'End Timers' Urge Bush -'Bring on God's Nuclear Doomsday' and Rapture to Heaven for the Faithful. Bush's 'End Times' supporters believe this would be the biblical Armageddon, as foretold in an obscure passage in the Bible. They believe Bush is God's chosen one, and are urging him to make it all happen. They believe it will result in a rapture of the chosen faithful few to heaven. Almost everything Bush has done in the Middle East, and not done, is consistent with these religious bunkum beliefs.

President George W. Bush has become dangerously steeped in ideas of Armageddon, the Apocalypse, an imminent war with Satanic forces in the Middle East, and an urgency to construct an American theocracy to fulfill God's end-of-days plan, according to close observers.
Historians and investigative journalists following the "end-time Christian" movement have grown alarmed at the impact it may be having on Bush's Middle East policies, including the current war in Iraq, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the strife in Lebanon and the administration's repeated attempts to find a cause for war against Iran.

Congratulations on your May 13 article by Irene Chapple on Justice Thomas's statements on Blair as a war criminal, as by association are others, such as the George Bush Administration. The Bush/Blair deceptions to gain support before launching their illegal war on Iraq are one of the major crimes of our era.

- Cindy Sheehan Says She Will Return After Stepping Back as Antiwar Leader
Cindy Sheehan has been the face of the US antiwar movement for the past two years. In August 2005, she set up Camp Casey outside President Bush's Crawford estate in memory of her son Casey, who was killed in Iraq. Now Cindy says she is stepping back from her role as a leading campaigner against the Iraq war. In this Democracy Now! special, Cindy Sheehan joins us for the hour to talk about her decision. [includes rush transcript]

Chris Hedges, former Middle East Bureau Chief of The New York Times, gives us valuable insights into how 'Coalition of the Willing' troops have become murderers of some 600, 000 innocent Iraqis since the US invasion in 2003. It is little wonder that the Bush regime and the Iraqi puppet government are suppressing this information. These trained murderers, disturbed, resentful, bitter and often wounded and infected with DU poisoning are returned and turned loose on US society. The costs of these damaged human beings, and their genetically damaged offspring, will be felt at many levels of American society for generations to come.

A Culture of Atrocity: U.S. Troops Feel the Effect of Prolonged Combat

After four years of war, our troops in Iraq have become acclimated to atrocity. The rage that soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians -- a short psychological leap, but a massive moral one.

Robert Fisk shows how our media completely misrepresent the situation in Palestine and the Middle East generally. The media's aim is to please the US-Israeli war machine by repeating their lies and propaganda, thus facilitating further Israeli conquest of Palestinian lands - such as levelling Arab homes and building new Jewish settlements on Arab lands, and generally oppressing the Arab citizens of the Israeli-occupied territory.  With their discreditted Abbas regime now installed in the Western Bank, the US-Israeli war machine, and their media can portray it as ' the Government' . They can now increase their war on the popular elected Hamas-controlled Gaza by aiding the Abbas regime militarily, and  oppressing the Arab citizens of the Hamas-controlled area. As Washington's Israeli-influenced neocons might say, from now on it's going to be a 'cakewalk' to gain complete Israeli control of the area.

Welcome to 'Palestine'

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

The Battle of Gaza

In less than 24 hours of fierce street-fighting, Bush's proxy-army in Gaza was routed by armed units of Hamas. It was a stunning defeat for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and for US-Israeli policymakers who have done everything in their power to overturn the “free and fair” election of the Hamas government. For now, Hamas has reestablished its authority in Gaza although Abbas is still working frantically with Bush and Olmert to consolidate his power in the West Bank. ...
The forces that Bush has put in motion will inexorably lead to the decline of “superpower rule” and the dismantling of the US imperium. The transition is already visible. The battle of Gaza is just a macrocosm of a much larger phenomenon which now extends from Mogadishu to Kabul.

... To Libby and his fellows lying is second nature and regarded as a tool in their kit box of tricks to deceive the public into wars like Iraq, and Iran to come. They invent various justifications for their lies, war plans and grandiose ambitions such as the goal of US global domination. They use the language and trigger words of 'Democracy, Freedom, Liberty, Free Expression', etc., to gain public approval and support for plans and wars based on gross deceit and deception. The psychopathogy of Bush makes the choice of such liars for top positions a very essential thing to do. If you decide on going for global domination, that means lots of lies, endless wars and killings and misery for all except those few people at the top of the military-industrial-political complex. President Eisenhower warned about the malign influence power of the "military-industrial complex" just before he left office in 1960. Almost 50 years later it is much more powerful. Wars are fabulously profitable for the few.

Begging His Pardon

We have yet another remarkable revelation of the mindset of Washington's ruling clique of neoconservative elites - the people who took us to war from the safety of their Beltway bunkers. Even as Iraq grows bloodier by the day, their passion of the week is to keep one of their own from going to jail.
It is well-known that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - once Vice President Cheney's most trusted adviser - has been sentenced to 30 months in jail for perjury. Lying. Not a white lie, mind you. A killer lie. Scooter Libby deliberately poured poison into the drinking water of democracy by lying to federal investigators, for the purpose of obstructing justice.

World's Greatest Oil Consumer and Polluter

.... America has become a 'Frankenstein-of-perpetual-war' creature, created by the machinations of Bush's neocon complex. Congress, elected to stop the Iraq war and correct any Administration excesses, and crimes, has lost any will to stop any present or future planned wars. Basically it is very much under the domination of the Bush executive and ideology.

Fighting Wars for Oil to Fight Wars

Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis – either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone.
Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That's greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million – and yet it's a gross underestimate of the Pentagon's wartime consumption.

UK forces have become more against the war and more aware that Bush and Blair have based it on massive fraud and lies. Of great interest is their awareness that journalists and the media generally, including the BBC and now The Guardian, are functioning as propagandists and justifiers of the war.
It is indeed a sad day if it is true that The Guardian has abandoned its integrity and become propagandists, defenders and apologists for this great crime. If any readers notice this alleged deterioration in The Guardian, please send me examples or articles to me at: webenquiry@nuclearfree.org.nz

The British Army rebels against propaganda

"It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and myths that surround it"
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger quotes from a letter received from a British army officer serving in Iraq and sent to the BBC. The officer calls the war unwinnable and wrong, and appeals to the media not to swallow "the office/White House line". For the first time, journalists are now being scrutinised by the soldiers whose war they report.

The new surge to 200,000 US troops in Iraq plus thousands of mercenary contractor-soldiers, the biggest US Embassy in the world, permanent US military bases and the Bush administration's new admission that they may occupy Iraq for as long as they occupied South Korea, 60 years, are all hard evidence that the Bush neocon administration never intended to leave Iraq . As seen below the US Democrats reinforce the Bush regime on this, and will keep on funding the war for as long as it takes.
The US and UK may soon make war on Iran to try and add this country to their joint imperial conquest.

Iraq Occupation Coming to a Head Over Oil

The situation in Iraq is coming to a head. Oil workers have been on strike for three days and are being threatened by the Iraqi government and surrounded by the Iraqi military. The Parliament passed a resolution urging an end to the U.S. occupation and has refused to act on the oil law the U.S. is demanding. Both the Democrats in Congress and the Bush Administration have united around the passage of the oil law as the top benchmark for the Iraqi government.

... Americans will be fooled again and swallow any accusation Bush offers, as they did with his litany of lies to justify the war on Iraq. They have not been educated about how the US and other states have used covert 'false flag' operations and then blamed the nation they wish to attack. They have been conditioned to believe a similar litany of lies about Iran and most now regard Iran with fear and hate, as do the Republicans below. The 'false flag' provides them with phony 'justification' for an attack and they will believe Iran did it.

The Real Reason for Bush's Invasion of Iraq is a National Security Secret

American soldiers have been fighting and dying in Iraq since 2003, and Americans do not know why.
All the reasons President Bush gave us for his war are false. Bush said he invaded Iraq “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.”
.... War without cause is murder, not war.

From an email to Dahr Jamail: "May 27, 2007
Baghdad is a smashed city..."Below is an email I have just received from my close friend and translator Abu Talat.
While he has fled Baghdad with his family and is now a refugee in Syria, he recently had to return to Baghdad in order to try to salvage what is left of his former life (his car, belongings from his house, etc.) before returning back to Syria.
His note is instructive as to the current living conditions in the capital city of Iraq. n the Bible

Hartung and Berrigan document that Bush is increasing nuclear weapon expenditures, and developing nuclear war-fighting doctrines and new nuclear weapons while he portrays his chosen target (Iran) as being a nuclear threat. But Iran is within the NPT agreements by enriching uranium to power Iran's nuclear reactors.
Again Bush is lying to lay the groundwork and justification for war with Iran, as he did in preparation for his war with Iraq. The authors have assembled an impressive array of facts in the following article which supports this.

Is Bush Leading Us to Nuclear War?

Only days before the fifth anniversary of September 11, President George W. Bush addressed military officers in Washington to warn that nuclear-armed terrorists could "blackmail the free world and spread their ideologies of hate and raise a moral threat to America."
This alarmist vision was accompanied by the White House's release of "A National Strategy for Combating Terrorism," which painted a picture of a "troubling potential WMD terrorism nexus emanating from Tehran." The administration is building the case for war against Iran - a job made easier by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent announcement that Iran can now enrich uranium on an industrial scale - despite the fact that many Iran-watchers and nuclear experts consider their claims of enrichment capacity to be an overblown boast.

If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran

The war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized by American military officers and has been recently expressed forcefully by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq during the first year of the attempted occupation. Winning is no longer an option. Our best hope, Sanchez says, is "to stave off defeat," and that requires more intelligence and leadership than Sanchez sees in the entirety of our national political leadership: "I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time."

The more I read, the more convinced I am that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job engineered by the Bush Administration. But I would be relieved to be able to change my mind if anyone was able to answer the many questions on our site. They can start with the amazing facts and questions below. This was a major false flag operation that worked well and was believed. It still serves as a launch pad for Bush's 'wars on terror'. Because of his very low popularity and growing public doubts, the Bush Administration will probably launch another convincing 'false flag' like 9/11, then blame Iran as justification to launch his much rumoured attack on Iran. He has marshalled a huge naval strike force of ships and planes off Iran's coast for this purpose.

