating a strategy, in this case, a foreign policy strategy, that might bring influence to bear on the Administration then in power, headed by President Clinton. Or failing that, on a new Administration that might someday come to power. They were pushing for the elimination of Saddam Hussein. And proposing the establishment of a strong US military presence in the Persian Gulf, linked to a willingness to use force to protect vital American interests in the Gulf. All of that might be of purely academic interest were it not for the fact that among the men behind that campaign were such names as, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. What was, back in 1997, merely a theory, is now, in 2003, US policy. Hardly a conspiracy, the proposal was out there for anyone to see. But certainly an interesting case study of how columnists, commentators, and think-tank intellectuals can, with time and the election of a sympathetic president, change the course of American foreign policy ...
JACKIE JUDD (Off Camera) What was the Project's influence in shaping that thinking?
WILLIAM KRISTOL Well, we had been making these arguments for a few years and we continued to make them.
JACKIE JUDD (Off Camera) How?
WILLIAM KRISTOL Magazine articles, faxed memoranda, longer reports. JACKIE JUDD (Off Camera) To whom?
WILLIAM KRISTOL To the whole world. We made it very public that we thought that one consequence the President should draw from 9/11 is that it was unacceptable to sit back and let, either terrorist groups or dictators developing weapons of mass destruction, strike, first at us.
JACKIE JUDD (Voice Over) Out of all this, a conspiracy theory blossomed, especially in Europe. From Scotland to Russia to England. Writers who oppose a war have written about a cabal of neo-conservatives pulling the strings of the President. A cabal with visions of an imperialist America dominating the world. Even Ian Lustick thinks the Project has acted in a conspiratorial way. PROFESSOR IAN LUSTICK This group, what I call the tom-tom beaters, have set an agenda and have made the President feel that he has to live up to their definitions of manliness, their definitions of success and fear, their definitions of failure ...
JACKIE JUDD (Voice Over) Some critics compare the Project to the group of men who helped lead America into Vietnam and came to be known as "the best and the brightest." Kristol dismisses the comparison. Still, he says, as America seems poised to go to war, there is a degree of accountability he will feel when the first bomb drops.
WILLIAM KRISTOL Of course I'll feel some sense of responsibility. The only point I would also make, though, is one also has to take responsibility, would also have to take responsibility if one advocated doing nothing and then if something terrible happens. And, and I worry. I worry, not because I'm going to look bad, I worry because people could die and will die in this war.
JACKIE JUDD (Off Camera) And after a war, the Project has a vision beyond a regime change in Iraq. A vision in which the United States government inserts itself in other failed regimes in the Middle East. So this truly does become a new American century."

[Another columnist who walks on eggshells before the Jewish Lobby. Dare to speak openly and honestly about Israel's centrality in the impending war with Iraq and your career is in danger.]
Playing Texas poker, Bush bets all on Iraq,
by Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times, March 6, 2003
"A senior Bush official privately admits what his administration cannot declare publicly. The stagnant economy, a dagger aimed at the heart of George W. Bush's second term, will not immediately respond to the president's economic growth program. The economic engine will not be revived until the war against Saddam Hussein is launched and won. Military victory is anticipated inside the Bush administration as the tonic that will prompt corporation officers and private investors to unleash the American economy's dormant power. Although it is impolitic to say so, the fact that the United States will be sitting on a new major oil supply will stimulate the domestic economy. That puts a high premium on quickly gaining control of Iraq's oil wells before they can be torched--a major uncertainty in an otherwise strictly scripted scenario. 'This is Texas poker, with the president putting everything on Iraq,' a Republican senator (who thoroughly approves of this policy) told me ... Few Republicans discuss even in private whether the president had to make this bet. The usually unasked question: Was it really necessary to focus on Saddam's removal from power? With U.S. troops ready to head into harm's way, patriotic politicians do not want to speculate whether this war was avoidable. Any suggestion that the present course largely echoes policies of the Israeli government risks accusations of anti-Israeli and, indeed, anti-Semitic bias. Ever since the Six Day War of 1967, my late partner Rowland Evans and I have faced such accusations whenever we questioned the wisdom of a joint U.S.-Israeli policy. Most recent was the column in the Washington Post of Feb. 18 by Lawrence F. Kaplan, a New Republic senior editor. He cited me and several other journalists in alleging that 'invoking the specter of dual loyalty' (to the United States and Israel) by Jewish Americans was 'toxic,' polluting and even nullifying 'public discourse.' Two days later on CNN's 'Crossfire,' I asked Kaplan to name one instance when I had suggested dual loyalty by anybody. He could not, because I had not. But more than misrepresenting me is involved. Origins of the decision to wage the war against terrorism by removing Saddam has nothing to do with the ethnic origins of its supporters, but constitute something that should be explored without being attacked."

[Jewish neurotic totalitarianism: if you're anti-war and don't want to kill in the service of Israel, the effect is to kill Jews.]
The peace movement of the 1930s made the Holocaust inevitable --- by accident; The peace movement of Today wants no more accidents: Just the death of Jews,
by Sam Schulman, Jewish World Review, March 6, 2003
"The forces aligned with the anti-war, pro-Saddam movement - the interests guiding the anti-war, pro-Sadaam movement - and most of all, the strength the anti-war, pro-Saddam movement derives from Jewish supporters - including, it would seem, most of Hollywood's Jews, the editors of The Forward, the readers of The New York Times - are objectively if not intentionally supporting the people who wish them harm, death, and total elimination. Language itself has changed its meaning. Three years ago, those who said they were anti-Israel but not anti-Semitic meant that they opposed the particular measures the Government of Israel was taking to defend its civilians from terrorists. Now, to say that one is anti-Israel but not ant-Semitic means generally that - if one is a moderate - one is opposed to the existence of Israel as a self-governing Jewish State where it has existed for the better part of a century. But if one is really progressive, it means that one is opposed to the notion that Jews might be permitted to live as individuals in Palestine, where they have lived and come and gone freely and continuously for over two millennia, and that, instead, they should be uprooted and dispossessed by force ... For those of our race - the historic victims of so many causes - it would be disastrous to make the same mistake twice, and entrust our children's fate to the hands of these sad and complicitous pacifists."

America admits suspects died in interrogations,
by Andrew Gumbel, Independent (UK), March 7, 2003
"American military officials acknowledged yesterday that two prisoners captured in Afghanistan in December had been killed while under interrogation at Bagram air base north of Kabul - reviving concerns that the US is resorting to torture in its treatment of Taliban fighters and suspected al-Qa'ida operatives. A spokesman for the air base confirmed that the official cause of death of the two men was 'homicide', contradicting earlier accounts that one had died of a heart attack and the other from a pulmonary embolism. The men's death certificates, made public earlier this week, showed that one captive, known only as Dilawar, 22, from the Khost region, died from 'blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease' while another captive, Mullah Habibullah, 30, suffered from blood clot in the lung that was exacerbated by a 'blunt force injury'. US officials previously admitted using 'stress and duress" on prisoners including sleep deprivation, denial of medication for battle injuries, forcing them to stand or kneel for hours on end with hoods on, subjecting them to loud noises and sudden flashes of light and engaging in culturally humiliating practices such as having them kicked by female officers. While the US claims this still constitutes 'humane' treatment, human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have denounced it as torture as defined by international treaty. The US has also come under heavy criticism for its reported policy of handing suspects over to countries such as Jordan, Egypt or Morocco, where torture techniques are an established part of the security apparatus. Legally, Human Rights Watch says, there is no distinction between using torture directly and subcontracting it out."

[Jack Walters is one of the few American politicians who isn't hanging out of Jewish pockets, and he's on the right moral track, but he doesn't emphasize the central problem: the Jewish Lobby that seeks to exploit the American military to remake the Middle East for the convenience of brutal, racist Israel.]
Missouri GOP Chairman Resignation Letter,
by Jack Walters, P.O. Box 512, Columbia, MO 65205, 573-474-4449
Email: rapid.press@verizon.net
Information Clearinghouse, March 8, 2003
"I grieve for our nation, and the untold suffering that will be wrought. As history has shown, you can possess the greatest armaments in the world, but if your cause and motives are not right, only catastrophe will result. OUR COUNTRY ABOVE POLITICS. As the Bush administration moves toward certain war in the Middle East—a war which I believe nothing good will come from, a war which is unjust, unnecessary, and a war which will undoubtedly widen, perhaps even into world war, thereby placing our nation in dire peril—I have made a decision regarding my position as Boone County Republican Chairman. Wars are easy to get into, but very difficult to get out of. They can sap the moral and spiritual fiber of a nation, squander lives and resources, deplete scarce funds, cause undue hardship on all involved, destroy families, and engender hopelessness. I have questioned both the motives for military action at this time, and the ever-changing, illogical justifications presented to us in what has to be one of the greatest media propaganda blitzes ever force-fed a populace. Any time ground troops are deployed, serious questions must be asked and real answers demanded. The jingoistic rhetoric we are receiving does not constitute legitimate answers. The consequences of our planned attack on Iraq (and also probably Iran, given the size of our forces and their location in proximity to Iran), should cause us all to pause. The Pentagon has announced that we will hit Baghdad with a force almost equal to the bombing of Hiroshima. Obviously many thousands of civilians will perish, with untold thousands maimed. And for what? To liberate them? To bring them freedom? Or democracy? Or is it to really secure the world’s second largest oil reserve and establish a base from which to subjugate other Middle Eastern nations? Is it also the plan for Israel to use the cover of war to forcibly relocate the Palestinian population (as has been publicly stated by some members of Israel’s current government)? How on earth have we arrived at this crucial juncture in our country’s history? How has a war on terrorism been converted into an attack on Iraq? What threat does Iraq pose to us? We must lay the blame squarely on our congress, who according to our Constitution, only has the power to declare war. For congress to cede it’s war-making power to the executive branch is unconstitutional on the very face of it and effectively destroys our three branches of government. Circumventing our Constitution is very bad, and the undeclared wars, which have resulted in our recent history, have had disastrous results. Undeclared wars have no declared objectives, and therefore can widen at will, and our foray into the Middle East will likely set in motion a long-term wave of retaliation. Indeed, I believe that the administration would like to entice Iraq into firing the first blow so some justification could be paraded at the United Nations. If the United States government can adopt this unreal doctrine of preemptive attack on any nation, anywhere, at any time, so can other nations! This is how world wars begin. If the President goes into Iraq alone without a UN resolution, he will be in violation of the war powers given him last October by congress which was contingent on UN approval. A constitutional crisis will occur. What we are about to do in the Middle East is abhorrent to me. It is made doubly so since this is a contrived and fraudulently justified war with hidden objectives. The coming mass slaughter of innocents, the harm our own troops are being placed in, and the potential for wars on several fronts have brought home to me the sobering realization that by remaining Boone County Republican Chairman, I would be giving tacit approval to this imminent war, and tacit approval to the belligerent and reckless language coming from the White House. The safety and integrity of our country outweighs politics. I therefore resign as Chairman of the Boone County Republican Central Committee effective at noon, March 10, 2003."

[Still waiting for Carter's courageous article about the Jewish lockhold on U.S. foreign policy ...]
Jimmy Carter opposes unilateral attack on Iraq,
ABC News, March 9, 2003
"Former US President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter has condemned preparations for a unilateral US attack on Iraq, saying it would be an unjust war 'almost unprecedented in the history of civilised nations'. In an article in The New York Times, Mr Carter said profound changes in US foreign policy have reversed 'consistent bipartisan commitments that for more than two centuries have earned our nation greatness' ... President George W Bush is facing widespread international opposition to his threats to invade Iraq and topple President Saddam Hussein, whom Washington accuses of hiding chemical and biological weapons. Mr Bush says he will not let the absence of UN approval stop him, describing US security as paramount. Saddam has denied having weapons of mass destruction and several members of the UN Security Council want continued UN arms inspections rather than war. Mr Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said Iraq did not directly threaten US security. 'But now ... despite the overwhelming opposition of most people and governments in the world, the United States seems determined to carry out military and diplomatic action that is almost unprecedented in the history of civilised nations,' he wrote. Mr Carter described Mr Bush's attempts to link Iraq to the September 11 2001 attacks on America as unconvincing and said the President has no international authority to establish a "Pax Americana in the region, perhaps occupying the ethnically divided country for as long as a decade'".

[Standing up to the (Jewish Lobby's) war against Iraq.]
Second US diplomat quits over war,
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), March 11 2003
"A veteran US diplomat resigned today in protest over US policy toward Iraq, becoming the second career foreign service officer to do so in the past month. John Brown, who joined the State Department in 1981, said he resigned because he could not support Washington's Iraq policy, which he said was fomenting a massive rise in anti-US sentiment around the world. In a resignation letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Brown said he agreed with J Brady Kiesling, a diplomat at the US embassy in Athens who quit in February over President George W Bush's apparent intent on fighting Iraq. 'I am joining my colleague John Brady Kiesling in submitting my resignation from the Foreign Service - effective immediately - because I cannot in good conscience support President Bush's war plans against Iraq,' he said. 'Throughout the globe the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force,' Brown said in the letter, a copy of which he sent to AFP. 'The president's disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century,' he said."

[The dam against open discussion about Jewish dominance in America is starting to rupture -- slow but sure.]
The Iraq crisis as the War of the Jews,
by Bradley Burston, Haaretz (Israel), March 12, 2003
"The Iraq crisis has triggered the largest pre-emptive anti-war movement in history, with millions on the march against a war that has still yet to begin. As the tide of opposition has grown, so has an undercurrent of argument that Jewish influence in America and Israel is a crucial factor pushing Washington into battle, in turn spurring furious debate over the line between free expression and classic anti-Semitism. The latest focus of the debate was a congressional district close to Washington, where veteran Democratic Congressman James P. Moran Jr. sparked fiery condemnation by telling an anti-war gathering at a Virginia church why he believed mass opposition across the U.S. to an Iraq offensive had not done more to reverse the march to war. 'If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this,' Moran said in remarks quoted Tuesday by the Washington Post. 'The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should.' An onslaught of criticism followed, undiminished by Moran's subsequent apology ... Moran's remarks came amid a flood of commentary from analysts of both the American left and right suggesting that Bush administration was taking advice - if not outright orders - from the Sharon government and the Israeli defense establishment on handling Saddam Hussein. The analysts' comments have intensified as top-ranking Israeli officials have gone on record predicting that the war could have a cure-all effect for many of the Jewish state's paralyzing economic and security ills. The image of such a deus ex machina has been invoked so often as to have entered Israeli public discourse as a synonym for the positive side effects of a war in Iraq - a solution which, if far-fetched in many of its assumptions, may be the only remedy on an otherwise desolate horizon. Of late, the very Jewish organizations speaking out against what they perceive as the new anti-Semitism have themselves come in for attack for allegedly doing the bidding of offstage Jewish and Israeli puppet-masters ... Several of Bush's current defense advisers were instrumental in the preparation of a 1996 position paper for then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a darling of a number of self-described neo-conservatives, many of them high-profile Jewish Republicans. As one of its recommendations, the position paper advised Israeli leaders to 'focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.' The paper's authors included Douglas Feith, now Bush's Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Richard Perle, currently chairman of the Pentagon's advisory Defense Policy Board, and David Wurmser, now a special assistant to Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton. The voices alleging undue hardline Israeli and Jewish influence on the administration also cite the appointments of the hawkish Paul Wolfowitz as Deputy Defense Secretary and of Perle protege Elliot Abrams, viewed as a persuasive critic of the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as director of Mideast affairs for the National Security Council. The Abrams appointment spurred an unnamed senior administration official to tell the Washington Post last month that 'the Likudniks are really in charge now' ... Although Jews on the left have long been inured to being dismissed - often by fellow Jews - as anti-Semitic for criticizing Israel, the vociferous nature of some anti-war organizers' anti-Israel positions has convinced even fellow Jewish leftists that anti-Semitism is indeed the proper designation."

[Unspoken subtext: American foreign policy has become a pawn of the Jewish Lobby, as has the British Tony Blair government.]
40 Labour MPs call for Blair to resign,
March 12, 2003
"Labour Party discontent over Tony Blair's stance on Iraq burst into the open for the first time yesterday when more than 40 MPs called for the Prime Minister to resign. The Campaign Group of Labour MPs issued a statement calling on the Prime Minister to 'consider his position' and fellow left-wingers urged a party conference to discuss a leadership challenge. Hilton Dawson, the MP for Lancaster and Wyre, also suggested in a Commons debate that Mr Blair should step down if he failed to get a fresh UN mandate for war ... . But the fact that MPs were openly prepared to contemplate Mr Blair's dismissal underlined the extent of the schism facing the Prime Minister in the absence of a second UN resolution. As well as resignation by Clare Short and others, he faces a rebellion by up to 200 MPs. Mr Dawson, who is not known as a left-winger, said in the House of Commons that the Prime Minister should consider quitting or risk bringing the Labour Party 'to its knees' over war with Iraq ... John McDonnell, the MP for Hayes and Harlington, issued a statement on behalf of the 40 MPs in the Campaign Group that read: 'It is time for the Prime Minister to consider his position. If he is not prepared to stand up to George Bush, he must make way for those that will,' it said."

[British Prime Minister Tony Blair swept by the Jewish pro-war Lobby.]
J'accuse: Why Tony Blair has to go,
Toronto Globe and Mail, March 12, 2003,
"The Linlithgow constituency association of the British Labour Party has put forward a motion recommending that Prime Minister Tony Blair reconsider his position as leader of our party if Britain supports a war against Iraq without clearly expressed support from the United Nations. I agree with this motion. I also believe that if Mr. Blair goes ahead with his support of an American attack without unambiguous UN authorization and without a vote in our House of Commons, he should be branded as a war criminal and sent to The Hague. I have served in the House of Commons as a member of the Labour Party for 41 years and I would never have dreamed of saying this about any one of my previous leaders. But this is a man who has disdain for the House of Commons and international law. This is a grave thing to say about my party leader. But it is far less serious than the results of a war that could set Western Christendom against Islam. Mr. Blair is a lawyer for heaven's sake, but a growing number of dissenters within our party have concluded that he seems to have no understanding that his decision to sanction military action in Iraq without proper Security Council authorization is illegal under international law ... I don't think Mr. Blair really understands the horrors of 21st century war. In 1994, I visited Baghdad (all expenses paid by me) and saw the carbonated limbs of women and children impregnated against a wall by the heat of just one cruise missile. In the coming war, we are told that 800 cruise missiles will be launched just to soften up the enemy. Canadians should not be astonished at the growing opposition to Mr. Blair in Britain and within his own party. Many of us in the Labour Party believe he has misunderstood the pressing danger. It comes not from Iraq, but from terrorism. If there is a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, it is this: Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein; on at least two occasions his organization tried to assassinate him. The wicked perpetrators of Sept. 11 were not Iraqis. They were Saudis and Yemenis. Their bases were in Hamburg, perhaps in London, and certainly in the U.S. itself." [Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow since 1962, is the longest continuously serving member of the British House of Commons.]

[The key is this: as long as people remain intimidated before Jewish power and fail to condemn the Jews' war for Israel, the Jewish Lobby maintains its censorial power. Once condemnation of the Jewish Lobby becomes an avalanche, all will be lost for them.]
As possible strike on Baghdad nears, some say U.S. is fighting Israel’s war,
by Matthew E. Berger, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 10, 2003
"A furor over comments by a U.S. lawmaker is highlighting the resurgent trend of blaming Israel and the Jewish community for the impending war against Iraq. Six rabbis from northern Virginia have asked for the resignation of Rep. James Moran (D-Va.), after he told constituents last week that the Jewish community is behind the Bush administration’s push for war. Moran is apologizing to the Jewish community, and was planning to meet with area rabbis later this week. While Moran’s comments specifically linked the organized American Jewish community with a push for war, an increasing number of people are blaming the looming Iraq war on Jewish officials in the Bush administration. The sentiments echo those made in 1991 by conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan, who said the Persian Gulf War was being touted by 'the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.' Given widespread skepticism of the U.S. motives for a strike on Baghdad, some Jewish leaders say there is potential for the 'amen corner' comments to gain as much — if not more — traction as they did a decade ago. 'There is a greater potential for mischief on this issue now than 11 or 12 years ago,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. In a town hall with constituents March 3, Moran said, 'If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this,' according to the Virginia-area Connection newspapers. Moran said Jewish leaders were motivated by discussions they had with Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish former prime minister. Rabbi Jack Moline, rabbi at the conservative Agudas Achim Congregation of Northern Virginia, is leading the charge for Moran’s resignation. Moline, who spoke with the congressman for 45 minutes last Friday, says the lawmaker’s remarks are comparable to the comments of Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who was forced to vacate his leadership post last year after making racially insensitive comments at a birthday party. The Jewish community has had problems with Moran for years because of his outspoken comments against Israel. They have also been frustrated by the lack of a primary challenger against him in congressional races. 'We have attempted to bridge the gap with Congressman Moran,' Moline said. 'And we have attempted to persuade the Democratic Party that he wasn’t the best representative for us.'” [WHAT ARROGANCE! WHO THE HELL GIVES A DAMN WHAT'S BEST FOR JEWS! THEIR POWER TO DEMAND THAT EVERYTHING REVOLVES AROUND THEM IS THE PROBLEM!]

[Gil Cates is Jewish, as is the war against Iraq.]
Oscars blacklist stars in bid to prevent peace protest speeches,
The Scotsman (Scotland), March 11, 2003
"The backlash against prominent stars opposing any attack on Iraq has impacted on this year’s Oscars, with organisers drawing up a blacklist of people who will not be allowed a platform to air anti-war views. Meryl Streep, Sean Penn, Vanessa Redgrave, George Clooney, Dustin Hoffman and Spike Lee are among those who will not be speaking, amid fears they could turn the ceremony into an anti-war rally. In a move denounced by some as a return to McCarthyism, star presenters have been ordered to stick to scripts, while winners, who the producers have no control over, could find their acceptance speeches cut if they say anything much more than a brief thank you. Officially, executives say that politics is a turn-off for the show’s television audience. But in the wake of a public backlash against actors such as Martin Sheen, from the West Wing, who have voiced opposition to war, producers do not want to upset advertisers who have paid more than £50 million for adverts ... Gil Cates, one of the ceremony’s producers, wants the ceremony, which takes place on 23 March, to celebrate the Oscars’ 75th anniversary rather than the anti-Bush/Blair movement. And he admitted he thought it 'inappropriate' for stars to use their slots to spotlight world problems. But Tom O’Neil, an Oscar historian, said: 'Political tantrums are inevitable. You’re dealing with a class of people who have unchecked egos and who are invited on talk shows to be experts on everything from high art to pop culture.' Top of the loose-cannon list this year is the Bowling for Columbine director, Michael Moore, a favourite to win the documentary feature award. Last month, Moore thanked the French for not supporting the proposed Iraqi invasion while accepting an award in Paris. And on Saturday, he used the Writers Guild of America awards in Los Angeles to voice his opinions of George Bush, the US president. Worryingly, for the Oscar producers, Moore won loud applause after telling the audience: 'What I see is a country that does not like what’s going on. Let’s all commit ourselves to Bush removal in 2004.' If Moore does not win an Oscar, insiders claim Hollywood will be reverting back to the witch-hunting 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy and his cohorts destroyed the careers of supposed Communist sympathies."

