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A British soldier's story: 'People are suffering … I couldn't go back'
Alexandra Topping
Thursday 30 July 2009
Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, a soldier with the Royal Logistics Corps, has written to Gordon Brown explaining why he refuses to fight in Afghanistan. He spoke to Alexandra Topping.
I was sent to Afghanistan in 2006 and from the start it was very challenging, it's a very hard place to be posted.
There was so much confusion about why we were there, whether it was to get rid of the poppy fields, or for national security.
I saw repatriations all the time and it just grinds you down.
The Nimrod crash [in which 14 men died when an RAF Nimrod exploded over Afghanistan on 2 September 2006] is one of my enduring memories.
I was one of the drivers and I can remember just going up and down the road in a JCB spending a whole afternoon humping coffins around, two at a time, on a forklift truck. Some people can shrug it off, and maybe I did at the time, but it is the type of thing that keeps coming back. They weren't even combat deaths, it was just the futility of it.
While I was there millions of bullets passed through my hands.
I can't account for where those bullets went. We were supplying more and more, and I didn't know where they were going.
It haunts me.
When I came back after my first tour I just couldn't see what we had given to the country.
I felt ashamed.
They were dark days.
When I joined the army I was lean, green and keen.
I was proud of being a soldier.
But now, as a serving officer, I want my feelings to be known.
Kisses mother
I want the government to consider the welfare of the guys out there, and the welfare of the Afghan people.
People are suffering and it shouldn't be allowed.
When I came back from Afghanistan in 2007 I was promoted and redeployed in the UK.
I wasn't supposed to be going back originally, because it would have been in breach of harmony guidelines [under which soldiers should not spend more than more 13 months within a three-year period on tour].
But then we were told we would be going back.
And I just couldn't go back.
It was an incredibly difficult thing to do, I loved the army, but I had lost my faith in the structure, the government and the cause.
I went to south-east Asia, I just needed to escape.
I was dealing with it very badly, drinking a lot.
Depression is a word that gets bandied about easily, but I wasn't very happy, that's for sure.
I was trying to find space to sort myself out, trying to drown it with drink.
I wasn't in contact with any of the lads, which was hard because it is like you lose your support group.
I didn't want to incriminate them.
You get into trouble if you have information about someone who has absconded and I didn't want to put anyone in that position.
I've spoken to some of them since, they have been supportive.
They said 'What happened to you?   We didn't expect this from you.'   But I told them I had to do what I had to do.
I went to Australia after a few months.
I thought all the time the army would catch up.
But I met my wife and she was my rock.
She helped persuade me to call the awol hotline.
It was hard but I had to do it.
We came back in May and I thought I would be nobbled at customs.
But no one was there, so I handed myself in to my unit.
I'm pending court martial now and face up to two years in prison.
It's scary stuff and I'm tempted to head for the hills but I believe I have something to say, something to contribute, so I will just crack on with it.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2009
       Western Terror States: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy      
       Photos of Afghanistan people being killed and injured by NATO      
Why I’ll Refuse to Fight in this Immoral War
“When two of my comrades returned wounded, I began thinking seriously about what I could do to help end this continuing war.
I began to do a lot of research, learning everything I could about the illegality and immorality of our occupation of Iraq.
And I started to go on the anti-war demos that continue around the country.
I listened to peace campaigners and soldiers who had been out there, and MPs like George Galloway.
I would recommend similar research to any soldier who is having doubts about the war. ”		         
RAF doctor jailed over Iraq refusal
Staff and agencies
Thursday April 13, 2006
An RAF doctor was today jailed for eight months after being found guilty of failing to comply with lawful orders when he refused to serve in Iraq.
Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith - who likened the invasion of Iraq to a Nazi war crime - was convicted on five charges, including refusing to serve in Basra, by a court martial panel of five RAF officers. He will also be dismissed from the service.
Kendall-Smith, a former university philosophy tutor who has dual British and New Zealand citizenship and is based at RAF Kinloss in Morayshire, Scotland, had argued that the ongoing presence of US-led forces in Iraq was illegal.
He told the military hearing in Aldershot, Hampshire, he had refused to serve in Basra last July because he did not want to be complicit with an "act of aggression" contrary to international law.
Judge Advocate Jack Bayliss told Kendall-Smith that the court martial panel believed he had acted on moral grounds. However, he accused him of an "amazing arrogance" and said the sentence was intended to make an example of him.
"Obedience of orders is at the heart of any disciplined force," he said. "Refusal to obey orders means that the force is not a disciplined force but a disorganised rabble.
"Those who wear the Queen's uniform cannot pick and choose which orders they will obey. Those who seek to do so must face the serious consequences."
Following the sentencing, Kendall-Smith's solicitor, Justin Hugheston-Roberts, said his client was "shocked" and "distressed" by the judgment and would appeal against the conviction and sentencing.
"He has asked me to say that he feels now, more than ever, that his actions were justified and he would not, if placed in the same circumstances, seek to do anything differently," Mr Hugheston-Roberts said.
"He said this still has a long way to travel and he will now concentrate his efforts on that task."
In court, Judge Bayliss ordered that Kendall-Smith serve half of his sentence in custody and the remainder on licence.
He also told him to pay £20,000 from his personal savings of £140,000 towards his defence costs, which were covered by legal aid.
Kendall-Smith was taken from the court to Colchester military prison, where he will undergo a medical examination and a period of demilitarisation that will see him stripped of his rank and ordered to hand over his uniform and kit.
He will then be transferred to a civilian prison, where he will serve the remainder of his sentence.
Condemning the sentence, Kate Hudson, the chairwoman of CND, said: "All military personnel are required to comply with international law and to be familiar with it regarding warfare and the conduct of war.
"We all know they cannot hide behind the excuse that they are on the receiving end of orders from on high. We have full sympathy for him, and he has our full support. We consider it to be a commendable and moral act."
Kendall-Smith formed his belief that the war was unlawful after serving tours of duty in Kuwait and Qatar at the time of the invasion.
"I have evidence that the Americans were on a par with Nazi Germany with [their] actions in the Persian Gulf," he told the court. "I have documents in my possession which support my assertions.
Boy hides face from puppet Afghanistan forces
"This is on the basis that ongoing acts of aggression in Iraq and systematically applied war crimes provide a moral equivalent between the US and Nazi Germany."
He said he had refused to take part in training and equipment fitting prior to the deployment because he believed these were "preparatory acts which were equally criminal as the act itself".
During the hearing, David Perry, prosecuting, said the case against Kendall-Smith was that the orders were lawful and he had a duty to obey them as a commissioned officer.
He added that the question of the invasion of Iraq was irrelevant because it had occurred prior to the charges, which date back to last year.
At the time of the charges, he said, the presence of US-led forces in Iraq was legal because they were there at the request of the country's democratically-elected government.
The charges faced by Kendall-Smith were that, on June 1 2005, he failed to comply with a lawful order to attend RAF Kinloss for pistol and rifle training, failed to attend a helmet fitting on June 6 2005, and failed to attend a training course between June 12 and June 24 2005.
He was also charged with failing to comply with an order to attend a deployment briefing at RAF Lyneham on June 30 2005 and failing to comply with an order to replace a squadron leader for Operation Telic in Basra on July 12 2005.
Kendall-Smith denied that he had refused the order because he did not want to be posted overseas.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007
 
Thank you again Malcolm.
Have no doubt, as history unfolds you will be honored more and more until the statues of these war mongers will at last be torn down
Children reading of your courage, will look to you as their moral compass
Those who have dared to judge you, those steeped in evil, those will be the ones who go down in infamy
Kewe — TheWE.cc
 
Killed by US soldier
12 killed, 47 wounded in US NATO massacre
US Marines threatened journalists saying delete the photographs or we will delete you
US military defended forced deleting of images, arguing publication could have compromised the 'investigation'
Afghan men carry the body of a civilian killed by American soldiers after a car bomber attacked an American convoy in Barikaw in Nangarhar province, eastern Afghanistan, March 4, 2007. U.S. Marines who shot their way out of a suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan last month violated international humanitarian law by using excessive and indiscriminate force that left more than 12 civilians dead, a report released Saturday April 14, 2007, said. Following the March 4 attack in Nangarhar province, when an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into its convoy, members of the Marine unit shot at vehicles and pedestrians in six locations on a 16-kilometer (10-mile) stretch of road, according to a report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission. US Marines expressly threatened journalists, one cameraman reporting he was told to delete the photographs or we will delete you. More than 40 Afghan civilians have reported being killed or wounded. US military defended forced deleting of images, arguing publication could have compromised the 'investigation' Later US occupying force Major General Frank Kearney, head of Special Operations Command Central stated there was no evidence that the marine special operations platoon came under small-arms fire after the bombing. 'We have testimony from marines that is in conflict with unanimous testimony from civilians at the sites.' Photo: AP/Rafiq Maqbool     

Afghan men carry the body of a civilian killed by American soldiers after a car bomber attacked an American convoy in Barikaw in Nangarhar province, eastern Afghanistan, March 4, 2007.
U.S. Marines who shot their way out of a suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan last month violated international humanitarian law by using excessive and indiscriminate force that left more than 12 civilians dead, a report released Saturday April 14, 2007, said.
Following the March 4 attack in Nangarhar province, when an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into its convoy, members of the Marine unit shot at vehicles and pedestrians in six locations on a 16-kilometer (10-mile) stretch of road, according to a report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission.
US Marines expressly threatened journalists, one cameraman reporting he was told to delete the photographs or we will delete you.
More than 40 Afghan civilians have reported being killed or wounded.
US military defended forced deleting of images, arguing publication could have compromised the 'investigation'
Later, US occupying force Major General Frank Kearney, head of Special Operations Command Central stated there was no evidence that the marine special operations platoon came under small-arms fire after the bombing.
'We have testimony from marines that is in conflict with unanimous testimony from civilians at the sites.'
Photo: AP/Rafiq Maqbool
 
Loved one killed by US soldier
12 killed, 47 wounded in US NATO massacre
US Marines threatened journalists saying delete the photographs or we will delete you
US military defended forced deleting of images, arguing publication could have compromised the 'investigation'
Loved one killed by US soldier. An Afghan man cries as he shouts anti-American slogans after twelve Afghans were killed and more than wounded in an attack by US NATO forces in Barikaw in Nangarhar province. U.S. Marines who shot their way out of a suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan last month violated international humanitarian law by using excessive and indiscriminate force that left more than 12 civilians dead, a report released Saturday April 14, 2007, said. Following the March 4 attack in Nangarhar province, when an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into its convoy, members of the Marine unit shot at vehicles and pedestrians in six locations on a 16-kilometer (10-mile) stretch of road, according to a report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission. US Marines expressly threatened journalists, one cameraman reporting he was told to delete the photographs or we will delete you. More than 40 Afghan civilians have reported being killed or wounded. US military defended forced deleting of images, arguing publication could have compromised the 'investigation' Later US occupying force Major General Frank Kearney, head of Special Operations Command Central stated there was no evidence that the marine special operations platoon came under small-arms fire after the bombing. 'We have testimony from marines that is in conflict with unanimous testimony from civilians at the sites.' Photo: AP/Rahmat Gul

Loved one killed by US soldier.
An Afghan man cries as he shouts anti-American slogans after twelve Afghans were killed and more than wounded in an attack by US NATO forces in Barikaw in Nangarhar province.
U.S. Marines who shot their way out of a suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan last month violated international humanitarian law by using excessive and indiscriminate force that left more than 12 civilians dead, a report released Saturday April 14, 2007, said.
Following the March 4 attack in Nangarhar province, when an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into its convoy, members of the Marine unit shot at vehicles and pedestrians in six locations on a 16-kilometer (10-mile) stretch of road, according to a report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission.
US Marines expressly threatened journalists, one cameraman reporting he was told to delete the photographs or we will delete you.
More than 40 Afghan civilians have reported being killed or wounded.
US military defended forced deleting of images, arguing publication could have compromised the 'investigation'
Later US occupying force Major General Frank Kearney, head of Special Operations Command Central stated there was no evidence that the marine special operations platoon came under small-arms fire after the bombing.
'We have testimony from marines that is in conflict with unanimous testimony from civilians at the sites.'
Photo: AP/Rahmat Gul
 
