Americans, who preach the equality of all races, creeds, and cultures, are, de facto, poor imperialists. When we attempt an imperial role as in the Philippines or Iraq, we invariably fall into squabbling over whether a republic should be imposing its ideology on another nation. A crusade for democracy is a contradiction in terms.

It's really the US government, or at least certain elements in the government and in the intelligentsia, that desires the decline of traditional American liberties on a persistent and ongoing basis.

Our first overseas venture a hundred years ago offers insights into our occupation of Iraq. People always prefer self rule to a foreign master. Resisting self-determination was unpleasant long ago, and it has not and will not be pleasant now. Presidential lies come around to bite again.

The diversity at which Heather and her two bubbleheads love to play so much is just as much of a fraud and a fake as all the rest of the gooey liberalism they believe and pretend to embrace.

Vietnam and Iraq were both wars of choice. And they are also similar in that deceit and misrepresentation was employed by the U.S. government, first to engage U.S. forces and then to keep them there.

U.S. national security policy in the 20th century has been something that mainly happened ‘there,’ in Europe or Asia or the Near East. Domestic security was something that happed ‘here,’ and it was the domain of law enforcement and the courts. Rarely did the two mix. The distinction between national security policy and domestic security is already beginning to blur, and in the next quarter century it could altogether disappear”.

As an American I suddenly see America as being hardly recognizable as my country at all, right, wrong, or indifferent. I cannot help but be repulsed beyond words by her actions in my name. I am repulsed by a once-proud and always courageous military suddenly run by a herd of civilian murderers and thieves and being used as their personal pirates.

The State Department's No. 2 official said yesterday that those guilty of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program "ought to hang."

Three months after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Fox News planned on running a four-part series on a widespread Israeli spy ring which was operating within the United States . . . The biggest question now, 2 ½ years later, is: who had enough sway over Ruppert Murdoch to get this explosive story pulled before it aired?

Due to Washington's historic support for the state of Israel, the United States has had difficulty placing itself in a positive light among the population of the Middle East . . . If current U.S. policies persist, the number of individuals who are willing to turn their hatred into violence against either the United States or the countries it supports may increase to such a degree that it will destabilize the many Middle Eastern governments that support U.S. interests.

"We want them to exercise as much sovereignty as they are capable of exercising," says Secretary of State Colin Powell.

But many Iraqis object to any limits. And if the Iraqi public believes the handover isn't legitimate, anti-American sentiments could only worsen.

The rumors of the possible return to power of former members of Iraq’s disbanded Baath Party and U.S. administrator Paul Bremer’s private meetings with a number of them are ominous developments which have given rise to speculation that Bremer is plotting a coup against the majority of the Iraqi people.

The United States and Britain have decided to adopt the Pol Pot theory of social engineering -- kill everyone with academic credentials. And when the irate Iraqis decide to strike back at this masterpiece of Israeli-style population control, the U.S. ups the ante on its already-high atrocity level . . . And now the opposition presidential candidate, supposedly a war hero himself who only recently found out he was Jewish, says he will continue the same policy of random murders and denial of self-determination should he win the totally-fixed elections of 2004.

"It is impossible to describe how deeply this (Bush's action) has undermined Palestinian moderates, such as myself, who have continued to argue for a solution that is based on reconciliation and negotiation and not on revenge and retaliation."

America can never be the modern successor to the British. America's choices are fast running out . . . Sadr's militia is only symptomatic of the problems which a new expansionist power will face in the Middle East. It is the price any nation will have to pay if they want to step into the boots of the past adventurers.

History shows that the liberated often turn to oppressing their oppressors. Liberated from Saddam, the Kurds seized Kirkut and its oil fields and started kicking Arabs out. The Shi'ites await a Shi'ite-dominated Iraq. The Sunnis do not believe in majority rule. They believe in Sunni rule. When we liberate a people, we liberate not only its democrats but its demons.

