.              

Global Menace:

The U.S. spends more on what they euphemistically call "defense" than all the countries who are members of the Security Council combined. As a matter of fact the U.S.    spends more on it's military than all the countries of the world combined

By Hank Roth

   (PNews) There is a major preoccupation of members of the George Bush
   administration with oil and with weapons of mass destruction.

   While everyone is ALSO preoccupied with weapons of mass destruction
   there is also a proportionality to death and destruction by the amount
   of money spent on a country's military and no one spends more than the
   United States on their military.

   Obviously Iraq can't even come close. Nor can al-Qaeda or Libya or any
   other Third World country and neither does any other country in the
   United Nations Security Council. In fact the U.S. spends more on what
   they euphemistically call "defense" than all the countries who are
   members of the Security Council combined. As a matter of fact the U.S.
   spends more on it's military than all the countries of the world
   combined. (See Michael Parenti, "Against Empire" for these references)

   We consider Iraq and all the countries of the Middle-East
   dictatorships (whether monarchy or military for their lack of
   democracy), except for Israel - however, as McGowan writes in
   "Understanding the F-Word, American Fascism and the Politics of
   Illusion", Writers Club, 2001, it is all an illusion and asks if
   America is merely comprised of the "existence of various competing
   political parties and ideologies" is "an elaborate hoax that has
   successfully pulled the wool over America's eyes?"

   McGowan writes: "What should be abundantly clear to any
   rational-minded America by this time is that there is absolutely no
   substantive difference between the two major political parties in this
   country. This has been noted with increasing frequency by various
   writers, who have dubbed the emerging one-size-fits-all party the
   Republicrats. [McGowan]

   The American agenda are the profits to be made with other people's
   cheap labor and utilization of the rest of the world's resources for
   the comfort and further enrichment of the wealthy elite. AND the
   president of the U.S. is the CEO for America's big businesses.

   "...there is only the agenda, and the only debate is over how rapidly
   that agenda can be implemented while still maintaining the illusion of
   democracy."

   McGowan writes that Clinton went about implementing the most
   reactionary agenda of any president in modern history. He not only did
   not reform healthcare, his agenda included "decimation of the welfare
   system" and he did more to "militarize the nation's police forces than
   any president in history." AP reported that "More Americans went to
   prison or jail during the Clinton administration than any past
   administration" and the "Justice Policy Institute reported that the
   incarceration rate at the end of Clinton's terms of office was nearly
   double what it had been at the end of Reagan's terms -- 476 per
   100,000 vs 247 per 100,000." The death penalty also soared during the
   Clinton years. McGowan wrote:

   "The use of the death penalty has skyrocketed during his (Clintons')
   tenure, with its use expanded to cover more crimes, and with appeals
   of death penalty cases severely limited. His time in office has also
   seen the country increasingly execute juvenile offenders, and
   increasingly incarcerate minors as adults."

   And the "sales of arms to foreign regimes---already at a high level
   during the Bush administration---doubled in Clinton's first year in
   office alone." ("U.S. Arms Sales: Arms Around the World," The Mojo
   Wire)

     George Bush Junior is continuing a tradition, his fathers and Bill
                                  Clintons

   "And the militarization of foreign policy has far surpassed what the
   belligerent Bush team was able to achieve. In one seven month period,
   the Clinton White House conducted aerial bombing and/or cruise missile
   assaults against no fewer than four sovereign nations: Iraq, Serbia,
   Afghanistan, and the Sudan. All of these were conducted in rather
   flagrant disregard for international law." [McGowan]

      More than a million Iraqis died while Clinton was the president.
     That was considerably more than Bush killed during the war itself

The Agenda is the Same

   It doesn't matter what political party holds the office or controls
   the Congress. The agenda is the same. It is to do what is good for big
   business. The United States is a giant corporation and the President
   is the CEO and this president thinks he is King George.

