"[...] several factions in the administration are serious about a military strike if diplomacy fails, and since the White House is unwilling to try diplomacy in any meaningful way, it probably will fail. The upshot is a growing possibility that President Bush could reluctantly order such a strike this summer, risking another Korean war."
German lessons: Bush should not mess with history"When America defeats its enemies, George W Bush said in his speech on Iraq this week, it leaves not occupying armies but democracy and liberty. 'There was a time,' he went on, 'when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong.' "
"In fact, it is Mr Bush who is wrong. Japanese men got the vote in 1925, not in 1945, as the president implied. And German men won the vote as far back as 1849, albeit subject to a property qualification, at a time when Mr Bush's country practised legalised slavery. Bearing in mind that America only became a full democracy in 1965, and Germany in 1946, there is a case for saying that Germans have at least as strong a democratic tradition as Americans. What's more, there is no dispute about who actually won the last German election, which is more than can be said about the means by which Mr Bush came to office. A little historical humility would do the president no harm."
UK taxpayers forced to pay millions for Iraq arms Blix damns Iraq: too little, too late"Saddam Hussein's prospects of staving off war all but evaporated when UN weapons inspectors said demands for Iraq to disarm had shown 'very limited' results"
"No action should be seen as too small, no non-violent action should be seen as too large. The calls now for the impeachment of George Bush should multiply. The constitutional requirement 'high crimes and misdemeanors' certainly applies to sending our young halfway around the world to kill and be killed in a war of aggression against a people who have not attacked us."
U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation"It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer."
"The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. 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. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security."
Mokhiber: The Washington Post reported yesterday on its front page that "many people in the world increasingly think that President Bush is a greater threat to world peace than Iraqi President Saddam Hussein." Why do you think that millions of people around the world hold that view?
Voting machine engineer sues, alleges machine design flawsExclusive: Risking a Civil War US warns it is 'time for action' against Saddam: New UN resolution will say Iraqi dictator is in 'material breach' of disarmament rulesI screened job applicants over the phone for a company I didn't work for. My favorite part: Arrogant middle managers who suddenly began to grovel when they realized I wasn't the receptionist.
"Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, suggested that a war against Iraq could be launched within three weeks as he insisted yesterday that it was 'time to take action' against Saddam Hussein."
World-renowned Irish civil rights leader and youngest member of British Parliament Bernadette Devlin Mcaliskey is turned away at the U.S. border and deported (Democracy Now! audio)"The Chief Officer Mr. Squires [...] he was thre person who informed me that I had no rights. And I tried to say to him, look, you know, the United Nations Charter gives me rights. The United States Constitution gives me rights. And that is the point at which he said he would demonstrate the rights I had by putting me in handcuffs and putting me in jail. Then his counterpart said to me very very slowly and deliberately into my face, and softly, 'Do not anger my boss. Ma'am, listen to me. Do not anger my boss, ma'am. Do not make this man angry, ma'am. I am telling you this in terms of your own safety and well-being. Do not make this man angry.' And then later he said to me again, 'You don't have rights, ma'am. You keep saying you have rights. Let me assure you that you do not have any rights here. My boss has rights, my boss has power, and my boss has a revolver.' That's what he said to me."
U.S. on Diplomatic Warpath: The word is out: Rebuff on Iraq could reduce aid"UNITED NATIONS -- Senior U.S. officials have been quietly dispatched in recent days to the capitals of key Security Council countries where they are warning leaders to vote with the United States on Iraq or risk 'paying a heavy price.' "
("The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." -- Art. II, §4 of the U.S. Constitution)
"Computerized vote-counting machines are sweeping the country. But they can be hacked -- and right now there's no way to be sure they haven't been."
US Lobbyist Helped Draft Eastern Europeans' Iraq Statement"Mokhiber: You said last week that, 'Every step will be taken to protect civilian and innocent life in Iraq.' But Pentagon officials have said that under a battle plan called 'shock and awe,' 'there will not be a safe place in Baghdad when we attack.' Baghdad is a city the size of Paris, with five million residents. If there will not be a safe place in Baghdad when we attack, then how do you plan to protect every civilian life?"
US plan for new nuclear arsenalBy attacking Baghdad, US president George W. Bush wants to fulfill a divine order. In the highly religious United States, there has rarely been such a deep connection between national power interests and fundamentalist false piety. Christian fanatics are calling for a crusade against Islam.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: A little honesty might help the Government's case against Iraq: Prescott says Blair is a man nobody can fail to believe. Wrong. He is a man who thinks he must always be believed Charley Reese: Diplomatic Riffs"The whole world knows what most Americans don't: Israel has defied more U.N. resolutions than Iraq, and it has defied them because the United States blocks any attempt to enforce them."