Perhaps it is time to put an end to all of the schematic transfer of wealth mechanisms and withdraw not only from the UN, but the IMF, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, UNESCO, the International Criminal Court, the World Trade Organization and all of the rest of the alphabet soup organizations that have taken our sovereignty and are now calling for additional transfer of wealth schemes!

Government would face an extraordinary challenge in making the case that serving the country should become universal.

The problem is that people, like Iraqis, resist conquest and occupation. Does denying the existence of empire naturally lead imperial rulers to practice denial?

"I guess I just expected more people to come out," one volunteer said. "Everywhere we went there were just tons of excited people. I guess the Bush thing just scared them away."

One of the Treason Lobby’s flagship enterprises—the radical leftist National Immigration Law Center (NILC), whose raison d’etre for years has been suing the federal government—is getting free publicity from the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Sharon is not only an enemy, he is the most dangerous enemy of Israel”, wrote Likud activist, Ohad Kamin in a fiery article against PM Sharon on the “Jewish Leadership” Website and went on to compare the PM to a Nazi.

Conscription—which undermines the liberties of young Americans and harms the civilian economy by their absence from highly productive labor—allows politicians to avoid the tough choice of getting rid of outdated military commitments or making the Army more efficient.

In terms of international law, speeches in national parliaments, meetings of international organizations, historical facts, reports by U.N. mediators, decisions by states and international tribunals all count far more than a "unilateral declaration." Therefore whilst this sudden reversal in U.S. foreign policy is lamentable for Palestinian refugees, and will further enflame tensions in the Middle East and anger many people throughout the world, it also departs from elemental principles of international law.

Many Americans complain that there’s too much partisanship in our country, especially considering the crises we face. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. Democrats and Republicans both voted overwhelmingly for the Patriot Act and the War on Iraq, and their only differences now break down to superficial arguments over minute details.

The world’s most dangerous terrorist, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, after this past week’s terror summit with his subordinate puppet, President George W. Bush, promptly ordered the murder and assassination of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the successor to Sheik Ahmed Yassin, head of Hamas. Sharon ordered the murder of Sheik Yassin last month.

Both Bush and Kerry, by embracing Sharon, have embraced the continuation of terrorism against America for decades to come. Neither has thought out the causes of the hatred that resides in the world against the west, nor have they distinguished between legitimate freedom fighters struggling to regain stolen homeland, land occupied and controlled by foreign forces, and terrorists that rise in multiple countries around the globe.

I once believed that I was serving for a cause - "to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States". Now I no longer believe that; I have lost my conviction, as well as my determination. I can no longer justify my service on the basis of what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies.

The worst-case scenario is also the most likely: Bush and his rollicking band of booty bandits will attempt to mount their own October Surprise, leaving the remaining thousands of terrorists free to stage an early Guy Fawkes day celebration at the poorly secured domestic nuclear facility of their choice.

The American people are far more quiescent than Iraqis in accepting Bush’s unexplained policy of converting Iraq into a permanent American base. Unless Iraqis become as accepting of this mad enterprise as Americans, or unless Americans become as unaccepting of it as Iraqis, the blood and treasure thus far squandered in Iraq is but a drop in the bucket to what we will be forced to pay.

While Iran announced plans to begin building a heavy-water reactor that can produce weapons-grade plutonium, Israel began drawing up plans to demolish it – much as it destroyed an Iraqi nuclear facility more than a decade ago.

Speaking of the Palestinians, they were dealt a lethal blow," exulted a jubilant Ariel Sharon, "It will bring their dreams to an end." Sharon was bragging about his trip to Washington where he bullied Bush into selling out the Palestinians as thoroughly as Neville Chamberlain sold out the Czechs at Munich. "Sharon Got It All" blared a banner headline in Israel.