   "Whether Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, the
   president tends to treat capitalist interest as synonymous with the
   nation's well-being. Presidents greet the accumulation of wealth as a
   manifestation of a healthy national economy, regardless of how that
   wealth is distributed or applied." [Michael Parenti, "America
   Besieged", 98, City Lights]

   "Presidents will describe the overseas investments of giant
   corporations as `U.S. interest' abroad, to be defended at all
   costs--or certainly at great cost to the U.S. populace. In fact, a
   president's primary commitment abroad is not to democracy as such but
   to the global `free market.' In the past century, almost all
   Republican and Democratic presidential candidates have been
   millionaires either at the time they first campaigned for the office
   or by the time they departed from it. In addition, presidents have
   drawn their top advisers and administrators primarily from industry
   and banking and have relied heavily on the judgments of corporate
   leaders." [Parenti]

   "President's Lifestyle: He lives like an opulent potentate in a
   rent-free, 132-room mansion known as the White House, set on an 18-
   acre estate, with a domestic staff of about one hundred, including six
   butlers and five full-time florists, a well-stocked wine cellar,
   tennis courts, a private movie room, a gymnasium, a bowling alley, and
   a heated outdoor swimming pool. The president has the free services of
   a private physician, a dozen chauffeured limousines, numerous
   helicopters and jets, including Air Force One. He also has access to
   the imperial luxuries of Camp David and other country retreats, free
   vacations, a huge expense allowance---and for the few things he must
   pay for---a generous annual salary." (Parenti - "America Besieged")]
   "Democracy is incongruous with modern-day capitalism and is
   consistently violated by a capitalist social order" [Parenti -
   "Democracy for the Few"]

       Modern-day capitalism has little in common with human rights

   George Bush wants Iraqi oil no less than he wanted the pipeline to
   carry oil across Afghanistan. The Iraqis had their use and their day
   just as the Taliban were also useful allies and Osama bin Ladin was
   useful for defeating the Soviets. George Bush has very strong ties to
   the oil industry. The pipeline projects in Afghanistan were front and
   center after Bush was appointed president by the Supreme Court. So was
   reopening of oil and gas drilling in Alaska's nature reserves and the
   rejection of the Kyoto Protocol (emission levels and pollution). Even
   Bush's choice for vice president, Dick Chaney, was a big shot in the
   oil industry as former chairman and CE) of Hailliburton (one of the
   world's leading service contractors for the oil industry). Bush's
   selection to be director of the National Security Council, Condoleezza
   Rice, (overseeing all intelligence agencies) was director of Chevron
   from 1991 to 2000. Rice was familiar with issues concerning Central
   Asia and worked on projects by Chevron in Kazakhstan and had also
   worked for George Bush, Senior on the National Security Council. Done
   Evans became Commerce secretary and a close friend of the Bush family.
   He spent his career in oil and was CEO of Tom Brown. So was energy
   secretary Spencer Abraham an oil executive, and Kathleen Cooper,
   undersecretary for economic affairs, who was chief economist at Exxon.

   There is a major preoccupation of members of this administration with
   oil and with weapons of mass destruction. The United States is the
   world's major consumer of oil and gas and the world's largest seller
   of military hardware. The United States is also the world's major
   user, stockpiler, and seller of weapons, including chemical,
   biological and munitions of every type, including "dual use"
   technology, which it has sold to friends and foes alike.

Fascism of George Bush

   A LIE THAT WORKED

   "After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, a group backed by the
   Kuwait government-in-exile hired a US public relations firm to devise
   a campaign to win American support for the war. The high point was the
   use of the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the US as a star witness
   to a congressional hearing into the Iraq invasion. Under an assumed
   name, she said: "I saw Iraq soldiers come into the hospitals with
   guns, and go into a room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took
   the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the
   babies on the cold floor to die." She later admitted she had lied."

   WHY DID SADDAM INVADE KUWAIT?

   "So why did Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait? Before the invasion, the US
   ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, said the US would not interfere. It
   was a reasonable expectation. Saddam was a US ally against Iran, so
   much so that between 1985 and 1989, dozens of biological agents were
   shipped to Iraq from the US under licence from the Commerce
   Department, despite the fact that Iraq had been reported to be
   engaging in chemical and possibly biological warfare against Iranians,
   Kurds and Shiites since the early 1980s."

THE GRIEVANCE

   "And Iraq had real grievance against Kuwait. According to Saddam,
   Kuwait had been exceeding its OPEC oil production quota and this was
   depressing the price of oil and Iraq's revenue, which was needed to
   pay for its war with Iran. Saddam believed Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
   owed part of Iraq's debt for its war against Iran because Iraq was
   protecting both these countries against Iran. And to add insult to
   injury, Kuwait was drilling into Iraq's share of the Rumaila oil field
   which straddles both countries."