From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Expanded Paperback Edition Greg Palast
BuzzFlash and Greg Palast go back a long way, right back to the stolen 2000 election.
Palast was the only journalist who did the hard work of proving how the Bushevik felon purge in Florida stole tens of thousands votes from Gore. You see, Palast is University of Chicago trained and knows statistics. He was dead on accurate about the theft of the 2000 election from Gore -- and he's been on the heels of the corrupt Republicans, robber barons, and Enron-inspired corporate thieves, among others, throughout the seven year history of BuzzFlash.

Double the US troops in Iraq by Christmas, according to Robert Parry. Some have suggested that increased US troops are to cope with increasing resistance if Bush attacks Iran . They may be used against Iran after Bush launches a bombing attack.

.... The unspeakable suffering of these parents of dead soldiers stands in marked contrast to the maneuvering over the Iraq War now underway across the river in Washington. There, George W. Bush appears quietly planning another escalation of the Iraq War - possibly doubling U.S. combat troops by Christmas - and many members of Congress are frightened of the political repercussions if they stand up to him.

In the Bible both Mark and Mathew refer to Jesus as a carpenter and carpenter's son. In the following article two UK carpenters were found innocent by a jury in England for planning to prevent US B52's from committing war crimes by dropping bombs to kill or maim Iraqi people.
Jesus was an inspired social reformer and activist in his day and acted against those committing crimes against the people. So today's two carpenters are carrying on a fine tradition. They risked great danger and years in prison for what they did. They deserve praise and recognition for their contribution to humanity. If the UK was a real Christian nation they would be honoured with a knighthood. Some 0ne million articles are listed under a Google search of "Jesus - the Carpenter"

Fairford Two strike blow for anti-war protesters

after jury decide they were acting to stop crime
If they were to do it over again, Phil Pritchard says, they would bring less stuff. He and Toby Olditch were carrying "silly amounts" when they broke into RAF Fairford on the eve of the Iraq war: bolts and screws to be placed inside the B-52s' engines, pictures of smiling Iraqi children to be stuck on to the payload doors, toothbrushes and stamps to be used in prison, and flashing headbands in the hope that they would look too ridiculous to be shot.

The continuous destruction and killing of Iraqis (655,000 so far) by the Americans both openly and covertly through their militias is yet more evidence of the scale of the war crimes being committed by the Bush Administration and their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq since 2003. All the excuses and lies of the Bush Administration to justify this illegal behaviour have been exposed again and again. There is no reason whatsoever for the Bush Administration to continue to impose this genocide on the Iraqi people. But Instead of leaving, Bush is spinning endless new lies to justify continuing his butchery of the innocents.

Operation Freedom From Iraqis

"Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq . Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That's a total of some 15 percent of the population.) Save the Children reported this month that Iraq's child-survival rate is falling faster than any other nation's. Yet for all the words President Bush has lavished on Darfur and AIDS in Africa, there has been a deadly silence from him about what's happening in the country he gave 'God's gift of freedom.' It's easy to see why," says Frank Rich.

Rep. Jim McDermott has done a great service for all Americans by exposing in Congress how the US acting through its State Department and the C.I.A. overthrew the democratically-elected Mossedagh government in Iran in 1953. He exposed that now the Bush regime has authorised the C.I.A. to do it again. I have included 3 of the very excellent comments on this article that follow this article. 

Editor's note: After a week that saw Democrats cave to the White House in the worst possible way on Iraq, we thought this speech, offered on the House floor by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wa., last Wednesday, was worth highlighting. In a brief, five-minute commentary, McDermott does something almost unheard of in Washington: He looks at an issue in its larger historical context instead of pretending it just sprung up overnight like mushrooms after a rainfall.
Mr. Speaker: This president and vice president have vowed to repeat the mistakes of history, and they have put into motion a plan to do just that in Iran, even as the House is about to send the president a box of blank checks for Iraq, against the will of the American people.

This is a great speech by Al Gore who won the popular vote for US President in 2,000 and should have been declared President.
There would have been no Iraq war, and no plans for war on Iran or other states. The terrorist threat would have been dealt with in far different and much more effective ways by co-operating with other governments, and their police to catch and punish the genuine terrorists. The enormously wasteful war expenditures would be non-existent. There would be no threat to the American people or Constitution from a power-mad Administration taking away American civil liberties while it is "trying to impose global domination" according to Al Gore.
I think if Gore ran for President in 2008, he would win many more votes than in 2000 and end up as US President. No other acceptable Democratic candidate could expect to come close to the majority Gore would get.

Moral authority, which is our greatest source of strength, has been recklessly put at risk by this wilful president.
The pursuit of "dominance" in foreign policy led the Bush administration to ignore the UN, to do serious damage to our most important alliances, to violate international law, and to cultivate the hatred and contempt of many in the rest of the world. The seductive appeal of exercising unconstrained unilateral power led this president to interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that brought to life the worst nightmare of the founders. Any policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the US and recruits for al-Qaida, but also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating terrorists who wish to harm and intimidate America. Instead of "dominance", we should be seeking pre-eminence in a world where nations respect us and seek to follow our leadership and adopt our values.

Lots of former Bush boosters have been in damage-control mode ever since the spotlights of "shock and awe" that they focused on Iraqis and American liberals began turning back on them. Some even associate themselves retroactively with the early war skepticism and genuine contrition of William F. Buckley Jr., who wrote recently, "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the [Iraq] war."

Although the majority of Americans are against the war in Iraq, and disapprove of Bush's handling of it, there are many indicators that war tragedies and perhaps much great disasters are just beginning.

Americans now view the war in Iraq more negatively than at any time since the war began, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Six in 10 Americans surveyed say the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, and more than three in four say that things are going badly there - including nearly half who say things are going very badly, the poll found.

These new US nuclear-permissive doctrines are the greatest threat to human existence ever conceived. Yet they are packaged and sold to the public by an ever-willing media, as a perfectly normal development.  Once nuclear weapons are used, escalation can quickly follow as more nuclear weapon nations become involved. A sudden, unexpected 'out-of-the-blue' nuclear weapon strike is one of the characteristics of a pre-emptive nuclear war. The theory behind it is to catch the target nation off-guard and destroy it's weapons before it can retaliate.

The extent of the United States predicament across the Middle East, and the policies being introduced to meet it, is increasing the risk of a crisis with Iran. The nature of the predicament is reflected in the decision to send additional military personnel to Afghanistan as well as Iraq, and in new priorities for equipment geared to counterinsurgency.

.....In the opening years of the 21st century the Republicans have made it clear that they are willing to sacrifice the US Constitution and Bill of Rights in order to wage “war against terrorism.” This willingness makes the Republican Party a more dangerous threat to Americans than Muslim terrorists. Muslim terrorists cannot destroy our country's reputation, trash our civil liberties and wreck our system of accountable government, but the Republican Party has done a thorough job of it.

The recent of Saddam Hussein may have turned "regime change" into a contemporary buzzword, but it's been a tactic of American foreign policy for more than 110 years. Beginning with the ouster of Hawaii's monarchy in 1893, Kinzer runs through the foreign governments the U.S. has had a hand in toppling.

Chalmers Johnson is an eminent US historian and gives us a comprehensive look at the American Empire today. In any kind of a normal world run by normal human beings with some established values and standards, the present disastrous trends would continue. Bush and his Republicans would be overwhelmingly voted out of office in 2008. But this is not a normal world and the Bush regime is run by people with few or no values and standards.

I According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll , released on April 26, 2007, some 78% of Americans believe their country to be headed in the wrong direction. Only 22% think the Bush administration's policies make sense, the lowest number on this question since October 1992, when George H. W. Bush was running for a second term -- and lost. What people don't agree on are the reasons for their doubts and, above all, what the remedy -- or remedies -- ought to be.

Two of the important US objectives in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq is to build permanent military bases in Iraq to act as a centre of US military activities in the region, and occupation of the country, and to secure a permanent share of Iraq 's oil for US corporations. By sheer brutality, wanton destruction, mass murder (655,000 dead), torture and imprisonment of Iraqis they are achieving their goals. That 26 million Iraqis live there and own the country is an inconvenient reality that the Bush Administration is dealing with in its own usual way. By the creation and use of death squads (the Salvador option) and orchestrating an Iraqi civil war, they can create the kind of chaos they need to justify to Americans that 'we must stay in Iraq to help our allies defeat the evil al-Qaeda terrorists'.

Something really momentous took place inside Iraq's Green Zone last week and if you're looking for a full report on it in the U.S. major media save yourself the trouble. As far as they are concerned, the fact that over half of Iraq's parliament joined in a call for setting a withdrawal date of the “coalition” force from their country, it was a non-event worthy of scant or belated mention. Likewise was the story of how the Senate in Afghanistan voted the same day to call for the exodus of the occupation forces from that country as well. Some major newspapers have yet to record that fact.

Stop the War Abroad and at Home
In the spirit of unity, and for the purpose of taking the movement from politicians and putting it back into the streets, the Troops Out Now Coalition submits this proposal to all antiwar forces:
Our proposal is for an Encampment to Stop the War at Home & Abroad, starting on Saturday, September 22 in Washington D.C., culminating in a mass march in Washington on Saturday 29.

Congratulations on your May 13 article by Irene Chapple on Justice Thomas's statements on Blair as a war criminal, as by association are others, such as the George Bush Administration. The Bush/Blair deceptions to gain support before launching their illegal war on Iraq are one of the major crimes of our era.

A New Zealand Supreme Court judge has launched a blistering attack on outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, effectively calling him a war criminal for his role in the Iraq conflict.
Justice Ted Thomas, who retired last year but still presides over ongoing cases, told the Sunday Star-Times yesterday that Blair "deceived Cabinet, parliament and the British people" over the war.

‘Tony Blair's contempt for Middle Eastern lives has already been adequately demonstrated in Iraq and Lebanon . His lack of genuine concern for British servicemen is demonstrated by his steadfast refusal to meet even one parent of a dead British serviceman or woman killed in the wars he created.'

General Batiste says to Bush: "...you did not listen. You continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps....you have placed our nation in peril. Our only hope is that Congress will act now to protect our fighting men and women". He said to US Senators "protect America not George Bush".

In an act of defiance perhaps not seen since President Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur, today the anti-war veterans group VoteVets.org, which has been influential with Capitol Hill Democrats, is launching a half-million-dollar TV ad campaign featuring Maj Gen John Batiste (Ret.), former commanding general of the first infantry division in Iraq.    