Western Terror States: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy
While they commit cowardly attacks by air, never seeing those they kill, often killing women and children in their homes as they fly away back to their cowardly bases
If they kill only the husband, see how they care for the family they have destroyed
Sunday 12 March 2006
SAS soldier quits Army in disgust at 'illegal' American tactics in Iraq
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
((Filed: 12/03/2006)
An SAS soldier has refused to fight in Iraq and has left the Army over the "illegal" tactics of United States troops and the policies of coalition forces.
After three months in Baghdad, Ben Griffin told his commander that he was no longer prepared to fight alongside American forces.
Told commanders that he thought the Iraq war was illegal
Ben Griffin told commanders that he thought the Iraq war was illegal
He said he had witnessed "dozens of illegal acts" by US troops, claiming they viewed all Iraqis as "untermenschen" — the Nazi term for races regarded as sub-human.
The decision marks the first time an SAS soldier has refused to go into combat and quit the Army on moral grounds.
It immediately brought to an end Mr Griffin's exemplary, eight-year career in which he also served with the Parachute Regiment, taking part in operations in Northern Ireland, Macedonia and Afghanistan.
But it will also embarrass the Government and have a potentially profound impact on cases of other soldiers who have refused to fight.
On Wednesday, the pre-trial hearing will begin into the court martial of Flt Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a Royal Air Force doctor who has refused to return to Iraq for a third tour of duty on the grounds that the war is illegal.   Mr Griffin's allegations came as the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells, visiting Basra yesterday, admitted that Iraq was now "a mess".
Mr Griffin, 28, who spent two years with the SAS, said the American military's "gung-ho and trigger happy mentality" and tactics had completely undermined any chance of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population.   He added that many innocent civilians were arrested in night-time raids and interrogated by American soldiers, imprisoned in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, or handed over to the Iraqi authorities and "most probably" tortured.
Mr Griffin eventually told SAS commanders at Hereford that he could not take part in a war which he regarded as "illegal".
He added that he now believed that the Prime Minister and the Government had repeatedly "lied" over the war's conduct.
"I did not join the British Army to conduct American foreign policy," he said.   He expected to be labelled a coward and to face a court martial and imprisonment after making what "the most difficult decision of my life" last March.
Instead, he was discharged with a testimonial describing him as a "balanced, honest, loyal and determined individual who possesses the strength of character to have the courage of his convictions".
Last night Patrick Mercer, the shadow minister for homeland security, said: "Trooper Griffin is a highly experienced soldier.   This makes his decision particularly disturbing and his views and opinions must be listened to by the Government."
The MoD declined to comment.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006
Flying Kites....
Friday, October 12, 2007
I really don't know what is going on here...
The other day was Pink and today it is Pastel colors.
Not a fitting time of the year for pastel colors.   After all, it is the beginning of Autumn, with its golden brown, rusty red and dying green...
But pastel colors have been obsessing me...ever since those pink and red taints.
Maybe because it is the Eid, the feast that marks the celebration of the end of our fasting month, Ramadan.
Painting: Iraqi female artist, Sawsan Al Sarraf. 'Immigration'
Artist,
Sawsan
Al
Sarraf
I remember the Eid in Baghdad, what used to be the Eid...
We have a tradition for the Eid, we must wear something new.   I remember young and old saving that new piece, that untouched garment, for the Eid.
I remember the little boys and girls dressed in their new clothes, laughing as they rock on their swings, as they cry with joy on their merry-go-rounds...
Eating "shaar al Banat" or "ghazl al Banat" as some may call it.
You know, that fluffy hair-like sugar, dyed in pastel colors, that feels like cotton in your mouth, wrappped around a wooden stick and glues all over your face and leaves your tongue colored in pastel...pink, green, blue, yellow and...white.
I also remember the conversations...
"Baba, baba, shoof, anee helwa?" — Daddy, daddy look, am I pretty? would ask a little one raising her eyes to her dad.   Showing off her new pastel colored dress and the pastel ribbons in her hair...
"Mama, mama, shofee shlon atayerhom" — Mom, mom, look how I can make it fly! would shout a little one to his mother, pointing his finger to his brand new kite made of pastel colored paper...
And the father would respond "Hadha shlon Jamal" — What beauty you are.   Or,
the mother would say "Shater, ibnee, enta shater" — Clever my son, you are clever.
I can still hear their giggles, their laughs and their shouts of excitement...
I can still see the joy in their shining innocent eyes, their funny faces, their tender smile...
I can still feel their hugs, their wet kisses smelling of candies and their warm little heads on my shoulder, when tired from too much running around...tired from too much play.
I am lucky to have such memories.   I am lucky to have witnessed them.
Today's children in Iraq are either too scarred or will not live to remember or... are already dead.
Only two days ago, 11 little ones were severly wounded by a mortar attack.   Yesterday, 9 little ones were killed in a so called counter-insurgency attack by your brave boys.   Today, at least 2 little ones were blasted away when a bomb placed in a toy cart exploded in their curious little faces...on the day of the Eid.
Our little ones are nothing but appetizers for you.   Your anti-pasti, your hors d'oeuvres... The more, the merrier...
In the name of Liberty.   In the name of Democracy.   In the name of Freedom.   In the name of the o' so civilized West that you are.
For 13 years, our little ones suffered, our little martyrs... Over half a million died as a result of your o' so civilized sanctions, while you were watching...
Thirteen fucking years and you watched, in silence, tasting your hors d'oeuvres in front of your TV screens.
Thirteen years of a deafening, utter silence.
Silence from the so called left and anti-war clowns.   Silence from the international community.   Silence from the so-called Islamic Ummah.
So silent, that the silence turned into a lullaby of agonies that you can still hear in the mass graves of our little ones.   So silent, that they have slept, never to wake up again... A murderous lullaby.
The little ones who survived, experienced their final liberation in 2003.
God damn you.   God damn you.   That is all I can repeat for now.   I will have to stop. I need to regain my composure.   Recompose what you have decomposed...
Am back... The composed, rational, polite Arab woman... I am now wearing my satin gloves, lest your sensitivities get ruffled...
But let me ask you something, are you as ruffled by an average of 40,000 little ones killed each year because of an occupation carried out in your name, with your money, under your "benevolent" eyes?
40,000 is the conservative estimate figure from the 2006 U.N Human rights report.
The real figure for 2006 is much higher.   Way higher.   And am not counting the orphans in the thousands...
Only yesterday, a new report warns of an ever-deepening humanitarian crisis, never seen before, since World War II... And I say, it is much worse than what this report states.
Come and see our overflowing morgues and find our little ones for us...
You may find them in this corner or the other, a little hand poking out, pointing out at you...
Come and search for them in the rubbles of your "surgical" air raids, you may find a little leg or a little head... pleading for your attention.   Come and see them amassed in the garbage dumps, scavenging morsels of food...
Well over half of our little ones are under nourished or dying from disease.   Cholera, disentery, infections of all sorts....
Under nourished does not mean on a diet like your fat little kids.   It means not having food to eat.   It means cannot find food to eat.   It means starved.
Come and see, come....
See them being trafficked, raped, sold and "finally" killed by your brave boys.   The "final solution."   Remember that one?   It was not so long ago... Except this time it is carried out by the "greatest Democracy on earth."
And if you are too sensitive to such scenes, and your stomach can't take it, even though your hands and pockets contribute daily to it, come and search for them in the alley ways of Damascus, Amman or Cairo...
Search for them, hiding behind walls.   Find them selling or begging in street corners.
Look for them behaving like a 40 year old adult, fending for a whole family...
Come and see...
The other day, I overheard a 6 years old saying to her mother, "I want to die."
Just in case one of your bullets does not get to her, you have ensured that she will finish it off herself...
Come and see them stutter, hear them shout at night during their sleep and see their wet beds...
This is no lost innocence.   This is a raped innocence, a murdered innocence...
Raped and murdered by you.   I will net let you off the hook that easily.   I guess you know me by now.
As for the little assholes (I guess am losing my composure again) who call me a whining Arab bitch, let me not wish the same on your children...
Because by God, if I did, you would strangle yourselves in grief and...remorse.
An article in Haaretz states that the Holocaust is still affecting the granchildren of the survivors... and that is well over 60 years, later.
How many decades, centuries would it take our surviving little ones to get over being freed by "Democracy"?
Painting: Iraqi artist, Mohanad Al-Hayali. 'Flying Kites'
Artist,
Mohanad
Al
Hayali
In the meantime, the little survivors of your Holocaust, those who were born under your bombs, under your occupation, under your destruction, in your ghettoes, in your prisons, in your new Iraq, and who have known nothing else but you, their primal "caretaker", if they ever make it to adulthood, will bear witness on the day of Eid...
They, who have not known the Spring, Summer, of their lives.   They who have witnessed nothing but the cold of the Winter.   The coldness of Death...
They will remember, as I am doing now, the blown up cart of toys, the overflowing morgues, the rubbles of their homes, the mortars falling on their heads, the noise of explosions squatting their ears, their sisters and brothers in pieces, in front of their very eyes...
They will remember it, like some ugly melody, like some ugly lullaby...you lulled to them during their "liberated" childhood...
And those who have not and will not survive your "Liberation", will be flying high above like the pastel colored balloons of the Eid, like the kites made of pastel colored paper, like some white feather plucked from an innocent Dove...
Only to fall on the ground like dying, dried up, Autumn leaves...
Layla Anwar's blog — click here
'Paramedic Sattar Taha killed by American bombing Aug. 8, 2007'
Reservist ready to refuse call-up
Ed Vulliamy and Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday January 19, 2005
The Guardian
The first British soldier has come forward to urge mass refusal among the ranks to serve in Iraq, saying he would rather go to prison than accept a call-up to war.
Speaking ahead of a press conference today, Lance Corporal George Solomou, from the London regiment of the Territorial Army, said: "I am not going to Iraq, point-blank.  I am a conscientious objector to this war, and I am going to see how the army plays it from there.  I would rather spend a year in prison than a minute in Iraq as part of an illegal war."
He spoke out as the Ministry of Defence said it was unable to provide details of serious injuries sustained by 790 British troops evacuated since the invasion of Iraq.  Their injuries were as a result of "hostile actions, accidents, and other incidents", Ivor Caplin, the junior defence minister, told MPs earlier this month.
Mr Solomou describes an atmosphere of restlessness over Iraq in the increasingly deployed reservist TA, saying: "I want to act as a beacon for other soldiers to come out and say they are against the war, or at least that they are not prepared to go.  There are so many more soldiers out there who believe what I believe.
"I have always wanted to be a soldier and I still want to be a soldier," he added.  "But I want to be used in the correct manner.  We are not just pieces of flesh to be moved about on a chessboard."
Mr Solomou, 38, a worker for the emergency services in east London, said he had always opposed the war in Iraq, and had marched against it in February 2003 with a group of TA colleagues.
Citing his objections yesterday, he said: "I believe the occupation of Iraq to be illegal.  They have tried everything — weapons of mass destruction, the connection to al-Qaida — none of it was true.
"Now the fundamental bedrocks of democracy are being trampled by this war, with the American treatment of prisoners.  Added to that, the Iraqis can see oil tanker after oil tanker coming out of Iraq while they haven't even got electricity.  This war is a turning point in history and is about America setting itself on a course to control the world's petroleum."
Mr Solomou started his TA career as an infantryman, but transferred to the Royal Army Medical Corps attached to the London Irish Rifles.
He will present his case at a press conference at Westminster today, convened by Military Families Against the War, and led by Rose Gentle from Glasgow, whose 19-year-old son Gordon was killed in Iraq in June last year.
Most of the 790 injuries sustained by British service personnel since March 2003 were caused by shrapnel, defence sources suggested yesterday.  The MoD said it could not give any further information.  It is known that a number have had limbs amputated.  They include two Royal Signals soldiers who lost their legs in a suicide bomber attack on the Black Watch battlegroup south of Baghdad in November.
Seveny-three members of the armed forces have been killed in Iraq, more than half the result of accidents and, in at least one case, suicide, according to the latest MoD figures on fatalities.
Mr Caplin also told MPs earlier this month that there are about 400 British military medical personnel in Iraq, including surgeons, dentists, physiotherapists and mental health specialists.
In separate parliamentary answers, the Foreign Office minister, Bill Rammell, said the government had "no reliable of ascertaining the number of Iraqi civilians injured by military or terrorist action" since May 2003.
But he said that according to the Iraqi health minister, figures based on records from some 180 hospitals, showed that between April and October last year 15,517 Iraqi civilians were injured, and 3,853 killed.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Ahmadinejad demonstrations outside the United Nations. Photo: Aljazzera/Gallo/Getty
Ahmadinejad demonstrations outside the United Nations
Photo: Aljazzera/Gallo/Getty
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Ahmadinejad's message to the world
By Mark LeVine
It was quite a week for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.
First he faced down the president of Columbia University and a host of hostile questioners in Harlem.
Then he headed down to Midtown Manhattan, where for 45 minutes he held the world's attention at the United Nations, before heading farther south, to Caracas, Venezuela, for talks with his close ally, President Hugo Chavez.
Local papers, such as the Daily News and The New York Post, featured headlines announcing that "The Evil has Landed" and lambasting the "Mad Iran Prez" for his past denials of the Holocaust, refusal to unequivocally renounce a quest for nuclear weapons, and call to have Israel "wiped off the map."
So much nonsense in one phony man
Not to mention the Orwellian lies he spewed
(An inaccurate translation of the Persian "bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad," which is better — but less violently and therefore less usefully — rendered in English as "erased from the page of time" or "fate").
Even Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, introduced him with an unprecedented — and to the minds of many academics, not to mention Iranians, uncouth — verbal attack, accusing him of being little more than a "petty dictator".
[Ignorance, not to mention a knee-bending pandering to the elite, sadly has become the most prominent feature of University Presidents in the waxing fascist state that now is the US, a practice now copied by many teachers of academics in Western countries - Kewe TheWE.cc]
In its critiques of Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia, the mainstream US press focused most of its attention on Ahmadinejad's tendentious claim that "there are no homosexuals in Iran" (belied by an evening stroll through Tehran's famous Daneshjoo Park), and his attempt to redefine his position on the Holocaust (it happened, but more research is needed to know its true extent).
At the UN, his criticism of "widespread human rights violations" elicited the expected derisive response in light of his own government's increasingly repressive policies, while his declaration that the nuclear case against Iran "is closed" suggested, to most commentators, continued intransigence by Iran in the face of supposedly universal opposition to its nuclear programme.
Students protest, but not at Columbia at their stupid University President, the protest is in Tehran, at Ahmadinejad
The President of the country has a history of going to the university and getting booed (by the children of the rich Iranian elite)
Send in the police goons to taser the students?
Unknown in Iran today
Discourteous treatment'
Few commentators considered how Ahmadinejad's words were heard outside of the US media circus.
And those who did, such as Timothy Rutton of the LA Times, focused purely on the reaction in the Muslim world, arguing that, as a "totalitarian demagogue", Ahmadinejad gained legitimacy because of the discourteous treatment by Columbia's president.
Rutton wrote: "Bollinger's denunciation was icing on the cake, because the constituency the Iranian leader cares about is scattered across an Islamic world that values hospitality and its courtesies as core social virtues."
"To that audience, Bollinger looked stunningly ill-mannered; Ahmadinejad dignified and restrained."
Underlying Rutton's argument is the still-widespread belief, whose roots lie deep in Europe and America's histories as imperial powers, that Muslims and the other formerly colonised peoples value "honour", "pride" and "hospitality" far more than they do issues of substance.
Indeed, they remain incapable of making well-reasoned and documented criticisms of a West, and the United States in particular, that remains by definition technologically, politically, and morally superior to the developing world.
'Poverty and deprivation'
It's no wonder, then, that almost no one in the American media focused on the substantive claims of Ahmadinejad's speech at the UN.