                 Did Saddam Expel Weapons Inspectors? NO!

   "So why did Saddam expel UN weapons inspectors in 1998? He didn't. The
   head of the inspection team, Richard Butler, ordered the inspectors to
   leave Baghdad in anticipation of an attack. The Russian ambassador,
   Sergei Lavrov, criticized Butler for withdrawing the inspectors
   without seeking the permission of the UN Security Council."

WEAPONS INSPECTORS WERE SPIES

   NOTE: Weapons Inspectors were spies for the U.S. That claim has been
   denied as propaganda but subsequently has been proven to be the truth,
   not propaganda. The truth is, getting rid of Saddam Hussein would be
   the "regime change" that would give America control of Iraq's 100
   billion barrels of oil reserves.

                  SOURCE (and quotes -- Kenneth Davidson):
      http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/11/1031608270446.html

BUSH HAS SEWN FRIGHTENING SEEDS OF CONFLICT IN THE LAND

   "Bush has sewn frightening seeds of conflict in the land. The
   Democrats, who should oppose his war policies that will involve much
   bloodshed and horrific consequences, wring their hands instead and
   make squeaks about Bush's unfair economic program. They fear that
   Bush's popularity ratings deny them the possibility of questioning the
   many anti-civil liberties clauses in the USA Patriot Act. Indeed, the
   Democrats ceded constitutional powers to Bush, whom, they did not
   trust, when they passed the October 2002 Iraq war resolution." [Saul
   Landau, "Bush is a Global Menace" - CounterPunch - (February 28,
   2003)]

   "Consciously or not, W's policies threaten to destroy the very pillars
   of social peace on which U.S. society has stood for decades. Moreover,
   he commits each act of divisiveness, from his reward the filthy rich
   with dividend tax cuts at home to kill the heathen terrorists with war
   abroad, with an air of forcefulness and certainty, as if the very
   depth of his ignorance provides him with the self-assurance that his
   paucity of knowledge should deny. The Democrats do not challenge this
   ultra Teflon character who may well have stolen the 2000 election from
   them, after spending years doing super shady oil business and going
   AWOL from his Texas Air National Guard unit." [Landau]

        Everything about this presidency is a distortion of reality

   ".......On February 5, the Bush Administration presented its best
   case. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN Security Council
   with an illustrated lecture that he had an air-tight case for military
   action against Iraq albeit he produced no smoking gun. To show that
   Iraq had not complied with the UN resolution 1441 ( in other words,
   eliminating weapons of mass destruction), he showed slides from aerial
   photos, played sound bites from supposedly intercepted communications
   of Iraqi military and scientific officials and related alleged links
   between the nefarious Al-Qaeda and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein."

   The Great `Intelligence' Fraud

   In an editorial for The Nation (March 3, 2002), Alexander Cockburn
   called it "The Great `Intelligence' Fraud". He says,

   "less tan a week after Powell's speech it looked as though its major
   claims were at best speculative and at worst outright distortions,
   some of them derided in advance by UN chief inspector Hans Blix."

   To quote some of the editorial:

   "There was the supposed transporter of biotoxins that turned out to be
   a truck from the health department; the sinisterly enlarged test ramp
   for long-range missiles that was nothing of the sort; the suspect
   facility that had recently been cleared by the UN inspection teams;
   the strange eavesdropped conversations that could just as well have
   been Iraqi officers discussion how to hid stills for making bootleg
   whiskey. the promoter of the Iraq/Al Qaeda link, Abu Mussab
   al-Zarqawi, turns out to be an imaginative liar trying to get a prison
   sentence commuted; and the terror cell Answar al-Islam, a bunch of
   Islamic fundamentalist violently opposed to Saddam and operating out
   of Kurdish territory." [Cockburn]

   "A few days later Powell cited Osama bin Laden's latest tape as
   confirming that Saddam and Al Qaeda are in cahoots. Actually it's
   mostly a vivid account, which has the ring of truth, of how bin Laden
   and his men in their Tora Bora foxholes survived ferocious US bombing
   with minimal casualties. He concludes by urging all Muslims `to pull
   up your pant legs for jihad' against the Great Satan. Of Saddam and
   the Baath, he says, `The socialists are infidels wherever they are,
   either in Baghdad or Aden. Such war which may take place these days is
   similar to the war between Muslims and Romans, when the interests of
   Muslims came along with the interests of the Persians, who both fought
   against the Romans." [Cockburn]

   But here is how it works. The Bush administration repeats or starts
   the lies and Bush supporters repeat them over and over again. It
   doesn't matter if it is the truth. It is enough that the president
   said it. That is the Washington Party Line and it is the "gospel
   truth" to those patriots who have wrapped themselves in the flag it is
   their faith and believers don't need truth.