This is a great interview with a long term investigative journalist who knows his Washington subject and their history going back to the 70s and 80s. It gives a new perspective on important events.
One point I question is his assertion that al-Qaeda wants US troops to stay in Iraq so they can be destroyed. I think it may be more true that the CIA and neocons may wish us to think al-Qaeda wants the US troops to stay etc. It is part of US strategy, I believe to stay in Iraq indefinitely and that's one reason they have built new permanent US military bases in Iraq and the biggest US embassy in the world in Baghdad.

Robert Parry of ConsortiumNews.com discusses the need he found to create a new home for investigative reporting back in the 1990s, explains the role of the old Iran-Contra criminals in running the war party today, evidence of George Bush Sr.'s role, the narrative of the “crazy” Iranian regime which was apparently plenty sane enough when this same crew sold them weapons to use against Iraq who the U.S. was also backing in the 1980s, the October Surprise, how Bush claims to follow the advice of his generals as he replaces them with ones sure to “agree” with him that the answer in Iraq is to escalate, why al Qaeda wants the U.S. to stay in Iraq, why they did 9/11 in the first place, the crazy theory that the President has unlimited power over an unlimited area forever, and the media narrative that Bush is some great decisive leader even though he is an idiot and a coward and their suppression of the story of the Florida recount in the election of the year 2000.

This appeal is from General Wesley Clark's website. It is unusual to have a 4-Star US General campaigning to prevent a war.
He certainly has an illustrious record as head of NATO attacking the Serbian invasion of Kosovo.  I think his accusations against Iran are quite wrong, but he is condemning the Bush regime's push for a war with Iran. He is advocating peaceful discussions with Iran with a view to resolving differences. He is recommending people take action to help bring this about. All this is good and should be supported. People may disagree with Clark on many points, as I do, but we are lucky to have him on the side of peace when the Bush Administration is working toward a catastrophic war with Iran.

Richard A. Clarke, former national security adviser to four presidents including President Bush, said the United States will deal with Iraqi "revenge terrorists" on American soil for the remainder of his years and for the lifespan of many who attended his Clark College appearance Monday evening.
"For as long as I'm alive, there will be Iraqis who hate us," Clarke told about 300 people gathered in the Gaiser Hall Student Center.
In the "battle of ideas" crucial to U.S. success in the Middle East, "We're not only losing, we've never really started," he said.

Colonel Lankford suggests you use Google to verify any comments he makes. He mentions a number of whistle blowers in government or University that have asked awkward questions or exposed Government lies about 9/11. Many have suffered the consequences of their honesty. A growing number of people who have researched the 9/11 questions, have become convinced that the Bush Administration staged a 'false flag' terrorist attack on the US to create a false 'Pearl Harbour'. The intention was to get public support to make war under the new catch-all slogan of 'war on terrorism'.

.... Are you afraid that you will learn the truth and you can't handle it? I think I know some people in that category. Are you afraid you will draw the attention of thugs who could do the things that were done that day? Do you believe your fellow man is just not capable of that degree of evil? I would not have believed that my country would ever become a torture state and have the Congress arguing with the executive about it. I thought that Habaes Corpus was fundamental to our civil rights, and now I find that it is not. I thought my country stood for honorable dealings with other nations, then watch a jingoistic cheerleading orgy on TV, composed like Oscar night, with the centerpiece a campaign of "Shock and Awe" as our armed forces invade a practically defenseless nation, without provocation, while considerable doubt of the validity of the reasons for that invasion exists.

Paul Craig Roberts has had an illustrious career, shown following his article below - the latest of many we have posted on our website. It is well worth reading, and reflecting on its dire implications. We live in one of the greatest crisis in history. Today's nuclear weapons arsenals place every man, women and child at risk, particularly from the new permissive nuclear weapons-use doctrines. Unlike histories previous rogue governments limited to a region and its neighbours, the Bush regime's policies and actions can decide the future of mankind in hours. Whether your children live or die depends on the multiple lies and illegal war polices of the Bush regime. Their war on Iraq may soon be followed by a war on Iran, and much more, if the many expert warnings are any indication.  (One example is to Google "US War on Iran". There are 20 million articles)
How long can people be casual, unconcerned or just dismiss this epic tragic drama and unprecedented personal threat to self, family and humanity?

Every American who voted Republican shares responsibility for the great evil America has brought to the Middle East.
The evil that America brought to Iraq transcends the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed and maimed in the conflict. The evil goes beyond the destruction of ancient historical artifacts and the civilian infrastructure of a secular state and the decimation of the lives, careers, and families of millions of Iraqis.

I have to say that watching Bill Moyers' " Buying the War " was quite an experience for me: a kind of vindication, yes, but also, ultimately, quite a depressing experience.
As the editorial director of Antiwar.com , my job is to make sure that we cut through the government propaganda and get at the truth about what is really going on in the world, and during the run-up to the Iraq war we had quite a time of it. The lies were coming so thick, and so fast, that it was all we at Antiwar.com could do to continually refute them , and yet that is precisely what we did. Moyers takes us through the lies , and shows how the "mainstream" media failed to make any critical analysis of the administration's allegations. That job, sadly, was left to us.

Every would be dictatorship tries to control the content, bias and slant of information fed to their publics. This applies particularly if they are deliberately lying to their publics and planning to gain public support for their wars. Once they start a war, they have many other opportunities to legislate for funds to fight the war, as well as legislate laws such as The Patriot Act that will facilitate the establishment of the planned shift from  democracy to dictatorship. The Bush regime is no different and has taken the American public well along this road. Bill Moyers presents a useful video on this process below.

Bill Moyers and his team piece together the reporting that shows how the media were complicit in shaping the "public mind" toward the war, and ask what's happened to the press' role as skeptical "watchdog" over government. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042307P.shtml

According to the following article no-one seems to know who is behind the car bombings and other seemingly random slaughter of Iraqis.
What is the purpose and whose interest does this serve?
A thorough and objective investigation is needed by an independent authority not connected to the US the UK or other 'coalition of the willing' illegal invaders. That's right they are all illegal invaders. Previous Sec. Gen. of the UN, Kofi Annan, said the invasion and war was illegal and unjustified as have many other famous commentators. Time does not magically transform this criminal enterprise into a just war or otherwise sanitize it. The war was based solely on lies, false and twisted accusations and assumptions.

Under the security plans additional troops were brought to Baghdad and most city streets closed. But car bombings, operations by death squads and attacks on U.S. troops continue.
The attacks Wednesday last week took a high casualty among Kurdish workers known to work in that area. Kurds in the north have stayed relatively free of the violence and the sectarian Shia-Sunni killings in the rest of the country. Kurds had supported the U.S.-led invasion four years back.

Ex-Presidential Candidate George McGovern in 1972 is still as brilliant as ever and his following paper is a masterpiece. But it is Cheney's lying accusations that will get the headlines in the US today - where lying, illegal wars and support for the Bush regime rules the editorial offices of the major US media.
 McGovern's refutation of Cheney's false accusations and exposure of war lies are unlikely to get much news coverage. Most US mass media have already demonstrated that they will not expose Bush-Cheney Iraq war lies, which they have repeated endlessly. So they are unlikely to start now by honestly reporting McGovern's exposure of these lies.

Vice President Dick Cheney recently attacked my 1972 presidential platform and contended that today's Democratic Party has reverted to the views I advocated in 1972. In a sense, this is a compliment, both to me and the Democratic Party. Cheney intended no such compliment. Instead, he twisted my views and those of my party beyond recognition. The city where the vice president spoke, Chicago, is sometimes dubbed “the Windy City.” Cheney converted the chilly wind of Chicago into hot air.Cheney said that today's Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.

In this long 1997 paper, Major Peters reveals an arrogant self-assured insanity that justifies "a fair amount of killing" in the "perpetual wars" to come. Like many of his fellow psychopaths today in the Bush Administration, the suicidal nuclear potential of modern wars never crosses his mind. He accepts any and all nuclear risks as part of the unconscious background  in which he can give full reign to his primitive militaristic values. The possibility of self-extinction, like the extinction of some 99.5% of all species of life that have ever inhabited earth, never enters his mind or cools his ardour for war. Nor has it in other dictatorships depending on military might to build an empire. To understand the US approach to wars today and their utter lack of principle read this tract. Realise what rational, humane humanity is up against. Rational humane Americans  have been shanghaied into the service of a military-industrial police state.

"The weight of the lies used to lead us into war has grown heavier with each death. Now is the time for Congress to examine the actions that led us into this war, just as we must work to bring the troops home. This resolution is a very serious matter, and I will urge the Committee on Judiciary to investigate and carefully consider this resolution."

This article shows why the US news media treats 32 deaths at Virginia Tech as vitally important and newsworthy, but 200 killings in Iraq as of little importance. ... Iraqis mourn their dead just like Americans mourn the 32 murdered students at Virginia Tech. Why do Americans consider their dead as more important? Partly it is it because the US media treat it that way, and Americans pick up this unexpressed message.

Why do 32 deaths in Virginia receive blanket coverage while nearly 200 fatalities in Iraq are barely reported?
Thirty-two die in American university shooting . Result? Huge media coverage in the US and Britain. In Iraq, almost 200 die, arguably the worst day of carnage in that beleaguered country since the coalition invasion. Result? Coverage so restrained as to be, in many cases, totally negligible. Could you even find it in the Times this morning? Why?

The following article in the London Times is a good example of US-UK collaboration in planting false stories to justify an attack on Iran. Tony Blair is probably staying in office as a trusted US war collaborator until sometime after the US launches the attack. The comments following the article are most valuable in pointing out how closely this false story is to the ones the UK used to justify the Bush-Blair illegal war on Iraq. M15 and other intelligence agencies in the UK and US are now an integral part of the US-UK deception campaign......
Just as the Germans believed Hitler's lies, so the US-UK publics are likely to believe really 'big lies' about Iran. Murdock is the man to give these lies to the people using the London Times.
Some newspapers in New Zealand are playing a similar role, often choosing to reprint blatant propaganda stories from the Murdock paper, in preference to more balanced comment and objective real news stories, such as one sees in The Guardian or Independent.

AL-QAEDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.   - We have seen these before too!
Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West.
Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by Al-Qaeda planners as a “change in the head of the company”.               But - Who is doing this plotting and timing?

Wow !!!! Sheila Samples, ex-US Army Public Information Officer, spells out awful truths of the evil that has taken over the US and runs it like a Mafia fiefdom and worse, far, far worse.
It comes from the: 'Move On' peace organization in the US. See http://pol.moveon.org/videovets/   and http://Bombshelter.org If you are ready to be shocked, read it and let me know what you think. Is she right or not? email Larry at : webenquiry@nuclearfree.org.nz
Should we, and can we, do something to help stop this evil? Or should we do nothing and pretend it isn't happening?