Chief among them were his argument regarding the "alarming situation of poverty and deprivation".
"Let me draw your attention to some data issued by the United Nations," he said, before calling to the attention of the world's leaders the fact that close to one billion people live on less than $1-a-day and that there is a rapidly increasing gap between the world's rich and poor.
He mentioned the continued disgraceful figures for infant mortality, schooling and related human development indicators in the developing world.
Perhaps wanting to be courteous, Ahmadinejad blamed "certain big powers" for the plight of a large share of humanity — he might have added that according to UN estimates almost half the world lives on less than $2 per day.
But he didn't need to name names; most of the developing world, including the Muslim world, share his belief that their plight is linked to a world economic system whose goal, for more than half a millennium, has been to exploit the peoples and resources of the rest of the world for the benefit of the more advanced countries of the West.
Students protest at the Presidents visit to Tehran University
(Protest by the children of the rich Iranian elite, unhappy small portions of the family wealth is being transferred to the poorer populations)
Discourteous treatment
That is precisely why so many people in the developing world remain opposed to Western-sponsored globalisation, which for most critics, including in the Arab/Muslim world, is little more than imperialism dressed up in the rhetoric of "free markets" and "liberal democracy".
It is this much wider audience, from the favelas of Rio De Janeiro and the shanty towns of Lagos as much as the slums of Casablanca, Sadr City or Cairo, to whom Ahmadinejad was speaking.
His discourse was strikingly similar to that of his biggest ally, Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, who in his speech before the assembly last year had fewer qualms (perhaps because he's neither Arab nor Muslim) about pointing fingers at whom he considers responsible for the sorry shape of so much of the world.
Hoisting Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival above his head, he exclaimed that "the hegemonic pretensions of US imperialism ... put at risk the very survival of humankind".
America, not Iran, Chavez argued, is "the greatest threat looming over our planet".
A more accurate historical comparison would be to the relationship between Egypt's Gemal Abdel Nasser and India's Jawaharlal Nehru, when both came together at the Bandung conference in 1955 to attempt to build a coherent bloc of nations that could protect its interests against those of the two major superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union.
'Human underdogs'
Writing after attending the Bandung Conference, the American novelist Richard Wright exclaimed that it was a meeting of "the despised, the insulted, the hurt, the dispossessed - in short, the underdogs of the human race".
It was this shared experience of oppression that grounded the "Bandung Spirit", which leaders such as Nasser used to develop the "pan-" ideologies (-Arab, -African, -American, -Islamic) that proved a thorn in the side of US policymakers for much of the Cold war.
The difference between Chavez and Ahmadinejad and their "Third World" predecessors, is, in a word, oil.
The Ahmadinejad-Chavez axis has been compared by American politicians such as Florida Republican Congressman Connie Mack to the relationship between Fidel Castro and Russia.
Such analogies are far off the mark.
'Courteous treatment'
— that's how you do it, Columbia
Iran and Venezuela possess the third- and seventh-largest oil reserves in the world, totaling well over 200 billion barrels — that's not much less than the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia.
The two countries will earn well over $80bn in revenues this year alone.
As important, both countries possess non-oil sectors that are surprisingly robust, according to many estimates, for the majority of both Iran's and Venezuela's Gross Domestic Product.
This provides both countries with billions of dollars to spend on foreign aid, as demonstrated by Ahmadinejad's stopover in Bolivia, where he pledged $1bn in Iranian aid and development to the poverty stricken country.
US policymakers' view of the world through the "you're either with us or against us" prism divides the globe into those who support the US and Europe (and the "West" more broadly), and those who support al-Qaeda and "Islamofascism", a term which has been created precisely to ensure that Americans conflate Osama bin Laden with Ahmadinejad, and both with Hitler.
But few people outside of the West buy this comparison, or the larger black-and-white world-view it reflects.
Instead, in Africa and Latin America, Ahmadenijad's argument that "humanity has had a deep wound on its tired body caused by impious powers for centuries" resonates far more deeply than George Bush's hollow-sounding calls for democracy and "ending tyranny".
Colonial rule
The West advises Africa to "get over" colonialism, but the pain of colonial rule is still felt by those suffering under the policies imposed by the IMF and/or the World Bank, or from the continued subsidisation of American and European agribusiness while their countries are flooded with below-market wheat, soy or corn.
It is to those people whom Ahmadinejad promised — in language that strikingly mirrors US President Bush's often religiously-hued speeches — that "the era of darkness will end" with the "dawn of the liberation of, and freedom for, all humans".
Americans may not like Ahmadinejad's or Chavez's internal politics, ideological orientations, or foreign policies.
But for most of the third world, which is tired of centuries of domination by the West, the two leaders are a breath of fresh air, who are coming not as conquerors, but as comrades.
They are free of the condescending "civilising mission" that, from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt to the US invasion of Iraq, always seem to include war, occupation, and the appropriation of strategic natural resources under foreign control as part of their mandate.
And because of this, most of the citizens of the developing world, rightly or wrongly, couldn't care less about Ahmadinejad's positions on Israel, the Holocaust, and nuclear weapons, never mind homosexuals, none of which affect them directly.
They care only that he is sticking-it-to their old colonial or Cold war masters, and offering "respect", "friendship" and billions of dollars in aid with no strings attached.
Americans, Europeans and Israelis can fret about it all they want, but it will not change this reality.
Only a reorientation of the world economy towards real sustainability and equality will dampen his appeal, and that's not likely to happen soon.
Which means that Americans will be hearing a lot more of Ahmadinejad and leaders like him in the future.
The question is, will they be listening?
Subtitles, captions, added by TheWE.cc
TEHRAN — Speaking of business as unusual.
A mere two months ago, the news of a China-Kazakhstan pipeline agreement, worth US$3.5 billion, raised some eyebrows in the world press, some hinting that China's economic foreign policy may be on the verge of a new leap forward.
A clue to the fact that such anticipation may have totally understated the case was last week's signing of a mega-gas deal between Beijing and Tehran worth $100 billion.
Billed as the "deal of century" by various commentators, this agreement is likely to increase by another $50 billion to $100 billion, bringing the total close to $200 billion, when a similar oil agreement, currently being negotiated, is inked not too far from now.
The gas deal entails the annual export of some 10 million tons of Iranian liquefied natural gas (LNG) for a 25-year period, as well as the participation, by China's state oil company, in such projects as exploration and drilling, petrochemical and gas industries, pipelines, services and the like.
The export of LNG requires special cargo ships, however, and Iran is currently investing several billion dollars adding to its small LNG-equipped fleet.
Still, per the admission of the head of the Iranian Tanker Co, Mohammad Souri, Iran needed to purchase another 87 vessels by 2010, in addition to the 10 already purchased, in order to fulfill the needs of its growing LNG market.
Iran has an estimated 26.6-trillion-cubic-meter gas reservoir, the second-largest in the world, about half of which is in offshore zones and the other half onshore.
It is perhaps too early to digest fully the various economic, political and even geostrategic implications of this stunning development, widely considered a major blow to the Bush administration's economic sanctions on Iran and particularly on Iran's energy sector, notwithstanding the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) penalizing foreign companies daring to invest more than $20 million in Iran's oil and gas industry.
While it is unclear what the scope of China's direct investment in Iran's energy sector will turn out to be, it is fairly certain that China's participation in the Yad Avaran field alone will exceed the ILSA's ceiling; this field's oil reservoir is estimated to be 17 billion barrels and is capable of producing 300 to 400 barrels per day.
And this is besides the giant South Pars field, which Iran shares with Qatar, alone possessing close to 8% of the world's gas reserves.
Iran applying
for church to
become a
UNESCO
World Heritage
Site
To open a parenthesis here, until now Tehran has been complaining that Qatar has been outpacing Iran in exploiting its resource 6-1.
In fact, Iran's unhappiness over Qatar's unbalanced access to the South Pars led to a discrete warning by Iran's deputy oil minister and, soon thereafter, Qatar complied with Iran's request for a joint "technical committee" that has yet to yield any result.
For a United States increasingly pointing at China as the next biggest challenge to its Pax Americana, the Iran-China energy cooperation cannot but be interpreted as an ominous sign of emerging new trends in an area considered vital to US national interests.
But, then again, this cuts both ways, that is, the deal should, logically speaking, stimulate others who may still consider Iran untrustworthy or too radical to enter into big projects on a long term basis.
Iran's biggest foreign agreement prior to this gas agreement with China was a long-term $25 billion gas deal with Turkey, which has encountered snags, principally over the price, recently, compared with Iran's various trade agreements with Spain, Italy and others, typically with a life-span of five to seven years.
Thus some Iranian officials are hopeful that the China deal can lead to a fundamental rethinking of the risks of doing business with Iran on the part of European countries, India, Japan, and even Russia.
Concerning India, which signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran initially in 1993 for a 2,670-kilometer pipeline, with more than 700km traversing Pakistani territory, the Iran-China deal will undoubtedly give a greater push to New Delhi to follow Beijing's lead and thus make sure that the "peace pipeline" is finally implemented.
The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to Russia, which has as of late been dragging its feet somewhat on Iran's nuclear reactor, bandwagoning with the US and Group of Eight (G8) countries on the thorny issue of Iran's uranium-enrichment program.
The Russians must now factor in the possibility of being supplanted by China if they lose the confidence of Tehran and appear willing to trade favors with Washington over Iran. Russia's Gazprom may now finally set aside its stubborn resistance to the idea of entering major joint ventures with Iran.
Iran appears more and more interested to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and form a powerful axis with its twin pillars, China and Russia, as a counterweight to a US power "unchained".
The SCO comprises China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
China, Russia and Iran share deep misgivings about the perception of the United States as a "benevolent hegemon" and tend to see a "rogue superpower" instead.
Even short of joining forces formally, the main outlines of such an axis can be discerned from their convergence of threat perception due to, among other things, Russia's disquiet over the post-September 11, 2001, US incursions in its traditional Caucasus-Central Asian "turf", and China's continuing unease over the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan; this is not to mention China's fixed gaze at a "new Silk Road" allowing it unfettered access to the Middle East and Eurasia, this as part and parcel of what is often billed as "the new great game" in Eurasia.
Indeed, what China's recent deals with both Kazakhstan (pertaining to Caspian energy) and Iran (pertaining to Persian Gulf resources) signifies is that the pundits had gotten it wrong until now: the purview of the new great game is not limited to the Central Asia-Caspian Sea basin, but rather has a broader, more integrated, purview increasingly enveloping even the Persian Gulf.
Increasingly, the image of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a sort of frontline state in a post-Cold War global lineup against US hegemony is becoming prevalent among Chinese and Russian foreign-policy thinkers.
For the moment, however, the Iran-Russia-China axis is more a tissue of think-tanks than full-fledged policy, and the mere trade interdependence of the US and China, as well as Russia's growing energy ties to the US alone, not to mention its weariness over any perceived Chinese "overstretch", militate against a grand alliance pitted against the Western superpower.
In fact, the Cold War-type alliances are highly unlikely to be replicated in the current milieu of globalization and complex interdependence; instead, what is likely to emerge in the future are issue-focused or, for the lack of a better word, issue-area alliances whereby, to give an example, the above-said axis may be inspired into existence along geostrategic considerations somewhat apart from purely economic considerations.
Hence what the SCO means on the security front and how significant it will be hinges on a complex, and complicated, set of factors that may eventually culminate in its expansion, from the current group of six, as well as greater, alliance-like, cooperation.
It is noteworthy that in Central Asia-Caucasus, the trend is toward security diversification and even multipolarism, reflected in the US and Russian bases not too far from each other.
In this multipolar sub-order, neither the US is capable of exerting hegemony, nor is Russia's semi-hegemonic sway without competition.
In the Caspian Sea basin, for example, Kazakhstan has opted to take part in several distinct, and contrasting, security networks, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Partnership for Peace program, the Commonwealth of Independent States' Collective Security Organization, the SCO, and membership in OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe).
Kazakhstan is not, however, an exception, but seemingly indicative of an expanding new rule of the (security and strategic) game played out throughout Central Asia-Caucasus.
Economically, both Kazakhstan and Russia are members of the Central Asia Economic Cooperation Organization, and all the Central Asian states are also members of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), which was founded by the trio of Iran, Turkey and Pakistan.
Certain economic alliances are, henceforth, taking shape, alongside the budding security arrangements, which have their own tempo, rationale and security potential.
Concerning the latter, in 1998, the ECO embarked on low security cooperation among its members on drug trafficking and this may soon be expanded to information-sharing on terrorism.
Also, Iran has also entered into low security agreements with some of its Persian Gulf neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The SCO initially was established to deal with border disputes and is now well on its way to focusing on (Islamist) terrorism, drug trafficking and regional insecurity.
Meanwhile, the US, not to be outdone, has been sowing its own bilateral military and security arrangements with various regional countries such as Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as well as promoting the Guuam Group, which includes Azerbaijan and Georgia, formed alongside the BTC (Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan) pipeline as a counterweight to Russian influence.
Consequently, the overall picture that emerges before us is, as stated above, a unique multi-trend of military and security multipolarism defying the logic of Pax Americana.
In this picture, Iran represents one of the poles of attraction, seeking its own sphere of influence by, for instance, entering into a military agreement with Turkmenistan in 1994, and, simultaneously, exploring the larger option of how to coalesce with other powers in order to offset the debilitating consequences of (post-September 11) unbounded Americanization of regional politics.
A glance at Chinese security narratives, and it becomes patently obvious that Beijing shares Iran's deep worries about US unipolarism culminating in, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, unilateral militarism. Various advocates of US preeminence, such as William Kristol, openly write that the US should "work for the fall of the Communist Party oligarchy in China".
Unhinged from the containment of Soviet power, the roots of US unilateralism, and its military manifestation of "preemption", must be located in the logic of unipolarism, thinly disguised by the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq; the latter is, in fact, as aptly put by various critics of US foreign policy, more like a coalition of the coerced and bribed than anything else.
But, realistically speaking, what are the prospects for any regional and or continental realignment leading to the erasure of US unipolarism, notwithstanding the US military and economic colossus bent on preventing, on a doctrinal level, the emergence of any challenger to its global domination now or in the future?
The strategic debates in all three countries, Russia, China and Iran, feature similar concerns and question marks.
For one thing, all three have to contend with the difficulty of sorting the disjunctions between the different sets of national interests, above all economic, ideological and strategic interests.
This aside, a pertinent question is who will win over Russia, Washington, which pursues a coupling role with Moscow vis-a-vis Beijing, or Beijing, trying to wrest away Moscow from Washington?
For now, Russia does not particularly feel compelled to choose between stark options, yet the situation may be altered in China's direction in case the present drift of US power incursions are heightened in the future.
The answer to the above question should be delegated to the future.
For now, however, the quantum leap of China into the Middle East and Caspian energy markets has become a fait accompli, no matter how disturbed its biggest trade partner, the US, over its geopolitical ramifications.
Article published in 2004
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and "Iran's Foreign Policy Since 9/11", Brown's Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with former deputy foreign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003.   He teaches political science at Tehran University.