Money Talks

   There are no "liberal" or "left wing" radio or TV talk hosts. They're
   all coopted by conservatives or cancelled like Donahue who had the
   highest ratings on that station but was cancelled never-the-less
   because the airways are essentially and for all intents and purposes
   owned by conservatives and money talks (and the left walks). SO, the
   lies are picked up and repeated over and over again and you hear
   allegations like "appeasement" levelled against the Left (or other
   "peaceniks") even when there are no imminent threats which are an
   essential element before there can be appeasement. This president and
   his administration will lie. There will always be enough prejudice and
   greed to maintain conservative policies. And MONEY TALKS.

   "Powell did not convince the majority on the Council. U.S.
   intimidation, bribery and promises lured a few members of the "new"
   Europe like the Czech Republic and Poland, to join with rightwing
   governments from "old" Europe like Spain and Italy, and, of course,
   the lap dog Tony Blair of England. When Jack Straw, the British
   Foreign Minister who as Home Secretary had engineered Pinochet's phony
   medical escape from trial in Spain in March 2000, rose to endorse
   Washington's bellicosity, the British press announced that large
   sections of Tony Blair's "Dossier" on Iraq--that Powell had praised as
   solid intelligence--had actually come from the work of a graduate
   student using published sources." [Landau]

   As Cockburn pointed out the British `intelligence' report "turned out
   to be a series of plagiarisms from OLD ARTICLES from Jane's and from a
   paper on Iraqi politics written (12 years ago) by a student called
   Ibrahim al-Marashi, at the Monterey Institute of International
   Affairs." [Cockburn]

     Marashi is a Shiite who lives with his family in Baltimore,
     Maryland and has never been to Iraq but would like to see the Sunni
     president of Iraq removed...The paper was published by an Israeli
     think tank, Middle East Review of International Affairs from
     Herzliya, Israel ... (Kenneth Raposa, Boston Globe)

   Cockburn wrote:

   "So here we have a politically inspired document, spliced together by
   a Shiite student, published by an Israeli think tank hot for war,
   swiped off the web by Blair's harried minions and given to Powell as a
   masterpiece of British intelligence collection from M16. Quite aside
   from the welcome damage done to Powell's credibility and to the war
   party in general, the saga vividly reminds us of just how much rubbish
   has been served up to the American people in the guise of reliable
   `intelligence.' Remember how, amid the buildup to the Gulf War, the
   Pentagon invoked satellite phots of 265,000 Iraqi troops massed to
   invade Saudi Arabia? ...Jean Heller, a journalist from Florida's St
   Petersburg Times persuaded her paper to buy two photos at $1,600 each
   from a Russian commercial satellite. No troops showed up in the
   photos. `You could see planes sitting wingtip to wingtip in Riyadh
   airport,' Heller says, `but there wasn't any sign of a quarter of a
   million Iraqi troops sitting in the middle of the desert."

   Cockburn also mentions his brother Patrick who drove from Amman to
   Baghdad at the end of the 1991 war and the oil tankers he passed which
   were bombed int he war "under the claim they were mobile Scud
   launchers." There is more. He mentions the U.S. bombing of the Amariya
   shelter in Baghdad which the Pentagon claimed was s top secret
   military command center which it wasn't and hundreds of innocent
   civilians were killed. This is the kind of collateral damage we can
   expect from the next war.

   This wasn't the biggest atrocity. Although every atrocity and every
   massacre is bad, the biggest atrocity was the bombing and killing of
   about 100,000 Iraqi soldiers fleeing back to Iraq, many of them
   conscripts and all of them massacred in the biggest "Turkey Shoot"
   carried out by the U.S. airforce in that war. And the biggest lie was
   the "destroyed incubator" story, a fabrication to get the American
   public behind the U.S. attack. And perhaps the biggest lie of all has
   been the allegation from the Bush administration that Iraq gassed
   civilians at Halabja. There is another report from a Senior CIA
   political analyst on Iraq which refutes that claim.