[Truth is the first casualty in times of war. Jews dominate the mass media top hierarchy; this is relevant to any claims of journalistic "objectivity."]
The people don’t know and can’t know,
Evatt Foundation, March 13, 2003
"John Pilger introduces the new edition of Phillip Knightley's classic. The First Casualty: When I read the first edition of this remarkable book twenty-five years ago, I was struck by the following quotations. During the First World War, Prime Minister David Lloyd George told C P Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: 'If the people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know and can't know.' The truth was reported, insisted The Times correspondent, Sir Phillip Gibbs (knighted for his services), 'apart from the naked realism of horrors and losses, and criticism of the facts' ... 'When American bombs incinerated hundreds of women and children in a bomb shelter in a residential part of Baghdad, and several British correspondents reported that there were no strategic or military targets nearby, their patriotism was called into question and their reporting was pilloried in the tabloid press as 'truly disgusting' and 'a disgrace to their country' ... Almost every word of these testimonies could apply to the wars of our time, especially the Gulf War of 1991 and the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Chapters covering these have been added to this new edition, making Knightley's work the most comprehensive j'accuse of journalism as propaganda in the English language. It is the author's lament that, for all the dazzling advances in media technology, the media has little or no memory, as the same bogus 'truth' is served up again and again. Reading the new material, I wondered when journalism's modern breeding grounds, the media studies courses, would begin to address the most important issue raised in this book: the virulence of an unrecognised censorship, often concealed behind false principles of objectivity, whose effect is to minimise and deny the culpability of Western power in acts of great violence and terrorism, such and the Gulf and Kosovo. Thus The Independent could praise the 'miraculously few casualties' in the Gulf War (meaning the few British and American casualties, most of them the result of American 'friendly fire'), while the horror of up to a quarter of a million Iraqis slaughtered by the US-led forces was consigned to oblivion."

[More prospects for the Jewish Lobby's war with Iraq.]
Average Iraqi resents the U.S. more than Saddam,
Daily News (Los Angeles), March 14, 2003
"Iraqis moving in and out of their country as war looms warn that invading U.S. troops likely would face a population determined to fight to the death. President Bush has appealed to Iraqis, promising liberation. But many now see America — which insisted on economic sanctions that hurt millions of Iraqis and is poised to defy world opinion by waging war - as more of a menace now than Saddam Hussein ... Many Shia Muslims from southern Iraq, like Kurds in the north, favor regime change. Iraqis in Baghdad and central Iraq are more loyal. Yet the overriding consensus — conveyed during two dozen recent interviews in desert borderlands and the capitals of Syria and Jordan — is that an oil-hungry invader acting unilaterally must be opposed ... The prospect of popular resistance presents a challenge to U.S. war chiefs .. This weekend, Bush seeks to amplify his appeal by meeting with Iraqi survivors of Saddam Hussein’s 1988 chemical weapons attack on a Kurdish town. But if a U.S. war begins to look like an unwelcome occupation, analysts say, America could bog down disastrously. No foreign army has occupied Arab turf since British forces entered Egypt during the 1950s. Extended combat in densely-populated Baghdad promises civilian casualties - sure fuel for anti-U.S. rage across the Arab-Muslim world. The only way to avoid real trouble, said former U.S. ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg, a contributor to several think tank projects, is for U.S. troops to leave Iraq quickly, install 'a regime bent on democratizing Iraq,' and ensure dissemination of 'wonderful photos of smiling people in Baghdad when we march into Baghdad.'"

[What country provided forged documents to justify a war with Iraq? Let's see. Who would have an interest in such a thing? Venezuela?]
Senator Seeks FBI Probe of Iraq Documents. Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia Requests FBI Investigation of Forged Iraq Documents,
ABC News, March 14, 2003
"The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee asked the FBI on Friday to investigate forged documents the Bush administration used as evidence against Saddam Hussein and his military ambitions in Iraq. Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia said he was uneasy about a possible campaign to deceive the public about the status of Iraq's nuclear program. An investigation should 'at a minimum help to allay any concerns' that the government was involved in the creation of the documents to build support for administration policies, Rockefeller wrote in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller. Secretary of State Colin Powell has denied the U.S. government had any hand in creating the false documents. 'It came from other sources,' Powell told a House committee Thursday. 'We were aware of this piece of evidence, and it was provided in good faith to the inspectors.' Rockefeller asked the FBI to determine the source of the documents, the sophistication of the forgeries, the motivation of those responsible, why intelligence agencies didn't recognize them as forgeries and whether they are part of a larger disinformation campaign. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The documents indicated that Iraq tried to by uranium from Niger, the West African nation that is the third-largest producer of mined uranium, Niger's largest export. The documents had been provided to U.S. officials by a third country, which has not been identified. A U.S. government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it was unclear who first created the documents ... At a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing Thursday, Powell said the State Department had not participated 'any way in any falsification.' Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the committee's top Democrat, noted a Washington Post report that said a foreign government might have been conducting a deception campaign to win support for military action against Iraq. When Obey asked Powell if he could say which country that was, Powell replied, 'I can't with confidence.'"

[The word is starting to get out: An "anti-Semite" is really whoever Jews hate and seek to censor. Jews dominate U.S. foreign policy and so much else. It's easy to see if you're not forbidden to look. Publicly noticing this is NOT kosher.]
Whose War? A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interest,
by Patrick J. Buchanan, The American Conservative, March 24, 2003
"The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: 'Can you assure American viewers ... that we're in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?' Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group. People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the schoolyard of politics. Not so. Former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot kicked off the campaign. When these 'Buchananites toss around 'neoconservative'-and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen-it sometimes sounds as if what they really mean is 'Jewish conservative.' Yet Boot readily concedes that a passionate attachment to Israel is a 'key tenet of neoconservatism.' He also claims that the National Security Strategy of President Bush 'sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible.' (For the uninitiated, Commentary, the bible in which Boot seeks divine guidance, is the monthly of the American Jewish Committee.) David Brooks of the Weekly Standard wails that attacks based on the Israel tie have put him through personal hell: 'Now I get a steady stream of anti-Semitic screeds in my e-mail, my voicemail and in my mailbox. ... Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving. It's just that its epicenter is no longer on the Buchananite Right, but on the peace-movement left.' Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan endures his own purgatory abroad: 'In London ... one finds Britain's finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the 'neoconservative' (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy.' Lawrence Kaplan of the New Republic charges that our little magazine 'has been transformed into a forum for those who contend that President Bush has become a client of ... Ariel Sharon and the 'neoconservative war party.'' Referencing Charles Lindbergh, he accuses Paul Schroeder, Chris Matthews, Robert Novak, Georgie Anne Geyer, Jason Vest of the Nation, and Gary Hart of implying that 'members of the Bush team have been doing Israel's bidding and, by extension, exhibiting 'dual loyalties.'' Kaplan thunders: 'The real problem with such claims is not just that they are untrue. The problem is that they are toxic. Invoking the specter of dual loyalty to mute criticism and debate amounts to more than the everyday pollution of public discourse. It is the nullification of public discourse, for how can one refute accusations grounded in ethnicity? The charges are, ipso facto, impossible to disprove. And so they are meant to be.' What is going on here? Slate's Mickey Kaus nails it in the headline of his retort: 'Lawrence Kaplan Plays the Anti-Semitic Card.' What Kaplan, Brooks, Boot, and Kagan are doing is what the Rev. Jesse Jackson does when caught with some mammoth contribution from a Fortune 500 company he has lately accused of discriminating. He plays the race card. So, too, the neoconservatives are trying to fend off critics by assassinating their character and impugning their motives. Indeed, it is the charge of 'anti-Semitism' itself that is toxic. For this venerable slander is designed to nullify public discourse by smearing and intimidating foes and censoring and blacklisting them and any who would publish them. Neocons say we attack them because they are Jewish. We do not. We attack them because their warmongering threatens our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon. And this time the boys have cried "wolf" once too often. It is not working. As Kaus notes, Kaplan's own New Republic carries Harvard professor Stanley Hoffman. In writing of the four power centers in this capital that are clamoring for war, Hoffman himself describes the fourth thus: 'And, finally, there is a loose collection of friends of Israel, who believe in the identity of interests between the Jewish state and the United States. These analysts look on foreign policy through the lens of one dominant concern: Is it good or bad for Israel? Since that nation's founding in 1948, these thinkers have never been in very good odor at the State Department, but now they are well ensconced in the Pentagon, around such strategists as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.' 'If Stanley Hoffman can say this,' asks Kaus, 'why can't Chris Matthews?' Kaus also notes that Kaplan somehow failed to mention the most devastating piece tying the neoconservatives to Sharon and his Likud Party. In a Feb. 9 front-page article in the Washington Post, Robert Kaiser quotes a senior U.S. official as saying, 'The Likudniks are really in charge now.' Kaiser names Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith as members of a pro-Israel network inside the administration and adds David Wurmser of the Defense Department and Elliott Abrams of the National Security Council. (Abrams is the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz, editor emeritus of Commentary, whose magazine has for decades branded critics of Israel as anti-Semites.) Noting that Sharon repeatedly claims a 'special closeness' to the Bushites, Kaiser writes, 'For the first time a U.S. administration and a Likud government are pursuing nearly identical policies.' And a valid question is: how did this come to be, and while it is surely in Sharon's interest, is it in America's interest? This is a time for truth. For America is about to make a momentous decision: whether to launch a series of wars in the Middle East that could ignite the Clash of Civilizations against which Harvard professor Samuel Huntington has warned, a war we believe would be a tragedy and a disaster for this Republic. To avert this war, to answer the neocon smears, we ask that our readers review their agenda as stated in their words. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. As Al Smith used to say, 'Nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.' We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people's right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity. Not in our lifetimes has America been so isolated from old friends. Far worse, President Bush is being lured into a trap baited for him by these neocons that could cost him his office and cause America to forfeit years of peace won for us by the sacrifices of two generations in the Cold War. They charge us with anti-Semitism-i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a 'passionate attachment' to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what's good for Israel is good for America." (The entire article is available at bookstores.)

[Consequences of the Jewish Lobby's war for Israel.]
Top US military planner fears a 'likely' repeat of Somalia bloodbath,
Independent (UK), March 15, 2003
"A former military aide to General Norman Schwarzkopf has warned that a US-led war against Iraq could turn into a disaster that echoes the bloody debacle of Somalia rather than the relatively painless 1991 Gulf war. Retired Colonel Mike Turner, who also served as military planner with the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, believes the Bush administration is ignoring potential risks – some that could cost the US dearly ... Colonel Turner said the US had made the mistake of fixing its sights early on ridding the world of Saddam Hussein. This plan had met stiff opposition from the uniformed staff within the Pentagon, but the administration had chosen this focus regardlessly. Colonel Turner outlined a worst-case scenario: 'Within hours of our attack, Saddam launches Scuds on Israel. Israel's government launches a full-scale attack on Iraq, creating a holy war. Saddam, threatened with his own survival, uses chemical and biological weapons and human shields. He torches his own oil fields, thousands of his own people are killed. Photos of US soldiers amid landscapes of Iraqi civilian bodies blanket the world press which aligns unanimously against the US.' He then envisaged the US left to administer a post-Saddam Iraq with minimal international co-operation and open to terror attacks from al- Qa'ida. North Korea could take advantage and start exporting nuclear weapons. 'These are not remote possibilities, but in my view reasonable, possibly even likely outcomes,' he concluded."

Your Religion's Stance on Iraq,
Belief .net
According to a survey by Belief.net, only four religious groups of those surveyed support an invasion of Iraq. They are the Southern Baptist Convention and three Jewish groups (whose qualifier is that "other means" must be "exhausted" first before invasion): The Orthodox Union, Union of American Hebrew Congregrations (Reform), and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. All these pro-war groups -- including the Baptists -- have especially strong ideological ties to Israel. Religous groups OPPOSED to war include the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Episcopal Church, Greek Orthodox Church in America, Mormons - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Presbyterian Church (USA), Quakers - American Friends Service Committee, United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

[The Jewish Lobby's war.]
War in Iraq a crime, says Vatican,
The Australian, March 18, 2003
"Military intervention against Iraq would be a crime against peace demanding vengeance before God, the head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has said. 'War is a crime against peace which cries for vengeance before God,' said Archbishop Renato Raffaele Martino, speaking on Vatican Radio. He stressed the deeply unjust and immoral nature of war, saying it was condemned by God because civilians were the worst sufferers. Martino, formerly Vatican permanent representative to the United Nations, strongly denounced the determination of the United States and its allies to disarm Iraq by force. 'Do not reply with a stone to the child who asks for bread,' he said. 'They are preparing to reply with thousands of bombs to a people that has been asking for bread for the last 12 years.' Stressing the Roman Catholic church would continue to insist on the need and the urgency of peace, he said: 'As always, it will be the Good Samaritan who will bind the wounds of a wounded and weakened people.' Pope John Paul II, one of the most prominent opponents of war on Iraq, urged UN Security Council members yesterday to continue negotiations on the disarmament of Iraq and avert a looming military conflict."

Forwarded to JTR: Robin Cook's resignation speech as Speaker of the House of Commons. The video cuts off as he is getting an unprecedented standing ovation in the House. He is demanding a vote tomorrow night on whether or not to commit British troops, and if Parliament has the power to stop their deployment, it will. However as Cook says, Parliament may have lost control over what is done. Even as our Congress has ... The place to click to play the video is in the upper right hand corner of this page. http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/events03/ukpol/hoc/cook17mar.ram

[Not everyone succombs to the Blair administrations' subservience to (the Jewish Lobby's domination of) US foreign policy.]
Third resignation hits Blair,
This is London/Evening Standard (UK), March 18, 2003
"Tony Blair was today hit by his third government resignation as Home Office minister John Denham unexpectedly quit in protest at the failure to win a fresh UN mandate for action against Saddam Hussein. In a statement, Denham, who became Minister of State for the Home Office in June 2001, said: 'I have this morning resigned from the Government as I cannot support the Government in tonight's vote' ... The 53-year-old peer used a radio interview early today to announce his move - piling the pressure on Mr Blair as he prepared for his sternest test since becoming Prime Minister ... With thousands of British troops poised for action, Mr Blair is now forced to deal with a government crisis which saw an electrifying resignation speech by Cook last night - he was one of the first of the waves of New Labour peers created by Tony Blair in 1997. Today Mr Blair's senior aides feared that Mr Cook's devastating address from the backbenches could lead other ministers to follow him, Lord Hunt and now John Denham out of the government - and swell the number of backbench rebels. Last month 122 Labour MPs voted against Mr Blair in the biggest Commons rebellion suffered by any government in modern times. If the number of Labour rebels reached 173 in a 10pm vote the Prime Minister would have to depend on Tory support to win a parliamentary mandate for going to war. If it hit 206 Mr Blair would have lost the support of half his parliamentary party - putting his leadership in peril."

Sen. Robert Byrd: 'Today I Weep for My Country',
Yahoo!News (from Reuters), March 19, 6:26 PM
"The oldest voice in the U.S. Congress rose on Wednesday to denounce as misguided President Bus's march to war with Iraq.'Today I weep for my country,' said West Virginia Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd. 'No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. ... Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.' 'We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance,' Byrd said, adding: 'After war has ended the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.' Byrd, who has been a leading foe on Capitol Hill of war with Iraq, spoke in a nearly empty Senate chamber about four hours before Bush's 8 p.m. EST deadline for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or face a U.S.-led invasion. 'May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us,/ Byrd said. As the white-haired senator concluded his remarks, a number of people in the visitor's gallery rose and applauded before they were admonished to be quiet. At 85, Byrd is now the oldest member of Congress as well as the longest serving."

[It would seem that the ADL -- so very image-conscious in the name of Jews -- knows what it's doing. As the the war with Iraq begins, we get a clear symbolic hint at who's at the economic helms of the War Monster.]
The Anti-Defamation League Opened The NASDAQ Stock Market,
NASDAQ, March 19, 2003
"Pictured: Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) joins NASDAQ host David Weild, Vice Chairman, The NASDAQ Stock Market to preside over the Market Open. Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League opened The NASDAQ Stock Market Wednesday, March 19, 2003 at NASDAQ's MarketSite in New York. The NASDAQ Stock Market proudly welcomes Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League to the Market Open. Since 1987 Mr. Foxman has attained his role as a world-renowned leader in the fight against anti-Semitism, bigotry and discrimination. In the forefront of major issues of the day, Mr. Foxman speaks out against hatred and violence wherever they occur. About ADL The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry."

[Well, Saddam's got a least one thing right.]
Israel believes Saddam spoke live in morning TV broadcast,
by Herb Keinon, Free Republic (originally from Jerusalem Post ), Mar. 20, 2003
"Israeli Foreign Ministry experts believe that Saddam Hussein was speaking live on camera when he addressed the Iraqi nation this morning on television and radio, shortly after the US launched a war against him ... Saddam also appeared to be under a lot of pressure and more disorganized than usual, when he made the speech, in which he characteristically lashed out at 'criminal Zionism' in addition to the United States, it was noted. In the speech, Saddam accused the United States of committing a 'shameful crime' by attacking Iraq and urged the Iraqi people to "go draw your sword' against the enemy. 'We promise you that Iraq, its leadership and its people will stand up to the evil invaders, and we will take them to such limits that they will lose their patience in achieving their plans, which are pushed by criminal Zionism,' he said."

War Is the Climax Of The American-Israeli Partnership,
by Patrick Seale, Al-Hayat, March 21, 2003
"The United States has embarked on an imperial adventure in the Middle East. This is the true meaning of the war against Iraq. The war is not about the disarmament of Iraq. That was always a hollow and cynical pretext. No one with any real knowledge of the situation believed that Iraq, on its knees from two disastrous wars and from twelve years of punitive sanctions, presented any sort of 'imminent threat' to anyone. In any event, from the start last November when UN inspectors returned to Iraq under Security Council Resolution 1441, the Washington hawks wanted the inspectors to fail and then pressed impatiently for war just when inspections showed real signs of progress. Nor is the war only, or even primarily, about toppling Saddam Hussein. Indeed the White House announced that US forces would enter Iraq whether or not the Iraqi leader resigned and left the country. The war has bigger aims: it is about the implementation of a vast - and probably demented - strategic plan. Washington is intoxicated by the vision of imposing a 'Pax Americana' on the Arab world on the model of the imperial 'order' which Britain imposed on the entire region in an earlier age - with its Gulf and South Arabian strong points protecting the route to India, its occupation of Egypt in 1882, and then the extension of its rule after the First World War to some of the Arab provinces of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The result was the creation under British tutelage of Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan. With bases across the region from Oman to Central Asia, America is now seeking to recreate the British Empire at its apogee. The occupation of Iraq, a major Arab country at the strategic heart of the region, will allow the United States to control the resources of the Middle East and reshape its geopolitics to its advantage - or so the Anglo-American strategists hope. But if things go badly, history may well judge the war to be a criminal enterprise - unjustified, unprovoked, illegitimate, catastrophic for the Iraqi victims of the conflict and destructive of the rules of international relations as they have evolved over the past half-century. The fatal flaw is that this is not a purely American project. Rather it must be seen as the culmination of America's strategic partnership with Israel which began 36 years ago when, in 1967, President Charles de Gaulle told Israel that it would lose French support if it attacked its Arab neighbours. Israel promptly switched its attentions from Europe to the US, which it gradually made its main external ally and subsidizer. The relationship has since grown more intimate with every passing year, to the extent that the tail now wags the dog. Much of the ideological justification and political pressure for war against Iraq has come from right-wing American Zionists, many of them Jews, closely allied to Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and occupying influential positions both inside and outside the Bush administration. It is neither exaggeration, nor anti-Semitism, as they would have it, to say that this is a Bush-Sharon war against Iraq. As is now widely understood, the genesis of the idea of occupying Iraq can be dated back to the mid-1990s ... The ultimate objective is to change the map of the Middle East by destroying or intimidating all the enemies of the US and Israel. If America's 'imperium' turns out to be benevolent, which is most improbable, the Arabs may accept it for a while. But they will always resist Israel's domination of their region. That is the flaw in the project ... Occupation breeds insurrection. This is an axiom of history."

[Below is well-illustrated the Jewish Lobby's imperialist aims, on behalf of Israel. The author of this aricle is Michael Ledeen, who is Jewish-American. The chief editors of this newspaper (Seth Lipsky and Ira Stoll) are also Jewish, as are the dominant financial investors (Michael Steinhardt, etc.) in the new New York City tabloid, the New York Sun. Here Ledeen calls for war against Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, after Iraq.]
AFTER BAGHDAD, TEHRAN, DAMASCUS, RIYADH,
by Michael A. Ledeen, middleeast.org (from New York Sun),
March 19, 2003
"The battle for Iraq is about to begin, and in all likelihood it will involve us in the broader war about which the president has been speaking ever since September 11, 2001. Once upon a time, it might have been possible to deal with Iraq alone, without having to face the murderous forces of the other terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riad, but that time has passed. We have given them more than a year to prepare for this moment, and they are ready. The Iranian, Syrian, and Saudi tyrants know that if we win a quick victory in Iraq and then establish a free government in Baghdad, their doom is sealed. It would then be only a matter of time before their peoples would demand the same liberation we brought to Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, they must do everything in their power to tie us down in Iraq, bleed us on the ground, frustrate our designs, and eventually break our will ... Iraq is a battle, not a war. We have to win the war, and the only way to do that is to bring down the terror masters, and spread freedom throughout the region. Rarely has it been possible to see one of history's potential turning points so clearly and so dramatically as it is today. Rarely has a country been given such a glorious opportunity as we have in our hands. But history is full of missed opportunities and embarrassing defeats. We'll know soon which destiny we will achieve. Michael A. Ledeen holds the Freedom Chair at AEI. In the Spotlight "There has been a distinct carefulness in the language of many senior Bush administration officials whenever the 'd-word' comes up. The boldness of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz-'If we commit . . . forces, we're not going to commit them for anything less than a free and democratic Iraq'--has not often been repeated."