Copyright 2004, Asia Times Online
Sick person
Sick mentally and spiritually
Calls Iran 'the centre of global terror'
Look a little closer Peres
Iran applying for ancient Armenian church
to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
       Photos of Iranian weapons      
       Syria protected by Russia      
                          To rebel is right, to disobey is a duty, to act is necessary !
twenty
twenty
         Moral responsibility              
Saturday 22nd January 2005
Why I’ll Refuse to Fight in this Immoral War
Every individual soldier has the moral right to decide whether he will put his life on the line
by George Solomou
Earlier this week, I came out publicly against the war in Iraq.
I’m not the only member of the Labour Party to be opposed to our military participation in this American-led adventure, nor am I the only soldier.
In fact, there growing vocal minority within the Territorial Army that is against the war.
Nonetheless I am the first one to make it clear, in public, that if called to serve in Iraq, I will refuse.
This has not been a decision arrived at impulsively.
I have never believed in the rightness of this war; in fact I was on the big anti-war March in February 2003.
Even then — before the absence of the weapons of mass destruction that Prime Minister Blair and President Bush cited as the principal reason to rush to war was admitted by all — I was astounded that they could take us to war when it was clear the majority of the population was opposed.
Members of the Labour Party at the time were talking about practicing an "ethical foreign policy", and yet there was nothing ethical about the way this was being planned and sold to the public.
It was not as though there was no alternative at the time.
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had both pressed for more time before the final decisions were taken.  And much of the rest of the world, both governments and their peoples, were saying, "Let’s get this investigation sorted before we start blowing up human beings."
I could have quietly left the Army then, without fuss; you can resign from the Territorial Army if you’ve not actually been called up to serve in action.
But from boyhood I had wanted to be a soldier; in fact, when I was 22 I had taken advantage of my dual Cypriot-British citizenship, and done national service for the Greek army in Cyprus.
Later I had joined the TA, as a medic, and I was proud to be a part of that institution, and bound to my friends and comrades there, some of whom agreed with me about the futility, immorality and illegality of the war.
None of us had been called up yet, so we succumbed to the all too human temptation to put off the evil day until it was upon us.
In the end, quite a few did resign, and others who were called up deliberately failed their medical examinations.
But although I stayed on a while longer, in the last year, when two of my comrades returned wounded, I began thinking seriously about what I could do to help end this continuing war.
I began to do a lot of research, learning everything I could about the illegality and immorality of our occupation of Iraq.
And I started to go on the anti-war demos that continue around the country.
I listened to peace campaigners and soldiers who had been out there, and MPs like George Galloway.
I would recommend similar research to any soldier who is having doubts about the war.
Finally, one day about a month ago, I stood up at a demo in my local London borough of Hackney and just said "I want to get out of this, but what can I do?"
It became clear that working with Military Families Against the War, I could make public my despair, my anger and my intention to refuse any call-up to serve in Iraq.
I wanted to leave the TA in the public way I have because, although so many solders are against this war, they don’t have a rallying point.
There has to be someone who is the first to go.
After that, there will be another and another and another.
They’re out there, the soldiers who want to make plain their refusal to part of this illegal war — I know, I’ve talked to them.
Many people, even those who agree with my views on the war, will say that it is not the place of soldiers to decide which wars they will fight; that decision must be taken by their senior officers, and ultimately by the government of the day.
But you should only obey orders that are morally right.
The WMD claims were untrue, and so many other lies were told in the pursuit of this war.
Every individual soldier also has the moral right to decide whether he will put his life on the line.
After all, it is his flesh and blood that gets wounded; that gives him the right to an opinion.
And in the modern army, not every opinion will be the same.
No longer do soldiers come from a uniform cultural background.
The Army wants lots of ethnic groups, and now that they’ve got them, they have to accept that there will be different points of view.
Think of the position of Muslims in the Army.
My own background as Greek Cypriot has made me aware of some distasteful things that the British military did in Cyprus in the Fifties; so I too have a different perspective.
If the Government wants their soldiers to fight, they will have to be clear and honest about what they are asking them to do.
I’m proud to be part of the military family that is against the war.
There will be more soldiers coming out soon, and I’ll be proud to stand next to them on 19 March at the anti-war demo in London.
We can help stop this illegal and immoral war, and that is our duty now.
If any soldier would like to contact George Solomou or Military Families Against the War, they can do so at
http://mfaw.org.uk
http://comment.independent.co.uk/co...
to file as a conscientious objector
http://www.objector.org/coclaim.html
by : George Solomou
Saturday 22nd January 2005
http://www.counterpunch.org/
March 7, 2005 By JOHN CHUCKMAN
Many outside the United States comfort themselves with the belief that it really isn't the same people making nightmarish decisions, for America.
Just as George Orwell's Oceania, has several distinct citizenship levels, each with differing rights and privileges, it is the group that George Bush comes from:
— arrogant, unthinking, virtually-get-away-with-murder snots —
that dreams up these horrors and sees that they are generously funded by ordinary, hardworking Americans who must pay their taxes.
A new US soldier arriving in Iraq reading a poster saying: SMILE, YOU'RE IN IRAQ Image: www.ccun.org/Mustafa Rahmeh, Alittihad, 3/9/05)
A new US soldier arriving in Iraq reading a poster saying:
SMILE, YOU'RE IN IRAQ
The Sunday Times — Britain
May 01, 2005
Blair planned Iraq war from start
Michael Smith
Sub-commander, Sozdar Serbiliz
PKK
Northern Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region
INSIDE Downing Street Tony Blair had gathered some of his senior ministers and advisers for a pivotal meeting in the build-up to the Iraq war.
It was 9am on July 23, 2002, eight months before the invasion began and long before the public was told war was inevitable.  
The discussion that morning was highly confidential.
As minutes of the proceedings, headed “Secret and strictly personal — UK eyes only”, state: “This record is extremely sensitive.   No further copies should be made.   It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.”
In the room were the prime minister, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, and military and intelligence chiefs.
Also listed on the minutes are Alastair Campbell, then Blair’s director of strategy, Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Sally Morgan, director of government relations.  
What they were about to discuss would dominate the political agenda for years to come and indelibly stain Blair’s reputation; and last week the issue exploded again on the political scene as Blair campaigned in the hope of winning a third term as prime minister.
For the secret documents — seen by The Sunday Times — reveal that on that Tuesday in 2002:
  • Blair was right from the outset committed to supporting US plans for “regime change” in Iraq.  
  • War was already “seen as inevitable”.  
  • The attorney-general was already warning of grave doubts about its legality.  
    Straw even said the case for war was “thin”.   So Blair and his inner circle set about devising a plan to justify invasion.  
    “If the political context were right,” said Blair, “people would support regime change.”
    Straightforward regime change, though, was illegal.   They needed another reason.
    • By the end of the meeting, a possible path to invasion was agreed and it was noted that Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff, “would send the prime minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week”.  
    Outside Downing Street, the rest of Britain, including most cabinet ministers, knew nothing of this.
    True, tensions were running high, and fears of terrorism were widespread.
    But Blair’s constant refrain was that “no decisions” had been taken about what to do with Iraq.  
    The following day in the House of Commons, Blair told MPs: “We have not got to the stage of military action .  .  .  we have not yet reached the point of decision.”
    It was typical lawyer’s cleverness, if not dissembling: while no actual order had been given to invade, Blair already knew Saddam Hussein was going to be removed, sooner or later.
    Plans were in motion.
    The justification would come later.  
    AS a civil service briefing paper specifically prepared for the July meeting reveals, Blair had made his fundamental decision on Saddam when he met President George W Bush in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002.  
    “When the prime minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April,” states the paper, “he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change.”
    Blair set certain conditions: that efforts were first made to try to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) through weapons inspectors and to form a coalition and “shape” public opinion.
    But the bottom line was that he was signed up to ousting Saddam by force if other methods failed.
    The Americans just wanted to get rid of the brutal dictator, whether or not he posed an immediate threat.
    US occupying forces
    Al-Ramadi
    Iraq
    This presented a problem because, as the secret briefing paper made clear, there were no clear legal grounds for war.
    “US views of international law vary from that of the UK and the international community,” says the briefing paper.  
    “Regime change per se is not a proper basis for military action under international law.”
    To compound matters, the US was not a party to the International Criminal Court, while Britain was.
    The ICC, which came into force on 1 July, 2002, was set up to try international offences such as war crimes.
    Military plans were forging ahead in America but the British, despite Blair’s commitment, played down talk of war.
    In April, Straw told MPs that no decisions about military action “are likely to be made for some time”.
    That month Blair said in the Commons: “We will ensure the house is properly consulted.”
    On July 17 he told MPs: “As I say constantly, no decisions have yet been taken.”
    Six days later in Downing Street the man who opened the secret discussion of Blair’s war meeting was John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee.
    A former MI6 officer, Scarlett had become a key member of Blair’s “sofa cabinet”.
    He came straight to the point — “Saddam’s regime was tough and based on extreme fear.
    The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action”.  
    Saddam was expecting an attack, said Scarlett, but was not convinced it would be “immediate or overwhelming”.
    His assessment reveals that the primary impetus to action over Iraq was not the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction — as Blair later told the country — but the desire to overthrow Saddam.   There was little talk of WMD at all.
    The next contributor to the meeting, according to the minutes, was “C”, as the chief of MI6 is traditionally known.
    Sir Richard Dearlove added nothing to what Scarlett had said about Iraq: his intelligence concerned his recent visit to Washington where he had held talks with George Tenet, director of the CIA.
    “Military action was now seen as inevitable,” said Dearlove.   “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.”
    The Americans had been trying to link Saddam to the 9/11 attacks; but the British knew the evidence was flimsy or non-existent.   Dearlove warned the meeting that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”.
    It was clear from Dearlove’s brief visit that the US administration’s attitude would compound the legal difficulties for Britain.   The US had no patience with the United Nations and little inclination to ensure an invasion was backed by the security council, he said.
    Nor did the Americans seem very interested in what might happen in the aftermath of military action.   Yet, as Boyce then reported, events were already moving swiftly.
    “CDS (chief of the defence staff) said that military planners would brief (Donald) Rumsfeld (US defence secretary) on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.”
    The US invasion plans centred around two options.   One was a full-blown reprise of the 1991 Gulf war, a steady and obvious build-up of troops over several months, followed by a large-scale invasion.
    Estonia
    The other was a “running start”.
    Seizing on an Iraqi casus belli, US and RAF patrols over the southern no-fly zone would knock out the Iraqi air defences.
    Allied special forces would then carry out a series of small-scale operations in tandem with the Iraqi opposition, with more forces joining the battle as they arrived, eventually toppling Saddam’s regime.
    The “running start” was, said Boyce, “a hazardous option”.
    In either case the US saw three options for British involvement.   The first allowed the use of the bases in Diego Garcia and Cyprus and three squadrons of special forces; the second added RAF aircraft and Royal Navy ships; the third threw in 40,000 ground troops “perhaps with a discrete role in northern Iraq entering from Turkey”.
    At the least the US saw the use of British bases as “critical”, which posed immediate legal problems.   And Hoon said the US had already begun “spikes of activity” to put pressure on the regime.
    AMID all this talk of military might and invasion plans, one awkward voice spoke up.   Straw warned that, though Bush had made up his mind on military action, the case for it was “thin”.   He was not thinking in purely legal terms.
    A few weeks later the government would paint Saddam as an imminent threat to the Middle East and the world.   But that morning in private Straw said: “Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.”
    It was a key point.   If Saddam was not an immediate threat, could war be justified legally? The attorney-general made his position clear, telling the meeting that “the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action”.
    Right from the outset, the minutes reveal, the government’s legal adviser had grave doubts about Blair’s plans; he would only finally conclude unequivocally that war was legal three days before the invasion, by which time tens of thousands of troops were already on the borders of Iraq.
    There were three possible legal bases for military action, said Goldsmith.   Self-defence, intervention to end an humanitarian crisis and a resolution from the UN Security Council.
    Neither of the first two options was a possibility with Iraq; it had to be a UN resolution.   But relying, as some hoped they could, on an existing UN resolution, would be “difficult”.
    Despite voicing concerns, Straw was not standing in the way of war.   It was he who suggested a solution: they should force Saddam into a corner where he would give them a clear reason for war.
    “We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors,” he said.
    If he refused, or the weapons inspectors found WMD, there would be good cause for war.   “This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force,” said Straw.
    From the minutes, it seems as if Blair seized on the idea as a way of reconciling the US drive towards invasion and Britain’s need for a legal excuse.
    “The prime minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors,” record the minutes.   “Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD .  .  .  If the political context were right, people would support regime change.”
    Blair would subsequently portray the key issue to parliament and the people as the threat of WMD; and weeks later he would produce the now notorious “sexed up” dossier detailing Iraq’s suspected nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes.
    But in the meeting Blair said: “The two key issues are whether the military plan works and whether we have the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.”
    Hoon said that if the prime minister wanted to send in the troops, he would have to decide early.   The defence chiefs were pressing to be allowed to buy large amounts of equipment as “urgent operational requirements”.   They had been prevented from preparing for war, partly by Blair’s insistence that there could be no publicly visible preparations that might inflame splits in his party, partly by the fact there was no authorisation to spend any money.
    The meeting concluded that they should plan for the UK taking part in any military action.   Boyce would send Blair full details; Blair would come back with a decision about money; and Straw would send Blair the background on the UN inspectors and “discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam”.
    The final note of the minutes, says: “We must not ignore the legal issues: the attorney-general would consider legal advice with (Foreign Office/Ministry of Defence) legal advisers.”
    It was a prophetic warning.
    Also seen by The Sunday Times is the Foreign Office opinion on the possible legal bases for war.
    Marked “Confidential”, it runs to eight pages and casts doubt on the possibility of reviving the authority to use force from earlier UN resolutions.
    “Reliance on it now would be unlikely to receive any support,” it says.
    Foreign Office lawyers were consistently doubtful of the legality of war and one deputy legal director, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, ultimately resigned because she believed the conflict was a “crime of aggression”.
    The Foreign Office briefing on the legal aspects was made available for the Downing Street meeting on July 23.
    Ten days ago, when Blair was interviewed by the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman, the prime minister was asked repeatedly whether he had seen that advice.
    “No,” said Blair.   “I had the attorney-general’s advice to guide me.”
    But as the July 23 documents show, the attorney-general’s view was, until the last minute, also riven with doubts.
    Three years on, it and the questionable legality of the war are still hanging round Blair’s neck like an albatross.
    Copyright 2006   Times Newspapers Ltd.
    U.S. troops backed by helicopters killed the man, injuring his wife
     US largest war funding request ever for 2008
    Weeps for father killed by the US
    U.S. troops backed by helicopters killed his father, injuring his mother
     US largest war funding request ever for 2008
     