   "....Bush harps on Saddam's criminal behavior. But the Reagan and
   senior Bush Administrations both supported Saddam during the period in
   the 1980s when he allegedly gassed Iranian troops and civilians at
   Halabja (now put into doubt by former U.S. Intelligence experts).
   Stephen C. Pelletiere, a Senior CIA political analyst on Iraq in the
   1980s, analyzed U.S. military intelligence and claims that the
   Iranians dropped the gas on the Kurds, not Saddam (NY Times Op-Ed
   1/31/03, "A War Crime Or An Act Of War?"). The US provided Saddam with
   logistical help--showing the position of Iranian troops -- the better
   to deploy his use chemical weapons. Indeed, Reagan approved of U.S.
   companies selling Iraq components of what became their biological
   weapons systems--nasty stuff like botulism and West Nile virus. And,
   of course, in 1983 Reagan dubbed Rumsfeld as his special envoy to
   Iraq." [Landau]

ROLE U.S. PLAYED IN TRAINING AND ARMING TERRORISTS

   "Congressman Dennis Kucinich points out in a conversation with Tikkun
   March April 2003 that there are over 17 states with or in the process
   of developing nuclear capacities and, in part through the help of
   Western countries including the US, have or are developing long-range
   delivery weapons. Twenty states have or are in the process of
   developing chemical and biological weapons. Yes, this makes the world
   unsafe and we have ourselves to blame for it, in large part, including
   the role we played in training and arming Al Queda operatives when
   they were terrorists fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan."
   [Rabbi Micheal Lerner - "THE TRIUMPH OF FEAR: The U.S. War Against
   Iraq....and A New Strategy" - An editorial by Rabbi Michael Lerner -
   March/April, 2003 - TIKKUN Magazine ---- RabbiLerner@tikkun.org]

   "George W. Bush has chosen a course to divide the country. Even before
   9/11, he pitted Americans against each other as at no other time since
   the 1960s. After 9/11 the polarization became dramatic: pro and anti
   war groupings, environmentalists and polluters, workers and bosses,
   landlords and tenants, citizens and non-citizens. He has reached the
   point whereby if the UN Security Council does not abide by his
   dictatorial wishes, he will launch a strike against Iraq and render
   the UN essentially irrelevant." [Saul Landau, "Bush is a Global
   Menace" - CounterPunch - (February 28, 2003)]

   Unlike Rabbi Lerner who writes about the role "we" played in arming
   the Taliban and other so-called "freedom fighters" and anti-communist
   right wing regimes, he is referring to the government and not "we the
   people". Many of us on the Left were opposed to any relationship with
   violators of human rights - just as "we" who are Jewish are also
   opposed to Israeli violators of human rights of Palestinians.

   AND by financing and providing training for right wing and Islamic
   regimes U.S. governments (both Democrat and Republican) were
   supporting future wars and terrorism not only against the U.S. but
   also against Europe and Russia.

   The Pakistanis were partnered via the Pakistani ISI, with the CIA in
   the creation of the Taliban.

   "The Pakistani ISI, a close junior partner to the CIA, set up hundreds
   of heroin laboratories across AFghanistan. `Within two years of the
   CIA's arrival, the Pakistan-Afganistan borderland had become the
   biggest producer of heroin in the world, and the single biggest source
   of the heroin on American streets.'" [Michael Parenti, "The Terrorism
   Trap" - 2002]

   "In Afghanistan the United States was `unaware that it was fiancing a
   future war against itself,' Arundhati Roy (in the "ALGEBRA OF INFINITE
   JUSTICE") Largely created and funded by the CIA, the mjahideen
   mercenaries now took on a life of their own. Hundreds of them returned
   home to ALGERIA, CHECHNYA, KOSOVO, and KASHMIR to carry on terrorist
   attacks in Allah's name against the purveyors of SECULAR
   `corruption.'" [Parenti]

   AND THE BEAT GOES ON....... Our funding and training has provided a
   direct correlation to global terrorism. Modern-day capitalism has
   little in common with human rights...

Very High Stakes for U.S. and Anyone Who Did Not Go Along...