Operation Anglosphere. Today's most ardent American imperialists weren't born in the USA, by Jeet Heer, Boston Globe, March 23, 2003
"Empire is a dirty word in the American political lexicon. Just last summer, President Bush told West Point graduates that ''America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish.'' In this view, the power of the United States is not exercised for imperial purposes, but for the benefit of mankind. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, however, many foreign policy pundits, mostly from the Republican right but also including some liberal internationalists, have revisited the idea of empire ... Today's advocates of American empire share one surprising trait: Very few of them were born in the United States. D'Souza was born in India, and Johnson in Britain - where he still lives. Steyn, Krauthammer, and Ignatieff all hail from Canada. (Krauthammer was born in Uruguay, but grew up in Montreal before moving to the United States.) More than anything, the backgrounds of today's most outspoken imperialists suggest the lingering appeal and impact of the British empire. 'I think there's more openness among children of the British Empire to the benefits of imperialism, whereas some Americans have never gotten over the fact that our country was born in a revolt against empire,' notes Max Boot, currently afellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 'But lots of people who are advocating pro-imperial arguments - such as Bill Kristol and me - are not Brits or Canadians.' (Boot, who was born in Russia, moved to the United States as a baby.) Imperialism is often seen as an expanding circle, with power radiating outward from a capital city like London or Paris to hinterlands. But a quick review of history shows that imperial enthusiasm doesn't emanate only from the center."

[Who says Jews aren't risking their lives -- en masse -- in the Jewish Lobby's war against Israel's Arab enemies?]
"U.K. lets Jewish soldiers in Gulf erase religion from dog-tags,
by Sharon Sadeh, Haaretz (Israel), March 23, 2003
"The British Army has allowed its Jewish soldiers involved in the war in Iraq to erase mention of their religion on their dog-tags, fearing they would be executed if they were captured. There are some 15 Jewish soldiers among the 45,000 British fighters currently in action in the U.S.-led campaign. The British Ministry of Defense made the decision following concerns expressed by Jewish community leaders in Britain. The ministry added that kosher rations had been provided to those Jewish soldiers who requested them."

Perle's network ... and Iran's Pahlavi?,
Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq
"Brian Whitaker of The Guardian notes that the public appearances of most of Perle's associates are brokered by a single representative (theatrical agent), Eleana Benador. Benador's client-list is a who's-who of the attack-Iraq crowd, including Perle, Khidhir Hamza, Charles Krauthammer, Kanan Makiya, Judith Miller, Laurie Mylroie, A.M. Rosenthal, Michael Rubin, Richard O. Spertzel, and James Woolsey. (William Safire, wherefore art?) Given Benador's role near the center of Perle's circle, one wonders about the implications of the following photos (http://www.bobguzzardi.com/Photos/photo.htm) apparently taken at a meeting that included: US Senator Joseph Lieberman (former Al Gore running-mate and increasingly intemperate hawk), anti-Arab ideologue Daniel Pipes, attack-Iraq PR flack Eleana Benador, and - inexplicably - Reza Pahlavi, the former Crown Prince of Iran. (Adding absurdity to inexplicability, the photos are posted on the vanity website of a Philadelphia-area realtor active in Middle East politics.) The 'spy-novelist within' wants to know ... Is the RETURN OF THE SHAH another option to be considered against the Axis-of-Evil; and what are the implications relative to Iraq? National Review columnist Michael Ledeen recently wrote of an Iranian groundswell for the return of Reza Pahlavi. Did I mention than Ledeen is a client of Eleana Benador?"

[Professional Jewish Thought Police Organization tries to invert the real: War is Peace. Jew is non-Jew. The ADL may be the world's foremost "disinformation" agency.]
Poisoners are back,
by Abraham H. Foxman, Anti-Defamation League
This op-ed originally appeared in the New York Daily News on March 23, 2003. Posted: March 23, 2003
"It began with a whisper about the space shuttle disaster, gathered force as pundits and political commentators ruminated on the reasons for going to war and burst into the light of day when Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) accused the Jewish community of driving America's war on Iraq: 'If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.' Moran's statement is not an isolated viewpoint. It is a voice in the chorus spreading the age-old anti-Semitic canard that when our country faces danger, Jews are responsible. Now, with our nation four days into its campaign in Iraq, the notion that the war is being driven by 'Jewish interests' or the 'pro-Israel lobby' has revived the conspiracy theory that 'hawkish' Jews are driving the war. The first whisperings were heard after the crash of the space shuttle Columbia, when anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers accused Israel and Jews of having a hand in the disaster. After all, wasn't there something sinister about the presence of an Israeli astronaut on the ill-fated mission? Some Internet chatter suggested Col. Ilan Ramon was a spy for Israel who was secretly gathering intelligence photos of Iraq. Since then, the whisper about Jews driving the war has grown into a chorus made up of anti-war activists, anti-Israel pundits and mainstream media. In its purest form, the charge embodies central themes of classical anti-Semitism: control of government decision-making by Jews, disloyalty of the Jewish community and Jews acting in conspiracy."

US firm wins Umm Qasr deal.
"There was greater resistance in Umm Qasr than the US expected A US company has won a $4.8m (£3m) contract to manage Umm Qasr port in southern Iraq. The contract is the second awarded under US Government plans for reconstruction in Iraq."

Live From Iraq, an Un-Embedded Journalist: Robert Fisk on Washington’s ‘Quagmire’ in Iraq, Civilian Deaths and the Fallacy of Bush’s ‘War of Liberation’
by Robert Fisk, Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill,
Democracy Now, March 25, 2003
"AG: Can you talk about the POWs and television- the charge that they’re violating the Geneva Convention by showing them on television? RF: Well, you know, the Geneva Convention is meant to protect children, and hospitals are full of civilians, including many children who’ve been badly wounded. It seems to me that this concentration on whether television should show prisoners or not is a kind of mischief: it’s not the point. The issue, of course, is that both sides are taking prisoners, and that both sides want the other side to know of the prisoners they’ve taken ... When you realize that 19 men have tried to commit suicide at Guantanamo, that we now know that 2 prisoners at the US base Bagram were beaten to death during interrogation. To accuse the Iraqis of breaking the Geneva Convention by putting American POWs on television in which you hear them being asked what state they’re from in the states, it seems a very hypocritical thing to do. But one would have to say, technically, putting a prisoner of war on television and asking them questions on television is against the Geneva Convention. It is quite specifically so. And thus, clearly Iraq broke that convention when it put those men on television- I watched them on Iraqi TV here. But, as I’ve said, it’s a pretty hypocritical thing when you realize, this equates to the way America treats prisoners from Afghanistan- Mr. Bush is not the person to be teaching anyone about the Geneva Convention ... You know, one thing I think the Bush administration has shown as a characteristic, is that it dreams up moral ideas and then believes that they’re all true, and characterizes this policy by assuming that everyone else will then play their roles. In their attempt to dream up an excuse to invade Iraq, they’ve started out, remember, by saying first of all that there are weapons of mass destruction. We were then told that al Qaeda had links to Iraq, which, there certainly isn’t an al Qaeda link. Then we were told that there were links to September 11th, which was rubbish. And in the end, the best the Bush administration could do was to say, 'Well, we’re going to liberate the people of Iraq'. And because it provided this excuse, it obviously then had to believe that these people wanted to be liberated by the Americans. And, as the Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said a few hours ago, I was listening to him in person, the Americans expected to be greeted with roses and music- and they were greeted with bullets. I think you see what has happened is that -- and as he pointed out -- the American administration and the US press lectured everybody about how the country would break apart where Shiites hated Sunnis and Sunnis hated Turkmen and Turkmen hated Kurds, and so on. And yet, most of the soldiers fighting in southern Iraq are actually Shiite. They’re not Sunnis, they’re not Tikritis, they’re not from Saddam’s home city. Saddam did not get knocked off his perch straight away, and I think that, to a considerable degree, the American administration allowed that little cabal of advisors around Bush- I’m talking about Perle, Wolfowitz, and these other people—people who have never been to war, never served their country, never put on a uniform- nor, indeed, has Mr. Bush ever served his country- they persuaded themselves of this Hollywood scenario of GIs driving through the streets of Iraqi cities being showered with roses by a relieved populace who desperately want this offer of democracy that Mr. Bush has put on offer-as reality. And the truth of the matter is that Iraq has a very, very strong political tradition of strong anti-colonial struggle. It doesn’t matter whether that’s carried out under the guise of kings or under the guise of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath party, or under the guise of a total dictator. There are many people in this country who would love to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I’m sure, but they don’t want to live under American occupation."

This War is for Us,
by Ariel Natan Pasko, Israel Insider, March 26, 2003
"Of course this war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein is for us. Even the anti-Semites, like Patrick J. Buchanan and Congressman Jim Moran know it. Pat Buchanan has been accusing the neo-conservatives, what he calls the War Party - i.e., the Jews and their followers in America - of pushing the United States into this war. He´s also blamed Prime Minister Sharon and Israel for wanting the war. That´s what he said in a recent article, 'Whose War?' Rep. Moran recently came out of the closet saying, 'If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.' Other anti-Semites have also been saying it. They´re both right, and dead wrong. True, most Jews in America and Israel want the US to capture Saddam Hussein and his gang, disarm Iraq of Weapons of Mass Destruction, institute some form of regime change, and introduce freedom and democracy. But so do most Americans, many Iraqis, and many other freedom-loving people in the region and around the world ... However, we already knew that this war is for us - i.e., the Jews and Israel. Chazal - our sages - throughout the ages have explained the Torah, telling us that everything that happens in the world is for the benefit of the Jewish People. Simply put another way, if all the world is a stage, then the Jews - and especially those in the Land of Israel - are the lead actors on the stage of history, and the goyim - the nations, i.e. the gentiles - have supporting roles, while the evil-doers are props and background scenery. As our tradition states, G-D - the great playwright - created the world for the sake of the Jewish People, and it is our responsibility to implement the Torah - absolute morality and the blueprint of creation - in it. Stop and think for a moment: the last Gulf War in 1991 ended erev - just before - Purim. This Gulf War began motzei - just after - Shushan Purim. Get the picture? ... As I said earlier, of course this war is for the Jews and Israel, and instead of hiding from the accusation, or crying, 'anti-Semitic slur', we should gratefully acknowledge what the Master of the Universe is doing to our enemies for us. Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, Bashar Assad, Osama Bin-Laden, and the other dictators, terrorists and mullahs of the region, are the modern day Hamans and Hitlers. Great things are yet to come. The Hebrew month of Adar is a time for ´increasing joy´. Purim is a time for celebrating our salvation from enemies who plot our destruction. Adar falls at the end of the calendar for months and the end of the winter. And after Adar comes Nisan - or Aviv, meaning springtime. Springtime is a time of rebirth and regeneration after a long dark winter ... Yes, the war is for the Jews. But it is also for all decent, peace-loving and freedom-loving people ... Great things are coming, for the Jewish People, for the State of Israel, for America, for the Western democratic world, and for all those who aspire to be like them. And why should we apologize for that?"

[Jewish author David Frum and the Jewish take-over of "what's good for America." It is the Jewish condemnation of protest against the Jewish Lobby's war on Iraq. So Frum implies: Jews "must turn their back" on the rest of America as their "neo-conservative" movement takes over American foreign policy.]
Unpatriotic Conservatives,
By David Frum, National Review, March 25, 2003
"Some of the leading figures in this antiwar movement call themselves 'conservatives.' These conservatives are relatively few in number, but their ambitions are large. They aspire to reinvent conservative ideology: to junk the 50-year-old conservative commitment to defend American interests and values throughout the world — the commitment that inspired the founding of this magazine — in favor of a fearful policy of ignoring threats and appeasing enemies. And they are exerting influence. When Richard Perle appeared on Meet the Press on February 23 of this year, Tim Russert asked him, 'Can you assure American viewers . . . that we're in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?' Perle rebutted the allegation. But what a grand victory for the antiwar conservatives that Russert felt he had to air it. You may know the names of these antiwar conservatives. Some are famous: Patrick Buchanan and Robert Novak. Others are not: Llewellyn Rockwell, Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming, Scott McConnell, Justin Raimondo, Joe Sobran, Charley Reese, Jude Wanniski, Eric Margolis, and Taki Theodoracopulos. The antiwar conservatives aren't satisfied merely to question the wisdom of an Iraq war ... But the antiwar conservatives have gone far, far beyond the advocacy of alternative strategies. They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's enemies. Common cause: The websites of the antiwar conservatives approvingly cite and link to the writings of John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Noam Chomsky, Ted Rall, Gore Vidal, Alexander Cockburn, and other anti-Americans of the far Left. ... America has social problems; the American family is genuinely troubled. The conservatism of the future must be a social as well as an economic conservatism. But after the heroism and patriotism of 9/11 it must also be an optimistic conservatism. There is, however, a fringe attached to the conservative world that cannot overcome its despair and alienation. The resentments are too intense, the bitterness too unappeasable. Only the boldest of them as yet explicitly acknowledge their wish to see the United States defeated in the War on Terror. But they are thinking about defeat, and wishing for it, and they will take pleasure in it if it should happen. They began by hating the neoconservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country. War is a great clarifier. It forces people to take sides. The paleoconservatives have chosen — and the rest of us must choose too. In a time of danger, they have turned their backs on their country. Now we turn our backs on them."

Iraqi Uses Web to Chronicle a City Under the Bombs,
by Jonathan Wright, Reuters, March 25, 2003
" A mysterious Iraqi who calls himself Salam Pax, writing a Web log from the heart of Baghdad, has developed a large Internet following with his wry accounts of daily life in a city under U.S. bombardment. Salam Pax, a pseudonym crafted from the Arabic and Latin words for peace, came back on line on Monday after a two-day break because of interruptions in Internet access. The traffic on his Web site, http://dear-raed.blogspot.com, caused the server to go down and Salam's e-mail folder has filled with inquiries about his true identity."

In Favor of the War, and Enjoying a Good Fight,
New York Times, March 23, 2003
"For 12 years, Morton A. Klein has been a one- or two-issue kind of man: brook no peace with the Palestinian leadership, ferret out anti-Semitism wherever it is. Mr. Klein is president of the Zionist Organization of America, so such views come as no surprise. He took a slight detour on Sunday, heading to Times Square to take part in a rally supporting the war against Iraq. By itself, that may not be so surprising, given that Iraq is an enemy of Israel. But his new role becomes more interesting when one realizes that Mr. Klein has emerged as one of the few people to take a lead in organizing public displays of pro-war sentiment in New York City, where some of the nation's largest antiwar demonstrations have been held. He is also one of the few Jewish leaders to take a prominent public stand on the war ... [Klein] actively protested the Vietnam War, grew his hair long and worked for George McGovern's presidential campaign in 1972. 'I was young and idealistic,' he said. 'When you get older, you realize it doesn't work.' Mr. Klein became a health economist in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. Around that time, he befriended the scientist Linus Pauling, and served as his research consultant for 15 years. In 1991, Mr. Klein became head of the Philadelphia chapter of the Zionist organization, and the group's national president two years later. There is an iconoclastic strain to the life of a man whom Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, once called an 'attack dog of the Jewish thought police.'"

GLOBAL CRISIS OVER IRAQ. United States: inventing demon,
La Monde Diplomatique, March 2003
"The neo-conservative right has been attempting, with varying success, to establish itself as the dominant ideological force in the United States for more than 25 years, especially in the definition of foreign policy. Long thwarted by democratic process and public resistance to the national security state, it is now on the brink of success, thanks to George Bush's disputed electoral victory in 2000, and to 11 September 2001, which transformed an accidental president into an American Caesar. President Bush has become the neocon vehicle for a policy that is based on unilateralism, permanent mobilisation and 'preventive war'. War and militarisation would have been impossible without 11 September, which tipped the institutional balance in favour of the new right... This project is now obvious, but it was already apparent in the mid-1970s, when the radical right sabotaged the new East-West detente. It took shape during the 1980s, when the same players ordered the biggest peacetime mobilisation ever, and in the early 1990s, when the neo-conservatives worked out the doctrine of US primacy ... In response to the broad popular revolt against the national security state and widespread cultural changes in US society, the radical right wing of the Republican party, led by Ronald Reagan, joined forces with elements in the national security apparatus bent on revenge for the humiliating defeat in Vietnam, and neo-conservative Democrats from the hardline anti-communist wing of the party. This coalition was determined to restore the state's authority and the national cold-war consensus, and to re-establish US strategic supremacy, and it conducted a political and ideological campaign to bury detente. The campaign was directed at the realistic balance of power policy that was being pursued by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, which in the coalition's view represented a dangerous weakening of the collective US will ... Richard Perle, one of the most influential neoconservatives in the current administration and an early critic of detente, is quite open about it: 'We had to show that detente could not work and re-establish objectives of victory' ... In 1974 Albert Wohlstetter of the Rand Corporation, father-in-law of Richard Perle and guiding spirit of the neo-conservative movement, fired the first shot. 'He accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet missile deployment, and conservatives began a concerted attack' ... Team B was headed by Richard Pipes, an 'expert' on Soviet affairs and father of neo-conservative publicist Daniel Pipes, and its members included Paul Wolfowitz, now deputy defence secretary, and other eminent cold warriors drawn from PFIAB and the committee on the present danger (CPD) ... As we know, a few years later Reagan, the man who coined the phrase "evil empire" (or at least his speechwriters did), took up where Ford left off. His team included key figures from the Ford era, headed by Perle and Wolfowitz. He embarked on a vast defence mobilisation programme and resumed, notably in Afghanistan and Central America, the wide-ranging clandestine operations that had ended after the defeat in Vietnam ... As William Kristol, neo-conservative theoretician, and founder of the Project for the New American Century, once said: 'It is a positive sign when the American people are prepared to go to war.'"

"The IRAQWAR.RU analytical center was created recently by a group of journalists and military experts from Russia to provide accurate and up-to-date news and analysis of the war against Iraq. The following is the English translation of the IRAQWAR.RU report based on the Russian military intelligence reports."

Support of Troops Prevails in L.A.,
New California Media, Mar 26, 2003
"Los Angeles Jews reacted to the imminence of war against Iraq with strong support, muted opposition and some ambivalence about the wisdom of President Bush’s course of action. Across the spectrum, however, the predominant feeling was to back U.S. troops, now that the die has apparently been cast, accompanied by prayers for their safety and an additional deep concern for the fate of Israel. Many rabbis celebrating Purim, the day after the president’s ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, drew analogies between the machinations and intentions of the Iraqi dictator and Haman, the ancient enemy of Persia’s Jews. Divided viewpoints were reflected by the membership of Temple Shalom for the Arts, which, said Rabbi David Baron, was 'split down the middle.' Those affiliated with the entertainment industry largely opposed the war, while Holocaust survivors and their families, seeing a parallel to Hitler’s rise to power, backed military action, Baron said. As for himself, Baron described both Saddam and commentator Patrick Buchanan as spiritual heirs to Haman. Saddam seeks to destroy the Jews, while Buchanan, in charging that a Jewish cabal is behind America’s action, is recasting Haman’s canard about a small minority of a different faith plotting against the welfare of the state ... Outspoken in support of the war was Rabbi Yitzchok Summers of Anshe Emes Synagogue, who interpreted the timing of Bush’s ultimatum, falling on Purim and preceding the Fast of Esther, as 'highly auspicious' and a contemporary sign of 'God’s hidden miracles.' ... Howard Welinsky, chairman of Democrats for Israel, ... pointed out that at the previous week’s California Democratic Convention, close to 90 percent of the delegates were opposed to war and booed Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), when he mentioned the need for military action during a video transmission ... Another concern by some congregants dealt with a possible anti-Semitic backlash by those who would label the conflict a 'Jewish war' ... Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs of Kol Tikvah said that he has been outspoken in his opposition to the war but that many of his congregants are keeping quiet, because of their concern for Israel."

[Thanks to the Jewish Lobby and and its iron allegiance to racist Israel: "We are all Palestinians now."]
The 'Palestinization' of Iraq,
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, March 27, 2003
"American tanks are now ripping at the heart of Mesopotamia, the 'land between the river' and the cradle of civilization; the US 5th Corps is already engaging the Medina division of the Republican Guards as B52s increase their bombing raids of the 'red line' in the outer ring of defenses of Baghdad, over which hangs a surreal, dust-induced dark orange cloud. For 280 million Arabs, the symbolic effect of the tanks in the country is as devastating as a lethal sandstorm. But Saddam Hussein seems to be one step ahead. It doesn't matter that Iraqi TV was silenced by a showering of Tomahawks (although domestic broadcasts, as well as the international signal, have been restored). Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV will be on hand to record the ultimate image that Saddam knows is capable of igniting the Arab world into an ocean of fire: an American tank in the streets of Baghdad juxtaposed with an American tank in the streets of Gaza. To date, an estimated 5,200 Iraqis have crossed the Jordanian-Iraqi border, going back 'to defend their homeland' as they invariably put it. In already one week of a war that was marketed by the Pentagon as 'clean' and 'quick' and which is revealing itself to be bloody and protracted, not a single Iraqi refugee has crossed the al-Karama border point into eastern Jordan. Beyond Iraq, the most crucial development in the Middle East for decades is the fact that from Amman to Cairo, from Beirut to Riyadh, the bulk of the Arab nation is now "Palestinized" ... One of the most extraordinary developments of the war so far is how the resistance of the Iraqi population against a foreign invasion has galvanized this sentiment of anger in the Arab world. 'We are all Palestinians now,'as a Bedouin taxi driver puts it. One of the first things anyone mentions in Jordan - be it a Jordanian, an Egyptian, a Lebanese or a Somali refugee - is their happiness about the way the Iraqi people are resisting the 'invaders' (never qualified as 'liberators')."