UK: PM Blair's Popularity Plummets Rich Procter: 'Bush: The Anti-Lincoln' Laurie King-Irani: Belgium's Challenge to War's Ancient Calculus The Weapon We Gave Iraq Secret UN Document: Over 1 Million Iraqi Children Might Die in War"A newly-obtained confidential UN document predicts that 30 percent of children under 5 in Iraq, or 1.26 million, 'would be at risk of death from malnutrition' in the event of a war. The draft document, 'Integrated Humanitarian Contingency Plan for Iraq and Neighbouring Countries', was produced by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on 7 January 2003. Its release comes as aid agencies and government representatives meet urgently in Geneva to discuss humanitarian operations in the event of war."
"More than a million people -- drawn from all parts of the kingdom, from Middle England to the housing estates, the shires to the inner cities -- marched through London yesterday in protest against a looming war with Iraq."
Blair stakes his political future on beating Iraq: Impassioned PM states the moral case for ousting Saddam"In the end, I think we are just tired of being lied to. Tired of being talked down to, of being bombarded with Second World War jingoism and scare stories and false information and student essays dressed up as 'intelligence'. We are sick of being insulted by little men, by Tony Blair and Jack Straw and the likes of George Bush and his cabal of neo-conservative henchmen who have plotted for years to change the map of the Middle East to their advantage."
Huge march against war in Melbourne New Zealand: Thousands march for peace around Aotearoa Police fire tear gas, rubber bullet at Colorado Springs war protest S.C. Rep. Blasts Bush's Economic Plan Thousands Protest War At Capitol Alliance with US could make Blair first war casualty Powell Calls for U.N. to Act on Iraq and Meets Deep Resistance On a day of high drama, a quiet Swede may just have turned back the tide of warSenator Carl Levin: "We have undermined the inspectors."
Arundhati Roy and Nelson Mandela on Democracy Now! Blix: "We have no evidence of weapons of mass destruction'NRDC Nuclear Notebook: Israeli nuclear forces,2002 Trying Saddam: The Options"14. Notes that the actions to be taken by Iraq in paragraphs 8 to 13 represent steps towards the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery and the objective of a global ban on chemical weapons;"
"TOMORROW one of the most important public events in memory will take place in central London.
"It is not possible to overstate the significance and urgency of the march and demonstration against an unprovoked British and American attack on Iraq, a nation with whom we have no quarrel and who offer us no threat.
"The urgency is the saving of lives. First, let us stop calling it a 'war'. The last time 'war' was used in the Gulf was in 1991 when the truth was buried with more than 200,000 people. Attacking a 70-mile line of trenches, three American brigades, operating at night, used 60-ton armoured earthmovers to bury alive teenage Iraqi conscripts, including the wounded and those surrendering and retreating. Survivors were slaughtered from the air. The helicopter gunship pilots called it a 'turkey shoot'.
"Of the 148 Americans who died, a quarter of them were killed by Americans. Most of the British were killed by Americans. This was known as 'friendly fire'. The civilians who were killed, whose deaths were never recorded by the American military because it was 'not policy', were 'collateral damage'."
David Ignatius: A Whale of a Mess? Libya working to extend the range of its missiles Schröder vigorous in rejection of conflict In Saudi Arabia, anti-U.S. backlash grows stronger Many Saudis are boycotting American firms We're in the grip of a faulty metaphor"One would have to go to the annual convention of the John Birch Society to find as many invectives directed against the United Nations as has been spewed out in recent weeks by the Bush Administration and its supporters in Congress and in the media."
Bewildered Iraqis Ask Why U.S. Wants War: 'Say to Bush and to the USA people that we ... are friends for you,' one man says. 'We are a peaceful people,' adds another"A diminutive man with graying hair, he thrust himself forward and pleaded with great urgency: 'You must say to the people there that I am a teacher in Iraq for 30 years. Say to Bush and to the USA people that we are like you. We are friends for you. Tell them that they must stop the war.' "
("To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." -- Judgement of the Nuremberg Tribunal)
CIA Officer on the Agency's Days of Shame: George Tenet Caves In US Offers Incentives for Backing on Iraq"WASHINGTON -- Determined to ensure broad support for an attack on Baghdad, the United States has been offering incentives around the world, from increased arms sales to Iraq's neighbors to a diplomatic nod for Russia's crackdown on Chechen separatists -- moves that some analysts here and in the Middle East contend could damage long-term US interests."