    Published on Wednesday, April 27, 2005 by the Guardian (UK)
    This Is Our Guernica
    Ruined, cordoned Falluja is emerging as the decade's monument to brutality
    by Jonathan Steele and Dahr Jamail
    Robert Zoellick is the archetypal US government insider, a man with a brilliant technical mind but zero experience of any coalface or war front.
    Sliding effortlessly between ivy league academia, the US treasury and corporate boardrooms (including an advisory post with the scandalous Enron), his latest position is the number-two slot at the state department.
    Put the prime minister and the foreign secretary to shame
    Yet this ultimate "man of the suites" did something earlier this month that put the prime minister and the foreign secretary to shame.
    On their numerous visits to Iraq, neither has ever dared to go outside the heavily fortified green zones of Baghdad and Basra to see life as Iraqis have to live it.
    They come home after photo opportunities, briefings and pep talks with British troops and claim to know what is going on in the country they invaded, when in fact they have seen almost nothing.
    Zoellick, by contrast, on his first trip to Iraq, asked to see Falluja. Remember Falluja?
    A city of some 300,000, which was alleged to be the stronghold of armed resistance to the occupation.
    Two US attempts were made to destroy this symbol of defiance last year.
    The first, in April, fizzled out after Iraqi politicians, including many who supported the invasion of their country, condemned the use of air strikes to terrorise an entire city.
    The Americans called off the attack, but not before hundreds of families had fled and more than 600 people had been killed.
    Six months later the Americans tried again.
    This time Washington's allies had been talked to in advance.  Consistent US propaganda about the presence in Falluja of a top al-Qaida figure, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was used to create a climate of acquiescence in the US-appointed Iraqi government.
    Shia leaders were told that bringing Falluja under control was the only way to prevent a Sunni-inspired civil war.
    Blair sent British troops to block escape routes from Falluja
    Blair was invited to share responsibility by sending British troops to block escape routes from Falluja and prevent supplies entering once the siege began.
    Warnings of the onslaught prompted the vast majority of Falluja's 300,000 people to flee.
    The city was then declared a free-fire zone on the grounds that the only people left behind must be "terrorists".
    Three weeks after the attack was launched last November, the Americans claimed victory.
    They say they killed about 1,300 people; one week into the siege, a BBC reporter put the unofficial death toll at 2,000.
    But details of what happened and who the dead were remain obscure.
    Were many unarmed civilians, as Baghdad-based human rights groups report?
    Even if they were trying to defend their homes by fighting the Americans, does that make them "terrorists"?
    Journalists "embedded" with US forces filmed atrocities, including the killing of a wounded prisoner, but no reporter could get anything like a full picture.
    Since the siege ended, tight US restrictions - as well as the danger of hostage-taking that prevents reporters from travelling in most parts of Iraq - have put the devastated city virtually off limits.
    Blasted husks of buildings still line block after block
    In this context, Zoellick's trip, which was covered by a small group of US journalists, was illuminating.
    The deputy secretary of state had to travel to this "liberated" city in a Black Hawk helicopter flying low over palm trees to avoid being shot down. 
    He wore a flak jacket under his suit even though Falluja's streets were largely deserted.
    His convoy of eight armoured vehicles went "so quickly past an open-air bakery reopened with a US-provided micro-loan that workers tossing dough could be glanced only in the blink of an eye," as the Washington Post reported.
    "Blasted husks of buildings still line block after block," the journalist added.
    Meeting hand-picked Iraqis in a US base, Zoellick was bombarded with complaints about the pace of US reconstruction aid and frequent intimidation of citizens by American soldiers.
    Although a state department factsheet claimed 95% of residents had water in their homes, Falluja's mayor said it was contaminated by sewage and unsafe.
    Other glimpses of life in Falluja come from Dr Hafid al-Dulaimi, head of the city's compensation commission, who reports that 36,000 homes were destroyed in the US onslaught, along with 8,400 shops.
    Sixty nurseries and schools were ruined, along with 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries.
    Daud Salman, an Iraqi journalist with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, on a visit to Falluja two weeks ago, found that only a quarter of the city's residents had gone back.
    Thousands remain in tents on the outskirts.
    The Iraqi Red Crescent finds it hard to go in to help the sick because of the US cordon around the city.
    Burhan Fasa'a, a cameraman for the Lebanese Broadcasting Company, reported during the siege that dead family members were buried in their gardens because people could not leave their homes.
    Refugees told one of us that civilians carrying white flags were gunned down by American soldiers.
    Corpses were tied to US tanks and paraded around like trophies.
    Justin Alexander, a volunteer for Christian Peacemaker Teams, recently found hundreds living in tents in the grounds of their homes, or in a single patched-up room.
    A strict system of identity cards blocks access to anyone whose papers give a birthplace outside Falluja, so long-term residents born elsewhere cannot go home.
    "Fallujans feel the remnants of their city have been turned into a giant prison," he reports.
    Many complain that soldiers of the Iraqi national guard, the fledgling new army, loot shops during the night-time curfew and detain people in order to take a bribe for their release.
    They are suspected of being members of the Badr Brigade, a Shia militia that wants revenge against Sunnis.
    One thing is certain:  the attack on Falluja has done nothing to still the insurgency against the US-British occupation nor produced the death of al-Zarqawi - any more than the invasion of Afghanistan achieved the capture or death of Osama bin Laden.
    Thousands of bereaved and homeless Falluja families have a new reason to hate the US and its allies.
    Tour the city that Britain had a share in destroying
    At least Zoellick went to see.
    He gave no hint of the impression that the trip left him with, but is too smart not to have understood something of the reality.
    The lesson ought not to be lost on Blair and Straw.
    Every time the prime minister claims it is time to "move on" from the issue of the war's legality and rejoice at Iraq's transformation since Saddam Hussein was toppled, the answer must be:  "Remember Falluja."
    When the foreign secretary next visits Iraq, he should put on a flak jacket and tour the city that Britain had a share in destroying.
    The government keeps hoping Iraq will go away as an election issue.
    It stubbornly refuses to do so.
    Voters are not only angry that the war was illegal, illegitimate and unnecessary.
    The treatment inflicted on Iraqis since the invasion by the US and Britain is equally important.
    In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction.
    In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the Russians; it still lies in ruins.
    This decade's unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja, a text-book case of how not to handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular occupations will always degenerate into desperation and atrocity.
    Jonathan Steele is the Guardian's senior foreign correspondent; Dahr Jamail is a freelance American journalist.
    © 2005 Guardian Newspapers, Ltd.
    Common Dreams © 1997-2005
    April 15, 2005
    Fallujah: Dresden in Iraq
    Although studiously ignored by the mainstream news media, last month came reports that the U.S. used napalm and chemical weapons in its assault upon the city of Fallujah.
    The assault of November 2004 resulted in the near-total destruction of the city, as well as the deaths of thousands of non-insurgent Iraqi civilians.
    If the reports about napalm and chemical weapons are true, not only would the U.S. be in violation of international law, it would be guilty of the very crimes against humanity that it previously leveled against Saddam Hussein and used as a justification for invading Iraq.
    Reportedly, Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli of the Iraq Ministry of Health held a press conference last month and charged the U.S. with using napalm, mustard gas, and nerve gas when it attacked Fallujah in November 2004.
    Dr. ash-Shaykhli described "melted" bodies and fires that could not be put out with water.
    Similarly, Dr. ash-Shaykhli described entire sections of the city where nothing, neither cats nor dogs nor birds, was left alive, suggesting the use of chemical weapons.
    Promptly, the United States denied Dr. ash-Shaykhli’s allegations about mustard and nerve gasses.
    The U.S. even went so far as to deny the very existence of Dr. ash-Shaykhli or that anyone by that name ever worked for Iraq’s Ministry of Health.
    According to the U.S., the false story about the U.S. military’s use of chemical and nerve gasses in Fallujah was invented by a web site pretending to be that of the Qatari television network Al Jazeera.
    Unfortunately, the U.S. denial of wrongdoing in Fallujah cannot withstand scrutiny.
    For example, while the U.S. is correct that a fake Al Jazeera ("aljazeera.com") published a story about U.S. atrocities in Fallujah, the U.S. glosses over the fact that the real Al Jazeera ("aljazeera.net") published a similar story.
    On March 17, 2005, the real Al Jazeera reported on the wholesale killings of civilians by U.S. forces in Fallujah, including through the use of napalm.
    In that story, the real Al Jazeera provided eyewitness accounts of U.S. forces killing entire families, including women and children.
    Likewise, the real Al Jazeera reported that the U.S. raided the only hospital in Fallujah at the beginning of the assault in order to prevent reports of civilian casualties.
    The U.S. has yet to attempt to discredit the story published by the real Al Jazeera.
    Furthermore, U.S. denials about using prohibited weapons in Fallujah, particularly napalm, lack credibility inasmuch as the U.S. was forced to retract previous denials of similar accusations.
    On March 22, 2003, following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that U.S. forces had used napalm.
    Noting that napalm had been banned by a United Nations convention in 1980 (a convention never signed by the U.S.), U.S. military spokesmen denied using napalm in Iraq.
    On August 5, 2003, however, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that U.S. officials confirmed using "napalm-like" weapons in Iraq between March and April 2003.
    In a feat of semantic hair-splitting of which Bill Clinton would have been proud, the U.S. claimed the incendiaries used in Iraq contained less benzene than the internationally-banned napalm and, therefore, were "firebombs" and not napalm.
    According to U.S. officials, had reporters asked about firebombs in March of 2003, the U.S. would have confirmed their use.
    Nonetheless, the U.S. was forced to concede that regardless of the technicalities, the napalm-like weapons were functionally equivalent to napalm.
    In fact, the difference between napalm and firebombs is so minute that U.S. forces still refer to the weapons as napalm.
    With that kind of track-record, it is difficult to swallow the recent denials by the U.S. that it used napalm or any other banned weapons in Fallujah.
    Such denials are even less convincing when contrasted with eye-witness reports of what happened in Fallujah.
    There are, first of all, the findings by Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhil of Iraq’s Ministry of Health that U.S. forces used napalm and chemical weapons in Fallujah.
    However, even taking as true the U.S. claim that Dr. ash-Shaykhli never existed, much less worked for Iraq’s Ministry of Health, he is not the only individual to claim that the U.S. used banned weapons in Fallujah.
    For instance, on November 10, 2004, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted Kamal Hadeethi, a physician from a hospital near Fallujah, as saying, "The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted."
    When he spoke from Baghdad on November 29, 2004 with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, American journalist Dahr Jamail recounted stories told to him by refugees from Fallujah.
    According to Jamail, the refugees described bombs which covered entire areas with fire that could not be extinguished with water and which burned bodies beyond recognition.
    Likewise, in a November 26, 2004 story for the Inter Press Service (http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=26440 ), Jamail reported eye-witness accounts of U.S. forces using chemical weapons and napalm in Fallujah.
    Later, in a January 18, 2005 report for Electronic Iraq, Jamail reported eye-witness accounts of U.S. forces using bulldozers and dump-trucks to remove tons of soil from various sections of Fallujah.
    Eye-witnesses also described U.S. forces using water tankers to "power wash" some of the streets in Fallujah.
    It does not take a conspiracy-theorist to conclude that U.S. forces wanted to "decontaminate" the city and remove evidence of chemical weapons.
    On November 29, 2004, Al Jazeera TV (the real Al Jazeera) interviewed Dr. Ibrahim al-Kubaysi in Baghdad after his medical delegation was denied access to Fallujah.
    In that interview, Dr. al-Kubaysi recounted eye-witness descriptions of blackened corpses and corpses without bullet holes strewn throughout the streets of Fallujah.
    On February 26, 2005, the German newspaper Junge Welt published an interview with Dr. Mohammad J. Haded, a member of the medical staff of the Central Hospital of Fallujah, and Mohammad F. Awad, a member of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society who helped gather corpses in Fallujah for identification.
    In that interview, Dr. Haded described Fallujah as "Dresden in Iraq" and Awad recounted the "remarkable number of dead people [who] were totally charred."
    Dr. Haded also described how U.S. forces "wiped out" the hospital in Fallujah, attacked rescue vehicles, and destroyed a makeshift field hospital.
    American documentary-maker Mark Manning made similar observations:
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8353.htm
    while in Fallujah, as reported in the March 17, 2005 edition of the Santa Barbara Independent.
    Manning visited Fallujah in January 2005 and interviewed Iraqi physicians who told him that the first target of U.S. forces in the November 2004 assault on Fallujah was the hospital and that ambulances were fair-game.
    Iraqi physicians told Manning they were certain chemical weapons had been used in Fallujah "because they handled many dead bodies bearing no evident sign of trauma."
    As for the use of napalm by U.S. forces, Manning returned home from Fallujah with photographs of charred corpses "whose clothes had been melted into their skin."
    Michele Naar-Obed, of the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Team, also visited Fallujah in early 2005.
    Naar-Obed described her trip in the March 13, 2005 edition of the Duluth News Tribune of Minnesota.
    As with Manning, Naar-Obed described Iraqi physicians who were convinced that chemical weapons and napalm were used by U.S. forces in Fallujah.
    According to Naar-Obed ( http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P1916 ), U.N. representatives confirmed to her reports of execution-style killings of handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqis, as well as reports of bodies that were burned and horribly disfigured.
    Finally, on March 21, 2005, the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah Citizens, established by the Iraqi transitional government, reported that approximately 100,000 wild and domesticated animals were found dead in Fallujah, killed by chemical or gaseous munitions ( http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m10580 ).
    An estimated 600 non-insurgent civilians died in the U.S. assaults upon Fallujah.
    Over half of them were women and children.
    According to an April 4, 2005 report by IRIN ( http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=46441 ), a U.N. humanitarian information unit, as many as 70 percent of all structures were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable.
    There is similarly no water, electricity, or sewage treatment in Fallujah.
    Not surprisingly, a mission that was meant to pacify an insurgent stronghold ended up breeding anti-American hatred among Fallujah’s survivors and their sympathizers.
    U.S. denials of wrongdoing notwithstanding, there are numerous independent sources making similar reports about U.S. forces employing banned weapons in Fallujah, as well as targeting hospitals and civilians.
    In the face of such independent and corroborating reports, it is hard to escape the sickening conclusion that the U.S. violated international law and committed war crimes in its assaults upon Fallujah.
    In doing so, the U.S. became the evil the Bush administration has vowed to eradicate.
    Suddenly, the Bush administration’s open hostility toward the International Criminal Court in particular, and international law in general, makes a whole lot more sense.
    Ken Sanders is a writer based in Tucson, Arizona. Visit his weblog at: www.politicsofdissent.blogspot.com/.
    Reported 5th March 2005
    U.S. Used Mustard gas, Nerve gas, and Burning Chemicals on Iraqis in Fallujah
    U.S. used banned weapons in Fallujah — Health ministry
    An official in Iraq’s health ministry said that the U.S. used banned weapons in Fallujah
    Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq’s health ministry, said that the U.S. military used internationally banned weapons during its deadly offensive in the city of Fallujah.
    Dr. ash-Shaykhli was assigned by the ministry to assess the health conditions in Fallujah following the November assault there.
    He said that researches, prepared by his medical team, prove that U.S. occupation forces used internationally prohibited substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals in their attacks in the war-torn city.
    The health official announced his findings at a news conference in the health ministry building in Baghdad.
    The press conference was attended by more than 20 Iraqi and foreign media networks, including the Iraqi ash-Sharqiyah TV network, the Iraqi as-Sabah newspaper, the U.S. Washington Post and the Knight-Ridder service.
    Dr. ash-Shaykhli started the conference by reporting the current health conditions of the Fallujah residents. He said that the city is still suffering from the effects of chemical substances and other types of weapons that cause serious diseases over the long term.
    Asked whether limited nuclear weapons were also used by U.S. forces in Fallujah, Dr. ash-Shaykhli said; “What I saw during our research in Fallujah leads me to me believe everything that has been said about that battle.
    “I absolutely do not exclude their use of nuclear and chemical substances, since all forms of nature were wiped out in that city. I can even say that we found dozens, if not hundreds, of stray dogs, cats, and birds that had perished as a result of those gasses.”
    Dr. ash-Shaykhli promised to send the findings of the researches to responsible bodies inside Iraq and abroad.
    Fallujah residents said napalm gas was used
    During the U.S. offensive, Fallujah residents reported that they saw “melted” bodies in the city, which suggests that U.S. forces used napalm gas, a poisonous cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel that makes the human body melt.
    In November, Labour MPs in the UK demanded Prime Minister Tony Blair to confront the Commons over the use of napalm gas in Fallujah.
    Furious critics have also demanded that Blair threatens the U.S. to pullout British forces from Iraq unless the U.S. stops using the world’s deadliest weapon.
    The United Nations banned the use of the napalm gas against civilians in 1980 after pictures of a naked wounded girl in Vietnam shocked the world.
    The United States, which didn’t endorse the convention, is the only nation in the world still using the deadly weapon.
    Wednesday, 4 June, 2003
    Blair under fire over weapons claims
    Tony Blair in the Commons
    Blair says the charges are totally untrue
    Tony Blair has again insisted intelligence documents on Iraq's weapons programmes were not changed on the orders of Downing Street to strengthen the case for war.
    Announcing that Parliament's all-party intelligence and security committee would be conducting an inquiry into the row, the prime minister said the allegations were "completely and totally untrue".
    Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said the credibility of the government was now at stake in the row.
    But a Liberal Democrat motion, backed by the Tories, calling for an independent judicial inquiry, was defeated by 301 votes to 203 on a government majority of 98.
    The vote, which saw just 11 Labour MPs rebel, came at the end of a debate about the Iraq intelligence.
    Deceit'
    During the debate, former cabinet minister Clare Short said her briefings from the security services made her believe the intelligence had been exaggerated.
    "The fact there was deceit on the way to military action is a very grave accusation because if we can be deceived about this what can we not be deceived about," she said.
    There have been uncorroborated briefings by a potentially rogue element
    Dr John Reid
    Leader of the Commons
    Critics reportedly faced a showdown with John Prescott at the weekly meeting of Labour backbenchers.
    "This is all about the integrity of the party — and the prime minister does not lie," Mr Prescott told them, according to London's Evening Standard newspaper.
    In the Commons, Mr Blair backed a claim by cabinet minister John Reid that "rogue elements" in the intelligence services were briefing against the government.
    But he said he was convinced that nobody from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) — which briefs ministers on security matters — was involved.
    Mr Blair said one claim being disputed — that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order being given — was entirely the work of the JIC.
    Blair says the charges are totally untrue
    Blair says the charges are totally untrue
    Launching a vigorous defence of the government's approach to Iraq, Mr Blair said work on finding the weapons was just beginning.
    A newly expanded team of about 1,400 people from the US, UK and Australia was only now stepping up the search.
    "I have absolutely no doubt at all that they will find the clearest possible evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," he said.
    'Credibility at risk'
    Mr Blair urged MPs to remember that as well as the weapons issue "the people of Iraq are delighted that a brutal dictator that murdered hundreds of thousands of people is gone".
    But he faced tough questioning from Mr Duncan Smith after Dr Reid's allegation that "rogue elements" were feeding journalists with false information about the government's approach to Iraq.
    The Tory leader demanded to know who those "rogue elements" were.
    "The whole credibility of his government rests on clearing up these charges," he said calling for an independent judicial inquiry.
    "I simply say to the prime minister these allegations are not going to go away."
    Robin Cook and Clare Short challenged the prime minister
    Robin Cook and Clare Short challenged the prime minister
    Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy said: "Who are the public to trust if the government are letting it be known that they can't wholeheartedly trust their own intelligence services?"
    Former cabinet minister Robin Cook urged Mr Blair to acknowledge the government was mistaken in making the 45 minutes claim, and also the separate claim Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa.
    Mr Cook later accused Dr Reid of "running around lighting bush fires" with his security services claims in the hope that attention would be diverted from the central charge.
    'Skulduggery'
    Earlier, Dr Reid told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was a "disgrace" that the integrity of the leadership of the security services was being impugned by "obviously rogue isolated individuals".
    He urged critics to "put up or shut up" in the light of "15 years of evidence" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Blair says the charges are totally untrue
    Two Committees
    Intelligence and security committee is appointed by and reports to the prime minister, although it prides itself on its independence.  It meets behind closed doors.
    Foreign affairs committee is a cross-party select committee and meets in public.