I cannot recall a single day since Vulcans' Godfather James Baker sent his thuggish henchman John Bolton to Florida's Palm Beach County to screw up the vote count that has not been filled with horror, anger, shame -- despair. On Dec. 9, 2000 -- three days before the Florida deadline -- the US Republic shuddered on its axis when Bolton crashed through the doors of a Tallahassee library where Miami-Dade ballots were being recounted and shouted triumphantly -- "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count!"
In that instant we lost most of what had taken more than two centuries to build. In one fell swoop, Americans were thrust into the mire of an Orwellian World spinning out of control on the other side of the Looking Glass. What a tragedy -- not that so many failed to realize their government had just been seized in a coup de'etat -- but that the few who did refused to acknowledge it.

Tom Engelhardt presents a very useful record of Bush Administration changing propaganda during the 4 year war on Iraq.  However he omits to mention the vital and ominous new element in Bush propaganda. That is the blaming of Iran for helping and arming 'the terrorists in Iraq'. Bush is desperately looking for a scapegoat to blame for his Iraq quagmire and Iran is it.  Iran is Bush's ultimate war target. He is demonising Iran as well as blaming Iran for causing the failure of his illegal war on Iraq. This will give him the invented excuses he needs to justify a war on Iran. Most of Congress and the US public now believe that Iran is a nuclear threat to the US, as they believed Iraq was a nuclear threat before Bush started a war against this country in 2003. They have a very short memory span in the US, and it's getting shorter. So it is easy for the Bush regime to fool them repeatedly with the same kind of lies. Engelhardt shows how Bush tries to wipe the public's 'memory slate' clean each time he invents new terminology to cover his failures in Iraq.

... Like all wars, the "war in Iraq" or "Iraq war" -- it's never gained the double caps of the Korean or Vietnam Wars -- has also been a war of words. From "homeland" and "unlawful combatant" to "extraordinary rendition" and "Global War on Terror" (aka: World War IV or the Long War), never has an administration reached more often for its dictionaries to create pretzled words and phrases. Its war in Iraq has been no exception. But recently there's been a change, hardly noticed by anyone. The administration's familiar war vocabulary and imagery, which hung in there so remarkably long, has finally disappeared down the memory hole. So many images, tailored for home-front consumption, each meant to help give just a little more time to an increasingly embattled administration, have in recent months disappeared.

Seymour Hersh is a very reliable judge of the US media and he claims it failed its job on Iraq issues.
It is shocking that in a democratic country with a supposed 'free press', how much the media is controlled, how little opposition or criticism is allowed of the official government line, and how much information is suppressed. It's either not reported, or is reported in a minor 'small print' way. Bush's new nuclear doctrines are an excellent example of vitally important factual stories the media treated as of little importance, if it printed it at all. Another good example is the constant repetition of Bush's lies on Iraq , without allowing expert refutation. They are doing the same on Iran issues - demonising the country and people and telling outright lies about it and Iran 's nuclear fuel programme. Usually they omit to say that the IAEA reported Iran had no nuclear weapons programme - only enriched uranium for fuel. They are helping condition people to hate and fear Iran , so that the public will accept a US war on Iran under any pretext.

On May 29th, 1975, an aide to then-White House chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld sat down with a yellow legal pad and in careful longhand sketched out a list of possible responses to a damaging investigative report in The New York Times . "Problem," the aide wrote. "Unauthorized disclosure of classified national security information by Sy Hersh and the NYT." He then laid out five options, ranging from the most ominous (an FBI investigation of the newspaper and a grand jury indictment) to the least offensive ("Discuss informally with NYT" and "Do nothing"). Number three on the list, however, read, "Search warrant: to go after Hersh papers in his apt."

Only Congressman Dennis Kucinich is willing to tell the truth about Iraq and the various crimes of Bush and his administration.
This lonely warrior wants to stop Bush and his team from committing anymore war crimes and doing irreparable damage to the world and the United States. .... Kucinich deserves support from every sane, uncorrupted American.

Looks like he's reached his boiling point.Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the most liberal of the Democratic presidential candidates in the primary field, declared in a letter sent to his Democratic House colleagues this morning that he plans to file articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. Kucinich has made ending the war in Iraq the central theme of his campaign. He has even taken aim at the leading Democratic presidential candidates in the field for their votes on authorizing the war.

Billionaire George Soros, tells how Israel has managed to link US policies to Israeli foreign policy objectives. This has involved a colossal cost to the US  and its reputation and may yet destroy it and the rest of the world. Just as Israel directly with the US government, and AIPAC with legislators in the US , influenced the US decision to make war on Iraq , so AIPAC is influencing the Bush Administration to move from the present covert war, to an open war on Iran . I hope there is still time for influential Americans like George Soros and Jimmy Carter to change US war policies before they plunge the world into a nuclear inferno from which it may never recover. The US has the technological means to do this, as has Israel with its own nuclear arsenal. Will sanity prevail over fanaticism harnessed to Christian and Zionist fundamentalism? Perhaps the answer is manifest in the historical record of 5,000 wars. They show that a majority can be enflamed to want war for almost any reason, and that sane, moderate, rational and wise people have seldom prevailed over the insanity of the wicked and power-mad few. This historical lesson has not yet been learned. Sane, moderate, rational people have not yet matched the dedication and commitment of the wicked and power-mad war hawks. Will they this time? 

George Soros, the billionaire investor, has added his voice to the debate over the role of Israel 's lobby in shaping US foreign policy.
In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Soros takes issue with "the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC]" in Washington and says the Bush administration's close ties with Israel are obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Paul Wolfowitz is a leading neo-conservative and one of the architects of the illegal war on Iraq. He was appointed by Bush to head the World Bank where he is now in deep trouble, as revealed by this article in the New York Times.
He wants to retain his job in spite of the fact that he is dragging the bank's name through the mud and they want him to resign.

The U.S. Defense Department ordered a contractor to hire a World Bank employee and girlfriend of then-Pentagon No. 2 Paul Wolfowitz in 2003 for work related to Iraq, the contractor said on Tuesday.
A spokeswoman for Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, said the Defense Department's policy office directed the company to enter a subcontract with Shaha Riza, under which she spent a month studying ways to form a government in Iraq.

An excellent account of how the Bush regime, with the help of other governments, constructed lies to fool the US public and Congress into supporting the war on Iraq. This was in spite of IAEA reports that Iraq did not have and was not making nuclear weapons. However with the help of the US mass media, this information was suppressed. They are now planning to do it again, as Senator Byrd warns:
Well, the conspirators are nigh onto doing it again, getting Congress, the mainstream media and most Americans to totally disregard the null findings of Director-General ElBaradei in Iran.

"After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq." After conducting a total of 218 inspections at 141 sites – including 21 sites suggested by the CIA! – ElBaradei reported.
"There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.

A very good analysis of how the US military/industrial/congressional complex involves it's public in illegal wars.

The idea, discussed by me and others, that it is good that most Americans are not directly touched by the President Bush's wars is of course not the whole story.
Our rulers could have forced us to be more involved. They could have passed a special war tax, launched a high-profile “Buy War Bonds” campaign, and found other ways to demand “sacrifice” in the name of patriotism and victory. They could have staged more events featuring “our brave heroes who risk everything to preserve your way of life.” They even could have started conscription if only for symbolic reasons.
But our misleaders have not done any of this. Why not?
To understand, we need to think about the nature of war as a political instrument — for at its core, that is what it is.

Iraq May Be the Greatest Crisis of Modern Times

All I can say about Pilger's article "Iraq May Be The Greatest Crisis of Modern Times" is Amen, how right he is. Let us hope that Pilger will cut through public apathy and awaken people who so far, have refused to be concerned. Just about everyone in the developed countries march happily and deliberately unaware, toward Bush's final Armageddon death camps, denying the unthinkable reality with every step.
So did the Jews, as they marched into Hitler's death camps. Most Jews just couldn't believe that they and their families were to become victims of the most diabolical evil ever conceived by man. It is the same today, but the reality is well-camouflaged because we are still able to continue life as usual - for the moment.

In a cover piece for the New Statesman, John Pilger evokes the memory of Germans 'looking from the side' at Bergen-Belsen to describe the challenge facing us in the West as the Bush/Blair 'long war' becomes 'perhaps the greatest crisis of modern times'.
.... And yet there is a surreal silence, save for the noise of “news” in which our powerful broadcasters gesture cryptically at the obvious but dare not make sense of it, lest the one-way moral screen erected between us and the consequences of an imperial foreign policy collapse and the truth be revealed. John Bolton, formerly Bush's man at the United Nations, recently spelled out the truth: that the Bush-Cheney-Blair plan for the Middle East is an agenda to maintain division and instability. In other words, bloodshed and chaos equals control. He was referring to Iraq, but he also meant Iran.

This damming new evidence links those accused of 9/11 crimes, with the CIA and FBI. It is particularly persuasive along with the other evidence presented by the 9/11 Truth movement and other similar groups. It seems ever more obvious that the Bush Administration and various government departments, were deeply involved in the 9/11 attacks, and have been trying to cover up their tracks ever since. Because so many Americans have made similar conclusions, the Bush Administration must be feeling the pressure, and the threat of exposure.

Dear Mr. Hynes,
It's been three months since I wrote you my letter of January 9th, 2007, urging your office to open an investigation into the horrific terrorist attacks of 9/11/01. Based on original research and sources, I urged you to focus on the social network that helped 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in our hometown of Brooklyn, NY. I have not yet received a response, so I am sending you this second letter, with key updates. It will be published in the April issue of The New York Megaphone (circulation 66,700) as well.

Guantanamo Bay and similar US prisons in countries using torture, are an important part of the Bush regime's plan for US global domination.
The destruction of civil rights, habeas corpus, imprisonment with our charge or trial, torture, rendition and murder are indications that Bush is introducing fascist-type controls in the US.
Guantanamo Bay and similar US prisons are established to spread hatred and fear of the US , make new enemies and terrorise the world's population.

Conditions for detainees at the US military jail at Guantanamo Bay are deteriorating, with the majority held in solitary confinement, a report says.
"Some inmates are dangerously close to full-blown mental and physical breakdown" - UK director Kate Allen Amnesty International

Here is a seer who sees through the fog of lies that are the basis of the world's problems and threats today.
It's long, and you've probably heard some of it before, but Valenzuela's penetrating insights are well worth the effort. What he says about the US situation, affects everyone and every country.

