e spends more than the United States on their military.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Agenda is the Same

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

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

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

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

Modern-day capitalism has little in common with human rights

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

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

Fascism of George Bush

A LIE THAT WORKED

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

WHY DID SADDAM INVADE KUWAIT?

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

THE GRIEVANCE

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

Did Saddam Expel Weapons Inspectors? NO!

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

WEAPONS INSPECTORS WERE SPIES

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

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

BUSH HAS SEWN FRIGHTENING SEEDS OF CONFLICT IN THE LAND

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

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

Everything about this presidency is a distortion of reality

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

The Great `Intelligence' Fraud

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

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

To quote some of the editorial:

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

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

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

Money Talks

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

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

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

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

Cockburn wrote:

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

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

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

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

ROLE U.S. PLAYED IN TRAINING AND ARMING TERRORISTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMERICAN POLICY for Controlling Middle East Energy Resources

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

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

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

When those who oppose this war favoring inspections and are against

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

King George

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hank Roth

http://pnews.org

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