[The terrible human cost of the Jewish Lobby's war against Iraq for Israel -- and America's Jewish foreign policy.]
Robert Fisk: 'It was an outrage, an obscenity',
by Robert Fisk, The Independent (UK), March 27, 2003
"It was an outrage, an obscenity. The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still-smouldering car. Two missiles from an American jet killed them all - by my estimate, more than 20 Iraqi civilians, torn to pieces before they could be 'liberated' by the nation that destroyed their lives. Who dares, I ask myself, to call this 'collateral damage'? Abu Taleb Street was packed with pedestrians and motorists when the American pilot approached through the dense sandstorm that covered northern Baghdad in a cloak of red and yellow dust and rain yesterday morning. It's a dirt-poor neighbourhood, of mostly Shia Muslims, the same people whom Messrs Bush and Blair still fondly hope will rise up against President Saddam Hussein, a place of oil-sodden car-repair shops, overcrowded apartments and cheap cafés. Everyone I spoke to heard the plane. One man, so shocked by the headless corpses he had just seen, could say only two words. "Roar, flash," he kept saying and then closed his eyes so tight that the muscles rippled between them. How should one record so terrible an event? Perhaps a medical report would be more appropriate. But the final death toll is expected to be near to 30 and Iraqis are now witnessing these awful things each day; so there is no reason why the truth, all the truth, of what they see should not be told. For another question occurred to me as I walked through this place of massacre yesterday. If this is what we are seeing in Baghdad, what is happening in Basra and Nasiriyah and Kerbala? How many civilians are dying there too, anonymously, indeed unrecorded, because there are no reporters to be witness to their suffering? Abu Hassan and Malek Hammoud were preparing lunch for customers at the Nasser restaurant on the north side of Abu Taleb Street. The missile that killed them landed next to the westbound carriageway, its blast tearing away the front of the café and cutting the two men - the first 48, the second only 18 - to pieces. A fellow worker led me through the rubble. "This is all that is left of them now," he said, holding out before me an oven pan dripping with blood. At least 15 cars burst into flames, burning many of their occupants to death. Several men tore desperately at the doors of another flame-shrouded car in the centre of the street that had been flipped upside down by the same missile. They were forced to watch helplessly as the woman and her three children inside were cremated alive in front of them. ... Only yesterday were Iraqis learning the identity of five civilian passengers slaughtered on a Syrian bus that was attacked by American aircraft close to the Iraqi border at the weekend. The truth is that nowhere is safe in Baghdad, and as the Americans and British close their siege in the next few days or hours, that simple message will become ever more real and ever more bloody. We may put on the hairshirt of morality in explaining why these people should die. They died because of 11 September, we may say, because of President Saddam's 'weapons of mass destruction', because of human rights abuses, because of our desperate desire to 'liberate' them all. Let us not confuse the issue with oil. Either way, I'll bet we are told President Saddam is ultimately responsible for their deaths. We shan't mention the pilot, of course."

The Spoils of War,
hermes-press.com
[Cartoons etc. about the hypocrisies of the Bush administration's "liberation" of Iraq.]

The Israeli Arms Connection,
Newsday, March 28, 2003
"Early in the American invasion of Iraq, amid one of the air assaults, an unmanned aircraft meant to confuse enemy radar fell to the ground in Baghdad. In the wreckage, Iraqis discovered a fragment marked with the manufacturer's signature and origin - 'Taas Jerusalem' - a taunting declaration, as if fired from the Jewish state itself. 'We found a missile that had fallen in southern Baghdad,' Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri announced. 'The missile did not explode and God be praised, it exposed Zionism's part in the aggression.' Despite vigorous U.S. attempts to keep Israel on the sidelines of the war, at turn after turn, it seems the country is cropping up in the unfolding campaign. From the renewed peace process supposed to arrive after the war to U.S. protection from Scud attacks to battlefield technology it supplies to America, Israel is in fact much closer to the action than the official Western line suggests. As one of the world's top arms exporters, the country has sold the United States an array of equipment that is either being used or could be employed in Iraq. It has supplied the American military with sophisticated decoys, such as the one found Saturday, as well as precision air-to-surface missiles on B-52 bombers, high-tech targeting systems, and onboard computers and armor for the Bradley fighting vehicles rolling across the Iraqi desert, according to military experts and analyses of Israeli arms sales. It also has designed and manufactured a host of other components that permeate the U.S. arsenal. And while Israel is not at the spearhead, its military contribution provides yet more fuel for Arab convictions that the Jewish state is behind the aggression. 'The perception is that there is no difference between the U.S. and Israel,' said Mustafa Al-Sayyid, a political scientist at American University in Cairo. He said that while most people in the region don't believe the United States depends on Israel for its military machinery, they regard the two countries as in lockstep. 'And the more this war continues, hostility to the U.S. and Israel will increase,' he said."

[Jewish Lobbyists for Israel (who haven't served in the U.S. military) say American casualties in the Zionist-led war against Iraq don't matter much. The four "hawks" mentioned in this article are all Jewish --which is of course taboo to note in the article itself.]
Hawks on War Against Hussein Stay the Course,
by Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post, March 28, 2003,Page A34.
"Strong proponents of the war against Iraq yesterday dismissed fresh concerns that the conflict could take much longer and produce more casualties than generally anticipated, expressing continued optimism about the conflict's ultimate outcome ... 'I think the American people are going to have great tolerance for the war taking longer, and they are going to have great tolerance for more casualties,' said William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard. 'The American people don't have tolerance for defeat or equivocation.' Kristol said he did not welcome a tougher fight, but, he said, 'in a certain way, the willingness to stick it out would be as impressive as' a quick victory, because such toughness would dispute the 'core [Osama] bin Laden claim that America is a weak horse,' that after suffering 19 casualties in Somalia, 'they fled.' Along similar lines, Michael A. Ledeen, author of 'The War against the Terror Masters' and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, argued at a forum on Iraq earlier the week: 'I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say, but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. . . . What we hate is not casualties but losing. And if the war goes well and if the American public has the conviction that we're being well-led and that our people are fighting well and that we're winning, I don't think casualties are going to be the issue.' Yesterday, Ledeen said his main critique of the war so far is not on military matters ... Several strong proponents of war maintained that victory against Iraq would be swift. Their dilemma now is perhaps best exemplified by Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, who in February 2002 wrote in The Washington Post: 'I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: 1) It was a cakewalk last time; 2) they've become much weaker; 3) we've become much stronger; and 4) now we're playing for keeps;' ... At the Pentagon, one of the leading architects of the Bush administration's Iraq strategy, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, argued earlier this week that the people of Iraq will voice their enthusiasm for the attack when they no longer feel threatened."

[Similar theme below as the Jewish ideological cluster bomb above: Jewish columnist William Safire dismisses the "casualties" issue; he demands unconditional surrender to Judeocentric, Zionist American imperialism.]
Help Iraqis Arise,
by William Safire, New York Times, March 27, 2003
"'America can't take casualties.' That was the first part of the message over the telephone from an Iraqi officer, eager to hedge his bets in case Saddam lost, to a friend in the coalition-held north. Saddam's plan is not to defeat the Americans and British in some mother of all battles. That proved a loser last time. Rather, the strategy in Baghdad is to use guerrillas - Baath Party Vietcong - to harass our troops everywhere, in order to demoralize America and achieve a negotiated peace. He's no fool. Every U.S. casualty or prisoner is fully reported in America's media. Television interviewers eager to match the human interest of gutsy frontline journalists exploit the suffering of relatives. Grief-stricken responses make for riveting television and ratchet up calls to stop the war. Nor can Americans take Iraqi casualties, according to Saddam's plan ... The answer is to adopt the proposition set forth by Gen. U. S. Grant in our Civil War, and Roosevelt and Churchill in World War II: declaring irrevocably that the only acceptable end to hostilities is unconditional surrender ... President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, meeting today, should emulate their World War II predecessors. They should pre-empt proposals for bombing halts and armistices with a ringing statement about the only way to end the war: by unconditional surrender. Change the leaflets and broadcasts. No talks about terms; no amnesties for paramilitary killers; no deals on exile for torturers. Surrender, plain and simple."

Quotes from History Relevant to Today's News,
History News Network, March 29, 2003
"IKE OPPOSED PREVENTIVE WAR (posted 2-18-03): Dwight Eisenhower, in 1953 after being shown plans to launch a preventive war against the Soviet Union; as quoted by Jonathan Schell, in the Nation (March 3, 2003): 'All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time....I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing' ...
WHY DICK CHENEY OPPOSED GOING TO BAGDAD IN 1991 AT THE TIME OF THE GULF WAR: (posted 10-16-02) Dick Cheney in April 1991, then Defense Secretary, as quoted in the Slate on October 16, 2002: If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein,you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave? ...
DISSENT DURING WAR (3-13-02) Robert Taft, December 19, 1941, in Chicago: As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government. Perhaps nothing today distinguishes democratic government in England so greatly from the totalitarianism of Germany as the freedom of criticism which has existed continuously in the House of Commons and elsewhere in England. Of course that criticism should not give any information to the enemy. But too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur. Source: The Papers of Robert Taft (Kent, 1997), p. 303."

Books Not Bombs! Our Communities Say No War on Iraq! Money for Schools, Jobs & Health Care! As Bush prepares to drop billions of dollars worth of bombs on Iraqi children, thousands of Bay Area teachers are getting pink slips. Join thousands of college and high school students and teachers from all over the West for a speak-out at UC Berkeley, and then march past the schools, libraries, hospitals and communities facing the budget massacres. Saturday, April 5 Gather at 10 AM at UC Berkeley, Sproul Plaza March down Telegraph begins promptly at 11am Join up with community rally at Mosswood Park (Broadway and 37th Street) March down Telegraph to Oakland City Hall for final rally and music. Campus Anti-War Network & April 5 Coalition 4 Peace & Justice: People's Non-Violent Response Network, Black Radical Congress, Labor Committee for Peace and Justice, Alameda Central Labor Council, Youth Power - Oakland High, Vanguard Foundation, City Councilwoman Nancy Nadel, Not In Our Name, ANSWER, Bay Area United Against War, United for Peace and Justice and many more. For more info: call 510-333-4604, email can-sf-april5@hotpop.com, or go to http://www.antiwarnetwork.org/ Half -page flyer available at: http://www.antiwarnetwork.org/images/april5sf.pdf

Israel quietly playing key spy role,
New York Daily News, March 29, 2003
"From a spy satellite orbiting overhead to clandestine operations in western Iraq, Israel is a strong ally in the U.S.-led war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But it's mostly a silent partnership because the Bush administration doesn't want to advertise Israel's help, fearing a backlash among Arab nations - particularly key allies like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Behind the scenes, however, the Israelis are heavily engaged. Their sophisticated Amos 4 satellite routinely beams data to U.S. intelligence, and Israeli agents in Baghdad have provided extremely sensitive intelligence, sources told the Daily News. Israel has been particularly aggressive in the desert of western Iraq, where its Sayeret Matkal commando force, in tandem with U.S. and Australian special forces, has run covert operations hunting for Scud missile launch sites."

[The Jewish "neocon" Lobby's gift to America, in the name of Israel:]
'Practice to Deceive' Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan,
by Joshua Micah Marshall, Washington Monthly April 2003
"Imagine it's six months from now. The Iraq war is over. After an initial burst of joy and gratitude at being liberated from Saddam's rule, the people of Iraq are watching, and waiting, and beginning to chafe under American occupation. Across the border, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, our conquering presence has brought street protests and escalating violence. The United Nations and NATO are in disarray, so America is pretty much on its own. Hemmed in by budget deficits at home and limited financial assistance from allies, the Bush administration is talking again about tapping Iraq's oil reserves to offset some of the costs of the American presence--talk that is further inflaming the region. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border. But as they begin to move, there is an explosion: Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon blow themselves up in a Baghdad restaurant, killing dozens of Western aid workers and journalists. Knowing that Hezbollah has cells in America, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge puts the nation back on Orange Alert. FBI agents start sweeping through mosques, with a new round of arrests of Saudis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Yemenis. To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated. In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would 'deal with' Iran, Syria, and North Korea ... Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments--or, failing that, U.S. troops--rule the entire Middle East. There is a startling amount of deception in all this--of hawks deceiving the American people, and perhaps in some cases even themselves. While it's conceivable that bold American action could democratize the Middle East, so broad and radical an initiative could also bring chaos and bloodshed on a massive scale. That all too real possibility leads most establishment foreign policy hands, including many in the State Department, to view the Bush plan with alarm. Indeed, the hawks' record so far does not inspire confidence. Prior to the invasion, for instance, they predicted that if the United States simply announced its intention to act against Saddam regardless of how the United Nations voted, most of our allies, eager to be on our good side, would support us. Almost none did. Yet despite such grave miscalculations, the hawks push on with their sweeping new agenda. Like any group of permanent Washington revolutionaries fueled by visions of a righteous cause, the neocons long ago decided that criticism from the establishment isn't a reason for self-doubt but the surest sign that they're on the right track. But their confidence also comes from the curious fact that much of what could go awry with their plan will also serve to advance it. A full-scale confrontation between the United States and political Islam, they believe, is inevitable, so why not have it now, on our terms, rather than later, on theirs? Actually, there are plenty of good reasons not to purposely provoke a series of crises in the Middle East. But that's what the hawks are setting in motion, partly on the theory that the worse things get, the more their approach becomes the only plausible solution. Moral Cloudiness Ever since the neocons burst upon the public policy scene 30 years ago, their movement has been a marriage of moral idealism, military assertiveness, and deception ... The fact that many neocons were Jewish, and outraged by Moscow's increasingly visible persecution of Jews, also caused them to reject both the McGovernite and Kissingerian tendencies to ignore such abuses ... Many spent the Reagan years orchestrating bloody wars against Soviet proxies in the Third World, portraying thugs like the Nicaraguan Contras and plain murderers like Jonas Savimbi of Angola as 'freedom fighters.' The nadir of this deceit was the Iran-Contra scandal, for which Podhoretz's son-in-law, Elliot Abrams, pled guilty to perjury. Abrams was later pardoned by Bush's father, and today, he runs Middle East policy in the Bush White House."

[The Jewish Lobby's gift to America:]
Outrage Spreads in Arab World. Civilian Deaths in Baghdad Market Called a 'Massacre',
Washington Post, March 30, 2003
"A shuddering sense of outrage at President Bush and the United States fell over the Arab world today as television networks and newspapers reported a U.S. air assault that Iraqi officials said killed 58 people at a vegetable market in Baghdad. 'Monstrous martyrdom in Baghdad,' said a huge headline in al-Dustur, a newspaper in Amman, Jordan. 'Dreadful massacre in Baghdad,' read a banner headline in Egypt's mass circulation Akhbar al-Yawm newspaper. Photos of two young victims of the blast covered half its front page. 'Yet another massacre by the coalition of invaders,' read the main headline in Saudi Arabia's popular al-Riyadh daily. 'Mr. Bush has lost us. We are gone. Enough. That's the end,' said Diaa Rashwan, head of the comparative politics unit at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. 'If America starts winning tomorrow, there will be suicide bombing that will start in America the next day. It is a whole new level now.' The anger was a clear sign that U.S.-Arab relations, despite the Bush administration's campaign to win hearts and minds, was at a low point ... The popular al-Jazeera satellite television network broadcast the funerals of those killed at the market. It repeatedly showed pictures of severed body parts and wounded toddlers bandaged and crying in hospital beds."

Former CIA analyst: US ‘conned into war’,
Daily Star (Lebanon),
"Middle East expert and former Central Intelligence Agency officer Robert Baer has charged that the American-led war in Iraq is a dire mistake based on false assumptions and faulty information, but that President George W. Bush cannot stop now and leave Saddam Hussein in power after the long emotional and political buildup to the war. 'The American people, Congress, government and president were conned into this war, in the full sense of the word, by neo-conservatives and hawks in Washington who sold a false bill of goods. The president was lied to and given erroneous information that was filtered through Iraqi exiles who had not lived in Iraq for 20 or 30 years and had no clear idea of realities inside Iraq. The exiles had no intention of fighting themselves, but wanted the US to fight for them,' he told The Daily Star Thursday in an interview. The 21-year CIA veteran quit the agency in good standing about five years ago, and was given the Career Intelligence Medal for his service. He called this 'almost an accidental war,' against the backdrop of an American population that did not bother with foreign affairs but suddenly suffered the wrenching emotional experience of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. 'There was already in place among some circles in Washington an old plan to attack Iraq. After Sept. 11, 2001 it was sold to the president, who was told that this would be a quick, decisive, easy, almost bloodless operation, at little expense and with no resistance by Iraqis, with Saddam Hussein gone at a flash of the muzzle."

Graphic German web site shows outrageous human consequences of the Zionist-driven bombs on Iraq.

Slaughter at the Bridge of Death. US Marines Fire on Civilians,
by Mark Franchetti, CounterPunch, March 31, 2003
"A horrific scene lay ahead. Some 15 vehicles, including a minivan and a couple of trucks, blocked the road. They were riddled with bullet holes. Some had caught fire and turned into piles of black twisted metal. Others were still burning. Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying in the road or in nearby ditches. All had been trying to leave this southern town overnight, probably for fear of being killed by US helicopter attacks and heavy artillery. Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the coalition's supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young American marines with orders to shoot anything that moved. One man's body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound. Tucked away in his breast pocket, thick wads of banknotes were turning to ashes. His savings, perhaps. Down the road, a little girl, no older than five and dressed in a pretty orange and gold dress, lay dead in a ditch next to the body of a man who may have been her father. Half his head was missing. Nearby, in a battered old Volga, peppered with ammunition holes, an Iraqi woman _ perhaps the girl's mother _ was dead, slumped in the back seat. A US Abrams tank nicknamed Ghetto Fabulous drove past the bodies. This was not the only family who had taken what they thought was a last chance for safety. A father, baby girl and boy lay in a shallow grave. On the bridge itself a dead Iraqi civilian lay next to the carcass of a donkey. As I walked away, Lieutenant Matt Martin, whose third child, Isabella, was born while he was on board ship en route to the Gulf, appeared beside me. 'Did you see all that?' he asked, his eyes filled with tears. 'Did you see that little baby girl? I carried her body and buried it as best I could but I had no time. It really gets to me to see children being killed like this, but we had no choice.'" Martin's distress was in contrast to the bitter satisfaction of some of his fellow marines as they surveyed the scene. 'The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy,' said Corporal Ryan Dupre. 'I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him.'"

[More from the War for the Jewish Lobby:]
US Said Prepared to Pay 'High Price' to Oust Saddam,
by Jim Wolf, Reuters, March 31, 2003
"The United States is prepared to pay a 'very high price' in terms of casualties to capture Baghdad and oust President Saddam Hussein, a senior official of the U.S. Central Command said Monday. 'We're prepared to pay a very high price because we are not going to do anything other than ensure that this regime goes away,' the official told reporters, adding that U.S. casualties in the 12-day-old war had so far been 'fairly' light. 'If that means there will be a lot of casualties, then there will be a lot of casualties,' said the official, who spoke on condition that he not be named. Referring to nights in World War II 'when we'd lose 1,000 people,' he added: 'There will come a time maybe when things are going to be much more shocking.' Forty-six Americans have been killed, and 17 reported missing, in the Iraq war. Britain has reported 25 deaths."

Infrastructure Minister Paritzky dreams of Iraqi oil flowing to Haifa,
Haaretz (Israel), April 1, 2003
"[Israeli] National Infrastructures Minister Joseph Paritzky has requested an assessment of the condition of the old oil pipeline from Mosul to Haifa, with an eye toward renewing the flow of oil in the event of friendly post-war regime in Iraq. Paritzky explained to Haaretz yesterday that resurrecting the pipeline to Haifa could save Israel the high cost of shipping oil from Russia. He is certain that the Americans would respond favorably to the idea, since the pipeline would bring Iraqi oil directly to the Mediterranean ... Hanan Bar-On, then the deputy director-general of the Foreign Ministry, confirmed yesterday that Israel was involved in talks during the mid-1980s on a plan for an Iraq-Jordanian pipeline to the Red Sea port of Aqaba. Among the participants in these talks was Donald Rumsfeld, then an adviser to U.S. president Reagan and currently secretary of defense. The American corporation Bechtel was slated to build the pipeline. According to the deal, which eventually fell through, Israel was to receive about $100 million a year via former Israeli businessman Bruce Rappaport in return for a commitment not to oppose the construction or operation of the new pipeline. In 1987, energy minister Moshe Shahal reportedly looked into the idea of helping Iraq export its oil via the Golan Heights to Haifa. But this plan also failed to materialize."

Robert Fisk: The monster of Baghdad is now the hero of Arabia. This is now a nationalist war against the most obvious kind of imperial power,
The Independent (UK), Apri. 1, 2003
"So it's a 'truly remarkable achievement,' is it? General Tommy Franks says so. Everything is going 'according to plan', according to the British. So it's an achievement that the British still have not 'liberated' Basra. It is 'according to plan' that the Iraqis should be able to launch a scud missile from the Faw peninsula – supposedly under 'British control' for more than a week. It is an achievement, truly remarkable of course, that the Americans lose an Apache helicopter to the gun of an Iraqi peasant, spend four days trying to cross the river bridges at Nasiriyah and are then confronted by their first suicide bomber at Najaf. One half of the entire Anglo-American force – still called 'the coalition' by journalists who like to pretend it includes 35 armies rather than two and a bit (the 'bit' being the Australian special forces) – is now guarding and running the supply line through the desert. And Baghdad is bombed but not besieged. The military 'plan' is so secret, according to General Franks, that very few people have seen it all or understand it. But his plan he says, is 'highly flexible'; it would have to be, to sustain the chaos of the past 12 days, and, of course, we hold the moral high ground. The Americans bomb a passenger bus close to the Syrian border and don't even apologise. An Iraqi soldier kills himself attacking US marines and it is an act of 'terrorism'. And now Secretary of State Colin Powell announces – to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the largest Israeli lobby group in the US who of course support this illegal war – that Syria and Iran are 'supporting terror groups' and will have to 'face the consequences'. So what's the plan? ... I rather think that this war's foundations were based not on military planning but on ideology. Long ago, as we know, the right wing pro-Israeli lobbyists around Bush planned the overthrow of Saddam. This would destroy the most powerful Arab state in the Middle East – Israel's chief of staff, Shoal Mofaz, demanded that the war should start even earlier – and allow the map of the region to be changed forever. Powell stated just this a month ago. False intelligence information was mixed up with the desires of the corrupt and infiltrated Iraqi opposition. Fantasies and illusions were given credibility by a kind of superpower moral overdrive. Any kind of mendacity could be used to fuel this ideological project – 11 September (oddly unmentioned now), links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden (unproven), weapons of mass destruction (hitherto unfound), human rights abuses (at which we originally connived when Saddam was our friend) and, finally, the most heroic project of all – the 'liberation' of the people of Iraq ... Bush and Blair hope, this is now a nationalist war against the most obvious kind of imperial power. Without Iraqi support, how can General Franks run a military dictatorship or find Iraqis willing to serve him or run the oilfields? The Americans can win the war. But if their project fails they will have lost. Yet there is one achievement we should note. The ghastly Saddam, the most revolting dictator in the Arab world, who does indeed use heinous torture and has indeed used gas, is now leading a country that is fighting the world's only superpower and that has done so for almost two weeks without surrendering. Yes, General Tommy Franks has accomplished one 'truly remarkable achievement'. He has turned the monster of Baghdad into the hero of the Arab world and allowed Iraqis to teach every opponent of America how to fight their enemy."