With Truth Comes Awakening - The suppression of truth has long been among the highest priorities for the upper echelons of power and authority.
For a minority elite that clings to power by the manipulation of the masses using an omnipresent cocktail of lies, deception, mass-produced ignorance and ingrained propaganda, the destruction of truth is an essential method of control.  It is a formula that has worked to unmitigated success for the elite throughout history, whether the shadows of power stretch from ancient pyramids, marble temples, castles, mansions or halls of governance.  Those holding the levers of power and control understand, better than most, that the dissemination of truths to a blind majority could spell the end of their reign, for truth brings sight to the blind. 

The human cost of King George's wars is spelled out by Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq 3 years ago. The agony of the Sheehan family can be multiplied a million times by Bush's murders of Iraqis. And perhaps millions of times if he escalates his wars to Iran and other countries. 

Three years ago today I was a "normal" American mother with four children, a marriage of almost 27 years and a boring 8 to 5 job. On April 3, 2004 I went to a nearby mall and bought a new outfit for work and two CDs: Evanescence and White Stripes. I was dreadfully worried about Casey, but I didn't know that my world was about to be turned upside down.

The increasing loss of religious right believers in Bush's wars, such as the Mormons (below), is another indicator that Bush will likely resort to some extreme action - such as a sudden pre-emptive nuclear attack on Iran. If he fabricates and constructs any excuse, or false flag event and blames Iran, the US mass media will leap on the pro-war bandwagon, repeating his every lie or excuse without criticism.

Iraq is lost militarily and politically. Even the Mormons are now abandoning President George W. Bush's mad war. That's akin to the Swiss Guard deserting and leaving the pope to fend for himself with the Vatican under siege.

Bush, Blair, Howard and other leaders, boosted by US-dictated anti-Iran Security Council resolutions, are bursting with desire to bomb Iran as Pinter says... very few seem to care or think about the probable number of dire consequences and results of such barbarity. It is a few very perceptive writers on internet who care. Certainly not our crop of current world leaders. Like Tony Blair, who lies so well and convincingly for Bush, as he moves his eyebrows up and down to get our agreement.  Bush's tamed world leaders talk languidly about diplomacy as Bush and his 'coalition-of-the-willing' deploy their military forces for the long-planned assault on Iran.

Why George Bush is Insane

.... The US is at this moment developing advanced systems of "weapons of mass destruction" and it prepared to use them where it sees fit. It has more of them than the rest of the world put together. It has walked away from international agreements on biological and chemical weapons, refusing to allow inspection of its own factories. The hypocrisy behind its public declarations and its own actions is almost a joke.
The United States believes that the three thousand deaths in New York are the only deaths that count, the only deaths that matter. They are American deaths. Other deaths are unreal, abstract, of no consequence.

Some of the many lies used by leaders to get popular support for their wars are mentioned below. Ask yourself why people believe such lies and never seem to learn? One reason is that they are conditioned by the mass media to believe, follow and obey their leader. John Helmer illuminates this.
Inadvertently, he may have started his article with a lie - that David Kelly committed suicide. That is the official version. But many examining doctors disagree with the suicide story. They don't presume to say who may have done it to Kelly, but that someone must have staged it, because the forensic evidence did not support the suicide story. John Helmer has certainly had the journalistic war experience to justify his comments.

Wars usually start with one large lie. Throwing more troops into the breach requires a great many little lies. Wars usually end when the lying can't staunch the bleeding, and the stench.
According to the wife of the David Kelly, the British Defense Ministry expert on Iraqi weapons who committed suicide last Friday by cutting his left wrist, and bleeding to death while on painkillers, "this was not really the kind of world he wanted to live in". But the kind of world prime ministers of England and presidents of the United States hatch, when they go to war together, should have been familiar to Kelly, as he was old enough to remember the Vietnam War.

As one who foresaw, and lectured against the Vietnam War before it started in the early 60's, and more or less continuously ever since about the nuclear arms race, wars and lately the Iraq War and the US planned War against Iran, I have been concerned about the peace movement. Where are the thousands that demonstrated in 2003 before Bush launched his illegal war on Iraq ? Now the Iraq body count is 655,000, the same people don't bother to demonstrate or make any noticeable gesture against this war now. Why? Tom Englehart gives some of the answers below.

Excuse me if, at 62, and well into my second era of protest against yet another distant, disastrous, and disabling American war, I express a little confusion.

If the mass media informed the public about Bush's lies to fool the people and Congress into supporting his war on Iraq, and how it violates the US Constitution and international law, and his preparations to use nuclear weapons on Iran, based on the same type of lies, the Polls would be much higher against Bush and his illegal wars. However telling the truth about the Bush Administration and its phony war on terrorism, is not something the media would do. Their role has been to act as cheerleaders for Bush and his wars, repeating his every lie, and preventing the truth from being known.

More Than Half Favor a Deadline for Withdrawal, Bush Suffers Longest Streak Without Majority Support Since Truman
A record number of Americans disapprove of the war in Iraq , and a clear majority now favors the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces, even if civil order has not been restored there — potentially a tipping point in public attitudes on the war.

737 US Bases in 103 countries and a defence budget larger than that of all other nations in the world. That's the US Empire.
The mission is building the US Empire through imperial conquest, using "9/11 and the war on terror" as their mantra, war cry and justification.
US Military Historian Chalmers Johnson dissects this imperial military industrial complex and predicts calamites for what may be next.
" If there weren't terrorists, Bush and Cheney would have had to invent them? " asks Karlin.

I believe that we're close to a tipping point right now. What happened to the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 could easily be happening to us for essentially the same reasons. Imperial overreach, inability to reform, rigid economic ideology. ... The world's balance of power didn't change one iota on September 11, 2001. The only way we could lose the power and influence we had at that time was through our own actions, and that's what we did. -- Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
Has our "leadership" traded democracy for empire? Have their over-bloated egos convinced them that they are the world's newly crowned colonial kings? Author Chalmers Johnson is certainly not given to wearing rose-colored glasses. As he concludes in his newest book, Nemesis: "... my country is launched on a dangerous path that it must abandon or else face the consequences."

The Bush regime would not have built such a huge embassy (see below) if it had not planned to occupy Iraq indefinitely. It is a demonstration that that the talk of withdrawing US troops at some point has always been a diversion and never a serious intention of the Bush regime.
This Imperial complex of 21 buildings on 104 acres in the heart of Baghdad , with 5,000 employees, must be intended to be much more than just an embassy to Iraq . It looks like some kind of permanent headquarters for the US in the Middle East - perhaps a centre for directing most regional  US operations in the area.

The headline reads: "Thousands of angry Iraqis pillage billion-dollar U.S. Embassy in Baghdad." The article details the ransacking of the grandiose American Embassy by Iraqi mobs.
This is the story I expect to read one day within the next decade.
In the 1950s, when I was in high school in Baghdad, my friends and I admired the technological advances of America and the West. But we resented the colonial tendencies of the West (especially, at the time, those of the British). Many demonstrations were held in front of the British and American embassies. The Iraqis are a proud people, and they resented foreigners meddling in their affairs. And the British were, in reality, running the country through a puppet regime.

This article based on opinions of a Spanish judge that Bush should face charges as a war criminal for his illegal war on Iraq based on lies, is vitally important. It should be read by everyone who accepts Bush lies as truth, and by those who deny, justify, minimize or accept the continuing situation today. Its findings are similar to our own at the PANNZ mock war crimes trial of Bush, Blair and Howard that we held in August 2004 in Christchurch New Zealand. Every MP, government servant, and member of the legal profession, and other interested person should read this and consider their own and their nation's policies.

[JURIST] Baltasar Garzon [BBC profile; JURIST news archive ], an investigating judge for Spain's National Court [official website, in Spanish], said Tuesday that President George W. Bush and his allies eventually should face war crimes charges for their actions in Iraq. In an opinion piece [text, in Spanish] for El Pais , Garzon called the war in Iraq "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history." Garzon also criticized those who joined the US president in the war against Iraq as having equally responsible for joining the war effort despite their doubts. In 1999, Garzon tried to extradite former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet [JURIST news archive] from Britain and try him for crimes against humanity. Reuters has more .

.... This reaction either shows total and profound ignorance of the situation, or corrupt duplicity in enabling Bush to make war without hindrance or seeking permission from a Democratic Congress recently elected to stop Bush's wars. ...
It could become millions of deaths, and horrific long-term consequences for everyone, including the US public.
That is the spineless Pelosi and Democratic Party gift to the American public for their support in the last election.

The AIPAC Girl

If George W. Bush launches a pre-emptive war on Iran, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bear full moral responsibility for that war.
For it was Pelosi who quietly agreed to strip out of the $100 billion funding bill for Iraq a provision that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before launching any new war on Iran. Pelosi's capitulation came in the Appropriations Committee.
What went down, and why?

Greg Palast spell's out the real motives of the Bush regime. It's Iaq's oil and a secret plan of the Houston oil moguls. From the oil moguls standpoint the Iraq war is going very well and according to plan  - to limit production in order to keep the price of oil as high as possible. Exxon-Mobil reported the highest profit of any corporation in history  a record $10 billion in profit last quarter. As Bush said: "Mission Accomplished".

It's STILL The Oil: Secret Condi Meeting on Oil Before Invasion

Four years ago this week, the tanks rolled for what President Bush originally called, “ Operation Iraqi Liberation ” — O.I.L. - I kid you not.
And it was four years ago that, from the White House, George Bush, declaring war, said, "I want to talk to the Iraqi people." That Dick Cheney didn't tell Bush that Iraqis speak Arabic … well, never mind. I expected the President to say something like, "Our troops are coming to liberate you, so don't shoot them."
Instead, Mr. Bush told, the Iraqis,"Do not destroy oil wells." Nevertheless, the Bush Administration said the war had nothing to do with Iraq's oil.

From London to New York and Washington to Los Angeles in fact all over the world thousands of people were rallying and marching in protest on the 4th anniversary, March 17, of Bush's illegal Iraq war based on his lies. Freezing weather deterred thousands more.
In Christchurch New Zealand about 100 rallied in Cathedral Square. An Iraqi speaker told of the horrible conditions and 600,000 deaths in Iraq and the deprivation, squalor and incredible misery his relatives were suffering in Iraq, as a result of the Bush Administration.