   Iraq has been the mission of the chicken hawk right wing to project
   American power everywhere and the U.S. welcome the Iraqi invasion of
   Kuwait as a convenient excuse to become the super-"hyperpower"
   dominant economic and military force in the Middle East.

   "When the invasion first took place it was a containable regional
   crisis. It was a US choice to make it an international conflagration.
   At the moment of the invasion, the Arab League tried to deal with the
   crisis. To no one's surprise, they failed. Whether they might have
   succeeded, give more time, I don't know, but when they called for more
   time, it was denied them. The US said that it was sending in troops."
   [Phyllis Bennis interview with Alternative Radio - Also see: Clovis
   Maksoud, "The Arab World in the `New World Order,'" in "BEYOND THE
   STORM: A Gulf Crisis Reader" (edited by Phyllis Bennis and Michel
   Moushabeck (NY Olive Branch Press - 91) and John Kifner, "Arabs to
   Convene on Iraqi Invasion," (NYT - August 4, 1990]

   "For the same reason, later, when there were efforts to craft a
   diplomatic solution rather than a military solution to the Iraqi
   invasion, they were not allowed to go forward. In particular there was
   a last-minute initiative in February 1991 by Yevgeny Primakov, who was
   at the time the foreign minister of the Soviet Union. He had been
   ambassador to Iraq in the past. He went to Baghdad and negotiated a
   withdrawal agreement with the Iraqi government. The US would not even
   allow the Security Council to discuss it, because it was clear that
   they had made a decision in Washington that this was going to be a
   military victory, a showpiece, and they were going to force the world
   to come to war with them. That's what Resolution 678 was all about,
   authorizing the use of force." [Bennis]

           Sound familiar, doesn't it? Like father, like son....

   "The US basically bribed China, Colombia, and Ethiopia on the Security
   Council. It punished Yemen dramatically for refusing to vote yes.
   There were two countries that voted no. One was Cuba, the other Yemen,
   the sole Arab country on the council When the Yemeni ambassador
   Abdallah Saleh al-Ashtal, had just brought down his hand after voting
   no, one of the US diplomats said to him, `That was the most expensive
   no vote you ever cast.' In retaliation, the United States and other
   countries cancelled or cut back aid to Yemen, one of the poorest Arab
   states. So, this was very, very high stakes for the United States."
   [Bennis]

                     And it was very, very high stakes
        for those courageous enough to buck the U.S. HYPERPOWER.....

   "China was bribed enormously to make sure it did not veto. It had
   threatened to veto. China wanted two things it had been unable to get
   since the massacre at Tiananmen Square. One was diplomatic
   rehabilitation. The second was long-term development aid. The US had
   blocked both. The day after the vote, the Chinese foreign minister was
   invited to the White House for a high-profile visit. So, China got
   what it wanted. The US got what it wanted, which was an abstention
   rather than a veto. This was high states for the US, and they made the
   most of it." [ibid]

AMERICAN POLICY
for Controlling Middle East Energy Resources

   "US FOREIGN POLICY: THE MIDDLE EAST - Since the Second World War --
   from which the United States emerged as the world's only undamaged
   major country and proceeded to organize the economy of the world -- a
   cornerstone of American policy has been control of Middle East energy
   resources, the greatest geopolitical prize in the modern world.
   Control, not just access, was what was demanded by all US
   administrations, Republican and Democrat, because control of those
   resources gave the US control of its principal economic competitors --
   which turned out to be, by the late 20th century, a German-led Europe
   and a Japan-led East Asia." [Carl Estabrook, "Israel and the US War on
   Iraq" - CounterPunch - (February 26, 2003)]

   "The US has never in fact required Mideast oil for its own society --
   all the energy requirements of the US could be filled from national
   sources (especially when we include in "national sources," our
   "backyard" -- Latin America) But Germany imports 80% of its energy
   resources, and Japan, 100%. Who controls world oil, controls the
   life-line of the modern world." [ibid]

   "And the principal threat to U.S. control has always come from what
   the US called "domestic radicalism" -- the dangerous idea amongst the
   peoples of the oil-producing regions that their natural wealth should
   be used for their benefit, rather than for that of the corporations
   and the economic elites to whom the US might assign it. And the chief
   form of "domestic radicalism" was Arab nationalism. To guard against
   it, the US constructed (and took over from Britain) a series of
   repressive Arab governments, the family dictatorships around the
   Persian Gulf, with Saudi Arabia at their head." [ibid]