    MPs on the influential foreign affairs select committee are set to investigate the way the government presented intelligence information over Iraq's weapons.
    The Intelligence and Security Committee inquiry will take place behind closed doors.
    But the prime minister said its report would be published and his spokesman indicated that Mr Blair himself could give evidence to the inquiry.
    Monday, 2 June, 2003
    In quotes: Blair and Iraq weapons
    There are growing calls for an inquiry into the government's claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes.
    Ex-cabinet ministers Clare Short and Robin Cook have both argued evidence about Iraq's weapons was hyped up before the war.
    So what claims did the prime minister make about Saddam's weapons?  Here are some of his key quotes.

    10 April 2002
    "Saddam Hussein's regime is despicable, he is developing weapons of mass destruction, and we cannot leave him doing so unchecked.
    "He is a threat to his own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also.
    "Doing nothing is not an option ... Our way of proceeding should be and will be measured, calm and thought through."
    House of Commons

    24 September 2002
    "(Saddam's) weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing.  The policy of containment is not working.  The weapons of mass destruction programme is not shut down.  It is up and running....
    "The intelligence picture (the intelligence services) paint is one accumulated over the past four years.  It is extensive, detailed and authoritative.
    "It concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population; and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability....
    "On chemical weapons, the dossier shows that Iraq continues to produce chemical agent for chemical weapons; has rebuilt previously destroyed production plants across Iraq; has bought dual-use chemical facilities; has retained the key personnel formerly engaged in the chemical weapons programme; and has a serious ongoing research programme into weapons production, all of it well funded..."
    House of Commons