Thousands of anti-war protesters took to the streets of New York Sunday to demand the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq , in a second day of national rallies to mark the fourth anniversary of the war.
Organizers from the group United for Peace and Justice said between 25,000 and 30,000 people marched in the rally, which came a day after similar mass protests in Washington and Los Angeles . Police did not estimate the turnout.
A colorful mixture of students, cyclists, Vietnam war veterans and musicians marched through Midtown Manhattan, drumming and chanting slogans such as "Troops out now" and calling for President George W. Bush to be impeached.

This paper is an excellent guide to how propaganda permeates and influences our opinions and guides our reactions. It is one of the best I have seen. Given the power of the Bush Administration over the media, it is unlikely that the mass media will report the facts about Bush's deceits to initiate wars of aggression. 

United State of Minds

America's methods of mind control or better put, manufacturing consent through efficient and careful use of media, must be the envy of every tyrannical dictator ruling the most oppressive regimes in the world. . . .
. . . Shaping of one's attitude, beliefs, and personality without that person's knowledge or consent works by gradually exerting increasing control through a variety of techniques which includes repetition and herding.

Short talks, Songs, Petition to Stop a New War On Iran. Bring banners and placards if you wish.
Show solidarity with patriotic American friends, who are encamping in Washington to stop Bush's lie-based assault on Iraq. This criminal genocide (over 600,00 Iraqis murdered) must be stopped. We must also stop the Bush-Chaney 'surge' on Iraq before they create a 'surprise provocation' blamed on Iran, to use as justification for their pre-planned assault on a possible 10,000 targets in Iran. See you there, Larry Ross

For daily updates

Students everywhere will be interested in this article and video about US students becoming more active against the Iraq war and Bush's plans for a new major war against Iran. Because the US mass media acts as the war propaganda department of the Bush Administration there is a virtual media blackout on news about Campus protest activities and teach-ins in the USA. 'Embedded' reporters usually only report war news, and war-related news, the way the Pentagon wants.
The following gives students the facts. It would be a great help if readers would forward this article to students, student organizations and their media.
If Bush is not stopped, he will try and target today's students, and make them tomorrow's cannon fodder. They have a right to be informed and warned.

On Saturday, March 17, anti-war activists from around the country will gather near the Vietnam Memorial and march to the Pentagon. This event comes 40 years after the historic march on the Pentagon which many observers saw as a turning point in the movement against the Vietnam War. Student organizers are also planning events on campuses around the country between March 15 and 20.

I wonder why top politicians in the US and other countries, top military people, government executives and ordinary informed citizens, don't speak out and take action before it's too late, to Impeach Bush before he starts a new war that could easily escalate and destroy our world. The only chance to do something constructive to prevent this disaster is before Bush starts it. That's now.
Once started, it's too late. No turning the clock back. The war momentum will take over then and a series of devastating disasters will rapidly follow.

Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over the Iraq war.
Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.
Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy.

Though U.S. legislators voted against appropriating funds for permanent bases in Iraq, the White House and Pentagon have ignored that prohibition by portraying the huge construction projects to be for temporary facilities tied to the on-going conflict.
From the very start, the debate over Iraq has been obscured by a miasma of bogus statistics and facts: issues no one really wanted to deal publicly with—not the White House; certainly not the Republican-led Congress.

A domestic war casualty, Stacy Bannerman, shows below some of the high social costs to America of casualties that are fooled into giving their services, futures and even lives to kill for the Bush regime in their illegal war on Iraq. Her figures are startling and don't cover some of the long-term costs of broken marriages, psychologically damaged children and adults, and veterans who may have become unemployable. Also, what about the social effect of damaged human beings feeling embittered and cheated 'by the system'. When some of the vets realise that the Bush regime is essentially a criminal group who are waging a series of wars based on lies and deceptions, that they have been conned and sucked into and used by this group as trained killers, and may now suffer long term physical and psychological effects, there's no doubt that there will be costs to society. Some may become very high in the long term. Stacy reveals the obvious, immediate costs.

"They volunteered, didn't they?"
As the war in Iraq has gone from wrong to worse, that question, often delivered as a statement, has become the fallback stance of folks who are attempting to silence the voices of those of us who actually have loved ones in uniform, or who died while wearing it. I love my country dearly, but sometimes it's difficult to retain a feeling of love for my countrymen who have said, "They volunteered, didn't they?" in an effort to shut up the growing numbers of military and Gold Star families who are speaking out against this war.

The Democrats are not intending to use their power to cut off funding and end the Iraq  war. Basically they are continuing to give Bush a carte blanche to do as he pleases, when he pleases, to whomever he pleases.
The US has become a de-facto dictatorship, and the Democrats have already signalled that they are ready to approve a war with Iran.

In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington's basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq - a country otherwise free from any foreign interference - on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.

Cindy Sheehan, Dan DeWalt and Ellen McKay have pointed out below, one of the best ways to stop the Iraq war. The group lecture tour of Vermont with town meetings to vote on impeaching Bush was an outstanding success. What a great way to allow the people to vote on the future of their country! Many Americans, even a majority, are frustrated at the apparent hesitation and helplessness of the US Senate and Congress to stop Bush. Could something like this be done in other countries? It would encourage US citizens.

Don't forget 4th Anniversary  Iraq war Rally, Songs and Talks at 12 midday, Saturday March 17 at Cathedral Square. Banners and posters welcome. Petitions to stop investing in US war corporations like Halliburton and Prevent/Stop the War on Iran.

The Nation - When Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, a Republican with reasonably close ties to President Bush, asked if there was any additional business to be considered at the town meeting he was running in Middlebury, Ellen McKay popped up and proposed the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The governor was not amused. As moderator of the annual meeting, he tried to suggest that the proposal to impeach - along with another proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq - could not be voted on.
But McKay, a program coordinator at Middlebury College, pressed her case. And it soon became evident that the crowd at the annual meeting shared her desire to hold the president to account. So Douglas backed down.

My recent trip to Turkey opened my eyes further to anti-American hatred. .....
I want to live in a country that gives hope to the world. I want to live in a country that decreases world instability instead of fomenting and celebrating it.

Although this article was published in 2003, it illustrates how pervasive pro-war propaganda has become. Also, how slavishly the editors of 175 Murdoch papers have followed Murdoch's pro-Bush-war line. The other corporate-owned media are similar. For instance Fairfax-owned papers in New Zealand follow a similar policy. The editors' views, reflecting those of their employer, seem to be totally arrogant.

Rupert Murdoch argued strongly for a war with Iraq in an interview this week. Which might explain why his 175 editors around the world are backing it too.

An historian of the future commenting on this period in US history will marvel at how a supposedly free people had been so easily tricked into giving up their wealth, freedoms and civil liberties and embracing a George Bush version of fascism to supposedly give them security and protect their freedom and democracy. The American people's response tends to prove Hitler's theorem in his book Mien Kemp: "The bigger the lie the more people will believe it." Although public doubt and rejection of Bush militarism and war is growing, people still accept the bigger lies of the Bush regime:

You have to read the New York Times editorial for Sunday, March 5th.  It's a list  of measures the Bush administration has put in place over the past five years that taken together add up to an astonishing attack against what we used to consider America's most basic constitutional principles.
The Times calls for Congress to take immediate action to reverse the situation.  The editorial, however, should be calling for Congress—and the media– to do much, nuch more.

An interview with John Mueller conducted March 6, 2007. Listen to the interview .
Is Iraq a distraction from the real War on Terrorism? Is there a real War on Terrorism? What exactly is the threat to the Heimatland ? (That's "Homeland" in the original German.)
To help discuss these questions is John Mueller, author of the new book Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them . He is a professor of political science at Ohio State University. Welcome to the show, sir.

Professor Griffin's paper on "Neocon Imperialism, 9/11 and the Attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq " is the most comprehensive, informative, and scholarly essay I have seen on this subject. ...
Bush and the hand-picked collection of neo-conservatives in his administration control the most powerful forces in human history - enough to kill the world's population many times over. Add to that the other 8 nuclear weapon states that might be triggered into action by Bush's pre-emptive wars as described in Griffin 's paper. The world and humanity face extreme threats from a criminal regime operating on lies, delusions and grandiose ambitions.  

My purpose in publishing this essay is to introduce a perspective, relevant to the debates about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, that thus far has not been part of the public discussion.

Professor Griffin covers topics he says have been inadequately answered by the commission. These include questions surrounding the attack on the Pentagon, the way in which the World Trade Center towers collapsed, and the behavior of President Bush and his Secret Service detail following notification that a second plane had hit the WTC. The talk was hosted by the Muslim- Jewish- Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth (www.mujca.com) and took place at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Includes Q&A.

Press Release March 6, 2007: To Honour and Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of New Zealand 's 1987 Nuclear Free Legislation
David Lange promised in 1984, "Elect Labour and we'll make all of New Zealand Nuclear Free" In spite of overseas allies and National Party opposition, Parliament legislated to make New Zealand nuclear free on August 6, 1987.

Richard Mynick shows how America, as people knew it, is disappearing and being transformed into a de-facto dictatorship - a perpetual war machine serving the military-industrial-governmental complex. There is little or no resistance. People are behaving like lambs. It is an indictment of what America is becoming under a blanket of well-designed false propaganda, ladled out to a confused public by a corrupted media.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" painted the United States in 1814 as "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." These words, though still mumbled by apathetic consumers at sporting events, amount to a cruel satire of the American people in 2007.

Paul Craig Roberts Sums Up World Crisis

Paul Craig Roberts has had a brilliant career as Assistant Secretary to the US Treasury under Reagan and many other prestigious positions and achievements. The following article is Roberts at his best and brilliantly sums up our predicament and the extraordinary circumstances behind it. I give it my highest recommendation.

The Bush-Cheney regime is America's first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America's moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.

This is a fascinating study by a US historian on violence and war in America since its inception.
It is very much a part of the culture. Violence, crime and war are also very popular as entertainment in movies, TV shows, war games and videos. Children grow up playing war games such as "Cowboys and Indians" or between gangsters and police. One of the most popular TV serials was about a Mafia Don, his family and his rackets and crimes. In this social climate it is perhaps natural for people not to seriously question the reasons and motives of their leaders taking them into war. It's as natural as apple pie.
Americans have been repeatedly fooled into supporting questionable wars, as they were in the continuing 2003 illegal war on Iraq.