US draws up secret plan to impose regime on Iraq,
The Guardian (UK), April 1, 2003
"A disagreement has broken out at a senior level within the Bush administration over a new government that the US is secretly planning in Kuwait to rule Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Under the plan, the government will consist of 23 ministries, each headed by an American. Every ministry will also have four Iraqi advisers appointed by the Americans, the Guardian has learned. The government will take over Iraq city by city. Areas declared 'liberated' by General Tommy Franks will be transferred to the temporary government under the overall control of Jay Garner, the former US general appointed to head a military occupation of Iraq. In anticipation of the Baghdad regime's fall, members of this interim government have begun arriving in Kuwait. Decisions on the government's composition appear to be entirely in US hands, particularly those of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence. This has annoyed Gen Garner, who is officially in charge but who, according to sources close to the planning of the government has had to accept a number of controversial Iraqis in advisory roles. The most controversial of Mr Wolfowitz's proposed appointees is Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, together with his close associates, including his nephew. During his years in exile, Mr Chalabi has cultivated links with Congress to raise funds, and has become the Pentagon's darling among the Iraqi opposition. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is one of his strongest supporters. The state department and the CIA, on the other hand, regard him with deep suspicion. He has not lived in Iraq since 1956, apart from a short period organising resistance in the Kurdish north in the 1990s, and is thought to have little support in the country. Mr Chalabi had envisaged becoming prime minister in an interim government, and is disappointed that no such post is included in the US plan. Instead, the former banker will be offered an advisory job at the finance ministry. A senior INC official said last night that Mr Chalabi would not countenance a purely advisory position ... Last week Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, told Congress that immediately after the fall of President Saddam's regime, the US military would take control of the Iraqi government. His only concession was that this would be done with the 'full understanding' of the international community and with 'the UN presence in the form of a special coordinator'".

For Israel Lobby Group, War Is Topic A, Quietly At Meeting, Jerusalem's Contributions Are Highlighted,
by Dana Milbank, Washington Post, April 1, 2003; Page A25
"This week's meeting in Washington of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has put a spotlight on the Bush administration's delicate dance with Israel and the Jewish state's friends over the attack on Iraq. Officially, Israel is not one of the 49 countries the administration has identified as members of the 'Coalition of the Willing.' Officially, AIPAC had no position on the merits of a war against Iraq before it started. Officially, Iraq is not the subject of the pro-Israel lobby's three-day meeting here. Now, for the unofficial part: As delegates to the AIPAC meeting were heading to town, the group put a headline on its Web site proclaiming: 'Israeli Weapons Utilized By Coalition Forces Against Iraq.' The item featured a photograph of a drone with the caption saying the 'Israeli-made Hunter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle' is being used 'by U.S. soldiers in Iraq.' At an AIPAC session on Sunday night, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom proclaimed in a speech praising Secretary of State Colin L. Powell: 'We have followed with great admiration your efforts to mobilize the international community to disarm Iraq and bring democracy and peace to the region, to the Middle East and to the rest of the world. Just imagine, Mr. Secretary, how much easier it would have been if Israel had been a member of the Security Council.' A parade of top Bush administration officials -- Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, political director Kenneth Mehlman, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns -- appeared before the AIPAC audience. The officials won sustained cheers for their jabs at European opponents of war in Iraq, and their tough remarks aimed at two perennial foes of Israel, Syria and Iran. The AIPAC meeting -- attended by about 5,000 people, including half the Senate and a third of the House -- was planned long before it became clear it would coincide with hostilities in Iraq."

[Prominent reporter gets canned by Jewish NBC News mogul for diverting from the mass media propaganda campaign:]
Arnett fired -- networks shift focus NBC severs ties after interview on Iraqi TV,
Times Dispatch (from Associated Press), Apr 1, 2003
"NBC fired journalist Peter Arnett yesterday, saying it was wrong for him to give an interview with state-run Iraqi TV in which he said the American-led coalition's initial plan for the war had failed because of Iraq's resistance. Arnett called the interview a 'misjudgment' and apologized. Arnett, on NBC's 'Today' show yesterday, said he was sorry for his statement but added, 'I said over the weekend what we all know about the war' ... NBC defended him Sunday, saying he had given the interview as a professional courtesy and that his remarks were analytical in nature. But by yesterday morning the network switched course and, after Arnett spoke with NBC News President Neal Shapiro, said it would no longer work with Arnett ... Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, gained much of his prominence from covering the 1991 Gulf War for CNN. One of the few American television reporters left in Baghdad, his reports were frequently aired on NBC and its cable sisters, MSNBC and CNBC ... In the Iraqi TV interview, broadcast Sunday by Iraq's satellite television station and monitored by The Associated Press in Egypt, Arnett said his Iraqi friends tell him there is a growing sense of nationalism and resistance to what the United States and Britain are doing. He said the United States is reappraising the battlefield and delaying the war, maybe for a week, 'and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan.' 'Clearly, the American war plans misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces,' Arnett said. Arnett said it is clear that within the United States there is growing opposition to the war and a growing challenge to President Bush about the war's conduct."

[The war for Israel goes on:]
Children killed and maimed in bomb attack on town,
by Robert Fisk, The Independent (UK), April 2, 2003
"At least 11 civilians, nine of them children, were killed in Hilla in central Iraq yesterday, according to reporters in the town who said they appeared to be the victims of bombing. Reporters from the Reuters news agency said they counted the bodies of 11 civilians and two Iraqi fighters in the Babylon suburb, 50 miles south of Baghdad. Nine of the dead were children, one a baby. Hospital workers said as many as 33 civilians were killed. Terrifying film of women and children later emerged after Reuters and the Associated Press were permitted by the Iraqi authorities to take their cameras into the town. Their pictures – the first by Western news agencies from the Iraqi side of the battlefront – showed babies cut in half and children with amputation wounds, apparently caused by American shellfire and cluster bombs. Much of the videotape was too terrible to show on television and the agencies' Baghdad editors felt able to send only a few minutes of a 21-minute tape that included a father holding out pieces of his baby and screaming 'cowards, cowards' into the camera. Two lorryloads of bodies, including women in flowered dresses, could be seen outside the Hilla hospital. Dr Nazem el-Adali, who was trained in Edinburgh, said almost all the patients were victims of cluster bombs dropped around Hella and in the neighbouring village of Mazarak. One woman, Alia Mukhtaff, is seen lying wounded on a bed; she lost six of her children and her husband in the attacks. Another man is seen with an arm missing, and a second man, Majeed Djelil, whose wife and two of his children were killed, can be seen sitting next to his third and surviving child, whose foot is missing. The mortuary of the hospital, a butcher's shop of chopped up corpses, is seen briefly in the tape. Iraqi officials have been insisting for 48 hours that the Americans have used cluster bombs on civilians in the region but this is the first time that evidence supporting these claims has come from Western news agencies. Most of the wounded said they were hit by American munitions and one man described how an American vehicle fired a shell into his family home. 'I could see an American flag,' he says. One of the editors in Baghdad, a European, when asked why he would not send the full videotape to London, wound the pictures on to two mutilated corpses of babies. 'How could we ever send this?'' he said."

French PM: U.S. Made Triple Mistake Starting Iraq War
Reuters, April 3, 2003
"French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said on Thursday the United States had made a moral, political and strategic mistake by launching war in Iraq, risking further damage to already strained ties with Washington. Raffarin told France 3 television that Paris wanted U.S. and British forces to prevail but offered blunt criticism of the U.S. policies that led to the conflict. There was no immediate reaction from the White House. 'The Americans made a triple mistake: first of all a moral mistake, and I think we have to say this: there was an alternative to war. We could have disarmed Iraq differently.' That was clear by Washington's failure to secure a U.N. resolution authorizing military action should Iraq fail to destroy its alleged weapons of mass destruction, he said. 'Also, (they made) a political mistake, because we know very well the difficulties of this region of the world,' he added. 'We see how serious the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, and at any moment it can set the world ablaze. It's a serious political error to start trouble in this region.' 'And then, there is a strategic mistake: that today one country can lead the world,' he said, arguing that Europe should be one of the major poles of influence in the world. Raffarin's blunt assessment of U.S. policy appeared at odds with efforts earlier in the week to play down differences with the United States."

[Here is a good account of the Jewish anti-Islamic axis that drives American imperialist ambition in the Middle East. The author of this piece, Chafets, was raised in America and moved to Israel, but still writes regular columns for the New York Daily News:]
Iraq's only the start - Syria & Iran are next,
by Zev Chafets, Daily News (New York), April 2, 2003
"Soon - my guess is within a matter of weeks - the Battle of Iraq will be over. Battle, not war. The American defeat of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein can only be understood as an early engagement in a much broader war against the Islamic axis. This war began in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime. Then it moved on to Iraq, in the same way World War II flowed to Italy from North Africa. But it won't end in Iraq. Baghdad isn't Berlin. The fall of Saddam won't be the end of armed Arab and Islamic fascism any more than the fall of Benito Mussolini brought the defeat of European fascism. When Saddam goes, American forces will be sandwiched between two enemies. To the east, Iran, a charter member of the Axis of Evil. To the west, Syria, a new volunteer. Both will have to be defeated before this war is over ... Beyond Baghdad, the Battle of Iran lies ahead - and the Battle of Syria and Lebanon. Fortunately, these axis dictatorships aren't (currently) more militarily formidable than Iraq. They will fall as Saddam is falling. Only when they are gone will Fifth Ave. be ready for a victory parade."

Iraqi Shadow Government Cools Its Heels in Kuwait,
by Jane Perlez, New York Times, April 2, 2003
"Along a promenade of beachside villas, several hundred American government officials — from well-worn former generals to fresh young aid workers — are working at their laptops, inventing flow charts and examining maps of Iraq in what has become Potomac on the Persian Gulf. This is the nucleus of the Bush administration's new Iraqi government. One of the faraway masters, in the minds of many here, is someone known fondly, or not so fondly — depending on one's political orientation — as Wolfowitz of Arabia. The reference, of course, is to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the undersecretary of defense, who has dispatched some of his protégés here to prepare key Baghdad ministries for American management. Mr. Wolfowitz is also passing judgment on others assigned here, making the transitory Potomac here as divisive and political as the permanent one at home, some participants say. The overall boss of this Iraqi government-in-waiting, an operation that has been endowed with the Washington-speak title 'Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance,' is retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner ... Arrayed below General Garner is a group of former army officers, former and present American ambassadors, aid bureaucrats who give themselves away by their many-pocketed khaki jackets, a smattering of State Department officials, several British officials and a cluster known as the 'true believers.' These are the people, like Robert Reilly, a former head of the Voice of America, who in the shorthand for Mr. Wolfowitz are known as 'Wolfie's' people. They are thought to be particularly fervent about trying to remake Iraq as a beacon of democracy and a country with a tilt toward Israel."

Red Cross horrified by number of dead civilians,
CTV (Canadian Press), April 3, 2003
"Red Cross doctors who visited southern Iraq this week saw 'incredible' levels of civilian casualties including a truckload of dismembered women and children, a spokesman said Thursday from Baghdad. Roland Huguenin, one of six International Red Cross workers in the Iraqi capital, said doctors were horrified by the casualties they found in the hospital in Hilla, about 160 kilometres south of Baghdad. 'There has been an incredible number of casualties with very, very serious wounds in the region of Hilla,' Huguenin said in a interview by satellite telephone. 'We saw that a truck was delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight. It was really very difficult to believe this was happening.' Huguenin said the dead and injured in Hilla came from the village of Nasiriyah, where there has been heavy fighting between American troops and Iraqi soldiers, and appeared to be the result of 'bombs, projectiles' ... 'In the case of Hilla, everybody had very serious wounds and many, many of them small kids and women. We had small toddlers of two or three years of age who had lost their legs, their arms. We have called this a horror.' At least 400 people were taken to the Hilla hospital over a period of two days, he said -- far beyond its capacity."

[The Jewish Lobby inspires the war, and Jewish reporters map it. But why would ANYONE take an MTV "news" reporter covering war seriously? And, yes, we all need more Jewish reporters documenting for us Arab suffering.]
Security concerns keep Jewish journalist from Iraq,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 3, 203
"It’s not just Ted Koppel and Wolf Blitzer blaring news from the war-torn Persian Gulf anymore. Meet Gideon Yago, the 25-year old Jew from New York, who was sent to cover America’s war in Iraq for MTV. Yago’s assignment underscores the war’s draw among a generation otherwise tuned in to sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. The war, in fact, superceded drugs as the chief concern among young people, according to an MTV poll last month. It was the first time a foreign subject ranked top on their radar. But it also reveals the challenges — and from Yago’s perspective, opportunities — of being a Jewish reporter in an Arab country ... His religion and the fact that his father is an Israeli who heads a fund-raising group for Israel raised 'too many red flags,' Yago said. Glenn Yago’s Pups for Peace, which began shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, trains and supplies Israel with bomb-sniffing dogs. An economist, Yago founded the program hoping to find a cost-efficient measure against suicide bombings. Even before Yago could enter Kuwait, he needed a fresh passport to eliminate the Israel’s stamps since Israeli nationals are blocked from the country ... And he attributes the area’s [Arabia's] negative outlook toward Jews to simple misinformation. 'You’re going to breed misunderstanding if you have policies at the door that are going to exclude people,' he said, referring to Kuwait’s policy of excluding Israeli nationals from the country."

Can We Talk?,
by Eric Alterman, The Nation, April 3, 2003
"This war has put Jews in the showcase as never before. Its primary intellectual architects--Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith--are all Jewish neoconservatives. So, too, are many of its prominent media cheerleaders, including William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and Marty Peretz. Joe Lieberman, the nation's most conspicuous Jewish politician, has been an avid booster, going so far as to rebuke his former partner Al Gore and much of his own party. Then there's the 'Jews control the media' problem. It's probably not particularly relevant that the families who own the Times and the Washington Post are Jewish, but let's not pretend this is so in the case of the Jewish editors of, say, U.S. News & World Report and The New Republic. Mortimer Zuckerman is head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and Peretz is unofficial chair of the American Arab Defamation Committee. Neither is shy about filling his magazine with news Jews can use. To make matters worse, many of these Jewish hard-liners--'Likudniks' in the current parlance--appear, at least from a distance, to be behaving in accordance with traditional anti-Jewish stereotypes. Much to the delight of genuine anti-Semites of the left and right, the idea of a new war to remove Saddam was partially conceived at the behest of Likud politician Benjamin Netanyahu in a document written expressly for him by Perle, Feith and others in 1996. Some, like Perle, apparently see the influence they wield as an opportunity to get rich. What's more, many of these same Jews joined Rumsfeld and Cheney in underselling the difficulty of the war, in what may have been a ruse designed to embroil America in a broad military conflagration that would help smite Israel's enemies ... A really good conspiracy theorist would begin to wonder if the Jews are being set up to take the fall when things go badly. A big part of the problem in addressing the 'Jewish war' conspiracy thesis is the reticence of almost all sides to broach the issue of Israeli and American Jewish influence on US foreign policy. A few writers, most notably Stanley Hoffmann, Robert Kaiser and Mickey Kaus, have raised the question gingerly. But writing on the Washington Post op-ed page, New Republic editor Lawrence Kaplan insists that even raising 'the specter of dual loyalty' is 'toxic.' Kaus noted accurately in Slate that the dual loyalty taboo is 'quite openly designed to stop people from raising the Likudnik issue.' And it works. This is all very confusing to your nice Jewish columnist. My own dual loyalties--there, I admitted it--were drilled into me by my parents, my grandparents, my Hebrew school teachers and my rabbis, not to mention Israeli teen-tour leaders and AIPAC college representatives. It was just about the only thing they all agreed upon. Yet this milk- (and honey-) fed loyalty to Israel as the primary component of American Jewish identity--always taught in the context of the Holocaust--inspires a certain confusion in its adherents, namely: Whose interests come first, America's or Israel's? Leftist landsmen are certain that an end to the occupation and a peaceful and prosperous Palestinian state are the best ways to secure both Israeli security and American interests. Likudniks think it's best for both Israel and the United States to beat the crap out of as many Arabs as possible, as 'force is the only thing these people understand.' But we ought to be honest enough to at least imagine a hypothetical clash between American and Israeli interests. Here, I feel pretty lonely admitting that, every once in a while, I'm going to go with what's best for Israel. As I was lectured over and over while growing up, America can make a million mistakes and nobody is going to take away our country and murder us. Israel is nowhere near as vulnerable as many would have us believe, but it remains a tiny Jewish island surrounded by a sea of largely hostile Arabs ... Our inability to engage the question only forces the discussion into subterranean and sometimes anti-Semitic territory. If the Likudniks played an unsavory role in fomenting this war (and future wars), and further discussion will help illuminate this unhappy fact, then I say, 'Let there be light.' If something is 'toxic' merely to talk about, the problem is probably not in the talking, but in the doing."

The Academy of Lagado,
by Edward Said, London Review of Books, April , 2003
"Full of contradictions, flat-out lies and groundless affirmations, the torrent of reporting and commentary on the 'coalition' war against Iraq has obscured the negligence of the military and policy experts who planned it and now justify it. For the past two weeks, I have been travelling in Egypt and Lebanon trying to keep up with the stream of information and misinformation coming out of Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan, much of it misleadingly upbeat, but some of it horrifyingly dramatic in its import as well as its immediacy. The Arab satellite channels, al-Jazeera being by now the most notorious and efficient, have given a quite different view of the war from the standard stuff served up by American reporters with their mass uprisings in Basra, their multiple 'falls' of Umm Qasr and al-Faw, their talk of Iraqis being killed for not fighting, and their grimy pictures of themselves, as lost as the English-speaking soldiers they have been living with. Al-Jazeera has had reporters inside Mosul, Baghdad, Basra and Nasiriya, one of them the irrepressible Tasir Alouni, fluent veteran of the Afghanistan war, and they have presented a much more detailed, more realistic account of what has befallen Baghdad and Basra, as well as showing the resistance and anger of the Iraqi population, dismissed by Western propaganda as a sullen bunch waiting to throw flowers at Clint Eastwood lookalikes. Let's get straight to what is so unwise about this war, leaving aside for the moment its illegality and international unpopularity. In the first place, no one has satisfactorily proved that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction that furnish an imminent threat to the United States. Iraq is a hugely weakened and ineffective Third World state ruled by a hated despotic regime: there is no disagreement about that anywhere, least of all in the Arab and Islamic world. But that after 12 years of sanctions it is a threat of any kind to any other state is a laughable notion, and not a single journalist of the overpaid legions who swarm around the Pentagon, State Department and White House has ever bothered to investigate it. Iraq might once have been a potential challenge to Israel. It was the one Arab country with the human and natural resources, as well as the infrastructure, to take on Israel's arrogant brutality. That is why Begin bombed Iraq pre-emptively in 1981, supplying a model for the US in its own pre-emptive war. How regrettable that the media have failed to elucidate the Likud's slow takeover of US military and political thinking about the Arab world. So fearful has everyone been of the charge of anti-semitism that the stranglehold of the neo-conservative cum Christian Right cum Pentagon civilian hawks on American policy is now a reality which forces the entire country into an attitude of undifferentiated bellicosity. The idea that Iraq's population would have welcomed American forces entering the country after a terrifying aerial bombardment was always utterly implausible. That this became one of the lynchpins of US policy is evidence of the rubbish fed to the Administration by the Iraqi opposition (many of whose members were out of touch with their country as well as keen on promoting their postwar careers by persuading the Americans of how easy an invasion would be) and by the two accredited Middle East experts identified long ago as having the most influence over American Middle East policy, Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami. Now in his late eighties, Lewis came to the US from the UK some thirty years ago to teach at Princeton. His fervent anti-Communism and disapproval of everything about contemporary Arabs and Islam pushed him to the forefront of the pro-Israel contingents during the last years of the 20th century. An old-fashioned Orientalist who seems to have little feeling for any country in the region other than Turkey, he was quickly bypassed by the advances in the social sciences and humanities that formed a new generation of scholars who treated Arabs and Muslims as living subjects rather than benighted natives ... Fouad Ajami is a Lebanese Shia educated in the US who made his name as a pro-Palestinian commentator. But by the mid-1980s, he was teaching at Johns Hopkins; he'd become a fervent anti-Arab ideologue and had been taken up by the right-wing Zionist lobby (he now works for Martin Peretz and Mort Zuckerman) and the Council on Foreign Relations ... According to this model, the Iraqi people are a blank sheet on which to inscribe the ideas of William Kristol, Robert Kagan and other deep thinkers of the Far Right."