("The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." -- Art. II, §4 of the U.S. Constitution)
CHARLIE CLEMENTS, M.D.: Report from Iraq: Bombing the Starving, Sick & Homeless"Hospital wards are filled with severely malnourished children, and much of the population has a marginal nutritional status. While visiting a children's hospital, we were told about newly emerging diseases that had previously been controlled when pesticides were available. (Current sanctions prohibit their importation.) Later I saw a mother who had traveled 200 km with her young daughter, who suffered from leschmaniais, or 'kala azar' as it is known there. She came to the hospital because she heard it had a supply of Pentostam, the medicine needed to treat the disease. The pediatrician told her there was none. Then he turned to me and, in English, said, 'It would be kinder to shoot her here rather than let her go home and die the lingering death that awaits her'. Our interpreter, by instinct, translated the doctor's comments into Arabic for the mother, whose eyes instantly overflowed with tears."
Art Spiegelman, cartoonist for The New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "MAUS", resigns in protest at censorship"(Q) Do you consider yourself a victim of September 11?"
"Exactly so. From the time that the Twin Towers fell, it seems as if I've been living in internal exile, or like a political dissident confined to an island. I no longer feel in harmony with American culture, especially now that the entire media has become conservative and tremendously timid. Unfortunately, even The New Yorker has not escaped this trend: Remnick is unable to accept the challenge, while, on the contrary, I am more and more inclined to provocation."
Jonathan Schell: The Case Against the War"Germany said yesterday that a clear majority of nations on the UN Security Council will oppose a new resolution authorising war on Iraq, heralding a political catastrophe for Tony Blair."
Rice lobbies Blix to produce a report that supports Bush administration's goal of starting a war Afghans Say 17 Civilians Killed in U.S. Raids Anti-war activists mobilizing for 'day after attack' actions Robert Byrd: We Stand Passively Mute Vulnerable but ignored: how catastrophe threatens the 12 million children of Iraq" 'They come from above, from the air, and will kill us and destroy us. I can explain to you that we fear this every day and every night.' -- Shelma (Five years old)
" 'I think every hour that something bad will happen to me' said Hadeel, aged 13.
"Assem, five, and one of the youngest interviewed, said: 'They have guns and bombs and the air will be cold and hot and we will burn very much.'
"Because there is only one month's supply of food in the country and the overwhelming majority depend on rations distributed by the Baghdad regime, the chaos of war could tip a population of malnourished children into starvation. And once American and British bombs start falling on President Saddam's power stations, the country's main water treatment plants will fail causing the rivers to become contaminated with sewage."
"In actuality, what we have here are the militant doctrines of an imperial power, economic self-interest and an attempt to ride the waves of the war to achieve petty political objectives."
"(WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2003) -- The Bush Administration is preparing a bold, comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, which will give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information."
"Tony Blair and George Bush are encountering an unexpected obstacle in their campaign for war against Iraq -- their own intelligence agencies."
Revealed: truth behind US 'poison factory' claim"If Colin Powell were to visit the shabby military compound at the foot of a large snow-covered mountain, he might be in for an unpleasant surprise. The US Secretary of State last week confidently described the compound in north-eastern Iraq - run by an Islamic terrorist group Ansar al-Islam - as a 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory.'
"Yesterday, however, it emerged that the terrorist factory was nothing of the kind - more a dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings at the foot of a grassy sloping hill. Behind the barbed wire, and a courtyard strewn with broken rocket parts, are a few empty concrete houses. There is a bakery. There is no sign of chemical weapons anywhere - only the smell of paraffin and vegetable ghee used for cooking."
"We think it is dreadful that Donald Rumsfeld is out there pushing for a war against Iraq," Karin Cecere (nee Rumsfeld), 59, said from her two-up, two-down home last week. "We are embarrassed to be related to him," she told The Telegraph.
Joan Smith: It's about time the US got over 9/11"If anyone had told me, in the autumn of 2001, that we were less than 18 months away from what might become the world's first nuclear war, I would have thought they were insane. In the half century since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no one has been that reckless or indeed that stupid -- even, or so I thought, the Bush White House. Then came the twin towers and everything changed overnight, to the point where we find ourselves apparently on the threshold of a terrifying conflict in the Middle East. So the question I am going to ask, at the risk of causing great offence, is this: when is the US going to get over the events of 11 September?"
Nudist protesters strike AGAIN -- BIG TIME US furious over reported Franco-German plan on Iraq"Antiwar opposition in the U.S. and around the world is already at unprecedented levels - even before a war. Now our movements have to grab the remote and turn to channel four wherein widespread growing peace and justice activism roots itself deeply in the moral and social fabric of society and then grows gigantic all around the world.