" Increasingly, Americans are a people without history, with only memory, which means a people poorly prepared for what is inevitable about life -- tragedy, sadness, moral ambiguity -- and therefore a people reluctant to engage difficult ethical issues. "
    Elliot Gorn, "Professing History: Distinguishing Between Memory and Past," Chronicle of Higher Education (April 28, 2000).
In August 2002, President George Bush began to drum up a war fever in America with a view to toppling Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein, alleged to be the possessor of weapons of mass destruction. Bush did so without providing the evidence, the costs, the "why now" explanation, or long-term implications of such a war.

Some articles say the US will stage an attack on Iran, others say Israel will attack Iran. Some say it will be a joint operation. In the following article the decision to strike is Israel 's but with US permission. I doubt whether Israel would attack Iran on its own, even though Israeli hawks may reason that Israel's nuclear arsenal will protect it against any retaliation. Other nations would fear that Israel may then retaliate with nuclear weapons and wipe them out. Israel and the US are playing on this fear. Israel has the full support of the Bush regime, which has been planning to attack Iran for years.

"The Telegraph" -- -- Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
To conduct surgical air strikes against Iran's nuclear programme, Israeli war planes would need to fly across Iraq. But to do so the Israeli military authorities in Tel Aviv need permission from the Pentagon.

ENCAMPMENT TO STOP THE WAR - In Washington DC Beginning March 12    In the past few days, we have been contacted by thousands of people from all over the country promising to come to Washington and STAY to stop the war.   We send them our encouragement and support.

You were willing to take the risk of going against traditional and emotional impulses to follow the US-UK-Australia direction without serious question.You went beyond US propaganda handouts, false or doctored US 'intelligence' so-called "secret reports' and the other nonsense of imperial manipulation of allied governments.
I don't think people understand the great internal and external pressures you must have been under to join the Western war alliance against Iraq.

It's good to see these photos of Australians protesting the Iraq war and the Cheney visit. Many people.are waking up to the facts that Australia is helping the Bush regime fight a totally illegal war based on lies. The war has no purpose or meaning, except to dominate middle east oil and to be a base to launch a lie-based war on Iran.

Sydney anti-war marchers defy police ban and reclaim the streets
This evening 1500 anti-war demonstrators overcame a strong police presence and, after a half-hour confrontation with the NSW riot squad and mounted police marched to the US Consulate to protest against US Vice-President Dick Cheney's visit to Australia and the five-year imprisonment of David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay.
An unexpected last-minute ban by NSW Police (no doubt at the instigation of the NSW Labor Government) turned what would have been a routine demonstration into a major test of the right to march.

Is it the beginning of the end of the Iraq war as Paul Rogers suggests? The US is on the verge of starting a major war on Iran (not mentioned by Rogers) that will dwarf the destruction and casualties suffered by Iraq. Perhaps the neoconservatives and Pentagon see the Iraq war, and the surge, simply as diversions from their real aim - Iran. After all they have managed to get Iraqis murdering Iraqis by using covert action to start a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites and directing activities of the different militias. They have built major US military bases and managed to pilfer billions of US taxpayer dollars rewarding favoured contractors with no-bid contracts.

The proposed British evacuation of Iraq prefigures the failure of the United States-led project in the country.

What is DU and Why Is It a Problem?
An Air Force officer is even stalking the internet, trying to intimidate anyone who suggests DU is anything but benign.
Yet the numbers suggested that something insidious happens when DU munitions are used. How to explain the exploding rates of cancer, birth defects, and radiation poisoning among Iraqis in the Basra region? How to explain a Department of Veterans Affairs study of 21,000 veterans of the Gulf War that found rates of birth defects were twice as great for male vets and three times as great for female vets who served in the Gulf War compared to vets who did not? How to explain a Washington Post report in January of 2006 that 518,00 of the 580,000 Gulf War veterans were on disability, over half on permanent disability. How to explain over 13,000 dead Gulf War veterans when only 250 were killed and 7,000 injured in the war itself?

Born in Yonkers N.Y. in 1927, I've been campaigning against war since Hiroshima in 1945. I moved to New Zealand and founded the New Zealand Nuclear Free Peacemaking Association which helped make New Zealand nuclear free in 1987. The Pentagon was very angry about losing one of their nuclear base countries.

Join us this weekend and all next week for outreach - National No More $$$ for War Day.
Activists across the country are planning pickets, rallies, sit-ins, and other forms of creative resistance and direct action.

The BBC was looked up to as an entity you could TRUST.
During this last week I have witnessed yet again the BBC News repeating Bush lies about "The Iranian Nuclear Weapons" and the "The Iranian Nuclear Weapons Policies". These are figments of Bush's imagination, part of his insane scheme for world domination. You refer to these weapons as if they were a matter of fact and in existence and so instill the lie in peoples' minds as truth.
If it were not for the lies about WMD in Iraq, Blair would not have been able to make it possible for Bush to invade Iraq and then there would not have been the London bombings.
Everything we do has some consequence for which we are responsible.

Professor Waddell gives a perspective on US policy toward smaller states since 1945. It is a matter of invoking the US war cry 'freedom and democracy' as a cover for invasion, regime change and setting up puppet regimes. The US "regularly brandishes the threat of recourse to "nuclear weapons" and Bush has been allowed to adjust US nuclear doctrines so that he can wage pre-emptive nuclear war, as well as introduce nuclear weapons into conventional conflicts.

. . . The aim of the United States is to protect and reinforce national interests rather than to create a better world for all humankind. It is an "imperial grand strategy" of global dimensions designed to ensure unlimited and uninhibited access, notably to strategic resources, notably energy, and to markets. Rather than to establish a direct colonial presence, the preferred strategy is to create satellite states, and this requires constant, and often repeated, military interventions in countries around the world, irrespective of their political regime. 

Brezinski analyses the war in Iraq, why it happened, what will happen, and how Bush may blame Iran as justification for war, and what should be done to end the quagmire - all in half a page. Brilliant. He also says "the administration is developing a mythical, historical narrative to justify the case for a protracted  and potential expanding war...with much of the world of Islam at large" The big question is: will the US Senate allow him to do it? Or get serious about stopping him in time. Impeachment may be the only way.

Washington - Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser, told Congress the war in Iraq is a calamity and likely to lead to "a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large."
Testifying before the Senate foreign relations committee Thursday, Brzezinski skewered U.S. administration policy as driven by "imperial hubris" and a disaster on historic, strategic and moral grounds.
While other former U.S. officials and ex-generals have criticized administration policy in committee hearings, none savaged it to the degree Brzezinski did.

The US dropped thousands of tons of Agent Orange on Vietnam during the war in the 1960's, contaminating the land and people - killing and deforming some 4 million of the Vietnamese population that continues today - some 40 years later. Thousands of US and allied veterans were also contaminated with exposure to agent orange sprays, causing disease, disabilities and early deaths for many vets, genetic mutation that goes into their children and generations to come.

The US has agreed for the first time to help towards cleaning up a site in Vietnam which stored Agent Orange and other chemicals during the Vietnam war.
Washington has pledged $400,000 (£205,000) towards a $1m study into the removal of the highly toxic chemical dioxin at a former US base at Da Nang.

Tom Engelhardt has written a superb essay describing the insanity of the White House race to war with Iran and the expected appalling and catastrophic results. It is very convincing, and very well documented by a very talented insightful commentator.     
He is scared as any normal and informed person would be.  I hope influential Americans, including awakened politicians, are finally scared enough to depart from their comfort zones and actually take effective action to stop this madness. There are many things concerned people could do - if there is the will. The future of humanity on this planet is at stake.

Thelma and Louise Imperialism - Let me make an argument about Bush administration Iran policy -- about the possibility that a regime-change-style, shock-and-awe air assault might someday be launched on Iranian nuclear facilities and associated targets -- based on no insider knowledge, just the logic of George-and-Dick's Thelma-and-Louise-style imperialism.
Of course, we all know at least half the story by now. Is there anybody in official Washington -- other than our President, Vice President, the Vice President's secretive imperial staff, assorted backs-against-the-wall neocon supporters lodged in the federal bureaucracy, and associated right-wing think tanks -- who isn't sweating blood, popping pills, and wondering what in the world to do about our delusional leaders?

"What's going on in Washington is unbelievable" says Larry Derfner. How true. "Bush is getting away with it. He's escalating the war in Iraq.
He's sending 21.500 more soldiers over there. Nobody's stopping him, nobody's going to, either - not the Democrats, not the Republicans and not American public opinion." Derfner wrote.
What Derfner did not say, is that US escalation in Iraq is part of the preparation for a sudden US attack on Iran, which in turn is part of the neocon plan for US domination of middle east oil resources.
The current increase of US demonization of Iran and increase in Bush lies as justification for military action is influencing US public opinion to hate and fear Iran as the number one enemy of the US. Only a small handful of US politicians challenge Bush's lies, and they don't get reported.

You watch these clowns in Congress, these eunuchs who don't have the balls to even pass what a Bush ally laughed off as a "confetti resolution" - a symbolic statement that wouldn't force Bush to withdraw but would at least officially express Congress's opinion in favor of withdrawal.

It is a great idea from a great US historian, that the people should hold Bush impeachment hearings all across America. Will it happen? The Democrats are too deeply involved in echoing Bush's lies, and with the Israeli and arms trade lobbies to offer much more than platitudes of token opposition. I think people should try but I doubt if there would be sufficient support in time to stop Bush's war on Iran. There could be as little as two months left.
It would take a massive campaign and I know various organisations are working for this now. So any help people can offer, now is the time to exert effort to prevent a doomsday war. If Bush begins his war, I think it may be too late to impeach him. So now is the time for any effective action.

Sweet vindication. Who wouldn't want it? To be right. To be free of criticism and upheld by evidence, by actual proof, that one's predictions about a controversial war were correct.
It is the culture of this town -- trafficking in rightness. People clamor day in and day out, in that polished and politic way of the Washingtonian, to be proved right.
But on Iraq, the vindicated are pained. There is no gloating -- not with thousands of people dead, Americans and Iraqis; not with the Iraq war precipitating an ongoing foreign policy crisis that has left the United States' global image in tatters.

Will Protest Help?

It's good to see this protest and typical of the New York Times to downgrade it by underestimating the numbers.
Will it move Bush.? Very unlikely.
. . . Nevertheless this popular protest is good because it may encourage others and embolden the very weak and vacillating Congress.
Bush is defiant and says he'll continue to make war based on lies, while he is making up new lies to justify his next war. The formula seems to work well for the Bush Administration who are determined to carry on their plan even if it means world war III.
Until Congress faces up to Bush's many lies, instead of going along with them, and acts to impeach Bush, his neocon regime will carry on their war-making agenda.