Richard Perle's Corporate Adventures,
by Tim Shorrock, The Nation, April 3, 2003
"Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people." -- Richard Perle

Recent articles about the U.S. invasion of Iraq

[Read between the lines: This war is for the benefit of who?]
White man's burden,
by Ari Shavit, Haaretz (Israel), April 5, 2003
"The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible. But another journalist, Thomas Friedman (not part of the group), is skeptical ... Washington is a small city. It's a place of human dimensions. A kind of small town that happens to run an empire. A small town of government officials and members of Congress and personnel of research institutes and journalists who pretty well all know one another. Everyone is busy intriguing against everyone else; and everyone gossips about everyone else. In the course of the past year, a new belief has emerged in the town: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history ... This is no longer an academic exercise, one of them says, we are responsible for what is happening. The ideas we put forward are now affecting the lives of millions of people. So there are moments when you're scared. You say, Hell, we came to help, but maybe we made a mistake ... [Bill] Kristol is pleasant-looking, of average height, in his late forties. In the past 18 months he has used his position as editor of the right-wing Weekly Standard and his status as one of the leaders of the neoconservative circle in Washington to induce the White House to do battle against Saddam Hussein. Because Kristol is believed to exercise considerable influence on the president, Vice President Richard Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he is also perceived as having been instrumental in getting Washington to launch this all-out campaign against Baghdad ... [The war] is being fought to consolidate a new world order, to create a new Middle East. Does that mean that the war in Iraq is effectively a neoconservative war? That's what people are saying, Kristol replies, laughing. ... Charles Krauthammer is handsome, swarthy and articulate. In his spacious office on 19th Street in Northwest Washington, he sits upright in a black wheelchair. Although his writing tends to be gloomy, his mood now is elevated. The well-known columnist (Washington Post, Time, Weekly Standard) has no real doubts about the outcome of the war that he promoted for 18 months ... America thus reached the conclusion that it has no choice: it has to take on itself the project of rebuilding the Arab world. Therefore, the Iraq war is really the beginning of a gigantic historical experiment whose purpose is to do in the Arab world what was done in Germany and Japan after World War II. It's an ambitious experiment, Krauthammer admits, maybe even utopian, but not unrealistic. After all, it is inconceivable to accept the racist assumption that the Arabs are different from all other human beings, that the Arabs are incapable of conducting a democratic way of life. However, according to the Jewish-American columnist, the present war has a further importance. If Iraq does become pro-Western and if it becomes the focus of American influence, that will be of immense geopolitical importance. An American presence in Iraq will project power across the region. ... This war will enhance the place of America in the world for the coming generation, Krauthammer says. Its outcome will shape the world for the next 25 years."

Hawkish lawyer to oversee Iraqi ministries. The Pentagon selects group to take power,
by Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, April 4, 2003
"A Pentagon lawyer who sought to have US citizens imprisoned indefinitely without charge as part of the war on terrorism will supervise civil administration in Iraq once Saddam Hussein is removed. Michael Mobbs, 54, who will take charge of 11 of the 23 Iraqi ministries, is one of several controversial appointments to the Pentagon-controlled government-in-waiting being assembled in a cluster of seaside villas in Kuwait. Other top-level appointees include James Woolsey, a former CIA director with Israeli connections, who has long pursued a theory that Saddam Hussein, rather than Islamic militants, was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York. Another is Zalmay Khalilzad, who once symp-athised with the Taliban but later changed tack. During the Reagan administration, Mr Mobbs worked at the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, where he became known for his hawkish views on national security and American-Soviet relations. On these issues he was closely aligned with the assistant defence secretary at the time, Richard Perle, who is widely regarded as chief architect of the war. Mr Mobbs later joined a Washington law firm in which Douglas Feith - now under secretary for policy at the Pentagon - was a partner. In his role as a legal consultant to the Pentagon, Mr Mobbs has been working behind the scenes to help determine the legal fate of terror suspects and other detainees held by the US military in Cuba and Afghanistan. He was also author of what has become known as the "Mobbs declaration", a document presented to the US courts on behalf of the Pentagon claiming that the US president has wide powers to detain American citizens alleged to be enemy combatants indefinitely. The former CIA director James Woolsey is expected to be handed a senior role in the post-Saddam government, according to sources close to the planning process. Mr Woolsey sits on the advisory board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a connection likely to arouse hostility in Iraq."

US accused of plans to loot Iraqi antiques,
By Liam McDougall, Sunday Herald (UK), April 6, 2003
"Fears that Iraq's heritage will face widespread looting at the end of the Gulf war have been heightened after a group of wealthy art dealers secured a high-level meeting with the US administration. It has emerged that a coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), met with US defence and state department officials prior to the start of military action to offer its assistance in preserving the country's invaluable archaeological collections. The group is known to consist of a number of influential dealers who favour a relaxation of Iraq's tight restrictions on the ownership and export of antiquities. Its treasurer, William Pearlstein, has described Iraq's laws as 'retentionist' and has said he would support a post-war government that would make it easier to have antiquities dispersed to the US. Before the Gulf war, a main strand of the ACCP's campaigning has been to persuade its government to revise the Cultural Property Implementation Act in order to minimise efforts by foreign nations to block the import into the US of objects, particularly antiques. News of the group's meeting with the government has alarmed scientists and archaeologists who fear the ACCP is working to a hidden agenda that will see the US authorities ease restrictions on the movement of Iraqi artefacts after a coalition victory in Iraq ... The ACCP has caused deep unease among archaeologists since its creation in 2001. Among its main members are collectors and lawyers with chequered histories in collecting valuable artefacts, including alleged exhibitions of Nazi loot. They denied accusations of attempting to change Iraq's treatment of archaeological objects. Instead, they said at the January meeting they offered 'post-war technical and financial assistance', and 'conservation support'."

[Ledeen is Jewish. Here is argues for more assault about Muslim and Arab governments.]
Syria and Iran Must Get Their Turn,
By Michael A. Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute (from National Post [Canada], April 7, 2003
"A year ago, as I was finishing the first draft of The War against the Terror Masters, I wrote that Syria and Iran could not tolerate an American success in Iraq, because it would fatally undermine the authority of the tyrants in Damascus and Tehran. Since the United States has taken too long to move on from Afghanistan to challenge the regimes of the terror masters, they had forged an alliance and would co-operate in sending terror squads against coalition armed forces, with the intention of repeating the Lebanese scenarios in the mid-Eighties (against the United States) and the late Nineties (against Israel). U.S. diplomats didn't believe a word of it ... Now, Eli Lake of United Press International reports the government is aware of Iranian terrorist operations inside Iraq, and there have been many stories reporting Syria's campaign to send terrorists across the border to attack U.S. forces. In truth, Americans didn't need intelligence to know this was going on, because the Iranian and Syrian tyrants had announced it publicly. Assad gave an interview recently in which he proclaimed--in words that could have been taken right out of my book--that Lebanon was the model for the struggle that had to be waged in Iraq against coalition forces. And Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, gave a speech a few weeks ago in which he said the presence of American troops in Iraq would be even worse for Iran than the hated regime of Saddam Hussein. So they are coming to kill coalition forces, which means that there is no more time for diplomatic 'solutions.' The United States will have to deal with the terror masters, here and now. Iran, at least, offers Americans the possibility of a memorable victory, because the Iranian people openly loath the regime, and will enthusiastically combat it, if only the United States supports them in their just struggle. ... This is the path--the correct path--that President George W. Bush has charted, despite the opposition of so many of his diplomats, and despite the near-total indifference of the Western press to the plight of the Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian people. It is the path that most fully expresses the American revolutionary tradition, and gives the peoples of the Middle East the chance to recapture their dignity by empowering them to govern their own lands ... Yet it is impossible for a democratic Palestine to emerge, let alone survive, so long as the dominant countries in the region are tyrannical supporters of terrorism. If, at long last, the United States is going to transform the Middle East in the name of the democratic revolution, it is madness to entrust this task to a Department of State that does not believe in it. ... But, like U.S. diplomats, American elected representatives need a crash course in democratic revolution, the better to advance their cause, defeat their enemies and save the lives of the incredible fighting men and women. The United States has written an exceptional page of military history in Iraq, but it can be undone by suicidal political blunders in the region in the very near future. It's time to bring down the other terror masters. Faster, please."

[Here we have the Jewish chameleon theory: a Jewish current of communism has morphed -- via Zionism -- into its right-wing opposite in taking over American government.]
The Weird Men Behind George Bush's War,
by Michael Lind, New Statesman, April 7, 2003
"America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve? Quasi-Marxist explanations involving big oil or American capitalism are mistaken. Yes, American oil companies and contractors will accept the spoils of the kill in Iraq. But the oil business, with its Arabist bias, did not push for this war any more than it supports the Bush administration's close alliance with Ariel Sharon ... The truth is more alarming. As a result of several bizarre and unforeseeable contingencies -- such as the selection rather than election of George W. Bush, and Sept. 11 -- the foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made by a small clique that is unrepresentative of either the U.S. population or the mainstream foreign policy establishment. The core group now in charge consists of neoconservative defense intellectuals. (They are called 'neoconservatives' because many of them started off as anti-Stalinist leftists or liberals before moving to the far right.) Inside the government, the chief defense intellectuals include Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. He is the defense mastermind of the Bush administration; Donald Rumsfeld is an elderly figurehead who holds the position of defense secretary only because Wolfowitz himself is too controversial. Others include Douglas Feith, No. 3 at the Pentagon; Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a Wolfowitz protege who is Cheney's chief of staff; John R. Bolton, a right-winger assigned to the State Department to keep Colin Powell in check; and Elliott Abrams, recently appointed to head Middle East policy at the National Security Council. On the outside are James Woolsey, the former CIA director, who has tried repeatedly to link both 9/11 and the anthrax letters in the U.S. to Saddam Hussein, and Richard Perle, who has just resigned his unpaid chairmanship of a defense department advisory body after a lobbying scandal. Most of these 'experts' never served in the military. But their headquarters is now the civilian defense secretary's office, where these Republican political appointees are despised and distrusted by the largely Republican career soldiers. Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their admiration for the Israeli Likud party's tactics, including preventive warfare such as Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for 'democracy.' They call their revolutionary ideology 'Wilsonianism' (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism. Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians. The neocon defense intellectuals, as well as being in or around the actual Pentagon, are at the center of a metaphorical 'pentagon' of the Israel lobby and the religious right, plus conservative think tanks, foundations and media empires. Think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) provide homes for neocon 'in-and-outers' when they are out of government (Perle is a fellow at AEI). The money comes not so much from corporations as from decades-old conservative foundations, such as the Bradley and Olin foundations, which spend down the estates of long-dead tycoons. Neoconservative foreign policy does not reflect business interests in any direct way. The neocons are ideologues, not opportunists. The major link between the conservative think tanks and the Israel lobby is the Washington-based and Likud-supporting Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which co-opts many non-Jewish defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired general Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq. In October 2000, he cosigned a Jinsa letter that began: 'We ... believe that during the current upheavals in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces have exercised remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of [the] Palestinian Authority.' The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Feith was given an award by the Zionist Organization of America, citing him as a 'pro-Israel activist.' While out of power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborated with Perle to coauthor a policy paper for Likud that advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the territories, and crush Yasser Arafat's government. Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists. The religious right believes that God gave all of Palestine to the Jews, and fundamentalist congregations spend millions to subsidize Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. The final corner of the neoconservative pentagon is occupied by several right-wing media empires, with roots -- odd as it seems -- in the British Commonwealth and South Korea. Rupert Murdoch (who may be part Jewish himself) disseminates propaganda through his Fox television network. His magazine, the Weekly Standard -- edited by William Kristol, the former chief of staff of Dan Quayle (vice president, 1989-1993) -- acts as a mouthpiece for defense intellectuals such as Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and Woolsey as well as for Sharon's government ... The corners of the neoconservative pentagon were linked together in the 1990s by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), run by Kristol out of the Weekly Standard offices. Using a P.R. technique pioneered by their Trotskyist predecessors, the neocons published a series of public letters whose signatories often included Wolfowitz and other future members of the Bush foreign policy team. They called for the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq and to support Israel's campaigns against the Palestinians (dire warnings about China were another favorite). During Clinton's two terms, these fulminations were ignored by the foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media. Now they are frantically being studied. How did the neocon defense intellectuals -- a small group at odds with most of the U.S. foreign policy elite, Republican as well as Democratic -- manage to capture the Bush administration? Few supported Bush during the presidential primaries. They feared that the second Bush would be like the first -- a wimp who had failed to occupy Baghdad in the first Gulf War and who had pressured Israel into the Oslo peace process -- and that his administration, again like his father's, would be dominated by moderate Republican realists such as Powell, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft."

AIPAC and the Iraqi opposition,
by Nathan Guttman, Haaretz (Israel), April 7, 2003
"An unusual visitor was invited to address the annual conference held last week in Washington by AIPAC, the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States: the head of the Washington office of the Iraqi National Congress, Intifad Qanbar. The INC is one of the main opposition groups outside Iraq, and its leaders consider themselves natural candidates for leadership positions in the post-Saddam Hussein era. Qanbar's invitation to the conference reflects a first attempt to disclose the links between the American Jewish community and the Iraqi opposition, after years in which the two sides have taken pains to conceal them. The considerations against openly disclosing the extent of cooperation are obvious - revelation of overly close links with Jews will not serve the interests of the organizations aspiring to lead the Iraqi people. Currently, at the height of rivalry over future leadership of the country among opposition groups abroad, the domestic opposition and Iraqi citizens, it is most certainly undesirable for the Jewish lobby to forge - or flaunt - especially close links with any one of the groups, in a way that would cause its alienation from the others ... The Jewish groups maintain quiet contacts with nearly every Iraqi opposition group, and in the past have even met with the most prominent opposition leader, Ahmed Chalabi. The main objective was an exchange of information, but there was also an attempt to persuade the Iraqis of the need for good relations with Israel and with world Jewry."

[Thank you, Jewish Lobby, for the Middle East love of America you sow:]
Doubts grow over US war claims,
Al-Jazeerah, April 7, 2003
"'We are almost in control of their country, and we'll be in complete control soon,' said US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday. Former congressional official Joseph Cirincione respectfully disagrees. 'It would be more correct to say we are operating in most areas of the country but we control very little,' said Cirincione, also Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and member of the Council on Foreign Relations ... American citizens may not be prepared for casualties from a protracted conflict, due in part to highly optimistic media coverage, said Ciricione. 'When you look at American media this war is being shown from the perspective of the firing hand, and in the Arab world, this war is being viewed on receiving end, with an emphasis on those being killed.' 'In America it looks heroic, but in the Arab world it looks like slaughter,' he said. 'The American public does not understand the level of hatred growing in the Muslim world as a result of this war.'"

Bore war rumbles on despite our national disinterest,
by Muriel Gray, Sunday Herald, April 2003
"Okay then, in that case, just before I begin writing about something else entirely, something really original, will you allow me a moment to get rid of those pesky visions that won't seem to go away? Visions like the news footage of an Iraqi man holding up his hands, begging British troops to cease fire in order that he can run across the road to retrieve the body of his brother. The brother, that is, that was shot dead while changing a burst tyre on his car. And perhaps just another moment or two to try and erase the sight of that dribbling, disgusting, imbecilic, malevolent chimp Bush, punching the Florida air and grinning like an eight-year-old who just passed his cycling proficiency badge, as hands testing tomatoes for plumpness in an Iraqi market place were severed from their arms by the missiles of their freedom-bringing 'liberators'. Bear with me while I try and forget the sight of the 10-year-old boy, hideously burnt and traumatised, lying on a filthy blanket in some makeshift hospital, his eyes giant pools of unnameable agony, confusion and terror. And if we're not going to discuss the war at all, then we must also put aside the pictures in our wonderful free press, two double pages this week in one tabloid devoted to a son attending the funeral of his father, a professional US soldier who chose his job and knew the risks, with the words 'The Cost' emblazoned below, while the pictures of hundreds of Iraqi civilians wailing over their dead and maimed are not deemed sufficiently newsworthy to print ... And if we're really, really not going to discuss the war, then let's stay right away from the H word. You know the one. Yes, that's right. Hero. A 19-year-old professional soldier, wounded and captured during an incompetent piece of manoeuvring by her superiors, is rescued by Special Forces to the gasping, whooping admiration of the free world. A senior American official declares 'We don't leave our heroes behind. Never have. Never will.' Quite what was so heroic about simply being shot at and captured is not clear, but what is abundantly clear is that the stories coming out of Iraq, of ordinary men and women trying desperately to help each other, assisting with births now that there are no maternity hospitals, sharing what little food they have, trying to protect the young, the elderly and the sick, are not considered as heroic as a working class American teenager who joined the army, presumably for a better life away from a deprived and backward part of America, and ended up nearly getting killed in the military action she signed up for. The young woman's blameless parents were filmed, understandably beaming with delight, her mother declaring: 'Well if you needed proof there is a God, then there it is.' No. If we needed proof that the Pentagon, pulsating with lies, deceit and malevolence, needed a prop-aganda coup to raise morale and stem rising dissent amongst intell-igent Americans, then the massively expensive rescue of a young, pretty, blue-collar, middle-American white girl conve

Invading Iraq: Converging U.S. and Israeli Agendas,
by Ronald Bleier, Demographic, Environmental and Security Issues Project, April 2003
"For a brief moment in early March the media was alive with the question of whether the U.S. is acting as Israel's proxy by invading Iraq. On network TV, Tim Russert asked Richard Perle, a high profile advocate of removing Saddam Hussein, whether the proposed war would be serving U.S. interests, and specifically about the link to Israel. Similar issues were raised in a New York Times Op-ed by Bill Keller ("Is it Good for the Jews," March 8, 2003) and in a Times news article on the subject ("Divide Among Jews Leads to Silence on Iraq War," 3.15.03). Patrick Buchanan in The American Conservative ("Whose War?" March 24, 2003) and Stephen J. Sniegoski in Current Concern ("The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel," February 2003) published long articles arguing that this is a war on Israel's behalf. Slate's Michael Kinsley wrote a tongue in cheek article on the subject (J'Accuse, Sort Of, 3.12.03) ... Key people in Bush administration are on record as strong supporters of Israel and of regime change in Iraq, among them: Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Doug Feith, Under Secretary, Arms Control and International Security, John R. Bolton, senior director on Middle Eastern affairs on the National Security Council, Eliot Abrams, These administration figures and others are promoters of Israel's right wing Likud party in Israel and Israel's superhawkish prime minister, Ariel Sharon ... The events of 9/11 provided administration hawks with the 'Pearl Harbor' that allowed them to implement their long standing demand for regime change in Iraq. These plans go back to the neoconservatives who began promoting the removal of Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Many of the neoconservatives were liberals who drifted to the right when the Democratic Party moved to anti-war McGovernite left. And concern for Israel loomed large in their change. As political scientist, Benjamin Ginsberg puts it: 'One major factor that drew them inexorably to the right was their attachment to Israel and their growing frustration during the 1960s with a Democratic party that was becoming increasingly opposed to American military preparedness and increasingly enamored of Third World causes [e.g., Palestinian rights]' ... On the one hand it would seem to go against all logic that a tiny country like Israel, albeit with the with the world's 7th, most powerful army and armed with nuclear weapons and delivery systems, could shape U.S. foreign policy. Nevertheless it shouldn't be so surprising that this is the present case. We recall that the tiny Cuban lobby exercises powerful influence over Cuban policy even though they are at odds with the otherwise influential farm lobby. Similarly when it comes to Middle East issues, the extraordinary power of the Zionist lobby has been a fact of life for many years. On the other hand, the U.S. would not venture on such a war if its leadership didn't see clear political and strategic gains for itself ... Much of the mainstream media which is also largely controlled by pro-Zionist Jews played an important role in allowing this extremist agenda to go forward without significant question or debate. (See appendix listing Jewish leadership of much of the mainstream media,) When Congressman Moran says that the leadership of the Jewish community is influential enough to change the direction of where this is going, he is stating a simple truth about the power of the Zionist lobby which helps to explain the silence and timidity of the Democrats. The power of Zionist interests explains in part why many high profile Democrats such as Senators John Kerry, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Charles Schumer, Barbara Boxer and others voted to give President Bush the authority for war in October 2002 despite the manifest recklessness of the venture. They understand that opposition to perceived Israeli interests might well have a dramatic impact on campaign contributions since Jewish sources reportedly donate 50% or more of the total receipts to the Democratic party. Support by the leadership of the Jewish community for war against Iraq represents a culmination of 50 years of U.S. support for Israel's expansionist and oppressive rule. The passionate attachment to Israel, the dual loyalty felt by many Americans -whereby Israel's interests are put on the same or higher level than U.S. interests -- has come back to haunt the United States through the agency of a President willing to adopt the most extravagant dreams of right wing Israelis and pro-Israeli hawks. The result is that the full might of the world's only super power has been dragged into Israel's service despite the costs, and the dangers and the folly of such a policy. Attachment to Israel has come back to haunt America by enabling a decisive shift in U..S. policy away from helping to preserve the peace and security of the world and turning the U.S. into an aggressor nation, just as Israel has been and continues to be. A measure of the influence of right-wing pro Israeli hawks in this administration is the way they have allowed Ariel Sharon free reign to apply extraordinary and unending pressure on the Palestinians and to destroy the possibility for Palestinian civil society. The Bush administration signaled their intention to leave the Palestinians to the tender mercies of the Israeli government as soon as they took office when they announced that they would allow the contending parties to settle their own differences. This ignored the disparity of power between the two sides and predictably the situation has deteriorated to its current awful level, ever spiraling downward with widening ripples into a hopeless future. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it was recognized that the Israeli Palestinian conflict was at the heart of the Al-Qaeda attack and there was a fair amount of attention to the subject even in the United States. However, as time passed, the issue returned to its familiar marginalization, banished from the major media."

[No Jewish dual loyalty?]
First known Jewish casualty talked of enlisting in the IDF,
By Joe Berkofsky, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 8, 2003
"As a young boy, Mark Evnin insisted on wearing a yarmulke to the Boy Scouts and later talked of enlisting in the Israel Defense Force. Now, even without his body, the family of the first known Jewish casualty of the war on Iraq is sitting shiva, the Jewish mourning period, at their home in Burlington, Vt. ... 'He was a macho kid with a gentle soul,' his mother told JTA this week as she was preparing her house for the shiva. 'He was like a sabra,' using the term for a native-born Israeli. And like most Israeli men, Mark seemed to know he was destined for military service from a young age. 'He was always interested in the military, ever since he was a child,' recalled his maternal grandfather, Rabbi Max Wall, 87, of Burlington. 'He had some kind of inborn feeling that he should serve his country; it was just a question of which uniform he should wear' ... After meeting Israeli soldiers when he became a Marine, his mother said, he talked of going to Israel one day and serving in the Israeli military. 'I am sure it mattered to him that he was doing something that is probably helping Israel right now,' she said ... When he joined the Boy Scouts as a young boy, his mother said, he insisted on wearing a yarmulke even though he was not observant."