    25 February 2003
    "The intelligence is clear: (Saddam) continues to believe his WMD programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression.
    "It is essential to his regional power.  Prior to the inspectors coming back in he was engaged in a systematic exercise in concealment of the weapons.
    "The biological agents we believe Iraq can produce include anthrax, botulinum, toxin, aflatoxin and ricin.  All eventually result in excruciatingly painful death."
    House of Commons

    11 March 2003
    "We have 300,000 troops down there now sitting on his doorstep.  You've got the UN inspectors in.  It's unlikely at this very moment in time as we speak that Saddam is going to do anything; that's true.
    "But what happened before when he was first given the opportunity to disarm completely was in April 1991 and he was given 15 days then to come forward with an honest declaration of what he had...
    "If we don't act now, then we will go back to what has happened before and then of course the whole thing begins again and he carries on developing these weapons and these are dangerous weapons, particularly if they fall into the hands of terrorists who we know want to use these weapons if they can get them."
    MTV debate

    25 February 2003
    "We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years-contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence-Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons.  I say that such a claim is palpably absurd."
    House of Commons
    “Saddam Hussein's regime is despicable, he is developing weapons of mass destruction, and we cannot leave him doing so unchecked.
    "He is a threat to his own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also.
    "Doing nothing is not an option ... Our way of proceeding should be and will be measured, calm and thought through.”
    Blair — House of Commons
    10 April 2002
    		http://dahrjamailiraq.com/
    A wounded four year-old Iraqi child lies in a hospital bed next to his sister after they were both injured in a suicide attack in Baghdad, January 4, 2005.
    ESTIMATED NUCLEAR WARHEADS, STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL
    Map showing declared, suspected and potential nuclear nations. The US is also said to have some 3,000 warheads in reserve, while Russia has about 11,000 in non-operational stockpiles. Israel declines to confirm it has nuclear weapons. North Korea — 1 test underground, October 2006. Iran is accused by the US of ambitions to build nuclear arms. The United states had drawn up a battle plan for the potential use of nuclear weapons in Iraq and the United States has been involved in planning potential nuclear use scenarios for Iran. The United States is now involved in a massive program to overhaul its nuclear arsenal. In fact they're working to replace every nuclear warhead and all of the existing delivery systems in the arsenal to ensure prompt precision global strike capabilities. Jackie Cabasso — Western States Legal Foundation
    The United States has conducted 1,127 nuclear and thermonuclear tests — 217 in the atmosphere.
    The Soviet Union/ Russia conducted 969 tests — 219 in the atmosphere.
    France, 210 tests, 50 in the atmosphere.
    The United Kingdom, 45 tests — 21 in the atmosphere.
    China, 45 tests — 23 in the atmosphere.
    India and Pakistan — 13 tests underground.
    Israel — possible 1 test atmosphere South Africa 1979.
    North Korea — 1 test underground, October 2006.
    “The United states had drawn up a battle plan for the potential use of nuclear weapons in Iraq and the United States has been involved in planning potential nuclear use scenarios for Iran.”
    “The United States is now involved in a massive program to overhaul its nuclear arsenal.   In fact they're working to replace every nuclear warhead and all of the existing delivery systems in the arsenal to ensure prompt precision global strike capabilities.”
    Jackie Cabasso — Western States Legal Foundation
    Western Elite militarism
    Western Elite Terror States
    Western Elite War Crimes
    'Oh!   You don't believe the 9-11 official version,' they say.
    'You mean where they want you to accept the buildings were not blown up from below.
    'Plane fuel!   Substance never burns higher then a gas stove!   That it caused the inner core steel to melt!
    'Steel melting!
    'Concrete vaporizing!
    ' 'No!   I don't believe that conspiracy theory.
    'Cheney!   Bush!   Rudy Giuliani!   HA!  HA!
    'Tower 7 that never had a plane hit — just came tumbling down!
    'You believe that, eh!
    'Ever think it had to be blown up because the plane scheduled to fly into it was off getting shot down.
    'Thermite in Tower 7's walls, you see — incriminating evidence — impossible to get out without people watching!
    Had to be blown up!
    'Next you'll be saying Obama is not a Wall Street Illuminati banker stooge?
    'Take your pick:   The partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comedians.
    'Him who allows himself to be used.
    'Oh!   I can't really blame you,   Television it turns minds to pulp.
    'Turn off the television.   It's the only way.'
    'Turn off the television?'
    'Get rid of it really.   I mean what else is there to do!'
    'Get rid of the television?'
    'Don't forget all radio garbage is propaganda, even the songs.
    'Then those five minute propaganda hits they send you every hour!
    'The ones they refer to as News
    'Get rid of all the propaganda from your brain, the only way to do it.'
    'Stop being hooked on those Hollywood movies — even those that make you think they are making you think'
    'All paid performers to make your brain dead.
    'You turn the brainwashing off, you'll begin to become yourself.
    'It really is the only way!'
    'Oh!'
    Kewe — TheWE.cc
     
           We are change      
                9/11 lies have sustained the ruling terrorism-threat paradigm          
           The “why” is obvious: To justify an unjust war to serve corporate interests and greed       
           9.11 Truth New York City      
          Decades long history of political disruption the US has been responsible for          
               9/11 is part of a long series of criminal, imperialist conquests          
               Another major highlight was surprise appearance of Cynthia McKinney       
     
           Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth      
                A solid convincing case which architects & engineers will readily see: that the 3 WTC high-rise buildings were destroyed by both classic and novel forms of controlled demolition          
           These buildings were professionally demolished with explosives       
      Protests around world every 11th of month
    Danish scientist Niels Harrit on nano-thermite in the WTC dust. Niels Harrit, you and eight other researchers conclude in this article that it was nano-thermite that caused these buildings to collapse. We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic. The carbon content of the red material indicates that an organic substance is present. This would be expected for super-thermite formulations in order to produce high gas pressures upon ignition and thus make them explosive. Photo: agenda911.dk
    Danish scientist Niels Harrit on nano-thermite in the WTC dust
    ITALIAN SAYS 9-11 SOLVED
    It’s common knowledge, he reveals
    CIA — Mossad behind terror attacks
    By the Staff of American Free Press
    Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, who revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, has told Italy’s oldest and most widely read newspaper that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad, and that this was common knowledge among global intelligence agencies.
    In what translates awkwardly into English, Cossiga told the newspaper Corriere della Sera:
    “All the [intelligence services] of America and Europe… know well that the disastrous attack has been planned and realized from the Mossad, with the aid of the Zionist world in order to put under accusation the Arabic countries and in order to induce the western powers to take part … in Iraq [and] Afghanistan.”
    Cossiga was elected president of the Italian Senate in July 1983 before winning a landslide election to become president of the country in 1985, and he remained until 1992.
    Cossiga’s tendency to be outspoken upset the Italian political establishment, and he was forced to resign after revealing the existence of, and his part in setting up, Operation Gladio.
    This was a rogue intelligence network under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 1960s, 1970s and ’80s.
    Gladio’s specialty was to carry out what they termed 'false flag' operations — terror attacks that were blamed on their domestic and geopolitical opposition.
    In March 2001, Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony:
    “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game.
    The reason was quite simple: to force … the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”
    Cossiga first expressed his doubts about 9-11 in 2001, and is quoted by 9-11 researcher Webster Tarpley saying:
    “The mastermind of the attack must have been a sophisticated mind, provided with ample means not only to recruit fanatic kamikazes, but also highly specialized personnel.
    I add one thing: it could not be accomplished without infiltrations in the radar and flight security personnel.”
    Coming from a widely respected former head of state, Cossiga’s assertion that the 9-11 attacks were an inside job and that this is common knowledge among global intelligence agencies is illuminating.
    It is one more eye-opening confirmation that has not been mentioned by America’s propaganda machine in print or on TV.
    Nevertheless, because of his experience and status in the world, Cossiga cannot be discounted as a crackpot.
    Free to redistribute as long as credit given to American Free Press
    We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic. The carbon content of the red material indicates that an organic substance is present. This would be expected for super-thermite formulations in order to produce high gas pressures upon ignition and thus make them explosive. Photo: Bentham-Open.org
    Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe
    Photo: Bentham-Open.org
    Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe
    We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center.
    One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later.
    The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).
    The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.
    The carbon content of the red material indicates that an organic substance is present.
    This would be expected for super-thermite formulations in order to produce high gas pressures upon ignition and thus make them explosive.
           Told for the first time — the story of Mossad's advance 'knowledge' about the 9-11 attack and how the US Army reported that Mossad "has capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."       
           Suppressed Details Of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly Into The Cia's Highest Ranks
    In the hours following the World Trade Center attack, millions of American Jews were shocked and deeply hurt at accusations spreading around the world like wildfire that Israel had been behind the attack, and had even warned thousands of Jews working in the Twin Towers not to go to work that morning.       
           It is a fair question to ask if Israeli intelligence might have known in advance and, further, if Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) might have had a hand in advancing the act to deflect criticism against Israeli actions in Palestine.       
           The secret story of Mossad and the World Trade Center attack      
           The Odigo Warning: Israeli employees get e-mail warnings of 9-11     
           SEC Secret Probe Of Stock Dealings Before 9/11    
           Truth Action LA Branch      
                We are in the midst of a mass awakening          
           9/11 is the foundational myth upon which the entire agenda has been triggered for our generation       
     
           Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice      
                High Velocity Bursts of Debris From Point-Like Sources in the WTC Towers           
           Why Did the World’s Most Advanced Electronics Warfare Plane Circle Over The White House on 9/11?        
    Your life, your children's lives —
    Will you live or die?
    Decided by small group of elite.
    Pure evil
    It doesn't get any clearer than this
     