Washington - Tens of thousands of protesters converged on the National Mall on Saturday to oppose President Bush's plan for a troop increase in Iraq in what organizers hoped would be one of the largest shows of antiwar sentiment in the nation's capital since the war began.
The event drew demonstrators from across the country, and many said that in addition to taking their discontent to the streets they planned to press members of Congress to oppose the war.

The Washington Post article shows that Bush has started his war on Iran by kidnapping, imprisoning and threatening to kill Iranians who are openly and legally in Iraq. He is doing everything he can to provoke some kind of reactions by Iran, so that he can blame "Iranian terrorism" and opposition to his war as an excuse for the quagmire he has created. Bush and US media are stepping up their campaign to demonise Iran to Americans in order to gain their support for any future big incidents blamed on Iran, as a justification for his planned attack. 

Policy on operatives stirs concern among some U.S. officials
The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran 's influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort.

On the heels of the president's State of the Union address, Judith LeBlanc, co-chair for the United for Peace and Justice coalition, described the situation as a "Perfect Storm" for the peace movement.

Russian Ex-Chief of Defence, General Ivashov's analysis is very similar to many articles on our website and in my comments. I think it is one of the most informed professional analysis so far of US intentions to nuclear bomb Iran. He even refers to a pretext or what many have referred to as a "False Flag" incident to get the Senate and Congress to give their approval for a nuclear attack on Iran. The article should convince people that now is the time to take action if they wish to prevent a US nuclear attack on Iran and all the disastrous consequences that can follow. I can't see any effective action or purpose in protest after such an attack when casualties are already in the millions with perhaps many more to come.

In the overall flow of information coming from the Middle East, there are increasingly frequent reports indicating that within several months from now the US will deliver nuclear strikes on Iran. For example, citing well-informed but undisclosed sources, the Kuwaiti Arab Times wrote that the US plans to launch a missile and bomb attack on the territory of Iran before the end of April, 2007. The campaign will start from the sea and will be supported by the Patriot missile defense systems in order to let the US forces avoid a ground operation and to reduce the efficiency of the return strike by “any Persian Gulf country”. Strategic Cultural Foundation (Russia)

The only way we will stop the war is if we stay in the streets.
Join the IAC contingent in the January 27 March on Washington, organized by United for Peace and Justice and hundreds of other national and local groups.  We will march to demand the Immediate, Complete, Unconditional withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq---no timetables, no surge, not another penny for war and occupation.  Bring the Troops Home Now -- Money for Jobs, Healthcare, and Education, Not War!

Bush's purpose in sending 21,000 or more US troops to Iraq is to create even more chaos and violence. He also wants to create incidents he can blame on Iran, so as to justify a US attack on Iran. The more violence and killing the US can create, the more their puppet Iraqi government will believe they need US troops. Bush names any opponents of the US illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, such as Muqtada al-Sadr, as linked to 'terrorism'.

He is a strange figure to be targeted as the number one enemy of the US in Iraq. Four years ago, few had heard of the Shia nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr inside or outside Iraq. Even somebody as suspicious as Saddam Hussain did not think he would play any role in the coming crisis.
Now he holds the future of Iraq in his hands. He has far more popularity and legitimacy than many of the pro-American Iraqi leaders cowering in the Green Zone. He is seen by millions of Shia in Baghdad and across southern Iraq as their spiritual and national leader.
Rightly or wrongly, he is feared by most Sunnis as their nemesis, a physical symbol that they are battling for their existence in Iraq.

This paper provides new insights into why the US will not withdraw troops from Iraq. It is the new imperialism and colonialism and exploiting Iraqi oil that provides enormous profits to the 100,000 private military contractors in Baghdad , and provides billions in profits for the military-industrial complex in the US . Money is the great motivator, with no-bid contracts for chosen Pentagon suppliers. Greater war risks, the slaughter or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, morality and ethics don't matter to people participating in a gigantic profits feeding frenzy in Baghdad and Washington.

Neither the Iraq Study Group nor other establishment critics of the Iraq war are calling for the withdrawal of US troops from that country. To the extent that the Study Group or the new Congress purport to inject some "realism" into the Iraq policy, such projected modifications do not seem to amount to more than changing the drivers of the US war machine without changing its destination, or objectives: control of Iraq's political and economic policies.
In light of the fact that by now almost all of the factions of the ruling circles, including the White House and the neoconservative war-mongerers, acknowledge the failure of the Iraq war, why, then, do they balk at the idea of pulling the troops out of that country?

The American people are in the position of continuing to invest billions of dollars to fund illegal, unjustified wars, based on lies invented by Bush's neucons. The US is risking a world war III by catering to the mad grandiose theories of the neurons. Boyle, who was trained as one, knows how they have been trained to think like Nazis.

Destroying World Order:
Analyzing The War In Iraq And The Middle East During An Interview With Dr. Francis A. Boyle.     by STEVE WATSON and ALEX JONES

It will be a huge mess spiralling upward and out of control. A general nuclear war that destroys all life cannot be ruled out....
...The American people and Democrats have not been forewarned about 'False Flags' and how Bush may use one to deceive them. Many believe he has already successfully used this technique, been believed, and then gone on to squander billions on illegal wars.
They are apt to believe the deception, and back Bushes action to use nuclear weapons to attack Iran , or at least quietly accept it, as they have accepted his previous lies and crimes. As with leading Democrats like Hillary Clinton, many accept and still repeat his Iraq war lies.

The new year began on the hopeful note that Bush's illegal war in Iraq would soon be ended. The repudiation of Bush and the Republicans in the November congressional election, the Iraq Study Group's unanimous conclusion that the US needs to remove its troops from the sectarian strife Bush set in motion by invading Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld's removal as defense secretary and his replacement by Iraqi Study Group member Robert Gates, the thumbs down given by America's top military commanders to the neoconservatives' plan to send more US troops to Iraq, and new polls of the US military that reveal that only a minority supports Bush's Iraq policy, thus giving new meaning to “support the troops,” are all indications that Americans have shed the stupor that has given carte blanche to George W. Bush.

The New York Times article below gives a good account of how alleged US strategy in Iraq during 2006 has zigzagged and failed.
The NYT and US Govt want to give the impression that it is a series of blunders and mistakes in Iraq that has resulted in the situation going from bad to worse, to full-blown civil war.
What they do not discuss is (1) They had no right or real reason to invade and occupy in the first place (2) That the whole effort is based on a collection of lies by the Bush regime. (3) With the lies they used to justify their attacks now thoroughly exposed, the Bush regime carries on anyway, intensifying their war, killing 655,000 Iraqis and stoking the civil war.

President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a “strategy for victory in Iraq.” He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed.
The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the plan collided with Iraq's ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush's war council by surprise.

Professor Lustick's article below, illustrates the amazing growth in the 'War on Terror' industry throughout various sectors of American society. From Congressional estimates of 160 potential terrorist targets in 2003 to 300,000 potential fund-generating targets in 2006. From zero dollars to 650 billion dollars for anti-terrorist expenditures. It's now a huge 'pork barrel' with "thousands of interest groups crowding toward the anti-terrorism trough" according to Lustick. It's like the Tulip craze in the Netherlands in the 1600s. Anti-terrorism has now become a huge industry of vested interests depending on the continuing phoney wars on terror created by the Bush regime and its neoconservatives to justify real invasions, wars and generally enlarging real wars. As with the intended US-planned nuclear war on Iran, proof of any accusations is not required. The accusation is enough backed up by an eager mass media repeating and embellishing every lie.

The official mantra is that we fight in Iraq because it is the "central front in the War on Terror." The exact opposite is the case.
We are trapped in fighting an unwinnable - even nonsensical - "war on terror" because its invention was required in order to fight in Iraq. After years of slaughter in Iraq, the neoconservative fantasy of a series of cheap, fast, neo-imperial victories is dead. But the war on terror lives on, stronger than ever.

A dedicated sometimes fanatical minority which has many wealthy and powerful adherents can dominate the more rational, but less focused majority. Fundamentalists often tithe and give large sums to further their fanatical beliefs This is demonstrated in the following article describing the rise of right-wing religionists in the military. Their major asset is George Bush who relies on their support and votes. Its a powerful combination and threat to American society. It is a cause of some of the irrational foreign policy decisions.  

The former New York Times Mideast Bureau chief warns that the radical Christian right is coming dangerously close to its goal of co-opting the country's military and law enforcement.
The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America's open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy.

.... Parry's article below reports that the Bush regime is planning to go ahead with its expansion of the Iraq  war, and by nuclear bombing Iran. This parallels many other articles on this site which say the same thing. All predict very, very serious consequences in many areas.
Parry also predicts there will be "some provocation that can be blamed on Syria and Iran , thus justifying the expanded war."
My own prediction is that the "provocation" referred to by Parry, will be a vitally important False Flag operation. It would be very carefully planned by the Bush Administration to stage some kind of an attack, perhaps a terrorist attack on the US, like 9/11, for which the Bush Regime has planned to blame Iran. ...

Intelligence sources say President Bush -- along with Israel's Ehud Olmert and the UK's Tony Blair -- are weighing the possibility of Israeli-led attacks on Syria and Iran in early 2007, with the United States providing logistical back-up.

Every tactic the US has taken in Iraq since their 2003 invasion seems to have been designed to provoke more hatred of the US and more, not less, terrorism. The US public are conditioned to believe that there is no such thing as legitimate armed resistance to their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq . The US government and mass media promote the fantasy that any opposition to US rule must be called "terrorist". The US mass media is more than happy to oblige the Bush regime, by using US psy-war designed words and definitions of the Iraq situation as part of their campaign to justify and white-wash every new US atrocity against a sovereign state and its people.

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies?

While brilliant and very worthwhile, Marjorie Cohn also neglects to mention the techniques and circumstances the Bush regime may use to start a war with Iran with US public support.  
The result of this kind of failure by many US journalists is a people that will be fooled by a US 'False Flag' against Iran. They will then support a war on Iran because of what they have been fooled into thinking that Iran has done. It is a story of how rational intelligent thinking people can discount and/or dismiss the idea of official chicanery, even though various US Governments and their agencies have a long history of committing various nefarious schemes against other countries and governments.

In 1971, singer Marvin Gaye raised hackles when he tried to make sense of the madness of the Vietnam War by asking, "What's Going On?" ....
The song, told from the perspective of a returning Vietnam veteran, was inspired by Gaye's brother who had recently returned from that disastrous war.
...."The deaths of American soldiers now verges on the criminal."