[Again and again we see it. Overcome by the Jewish Lobby, America has BECOME brutal, oppressive Israel -- an extension of it.]
America is not a role model,
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz (Israel), April 8, 2003
"Those who trample human rights in Israel are having a field day: Look at the behavior of the Americans in Iraq, they say. Every time troops open fire at a checkpoint, every killing of a civilian, every picture of siege and plight, leads to merriment here. The United States, the cradle of democracy, the leader of the free world, is behaving like us. According to one report, 'IDF officers find it difficult to stop smiling' when they hear the reports of the war in Iraq. From now on, no one will be able to criticize their conduct in the territories. The New York Times reported that Israel even hastened to suggest that the United States learn from its experience in the use of tanks, helicopters and bulldozers in the center of cities and refugee camps. Similar delight has also gripped those wishing to curb the media in Israel: Look at how America is censoring the images of the war in its media - no coffins and no prisoners, how the media has volunteered enthusiastically to enlist in the war effort. And how they fired the courageous reporter Peter Arnett, without so much as batting an eyelash, for expressing his opinions on enemy television. This keeping in line with the behavior of the United States is another case of the collateral damage of this base war. America is not an example for anything. Even before going to war, there was no way it could serve as a role model, and going to this unjustified war in Iraq has deprived it completely of the right to serve as a light unto the nations and the Jews in upholding freedom, morality and human rights. So let us not be quick to conclude that what America is allowed to do, we are allowed to do, too. Neither they nor we have the right to kill needlessly, to harm and humiliate civilians, deprive them of their freedom, starve them, take away their livelihood and trample on their sovereignty, or to recruit the media for the war effort. America, which is fighting an illegal war, is an occupier in every respect ... France, Belgium, Britain, the United States and Israel, all of them enlightened democracies, lost the justness of their cause when they became occupying powers. That is inevitable. As soon as the United States starts to become mired in the occupation, today's enlightened soldiers will become tomorrow's inhuman troops. They will lose the remnants of their moral image and will kill, destroy and abuse. The children huggers will become the children persecutors, the food distributors will turn into agents of starvation, the wound healers will block ambulances at checkpoints, the liberators will become jailers. Humiliating the occupied and stripping them of their rights will become the norm. The liberated Iraqi people will pay in the form of heavy losses, hunger and humiliation, even if these are temporary. And they will not forget. That is the impact of occupation, whether in the narrow alleys of a Gaza Strip refugee camp or in the sprawling city of Baghdad. If there is one lesson Israel can impart to the Americans, it is that every occupation is appalling, that it tramples the occupied and corrupts the occupier. If the Americans pause for a moment to see what is going on in the Tul Karm refugee camp and in the casbah of Nablus, they will see what they will soon become. And if Israelis look at what is happening in Iraq, perhaps they will understand that it is not the Palestinians but, above all, we who have created the present situation. An occupier is an occupier, whether he comes from a democracy that is two- and-a-quarter centuries old or from 'the only democracy in the Middle East.'"

Dead Al Jazeera correspondent deliberately targeted,
Al-Jazeera, April 9, 2003
"Colleagues of the Al-Jazeera correspondent killed on Tuesday when two US missiles struck the Baghdad offices of the Qatar-based channel have said they believe they were deliberately targeted. 'I will not be objective about this because we have been dragged into this conflict,' said Tayseer Alouni. 'We were targeted because the Americans don't want the world to see the crimes they are committing against the Iraqi people' ... Another cameraman, Zuheir Iraqi, was slightly hurt in his neck by shrapnel. They were both standing on the roof getting ready for a live broadcast amid intensifying bombardment of the city when the building was hit by two missiles, according to Tayseer Allouni, another Al Jazeera correspondent ... Another of Jazeera's Baghdad correspondents Majed Abdel Hadi called the US missile strike and Ayoub's death a 'crime'. Al-Jazeera aired footage of Ayoub only one hour before his death as he was preparing to go live ... Originally from Palestine, he had also worked for the Jordan Times and the international news agency Associated Press. Earlier, Abdel-Hadi told our presenter that the Al-Jazeera office was 'deliberately targeted… and it is not the first time. Our Kabul office was hit by four (US) missiles,' he said. US warplanes hit the Afghanistan office of Al-Jazeera in 2001, just 10 minutes after its correspondents had received warning of an impending attack. Last week, the hotel where Al-Jazeera correspondents in the southern Iraqi city of Basra were staying was also hit by four bombs that did not explode. 'The Al-Jazeera team has no role in the war. We are only witnesses and are reporting objectively. This proves that the US is trying to cover the crimes it commits in its war on Iraq. Targeting witnesses is the biggest crime,' said Abdel-Hadi. The bombing left Al Jazeera's offices in ruin. But the channel said it would continue its coverage of the US-led war on Iraq that began on March 20. 'It is impossible to work in the office, but we will continue to cover the war within the capabilities that we have and despite the difficult circumstances,' Abdel-Hadi said. The European Union said after the incident that it would call on the US to keep journalists out of the firing line. Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana had "agreed to make a joint representation to the United States in order to protect journalists," he said. 'Greece condemns this repugnant act and expresses its sorrow and regret.'"

[In the hidden name of The War for Israel, the U.S. has BECOME the Jewish state as a moral pariah before the rest of the world.]
Journalists' union slams deaths in Iraq,
UPI, April 8, 2003
"The International Federation of Journalists on Tuesday accused U.S. and Iraqi forces of committing war crimes against reporters after five correspondents were killed around Baghdad in less than 24 hours. The IFJ, which represents 500,000 journalists worldwide in more than 100 countries, called for an independent inquiry into the deaths. 'There is no doubt at all that these attacks could be targeting journalists,' said Aidan White, General Secretary of the IFJ. 'If so, they are grave and serious violations of international law.' 'The bombing of hotels where journalists are staying and the targeting of Arab media are particularly shocking events in a war which is being fought in the name of democracy. Those who are responsible must be brought to justice.' Two cameramen working for Spain's Telecinco TV station and the Reuters news agency died Tuesday and four other journalists were wounded when an American tank blasted Baghdad's Palestine Hotel ... In a separate incident, a correspondent from the al-Jazeera network was killed and a colleague injured when U.S. missiles landed on the station's Baghdad office. A U.S. State Department Spokesman said the building was hit by mistake."

Reporters Without Borders accuses US military of deliberately firing at journalists,
Reporters Without Borders, April 8, 2003
"Reporters Without Borders called today on US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to provide evidence that the offices of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera and the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad were not deliberately fired at by US forces earlier in the day in attacks that killed three journalists. 'We are appalled at what happened because it was known that both places contained journalists,' said the organisation's secretary-general Robert Ménard. 'Film shot by the French TV station France 3 and descriptions by journalists show the neighbourhood was very quiet at that hour and that the US tank crew took their time, waiting for a couple of minutes and adjusting its gun before opening fire.' 'This evidence does not match the US version of an attack in self-defence and we can only conclude that the US Army deliberately and without warning targeted journalists. US forces must prove that the incident was not a deliberate attack to dissuade or prevent journalists from continuing to report on what is happening in Baghdad,' he said. 'We are concerned at the US army's increasingly hostile attitude towards journalists, especially those non-embedded in its military units'. Army officials have also remained deplorably silent and refused to give any details about what happened when a British ITN TV crew was fired on near Basra on 22 March, killing one journalist and leaving two others missing."

Israel, Jordan To Talk Reopening Iraq-Israel Pipeline,
rense.com (from Reuters), April 9, 2003
"Israel and Jordan will hold meetings about the possibility of restarting an oil pipeline from Iraq to Israel via Jordan that was closed 55 years ago, a National Infrastructure Ministry source said on Wednesday. The source said that minister Yosef Paritzky (Shinui) will meet Jordanian officials about restarting the pipeline, which sent Iraqi oil from Mosul to the northern Israeli port of Haifa during the British mandate period, on the assumption a pro-Western government will be set up following the U.S.-led war. 'Jordan contacted the prime minister's office who asked the minister (Paritzky) to meet with the Jordanian officials,' the source told Reuters. 'We know the section of the pipeline here is in excellent condition but we want to know what the Jordanian part is like and whether it can be restarted easily." Haaretz reported on March 31 that Paritzky had requested an assessment of the condition of the old pipeline from Mosul to Haifa, with an eye toward renewing the flow of oil in the event of friendly post-war regime in Iraq. Paritzky explained to Haaretz that resurrecting the pipeline to Haifa could save Israel the high cost of shipping oil from Russia."

[Another Jew twists history and conjures a bogus Americanism to champion the killing of Arabs for their "liberation" into Zionist-driven U.S. imperialism. "Progressive Spirit," yah: cluster bombs and body parts. Even old pacificist Walt Whitman is appropriated to the Judeocentric bandwagon to lead the charge with raised bayonets!]
Today's Progressive Spirit. The scenes in Baghdad flow from understandings realized at the American founding,
by David Brooks, Weekly Standard, April 9, 2003
"I wish Ronald Reagan could be aware of the scenes being played out in Baghdad. He would know that the liberationist sentiment he rekindled in the American heart didn't die out with the liberation of eastern and central Europe. With his optimism, Reagan revived the progressive spirit that courses through our founding Declaration, that all human beings are created equal and all are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Reagan felt deep in his bones that this statement is true, and contains an implication. It assigns us the task of doing what we can to see that all human beings are able to realize these rights, in Europe, in the Arab world, and everywhere. After September 11, George Bush was seized by this sense of mission, and has remained true to it. Happily, he is alive to see this day. I doubt he will bang bongo drums or light up cigars for the cameras, a la Bill Clinton. But I'm sure he must feel some quiet satisfaction that he, more than anyone else on earth, is responsible for liberating the Iraqi people and destroying the most murderous regime of our age. I'm glad that many, though sadly not all, members of the U.S. and British armed forces can see this day, and know that their sacrifices have paid off so handsomely. I'm glad that the much maligned hawks are around to watch the images of Saddam's statue falling and the torture chambers emptying. Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld deserve their share of the glory ... On the left, Michael Ignatieff, a Harvard professor, has endured the scathing criticism of his colleagues because he knew what was right for the Iraqi people. Paul Berman of NYU recognized that the Whitmanesque spirit of optimism and progress demands that we do what we can to liberate peoples and advance the cause of self-determination. There are millions of others who deserve recognition today. Sure, big challenges remain. But destroying the Baath regime is already a great gift from America and Britain to the world. We don't know what the Iraqi people are going to do with the opportunity to be free. But they are being given this opportunity, which is not nothing ... The rump 15 percent of Americans who still oppose this war may perhaps grow more bitter, lost in the cul-de-sac of their own alienation. But, however things shake out over the next months and years, this is the sort of day that represents what the United States is on earth to achieve. Thank God we have the political leaders and the military capabilities to realize the ideals that have always been embodied in our founding documents."

US Hawks Set Sights on Iran, Syria as Baghdad Falls,
by Arshad Mohammed, Reuters, April 9, 2003
"Emboldened by the U.S. military's apparent quick rout of Iraqi forces, conservative hawks in America are setting their sights on regime change in Iran and Syria. 'It's time to bring down the other terror masters,' Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute wrote on Monday -- two days before U.S. troops swept into the heart of Baghdad -- in a piece entitled 'Syria and Iran Must Get Their Turn.' 'Iran, at least, offers Americans the possibility of a memorable victory, because the Iranian people openly loath the regime, and will enthusiastically combat it, if only the United States supports them in their just struggle,' he added. 'Syria cannot stand alone against a successful democratic revolution that topples tyrannical regimes in Kabul, Tehran and Iraq' ... John Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, told reporters in Rome he hoped Iran, Syria and North Korea -- which the United States believes is pursuing a nuclear weapons program -- will get the message

The Night After Some more thought about the war,
by Uri Avnery, April 9, 2003
"After the end of hostilities in Iraq, the world will be faced with two decisive facts: First, the immense superiority of American arms can beat any people in the world, valiant as it may be. Second, the small group that initiated this war - an alliance of Christian fundamentalists and Jewish neo-conservatives - has won big, and from now on it will control Washington almost without limits. The combination of these two facts constitutes a danger to the world, and especially to the Middle East, the Arab peoples and the future of Israel. Because this alliance is the enemy of peaceful solutions, the enemy of the Arab governments, the enemy of the Palestinian people and especially the enemy of the Israeli peace camp. It does not dream only about an American empire, in the style of the Roman one, but also of an Israeli mini-empire, under the control of the extreme right and the settlers. It wants to change the regimes in all Arab countries. It will cause permanent chaos in the region, the consequences of which it is impossible to foresee. Its mental world consists of a mixture of ideological fervor and crass material interests, an exaggerated American patriotism and right-wing Zionism. That is a dangerous mixture. There is in it something of the spirit of Ariel Sharon, a man who has always had grandiose plans for changing the region, consisting of a mixture of creative imagination, unbridled chauvinism and a primitive faith in brute force. Who are the winners? They are the so-called neo-cons, or neo-conservatives. A compact group, almost all of whose members are Jewish. They hold the key positions in the Bush administration, as well as in the think-tanks that play an important role in formulating American policy and the ed-op pages of the influential newspapers. For many years, this was a marginal group that fostered a right-wing agenda in all field ... Only nine days after the [9-11] outrage, William Kristol (the son of the group's founder, Irving Kristol) published an Open Letter to President Bush, asserting that it was not enough to annihilate the network of Osama bin Laden, but that it was also imperative to 'remove Saddam Hussein from power' and to 'retaliate' against Syria and Iran for supporting Hizbullah. Following is a short list of the main characters. (If it bores you, skip to the next section). The Open Letter was published in the Weekly Standard, founded by Kristol with the money of ultra-right press mogul Rupert Murdoch, who donated $ 10 million to the cause. It was signed by 41 leading neo-cons, including Norman Podhoretz, a Jewish former leftist who has become an extreme right-wing icon, editor of the prestigious Encounter magazine, and his wife, Midge Decter, also a writer, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Studies, Robert Kagan, also of the Weekly Standard, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, and, of course, Richard Perle. Perle is a central character in this play. Until recently he was the chairman of the Defense Policy Board of the Defense Department, which also includes Eliot Cohen and Devon Cross. Perle is a director of the Jerusalem Post, now owned by extreme right-wing Zionists. In the past he was an aide to Senator Henry Jackson, who led the fight against the Soviet Union on behalf of the Jews who wanted to leave. He is a leading member of the influential right-wing American Enterprise Institute. Lately he was obliged to resign from his Defense Department position, when it became known that a private corporation had promised to pay him almost a million dollars for he benefit of his influence in the administration. That Open Letter was, in effect, the beginning of the Iraq war. It was eagerly received by the Bush administration, with members of the group already firmly established in some of its leading positions. Paul Wolfowitz, the father of the war, is No. 2 in the Defense Department, where another friend of Perle's, Douglas Feith, heads the Pentagon Planning Board. John Bolton is State Department Undersecretary. Eliot Abrams, responsible for the Middle East in the National Security Council, was connected with the Iran-Contra-Israel scandal. The main hero of the scandal, Oliver North, sits in the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, together with Michael Ledeen, another hero of the scandal. Headvocates total war not only against Iraq, but also against Israel's other enemies, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority. Dov Zakheim is comptroller for the Defense Department. Most of these people , together with Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are associated with the 'Project for the New American Century', which published a White Paper in 2002, with the aim ‘to preserve and enhance this ‘American peace'" - meaning American control of the world. Meyrav Wurmser (Meyrav is a chic new Israeli first name) is Director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute. She also writes for the Jerusalem Post and is co-founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute that is, according to the London Guardian, connected with Israeli Army Intelligence. MEMRI feeds the media and politicians with highly selective quotations from extreme Arab publications. Meyrav's husband, Davis Wurmser, is at Perle's American Enterprise Institute, heading Middle East Studies. Mention should also be made of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy of our old acquaintance, Dennis Ross, who for years was in charge of the "peace process" in the Middle East. In all the important papers there are people close to the group, such as William Safire, a man hypnotized by Sharon, in the New York Times and Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. Another Perle friend, Robert Bartley, is the editor of the Wall Street Journal. If the speeches of Bush and Cheney often sound as if they came from the lips of Sharon, one of the reasons may be that their speechwriters, Joseph Shattan, Mathew Scully and John McConnell, are neo-cons, as is Cheneys Chief-of-Staff, Lewis Libby. The immense influence of this largely Jewish group stems from its close alliance with the extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists, who nowadays control Bush's Republican party. The founding fathers were Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority, who once got a jet plane as a present from Menachem Begin, and Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition and the Christian Broadcasting Network, which help to finance the Christian Embassy in Jerusalem of J.W. van der Hoeven, an outfit that supports the settlers and their right-wing allies. Common to both groups is their adherence to the fanatical ideology of the extreme right in Israel. They see the Iraq war as a struggle between the Children of Light (America and Israel) and the Children of Darkness (the Arabs and Muslims). By the way, none of these facts are secret. They have been published lately in dozens of articles, both in American and world media. The members of the group are proud of them. The man who symbolizes this victory is General Jay Garner, who has just been appointed chief of the civilian administration in Iraq. He is no anonymous general who has been picked accidentally. Garner is the ideological partner of Paul Wolfowitz and the neo-cons. Two years ago he signed, together with 26 other officers, a petition organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, lau[ding] Israeli Army for 'remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of the Palestinian Authority,' which is certainly news to the Israeli peace forces. He also stated that "a strong Israel is an asset that American military planners and political leaders can rely o' ... The ideology of this group, that calls for an American world-empire as well as for a Greater Israel, reminds one of bygone days ... Chaos in the Arab world endangers our future. Wolfowitz and Co. may dream about a democratic, liberal, Zionist and America-loving Middle East, but the result of their adventures may well turn out to be a fanatical and fundamentalist region that will threaten our very existence."

[Even an Israeli complains about America's Fox News biased reporting for the Jewish state. Fox is headed by pro-Israeli activist Rupert Murdoch.]
Foxa Americana,
by Rogel Alper, Haaretz (Israel), April 10, 2003
"America's Fox News network has been demonstrating since the start of the war in Iraq an amazing lesson in media hypocrisy. The anchors, reporters and commentators unceasingly emphasize that the war's goal is to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. The frequency, consistence and passion with which they use that lame excuse, and the fact that nearly no other reasons are mentioned shows that this is the network's editorial policy. The American flag lies in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, while the logo accompanying the programming is Operation Iraqi Freedom, the official name given by the Pentagon. Fox journalists display what appears to be genuine happiness, innocent and sincere, brainwashed in nature, in the expectation for the wonderful day when the American army leads the Iraqi people from slavery to freedom. With effective, rapid and decisive rewriting of history, there is an impression that the network has erased past relations between Iraq and America. It is difficult to find any mention of the fact that the U.S. armed Iraq in its war against Iran in the 1980s, or that it turned a blind eye when Saddam Hussein brutally put down a 1991 uprising with chemical weapons after the first Gulf War ... Just as the Iraqi TV deceives its viewers about the situation on the battlefield, Fox misleads its American viewers about the reasons for the war. If only the issue of the human rights of the Iraqi people was at stake, there never would have been a war. But Fox broadcasts to the entire world. Like CNN, it presents to the globe the face of America and its perception of reality, and it exports its dark side, the infuriating side that inspires so much hostility: the self-righteousness, the brutality, the pretension, hubris, and simplicity, the feverish faith in its moral superiority, the saccharine and infantile patriotism, and the deep self-persuasion that America is not only the most powerful of the nations, but also that the truth is always American. Fox looks like the media arm of the superpower mentality, indifferent to any perspective that is not American and alienating vast portions of the world. Its war coverage is as governmental as that of Iraqi TV. This is American TV. For some reason, ever since Fox showed up on Israeli cable, the other foreign networks have become unnecessary. CNN was nearly removed, BBC World has been thrown out of the cable package, and both are suspected of hostility to Israel. Fox, for whom Israel's enemies are 'the bad guys,' is the perfect alibi for the new fashion of censorship. Who needs BBC when there's Fox? That has dangerously narrowed the horizon of thinking available to the viewers of foreign news stations in Israel."

The photographs tell the story... Is This Media manipulation on a grand scale? Yes, the occupation has begun,
Information Clearinghouse, April 10, 2003
Analysis of the pulling down of the Saddam Hussein statue in downtown Baghdad, including photographs of the scene. Evidence is presented that the scene was staged for the media by the U.S. government and Iraqi exiles in cahoots with the invaders, resulting in the consummate propaganda coup to create the illusion that masses of Iraqis have risen up thanks to their American "liberators."

[The especially grotesque thing about this article is that Hezbollah doesn't really have a gripe with the United States. Theirs is a fight with repressive Israel, which seeks to draw Americans into a larger war against Arabs and Islam.]
Jerusalem Urges Bush: Next Target Hezbollah. Warns of Threat To U.S. Security,
by Ori Nir, [Jewish] Forward, April 11, 2003
"Israel is urging the Bush administration to target Hezbollah following the war in Iraq, arguing that the militant Shiite organization threatens the stability of the Middle East and the security of the United States worldwide. Based in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has stepped up its anti-American rhetoric since the start of the war in Iraq three weeks ago. Israeli intelligence sources warn that Hezbollah may be involved in recruiting volunteers to fight allied forces in Iraq, although the group has not directly targeted Israel or the United States since hostilities began. According to Israeli government sources in Washington, such warnings have been conveyed to American officials during 'working level' talks between the two countries on postwar priorities. Critics of Hezbollah argue that the group's global network of sleeper cells and its ability to destabilize the region with missile attacks against Israel make it impossible for the Bush administration to ignore. Israeli sources said that one plausible scenario would be an American green light for Israeli strikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, following American diplomatic measures to ensure that such Israeli actions would not spark a Syrian reaction. 'Clearly, we would have to work together closely on this one,' said an Israeli diplomat in Washington. Several experts warned that any military or diplomatic action by the United States against Hezbollah could trigger a string of devastating, retaliatory terrorist strikes. 'They have dormant cells around the world, which they can easily decide to use,' said Gal Luft, an expert on Hezbollah who co-directs the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a small Washington-based advocacy group dedicated to ending America's dependence on Arab oil. Israel's position is that after stabilizing the situation in Iraq, the United States should act against Hezbollah, regardless of the organization's behavior during the war, sources said. Israeli sources told the Forward that even if Hezbollah does not actively fight with Iraq in the war, action must be taken because the organization has both the motivation and the ability to launch future attacks. Israeli officials have warned that Hezbollah boasts a military capability exceeding that of some Arab states, and a global network of dormant cells with the ability to hit American targets around the world. Also, Israeli officials warn, Hezbollah could at any moment destabilize the region by provoking Jerusalem with cross-border attacks."