"Doing this, we may stop the war. Even now, project awe and shock is not a foregone conclusion.
"And if we don't stop the war, we can certainly reduce the horrors it unleashes.
"And beyond this war, we must develop a movement that is politically conscious enough, morally committed enough, and creatively organized enough, to prevent the next war.
"And beyond just preventing wars, we need to build a movement that can literally reverse reactionary agendas and go on to win liberating alternatives for global relations, ecology, economic life, women and families, and cultural communities, as soon as it is humanly and socially possible.
"Come out to demonstrate February 15-16.
"But show up with every intention to come out again and again, each time more informed about all manner of injustice, more committed to seek all manner of liberation, more organized to wield our strength on behalf of our visions, and more positive and hopeful in order to sustain and inspire ourselves and others."
"JOURNALIST Sean Boyne and student Ibrahim al-Marashi have attacked Tony Blair for using their reports to call for war against Iraq.
"Mr Boyne, who works for military magazine Jane's Intelligence Review, said he was shocked his work had been used in the Government's dossier.
"Articles he wrote in 1997 were plagiarised for a 19-page intelligence document entitled Iraq: Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception And Intimidation to add weight to the PM's warmongering.
"He said: 'I don't like to think that anything I wrote has been used for an argument for war. I am concerned because I am against the war.'"
Bill Christison: The US Gameplan for IraqDowning Street was last night plunged into acute international embarrassment after it emerged that large parts of the British government's latest dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on "intelligence material" - were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old.
Rumsfeld remark outrages German press Blair-Powell UN Report Written by StudentPowell's presentation relied in no small part upon an intelligence dossier prepared by the British Government entitled, "Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation." That report plagiarized large swaths of an essay written in September of 2002 by a graduate student from California named Ibrahim al-Marashi. Al-Marashi's essay appeared in the September 2002 edition of a small journal, the Middle East Review of International Affairs.
Entire sections of the al-Marashi essay, including six full paragraphs in one section, had been cut and pasted into the British dossier, including several spelling and grammatical errors that are identical.
Adlai Stevenson III: Powell's presentation no "Adlai Stevenson moment"CHICAGO -- Pundits and officials in Washington have dubbed Secretary of State Colin Powell's attempt to make a case for war against Iraq in the United Nations Security Council an "Adlai Stevenson moment."
I couldn't disagree more. My father was Adlai Stevenson, who in 1962, as President Kennedy's representative to the United Nations, presented the Security Council with incontrovertible proof that the Soviet Union, a nuclear superpower, was installing missiles in Cuba and threatening to upset the world's "balance of terror."
Israelis Play Sickening Game of 'Bingo' MEMORANDUM"Indeed, it is our view that an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future. Far from eliminating the threat it would enhance it exponentially.
"As recent events around the world attest, terrorism is like malaria. You don't eliminate malaria by killing the flies. Rather you must drain the swamp. With an invasion of Iraq, the world can expect to be inundated with swamps breeding terrorists. In human terms, your daughters are unlikely to be able to travel abroad in future years without a large phalanx of security personnel.
"We recommend you re-read the CIA assessment of last fall that pointed out that 'the forces fueling hatred of the US and fueling al Qaeda recruiting are not being addressed,' and that 'the underlying causes that drive terrorists will persist.' That CIA report cited a Gallup poll last year of almost 10,000 Muslims in nine countries in which respondents described the United States as 'ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked and biased.'"
Imad Khadduri: The nuclear bomb hoax"This article is written in President George Bush's home state of Texas, where the flags fly at half-staff for the Columbia crew, where the dispatch to the Middle East of further troops of the 108th Air Defence Artillery Brigade from Fort Bliss and the imminent deployment from Holloman Air Force Base in neighbouring New Mexico of undisclosed numbers of F-117 Nighthawk stealth bombers earned a mere 78-word down-page inside 'nib' report in the local Austin newspaper."
Nelson Mandela: "We are not going to listen to the United States of America." About his statement last week, "One power with a president who has no foresight and cannot think properly is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust," Mandela said, "I'm not changing a word, not even a comma, of what I said, because I said so because I believe it." US claim dismissed by Blix U.S. Economy in Worst Hiring Slump in 20 Years Phyllis Bennis: Powell's Dubious Case for WarSome residents of Mill Valley's Redwoods Retirement Center feel President Bush is leading the country into war and they demonstrated yesterday - using canes, walkers and wheelchairs - to let him know they want no part of it.
"He doesn't tell us what's going on," said Nora Boskoff, 84, organizer of a curbside demonstration yesterday outside the nursing home on Camino Alto.
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Last modified: Sun May 9 18:06:50 CDT 2004