    Published on Friday, March 2, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times
    US to Develop New Hydrogen Bomb
    by Ralph Vartabedian
    The Energy Department will announce today a contract to develop the nation's first new hydrogen bomb in two decades, involving a collaboration between three national weapons laboratories, The Times has learned.
    The new bomb will include design features from all three labs, though Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area appears to have taken the lead position in the project. The Los Alamos and Sandia labs in New Mexico will also be part of the project.
           Hiroshima, Nagasaki      
           — George Weller report      
    Why are the West's elites trying to start a nuclear war?
    Because you pay for it
    BBC — Thursday, 6 September 2007
    UK jets 'chase Russian bombers'
    UK MoD image of Tupolev-95 Bear bomber An MoD photo shows RAF Typhoon shadowing a Russian Bear-H
    Norway says Russia has increased military flights in the Arctic
    The UK's Royal Air Force has launched fighter jets to intercept eight Russian military planes flying in airspace patrolled by Nato, UK officials say.
    Four RAF F3 Tornado aircraft were scrambled in response to the Russian action, the UK's defence ministry said.
    The Russian planes - said to be long-range bombers - had earlier been followed by Norwegian F16 jets.
    Russia recently revived a Cold War-era practice of flying bombers on long-range patrols.
    A Norwegian officer, Lt Col John Inge Oegland, told the BBC the Russian Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bombers flew in international airspace from the Barents Sea to the Atlantic, before turning back.
    Two Norwegian F-16s shadowed them on Thursday morning and another two went up later, he said.
    There have been several similar incidents in recent months, Lt-Col Oegland added.
    "Norway is following the increased Russian activity in the far north with interest," he told the BBC News website.
    He said the Russian flights were not causing alarm in Norway.   "Our systems are adequate," he said, when asked whether Norway was bolstering its security in the area.
    If you never see another movie, better watch this: the old original version still allowed on Google video
    For Google video version — click here — it will state this version is old!
    This version is not censored — it is infinitely better then the newer censored version
    To download this version and keep
    http://keepvid.com
    copy and paste
    http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331
    P.S. The new Zeitgeist movie is loaded with political rhetoric
    It cannot be more opposite of the sense of Zeitgeist — a German word meaning 'Of the time'
    AND don't forget this:
    Pandora's Black Box Chapter Two — click here
    Pilots for 911 truth — click here
    9/11
    By all accounts, the unprecedented events of September 11th, 2001 changed the way our country functions, and in turn, the world.
    It is therefore critical that conscientious Americans, as well as people around the globe, understand these events in detail.
    Unfortunately the official reports, including The 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST WTC Report, written by those working under the direction of the Bush Administration, have been proven to be elaborate cover-ups.
     Film: 9/11 Revisited
    September 11th Revisited is perhaps the most riveting film ever made about the destruction of the World Trade Center.
    This is a powerful documentary which features eyewitness accounts and archived news footage that was shot on September 11, 2001 but never replayed on television.
    Featuring interviews with eyewitnesses & firefighters, along with expert analysis by Professor Steven E. Jones, Professor David Ray Griffin, MIT Engineer Jeffrey King, and Professor James H. Fetzer.
    This film provides stunning evidence that explosives were used in the complete demolition of the WTC Twin Towers and WTC Building 7.
    For Film: 9/11 Revisited
    — Click Here
    Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
    An excellent documentary about the families of the victims of 9/11 and their fight to uncover and expose the truth about what happened that day.
    For Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
    — Click Here
    Film: 9/11 Mysteries
    90 minutes of pure demolition evidence and analysis, laced with staggering witness testimonials.
    Moving from “the myth” through “the analysis” and into “the players,” careful deconstruction of the official story set right alongside clean, clear science.
    The 9/11 picture is not one of politics or nationalism or loyalty, but one of strict and simple physics.   How do you get a 10-second 110-story pancake collapse?
    Every missile has a home. Photo: Alaska Image Library
    Every missile has a home
    (No Mortgages to Worry About)
    Image: Natasha Mayers
    It's kind of a fun game
    You see the aim of those inner forces who guide the Elite —
    For them the real agenda is depopulation
    To kill off you
    your children
    your grandchildren
    It is to have fun watching our stupidity as we allow the destruction of our planet
         — but most haven't figured this out yet!
    If we stop them with the nuclear and biological weapons
    then it's the 400+ MPH, KPH wind
    the increase in UVB, UVC, UVA rays due to loss of stratospheric ozone.
    It's the climate!
    It's the reduction and elimination of food coming from all levels of cunning
    World Elite — tools and servants of Lucifer
    The fall of Lucifer, Gustave Doré's illustration for Paradise Lost by John Milton. Photo: wikipedia.org/
    The fall of Lucifer
    Gustave Doré's illustration for Paradise Lost by John Milton
           The Dark Side Initiates — Click here      
           Dark path initiates depend on the denial      
           The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path      
           Agent Orange Dioxin — Vietnam      
           Cleft palate, Canoe footed, Clawed fingers continue in births    
           I didn't know what it was then, but it was white    
           UVC in the 10 to 290 nanometer band      
           UVB, 290 to 320 nanometers    
           UVA, 320 to 400 nanometers    
           Soot's effect on ice melt and glaciers      
           Washington State's Glaciers are Melting    
           Remnants of knowledge would be retained with those on higher ground.   A few people here, a few there.      
           Translations of discussions with The WE      
           UK Terror State      
           Downing Street Memo — How Bush and Blair took us all for a ride      
           Blair, Brown, Campbell, Goldsmith, Hoon, Straw      
    US destroyed Fallujah as it tries to destroy the rest of Iraq
    Published on Monday, July 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
    by Sheldon Drobny
    Justice O'Connor's decision in Bush v. Gore led to the current Bush administration's execution of war crimes and atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places in the Middle East that are as egregious as those committed by the Third Reich and other evil governments in human history.
    The lesson is clear.
    Those people who may be honorable and distinguished in their chosen profession should always make decisions based upon good rather than evil no matter where their nominal allegiances may rest.
    Justice O'Connor was quoted to have said something to the affect that she abhorred the thought of Bush losing the 2000 election to Gore.
    She was known to have wanted to retire after the 2000 election for same reason she is now retiring.
    She wanted to spend more time with her sick husband.
    Unfortunately, she tarnished her distinguished career with the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore by going along with the partisan majority of the Court to interfere with a democratic election that she and the majority feared would be lost in an honest recount.
    She dishonored herself and the Supreme Court by succumbing to party allegiances and not The Constitution to which she swore to uphold.
    And the constitutional argument she and the majority used to justify their decision was the Equal Protection Clause.
    The Equal Protection Clause was the ultimate basis for the decision, but the majority essentially admitted (what was obvious in any event) that it was not basing its conclusion on any general view of what equal protection requires.
    The decision in Bush v Gore was not dictated by the law in any sense—either the law found through research, or the law as reflected in the kind of intuitive sense that comes from immersion in the legal culture.
    The Equal Protection clause is generally used in matters concerning civil rights.
    The majority ignored their basic conservative views supporting federalism and states' rights in order to justify their decision.
    History will haunt these justices down for their utter lack of justice and the hypocrisy associated with this decision.
    Sheldon Drobny is Co-founder of Air America Radio.
           Bush v. Gore      
           Appointment of U.S. President by the U.S. Supreme Court      
           — Raw political clout exercised by US Supreme Court    
    Unspeakable grief and horror
    ÇáäÊÇÆÌ ÇáÃæáíÉ ááÍá ÇáÃãíÑßí ÇáÍÐÑ ááãÞÇæãÉ ÇáÚÑÇÞíÉ Ýí ÇáÝáæÌÉ (ÇáÌÒíÑÉ)
                            ...and the circus of deception killing continues...
    He says, "You are quite mad, Kewe"
    And of course I am.
    Why, I don't believe any of it — not the bloody body, not the bloody mind, not even the bloody Universe, or is it bloody multiverse.
    "It's all illusion," I say.   "Don't you know, my lad, my lassie.   The game!   The game, me girl, me boy!   Takes on interest, don't you know.   T'is me sport, till doest find a better!"
    Pssssst — but all this stuff is happening down here
    Let's change it!
    Mother her two babies killed by US
    More than Fifteen million
    US dollars given by US taxpayers to Israel each day for their military use
    4 billion US dollars per year
    Nanci Pelosi — U.S. House Democratic leader — Congresswoman California, 8th District
    Speaking at the AIPAC agenda   May 26, 2005
    There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.   This is absolute nonsense.
    In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been:  it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.
    The greatest threat to Israel's right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran.
    For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology....
    In the words of Isaiah, we will make ourselves to Israel 'as hiding places from the winds and shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.'
    Pelosi
           Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying      
           — Lest we forget      
           Atrocities committed by Israel — graphic pictures      
           What CNN never shows you      
           Israel, chemical weapons and phosphorous bombs       
           New and unknown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces      
           Undetectable poison-needle gun for 'clean' assassinations       
           UK Terror State      
           Downing Street Memo — How Bush and Blair took us all for a ride      
           Blair, Brown, Campbell, Goldsmith, Hoon, Straw      
     
     
          U.S. War Crimes — Falluja photos — Graphic Images      
          US used chemical and thermobaric weapons in Fallujah     
          Fallujah photos — War — lunacy, bewilderment, panic, fear invading body, death      
           Depleted Uranium — its use in Afghanistan, Iraq, Balkans      
           Photos of Iraq children being born deformed          
          Elegantly dressed statesmen constructing framework     
          that would allow them to kill quite a lot of people         
          IRAN US Confrontation      
          American Democracy in Trouble — Al Gore     
          No longer possible to ignore the strangeness         
          Global warming point of no return       
                 Has the Age of Chaos Begun?       
          Loo!   Loo!   Lulu!   Loot! — New Orleans after Katrina        
           Afghanistan - Terror, Torture, Poppy cultivation, Opium       
           He was a young boy       
           and he spent three days in the detainee facilities       
          Why I would not kill in war
           — Stories of former Conscientious Objectors        
          Some U.S. soldiers speak — Iraq Invasion       
            Siberia, Alaska        
            Dramatic permafrost melt — click here       
         Iraqi rebels turning to defeat United States     
          I am ready to sacrifice the rest of my family to defeat America. 
      And God willing we will defeat her      
              Soot's effect on ice melt and glaciers          
              Melting glaciers Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Himalayas, Kilimanjaro...          
           US veteran Mothers against the war:       
           So anyway that filth-spewer and warmonger, George Bush       
           was speaking after the tragedy of the marines in Ohio...         
           Suicide Bombing  Blair, Bush      
           Suicide Bombing is response to foreign occupation      
           Will stop once troops withdraw      
           Doris Colmes escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 — Patriot Act — Iraq photos      
           World Tribunal       
           War Crimes — Illegality of Preventive Attack       
           Unilateral Use of Force       
         "None of that spilling of secrets for crass political retribution       
           could have gone on without her knowledge and approval,       
           and thus complicity.      
         Little of it could have happened without her participation,       
          if not as a leaker herself,      
         at least with her direction and with her scripting."       
          Condoleezza Rice — Iraq — Rove       
           Simple Questions — Iraq June 2005 photos         
          Settlements — Trees — Jayyous — West Bank — Palestine        
          Flag draped U.S. coffins      
          Life expectancy drops from 60 years to 30 years      
          Zimbabwe crises    
          Children workers — Sweat shops — Unions           
           Hunger, children dying         
              — locusts, drought — Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti         
           drinking the Kool-Aid — on the Death of Idealism       
          The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war,      
          the cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse,      
          and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress       
           Downing Street Memo — How Bush and Blair took us all for a ride         
           Blair Brown Campbell Goldsmith Hoon Straw       
           U.S. and British bombing raids illegal.         
          Coca-Cola and Plachimada, India        
          Deregulation, Accumulation of wealth       
          — India resistance and corporations       
          — India photos         
           Bolivia — Indigenous Revolt Evo Morales President         
          Venezuela       
           The elections of Hugo Chávez        
        Haiti     
        —   Aristide   Preval   Privatization   Poor   —     
        UN troops and Massacre          
          India — Class war         
           Globalization         
            Weather 2005        
           Mental Health disorders effecting returning US troops       
           US and  War — Interview with George Galloway       
           Most religious people are on the same side as most progressive people        
           Hiroshima, Nagasaki       
           — the bombs that incinerated and killed more than 200,000 people       
           — George Weller report         
          The Politics of Anti-Semitism      
          99 US Senators, 350 US House members attend AIPAC May, 2005 meeting     
          Life expectancy drops from 60 years to 30 years      
          Zimbabwe crises    

        Democracy in the United States and most of the rest of the industrial West
        is therefore a false front on a rich man’s mansion, a sham in which people are 
        given a political vote but then clock in each day to an economic system where
        their entire lives are regimented by a small group of executives busily downsizing
        whatever workplace rights people had gained in centuries of struggle.
          Agent Orange — Vietnam     
          Cleft palates      
          Mentally challenged      
          Extra fingers toes     
          Basra, Fallujah, Baghdad, Mosul...   US created Iraq — devastated cities      
            Global weather, environment and climate change — includes photos      
           Why did you cut down the trees Grandma?       
           State of the World's Garden       
           Listing of Iraq War — includes photos       
           I beheld the wretch — the miserable monster whom I had created          
           World is actually running out of oil       
           Corporate toadies — John Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton       
           March 2005 Anti-war photos         
           False memories — George Orwell wisdom          
           Fake News          
           The Negative Return Economy — a discourse on America’s black budget      
           Fascinating and lucrative    
           Black Budget?   What Black Budget?    
          With Bush's reinauguration, America now has the president it deserves      
           — Bush's reinauguration bash and the six children of Tal Afar      
          “When You Talk with God”      
            U.S. Debt        
          U.S. vote fraud continues 2005      
           Torture techniques no surprise       
           Israel: A Call for Divestment — Palestine photos          
          U.S. Soldiers against the war     
          Abu Ghraib soldier, Concientious Objector
    Aidan Delgado      
          Dr. Martin Luther King      
           — War and Militarism —  Photos and images   Iraq   Vietnam 1967      
          The Empire      
           U.S. destructive, psychotic fantasy:    The War On Terror       
           — 500 'bunker buster' bombs         
            CO2 record high levels in the atmosphere
            — Climate fear as carbon levels soar        
            Atrocities in Palestine        
            Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying        
            Sudan — Darfur
            Pictures and arial views of destruction
             — 2003 - 2005       
            Faith Fippinger        
            Book of Merlyn        
            2005 hottest year on record,         
            2004 4th hottest,        
            2003 3rd hottest,        
            2001-2002 tied for 2nd.        
           Bush, Blair and their minions have committed a monstrous crime       
           and they know it       
            Rumi        

    		 
    		 
     
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