Syrian Ties to Iraq Raise White House Ire,
Fox News, April 11, 2003
"With Syria under fire for helping Saddam Hussein's regime, President Bush weighed in publicly Friday, saying Iraq's neighbor needs to refuse refuge to Saddam loyalists. 'We strongly urge them not to allow for Baath Party members or Saddam's families or generals on the run to seek safe haven and find safe haven there,' Bush said during a question and answer session following a visit with wounded Marines and sailors ... Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told lawmakers Thursday that if Syria does not fall into line, then Congress and the president will have to consider additional steps. 'If they continue, then we need to think about what our policy is with respect to a country that harbors terrorists,' Wolfowitz said. By Friday morning, a bipartisan group of lawmakers was talking tough. 'It's a country that really should be the focus of this administration and this Congress and obviously the world at large,' said Rep. Robert Matsui, D-Calif."

[America's Jewish "pre-emptive" attacks upon Muslim countries in the hidden name of israel guarantees and codifies the U.S. and Israel as one and the same.]
Syria Warned - Perle Sees More 'Preemption' In Future,
rense.com (from The International Herald Tribune), April 12, 2003
"Richard Perle, one of the chief U.S. ideologists behind the war to oust Saddam Hussein, warned Friday that the United States would be compelled to act if it discovered that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have been concealed in Syria. Perle said that if the Bush administration were to learn that Syria had taken possession of such Iraqi weapons, 'I'm quite sure that we would have to respond to that.' 'It would be an act of such foolishness on Syria's part," he continued, "that it would raise the question of whether Syria could be reasoned with. But I suppose our first approach would be to demand that the Syrians terminate that threat by turning over anything they have come to possess, and failing that I don't think anyone would rule out the use of any of our full range of capabilities.' In an interview with editors of the International Herald Tribune, Perle said that the threat posed by terrorists he described as 'feverishly' looking for weapons to kill as many Americans as possible obliged the United States to follow a strategy of preemptive war in its own defense. Asked if this meant it would go after other countries after Iraq, he replied: "If next means who will next experience the 3d Army Division or the 82d Airborne, that's the wrong question. If the question is who poses a threat that the United States deal with, then that list is well known. It's Iran. It's North Korea. It's Syria. It's Libya, and I could go on.' Perle, a Pentagon adviser as a member of the Defense Policy Board, said the point about Afghanistan and now Iraq was that the United States had been put in a position of having to use force to deal with a threat that could not be managed in any other way ... The former official in Republican administrations said the United States also has 'a serious problem' with Saudi Arabia, where he said both private individuals and the government had poured money into extremist organizations."

Subject: Saddam is Alive,
by Gordon Thomas, yourmailinglistprovider.com (from globe-intel.net)
"If [Saddam is] alive, then Bush wants him to face justice in either an American controlled court in Iraq – or a trial in the United States. Paul Wolfowitz, US deputy secretary of defence, has indicated 'this is personal for George – and he wants Saddam to face American justice for his part in 9/11'. Helping Bush achieve that are the hardmen of the intelligence world – Mossad’s spies. Not only have they been the only spies on the ground during the Saddam regime – but they have also played a vital role in the run up to, and during, the war with Iraq. It was their intelligence which enabled Coalition troops to storm up into Baghdad in record time. No other agency is so well-entrenched in the Arab capitals of the region. Now, those agents, under the direction of Mossad chief Meir Dagan, have reinforced the Mossad men already in Iraq. They are part of an operation squad, codenamed Caesarea. Many are Iraqi Jews. 'They can track as well as any Bedouin. They speak the desert dialects. They eat, sleep and behave in every way like an Arab. That is what makes them so unique', one of Dagan’s staff said. Years ago, Mossad had an agent inside the inner circle of Syria’s leadership. The man, Eli Cohen, time and again gave Tel Aviv vital forewarning of a Syrian threat. Rafi Eitan, the former Operations Chief with Mossad, secreted a spy into King Hussein of Jordan’s palace. 'Our man gave us information that no other service had – not the CIA or MI6. Not anybody', Eitan said. Unknown to Saddam, Mossad had an agent within the top echelon of the Iraqi leadership. Last week, the spy managed to plant a homing device in the briefcase of one of Saddam’s top aides when they met for a dinner meeting at the al-Saa restaurant, in Baghdad’s Mansour district. Over thirty of Iraq’s Special Security Organisation and senior military intelligence officers had gathered in the expensive restaurant to hear Saddam speak ... But, with that sixth sense for which he was renowned, Saddam for as yet an unexplained reason became suspicious. He left the restaurant – but ordered everybody else to remain present. Four minutes later, 300,000 feet above the restaurant, US weapons officer Lt-Col Fred Swan programmed the coordinates in his BI bomber."

[Israel rides America -- and its people -- like a donkey. American soldiers kill for Isael, and die for it:]
Israel wants strike on Syria while iron's hot,
by Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times, April 17, 2003
"Coinciding with the Bush administration's tough talk about Syria, a senior Israeli official Monday exposed a smoking gun. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Tel Aviv newspaper Maariv: 'We have a long list of issues we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it would be best done through the Americans.' Mofaz's Hebrew-language interview was not widely distributed in Washington, but a few members of Congress who learned of it were stunned by its audacity. With Prime Minister Ariel Sharon long having urged changing Iraq's regime by force of U.S. arms, his government now hopes to ride the emerging American imperium to regional reconstruction along Israeli lines. That is the goal of prominent Pentagon civilian officials who see virtual identity between U.S. and Israeli interests. Sharon's hopes for his agenda are buoyed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's emergence. Vindicated by the spectacular success of American arms, Rumsfeld is the strongman of the Bush Cabinet who is directing the postwar transformation of the Middle East. Gen. Mofaz, a career officer before becoming defense minister last October, is a plain-spoken paratrooper who has now revealed his country's grand design of riding American power to reach old goals. While Israel's military is the region's strongest, it has been unable to achieve Mofaz's long, unspecified wish list: removal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, ending Syrian support of anti-Israeli terrorist groups and effective Syrian disarmament. The biggest political-military failure in Israel's brief history was its Lebanese intervention. Israel's goals conceivably can be 'done through the Americans' in the wake of the awesome U.S. military performance ... Furthermore, the Joint Chiefs of Staff two weeks ago ordered the U.S. European Command to prepare a plan for Syria. All this has frightened Syria and the entire Arab world ... Nothing has so demonstrated to Arabs their political impotence than Rumsfeld's selection of retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner as Iraq's interim military governor. Now a defense contractor, he helped develop the Arrow missile-defense system for Israel. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Garner visited Israel as guest of the hard-line Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and signed that organization's letter praising Sharon's treatment of Palestinians. ''Out of the 270 million Americans,' said Syrian Deputy Ambassador Imad Moustapha on NBC's 'Meet the Press' Sunday, 'you choose a military ruler to rule Iraq who is closely related to the extremist factions in Israel.'"

[We are all becoming subsumed in the expansionist Zionist matrix. The Jewish erasure of Palestinian history and identity roots is the blueprint for the invasion/destruction of Iraq. It is a war against Palestinians, against Arabs, and against Islam.]
Robert Fisk: For the people on the streets, this is not liberation but a new colonial oppression America's war of 'liberation' may be over. But Iraq's war of liberation from the Americans is just about to begin,
The Independent (UK), 17 April 2003
"It's going wrong, faster than anyone could have imagined. The army of 'liberation' has already turned into the army of occupation. The Shias are threatening to fight the Americans, to create their own war of 'liberation' ... The Americans have now issued a 'Message to the Citizens of Baghdad', a document as colonial in spirit as it is insensitive in tone. 'Please avoid leaving your homes during the night hours after evening prayers and before the call to morning prayers,' it tells the people of the city. 'During this time, terrorist forces associated with the former regime of Saddam Hussein, as well as various criminal elements, are known to move through the area ... please do not leave your homes during this time. During all hours, please approach Coalition military positions with extreme caution ...' So now – with neither electricity nor running water – the millions of Iraqis here are ordered to stay in their homes from dusk to dawn. Lockdown. It's a form of imprisonment. In their own country. Written by the command of the 1st US Marine Division, it's a curfew in all but name. 'If I was an Iraqi and I read that,' an Arab woman shouted at me, 'I would become a suicide bomber.' And all across Baghdad you hear the same thing, from Shia Muslim clerics to Sunni businessmen, that the Americans have come only for oil, and that soon – very soon – a guerrilla resistance must start. No doubt the Americans will claim that these attacks are 'remnants' of Saddam's regime or 'criminal elements'. But that will not be the cas... Here's what Baghdadis are noticing – and what Iraqis are noticing in all the main cities of the country. Take the vast security apparatus with which Saddam surrounded himself, the torture chambers and the huge bureaucracy that was its foundation. President Bush promised that America was campaigning for human rights in Iraq, that the guilty, the war criminals, would be brought to trial. The 60 secret police headquarters in Baghdad are empty, even the three-square-mile compound headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. I have been to many of them. But there is no evidence even that a single British or US forensic officer has visited the sites to sift the wealth of documents lying there or talk to the ex-prisoners returning to their former places of torment. Is this idleness. Or is this wilful? ... Then there's the fires that have consumed every one of the city's ministries – save, of course, for the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Oil – as well as UN offices, embassies and shopping malls. I have counted a total of 35 ministries now gutted by fire and the number goes on rising. ... [T]here is also something dangerous – and deeply disturbing – about the crowds setting light to the buildings of Baghdad, including the great libraries and state archives. For they are not looters. The looters come first. The arsonists turn up later, often in blue-and-white buses. I followed one after its passengers had set the Ministry of Trade on fire and it sped out of town. The official US line on all this is that the looting is revenge – an explanation that is growing very thin – and that the fires are started by 'remnants of Saddam's regime', the same 'criminal elements', no doubt, who feature in the marines' curfew orders. But people in Baghdad don't believe Saddam's former supporters are starting these fires. And neither do I. The looters make money from their rampages but the arsonists have to be paid. The passengers in those buses are clearly being directed to their targets. If Saddam had pre-paid them, they wouldn't start the fires. The moment he disappeared, they would have pocketed the money and forgotten the whole project. So who are they, this army of arsonists? I recognised one the other day, a middle-aged, unshaven man in a red T-shirt, and the second time he saw me he pointed a Kalashnikov at me. What was he frightened of? Who was he working for? In whose interest is it to destroy the entire physical infrastructure of the state, with its cultural heritage? Why didn't the Americans stop this? As I said, something is going terribly wrong in Baghdad and something is going on which demands that serious questions be asked of the United States government. Why, for example, did Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence, claim last week that there was no widespread looting or destruction in Baghdad? His statement was a lie. But why did he make it? ... So I'll make an awful prediction. That America's war of 'liberation' is over. Iraq's war of liberation from the Americans is about to begin. In other words, the real and frightening story starts now."

Israeli Commandoes In Iraq To Assassinate 500 Scientists,
Information Clearinghouse, April 18, 2003 (IOl & News Agencies)
"Some 150 Israeli commandoes are currently inside Iraq on a mission to assassinate 500 Iraqi scientists, a retired French general told the French TV Channel 5 on Friday, April 18. He asserted that Israel was seeking to liquidate 500 Iraqi armament scientists who were involved in the country’s biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, reported the Israeli Maariv newspaper which carried the news. The French general, who was not identified, said the scientists hunted by Israel are the same ones who were listed by U.N. weapons inspectors for interviews during their mandate in Iraq which was terminated two days before the unleashing of the U.S.-led war on March 20. The Israeli commandoes might be operating within the ranks of the American Marines now occupying Iraq, said the French general, without elaborating on how they managed to sneak into the war-ravaged country. Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, spokesman of the U.S. Central Command war headquarters in As-Sayliya, Qatar, had repeatedly said the U.S.-led war was seeking, beside toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, to eliminate the country’s capabilities in developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Appealing to the world community to protect them from the U.S. aggression aimed at obliterating Iraq’s minds, a number of Iraqi scientists and university professors had sent an SOS e-mail complaining American occupation forces were threatening their lives. In their e-mail, a copy of which was sent to IslamOnlin.net Friday, April 11, they asserted that occupation troops demanded them, particularly physicists, chemists and mathematicians, to hand over all documents and researches in their possession."

FICKLE 'VICTORY'. It vanishes when you claim it,
by Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, April 18, 2003
"No sooner had the War Party declared victory in Iraq and started looking impatiently around for their next victim, when their supposed easy conquest began to fall apart at the seams. The laptop field marshals and the Chickenhawk Brigade barely had time to pound out their demand that the peaceniks repent before it dawned on them that they might be the ones called to do a little recanting ... Writing in the (UK) Spectator, [Michael] Ledeen announces that the Coalition of the Conquerors is just warming up. Iraq was only a practice run, and the war, far from being over, has barely begun. He promises us "a long war," one spreading to "many countries" – as many as can be framed and convicted of "supporting the terrorists." Al Qaeda is no longer even mentioned. Now it's Hizbollah we're supposed to be after, and Syria, which have always been the main bulwark of armed resistance to Israel. Up until the invasion of Iraq, Hizbollah foreswore attacks on U.S. targets: their quarrel, they said, was with Israel alone. Yet the conquest of Iraq has merged Israeli and American interests so that they're indistinguishable: it won't be long before their methods are lined up. General Jay Garner no doubt picked up a few occupation do's and don'ts when he took a trip to Israel sponsored by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). I guess that's why he praised Israel's increasingly brutal treatment of the Palestinians as showing "restraint." JINSA, which Ledeen used to head up, is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to an outpost of the Israeli Defense Force. So kneejerk is their unconditional support for Israel, that this purportedly American organization openly declares that "Israel Has the Right to Sell Radar Planes to China." Perhaps a few of the boys in the Pentagon might be slightly perturbed by that. But not enough to nix JINSA's network within the U.S. military: JINSA not only sponsors visits to Israel by top U.S. military officials, it also conducts seminars for up-and-coming officers in all branches of the armed services. JINSA also believes Israel has the right to expect a steady stream of U.S. taxpayers' dollars to build a regional military machine equal if not superior to the American presence – and fully outfitted with weapons of mass destruction."

[There aren't many Jews in the U.S. military front lines, but Newsweek features them.]
Aiding the Enemy. Iraq’s recent hatred for Jews makes it an odd place to celebrate Passover for American GIs,
Newsweek, April 19, 2003
"The sun set behind the palm and oleander trees last week in Iraq, and Matthew Fain and Bret Turpin took off from work early to observe Passover. There’s nothing extraordinary about two friends sitting under an awning and eating a kosher meal. It’s where they did it that’s unusual. Their perch was surrounded by chem-bio labs and shattered hangars on a freshly bombed airbase in a country whose recent history of hatred for Israel obscures the fact that Iraq is home to the oldest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel. 'What do you think about being over here?' asked Fain, 25. 'I mean, being Jewish where they don’t like Jews.' Turpin, 34, picked through his kosher MRE. 'You know, I hadn’t thought about it, but it is pretty ironic that we’re over here on Passover.' The men are with the 1-8 Infantry of the Army’s Fourth Infantry Division, just arrived to help Iraq transition from war to renewal. They come carrying the Torah in their pants cargo pockets, “The Journeys of Abraham” in their rucksacks and slightly mixed feelings about their area of operations. Holy Week can be a confusing time for troops in battle. Chaplain Leif Esperland held popular Good Friday services for the unit’s Christian soldiers and was expecting a big turnout on Easter Sunday. But the experience of celebrating Passover in Iraq was a particularly odd sensation for the unit’s four Jews ... Iraq’s hostility is barely notable to Pfc. Joe Kashnow, an Orthodox Jew from Baltimore who enlisted after tiring of managing a kosher fish importer. While he chooses not to wear his yarmulke in theatre-the better to avoid hostility, he says-he thinks Iraq is no different from most countries. 'Jews have been run out of about everywhere they’ve been,' he says. 'The Jewish nation is about freedom, and that’s why we’re here.' The country isn’t entirely hostile toward Jews. Amid the madness of Iraq’s whiplash transition from Saddam to social equality, a group of Iraqi Muslims defended the Jewish Cultural Center against looters in Baghdad, where about 40 people comprise the country’s entire Jewish population. In fact, until the 1950s, Jews comprised 25 percent of Baghdad’s population and, few may realize, were not advocates of creating a Jewish state."

[Reporter Judith Miller is Jewish:]
Deep Miller Did the New York Times just change the rules of journalism?,
slate.com, April 21, 2003
"Judith Miller scores a sizzling scoop on Page One of today's New York Times. Her story, 'Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said To Assert,' asserts that an Iraqi scientist who claims he worked on Saddam's chemical warfare program for a decade has led U.S. military investigators to a 'supply of material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons' that he buried as proof of the weapons program ... But one-third of the way into Miller's story come these two paragraphs about the sourcing deal behind the scoop that she struck with Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, the U.S. military team searching for WMD in Iraq. Raising more questions about her relationship to MET Alpha than she answers, Miller writes: Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials. Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted. They said they feared that such information could jeopardize the scientist's safety by identifying the part of the weapons program where he worked. I've read a lot of news stories in my time, and a fair chunk of the reporting from Iraq, but terms of accreditation to report is a new piece of journalistic jargon to me. Is it Miller's way of saying she's an embed, and as an embed she's agreed not to divulge any information that may harm the 'operational security' of an ongoing military action? Or is Miller implying that she struck a more complex ad hoc deal with MET Alpha? (I think she is.) It's quite a deal when you read the story closely. She agreed not to interview the scientist, visit his home, divulge his identity, write about the MET Alpha for three days, or disclose the composition of the chemicals. And, most pungently, she consented to pre-publication review—oh, hell, let's call it censorship!—of her story by military officials. Did the 'military officials' who checked her story require her to redact parts of the story, or did she do so on her own accord? Were any other 'terms of accreditation' imposed on Miller? Other levels of censorship? Are other Times reporters filing dispatches under similar "terms of accreditation"? When and where were the terms of accreditation negotiated? Where are they stated? Did Miller, who co-wrote the well-received Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War, agree to these 'terms of accreditation to report' because she's writing another book about unconventional weapons and agreed to withhold her findings until the book comes out? Then, when she got this big scoop, did she ask for permission to sluice her early findings into the Times? Just a theory. Miller's relationship with MET Alpha does seem to be close. Is it too close? According to Nexis, the first mention of the outfit appeared in an April 10, 2003, Times article by Miller ('Hunt Finds Hint of How Iraqis Fill Power Void'). Miller's relationship with MET Alpha is so tight that, as she writes today, members of the group permitted her to accompany them in their search for the unnamed scientist. They also allowed Miller to watch the scientist from a distance as he pointed to the sites where he said the precursor biochem materials were buried."

Army contract for Feinstein's husband Blum is a director of firm that will get up to $600 million,
by David R. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2003
"URS Corp., a San Francisco planning and engineering firm partially owned by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, landed an Army contract Monday worth up to $600 million. The award to help with troop mobilization, weapons systems training and anti-terrorism efforts is the latest in a string of plum defense jobs snared by URS. In February, the firm won an army engineering and logistics contract that could bring in $3.1 billion during the next eight years. Government contracting has come under increasing scrutiny by Congress and citizen groups, with critics decrying the political connections of firms winning lucrative jobs. Richard Blum, Feinstein's husband, serves on the company's board of directors and controls about 24 percent of the firm's stock, according to Hoover's Inc. research firm. A Feinstein spokesman Monday declined to comment on the contract. Blum and several URS representatives could not be reached for comment."

NEOCONS IN DENIAL,
by Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, April 30, 2003
"It's a 'conspiracy theory' to blame neocons for the war – even though they spent the last decade agitating for it. One of the major accomplishments of this site, aside from keeping our readers up-to-the-minute on what's really happening in Iraq, has been to educate the public about who brought us this war, and why. We have held, from the beginning, that war on Iraq did not and does not serve American interests, and we have traced its origins back to a group of determined ideologues who see it as the first phase of a campaign to take America on the road to Empire. Ideas, not guns, rule the world, and the ideology espoused by the neoconservatives has been consistent, and relentlessly advanced since the first days of the post-cold war era. It boils down to this: war, war, and yet more war. Their goal – 'benevolent global hegemony' exercised by the U.S. These ex-leftists and former Scoop Jackson Democrats were agitating for war against Iraq – and most of the rest of the Middle East – well before 9/11. The debris from that horrific disaster hadn't even stopped smoldering when top neocons in this administration targeted Iraq – not Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda – as a target of opportunity they could not afford to miss. Now they stand on the verge of fulfilling their dream: a U.S.-imposed military occupation of Iraq to be followed by interventions in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and throughout the Middle East. It is the very scenario envisioned in 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,' the infamous memo written for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser. In this seminal document, the invasion of Iraq is prefigured, along with a campaign to 'roll back' Syria: 'Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right – as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria's regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq.' This is precisely what is happening today. The only difference is that the agent of rollback is not the IDF, but the U.S. military. With U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld openly threatening Syria, the idea that the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad clearly has spread far beyond its progenitors. The war in Iraq, as Professor Paul W. Schroeder pointed out in The American Conservative, Would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state.' That 'small client state' is, of course, Israel, the Middle Eastern Sparta that enjoys the same kind of knee-jerk support among some sections of the American right that the former Soviet Union once commanded on the radical left. If the core principle of constant warfare is the essence of the neoconservative doctrine, then the object of their special adulation is the state of Israel, whose interests they have openly advanced over and above the best interests of the U.S. When Ariel Sharon compared George W. Bush to Neville Chamberlain, Bill Bennett, neoconservative scold and head of 'Americans for Victory Over Terrorism' (AVOT), agreed with him. Since 9/11, the neocons have been pushing the line that the interests of the U.S. and Israel are identical – a logical impossibility, since the national interests of separate states are different by definition. Unleashed by 9/11, neoconservative publicists have been calling for 'World War IV,' a 'clash of civilizations' pitting the U.S. and Israel against the Muslim world – and a good deal of the rest of the world. All of this history of ceaseless warmongering on the part of the neocons is a matter of record: just follow the links in this column."