   When those who oppose this war favoring inspections and are against
   the killing they are accused of appeasement and compared to
   Chamberlain - as if the conditions which existed in 1938 are the same
   as those in 2003. Hitler was an imminent threat who demanded the
   Sudenland and wrote about his intentions in his infamous blue print
   which was described in his book, Mein Kampf years before his offensive
   in Europe. Saddam Hussein is not Hitler and has no elaborate blue
   print nor the means to inflict immediate harm to the U.S. or the
   capability to deliver any weapons of mass destruction, which the U.S.
   has failed to prove he has - nor does Saddam Hussein have any
   connections to al-Qaeda, in spite of false and still unproven claims
   by Colin Powell (the military officer who lied about My Lai).

King George

   George Bush is certain he is right. He is as certain of this as he is
   about being tough on crime. He is as certain about this as he was that
   everyone of the 150 executions carried during his watch in Texas were
   right. Not to be undone by the democrats, when Bill Clinton was a
   candidate for president he took time out to go back to Arkansas to
   sign off on the execution of Ricky Ray Rector. Who was Rector? He was
   severely retarded and didn't even know what was happening to him. He
   told his guards when they told him it was time, that he would finish
   his last meal when they finished with him.

   George Bush did provide clemency to one of the 151 cases to come
   across his desk when he was the governor of Texas. He demonstrated
   "compassionate conservatism" by commuting the most heinous killer to
   be convicted in Texas - and the 150 he didn't commute were enough to
   break the record of executions for any one governor in the history of
   the United States.

   Clemency was granted by George Bush to Henry Lee Lucas. Look it up.
   This is what David McGowen writes about Lucas (and McGowen is against
   capital punishment - but this case is not like any other):

   "Henry is, for the uninformed, the most prolific, and arguably the
   most brutal, serial killer in the annals of crime.....Henry and his
   sometime cohort Ottis Toole are responsible for between 300 and 600
   serial slayings." [David McGowen, "Understanding the F-Word", 2002,
   Writers Press]

   "Henry is a necrophile and torture aficionado, while his partner was a
   confessed arsonist and cannibal. The victims were frequently tortured,
   sexually abused before and after death, mutilated and dismembered,
   cannibalized, beheaded, and subjected to any other depraved urges the
   pair could conjure up." [ibid] And, this was the only person every
   given clemency by the governor of Texas. Was he convinced there also
   that Henry Lucas was deserving of life as much as he is convinced that
   Saddam is deserving of war because of weapons of mass destruction this
   president says Saddam has even if he cannot provide the proof?

     Henry Lucas perpetrated more deaths than Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer,
     John Wayne Gacy, Richard Ramirex, Charles Manson combined.....

   George Bush is convinced that Iraq is on the verge of developing
   nuclear bombs and there are those aluminum tubes Iraq tried to obtain
   to prove it.

   "This is something that the president (George W. Bush) has said
   publicly, that Iraq did, in fact, seek to buy these tubes for the
   purpose of producing, not as Iraq now claims, conventional forces, but
   for the purpose of trying to produce nuclear weapons," White House
   spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters. ["US accuses Iraq of seeking
   Tubes for Nuke Bombs", (12-02-2002), Xinhua News Agency]

   Iraq said it sought to acquire those tubes in order to build
   conventional weapons.

   Nuclear weapons are the ultimate in weapons of mass destruction. The
   U.S. knows all about it since the U.S. is the ONLY country in the
   world to have ever used them. There is no proof that Iraq has nuclear
   weapons. We have the capability to detect nukes and they simply do not
   exist in Iraq. They do however exist in Israel; about 200 of them.
   Israel is permitted to have them for deterrence but Iraq, who we do
   not truth is not permitted to have them. We are permitted to have
   them, but we get nervous when we hear that North Korea also has them.

   Iraq has been accused of using chemical weapons against Iranian
   troops. The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia was the source.

   "UN experts, however, never found toxins (poisons produced from living
   organisms), only mustard gas and perhaps the nerve gas tabun.
   According to the U.S. government, Iraq made its own chemical agents
   after purchasing precursor chemicals and equipment legitimately from
   western chemical companies." [Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, "Imperial
   Alibis" 1993, South End Press]

     Hank Roth

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