[Below is the full text of the redacted memo upon which Jason Vest’s April 20 article prepared for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) is based. AAN’s original intention was to withhold the release of the full memo, as it includes a section with new and useful leads on corruption in the United Nations Oil-For-Food Program that Jason Vest was working on developing as a separate story. However, given the high degree of reader interest and number of media queries the current story has generated, we have decided to go ahead and release the memo. It was originally sent as an e-mail and was received by Vest with the headers redacted.— Editor]

I came upon this letter while searching through my junk mail file. I have no idea how it got there unless the FBI or CIA were combing files under the Patriot Act and this got misplaced. But it is a curious piece, both because it comes from George the First and because it gives an unusual insight into his revisionist study of world events since he left office.

Rabbi Hertzberg, former president of the American Jewish Congress, and former vice president of the World Jewish Congress, was interviewed by Marjorie Mazel Hecht on April 15. Her review of his newest book, The Fate of Zionism, is below.

The new draft is planned to start next spring (2005.) Draft board positions all across the country are quietly being filled- more than 15,000 of them. Everyone foolishly thought the Patriot Act would never be signed. But they signed it.

Al-Jazeera has a track record of accurate reporting - which is why its journalists have been criminalised and its offices bombed.

"Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" Hagel said, even if that price meant death.

Middle America, innocent of foreign affairs, will likely swallow this nonsense. Bush's Christian fundamentalist backers, who yearn for the recreation of Biblical Israel, will be ecstatic.

It is primarily Washington — not OPEC or domestic oil companies — that bears the blame for inflated gasoline prices.

Despite the fact that the coalition of congressional Democrats and Republicans supporting the internationalist trade agenda has been successful on NAFTA, WTO, Trade Promotion Authority and various FTAs, there is very good reason to believe that we can defeat the FTAA — if we are serious about doing so and will activate and mobilize thousands of fellow citizens in the cause.

The Zionists’ latest enemy is France, for the French dared to object to their plans of taking over Iraq. On the tree-lined street I live on, a big parked Chevrolet carries the sticker ‘After Iraq, Chirac’. Israeli newspapers are full to the brim with dozens of anti-French reports and features. And whenever the Jews do not get what they want, they raise the spectre of their adversaries’ ‘anti-Semitism’.

While Mr Blair has been quick to condemn Palestinian suicide bombings against Israel in the past, he has been less ready to criticise action against Palestinians.

An Israeli who revealed that his country was developing nuclear weapons has repeated his demand that they should be destroyed, just as he is due to be released from jail.

Israeli Army Radio reported that a cabinet minister, Gideon Ezra, told Sunday's meeting the next target would be Hamas's main leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, who lives in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Once there was a time when American conservatives defended their country from government. No more. Today conservatives defend Bush’s warmongering neo-Jacobin government at all costs.

In placing America’s stamp of approval on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s annexation of the West Bank, Bush jettisoned a half century of American diplomacy and broadcast to Muslims everywhere that U.S. armed forces are Israel’s Middle Eastern legions. ~ Paul Craig Roberts

This kind of leadership can only lead American to ruin, and has other applications particularly harmful to American national security. As elder Republic statesman Congressman Paul Findley charges, “…Bush is overwhelmed by the influence of religious zealots both Zionist and fundamentalist Christian.”

The proposals of Israel's Gush Shalom--a group dedicated to genuine peace, a group so often treated by Sharon's thugs as a criminal or subversive organization--contains the key elements. A return to the Green Line as Israel's border and Jerusalem's becoming capital for both states are rational conditions for a stable peace.

This terrorist act took place at a time that those countries who claim to be the defenders of human rights and champions of struggle against terrorism especially the U.S. -- which has adopted the old colonial approaches in annexing countries . . .

The U.S. is fighting more than just a War on Terror; she is fighting a homegrown cancer born of her own freedom. This cancer threatens to turn our country, founded on Judeo-Christian philosophy and capitalistic in nature, into a monotone, gray, socialistic nanny state, a tool of the United Nations.

Israel yesterday threatened to strike Damascus. It also warned that the Damascus-based political bureau chief of Hamas, Khalid Meshaal would meet "an identical" fate to the movement's assassinated leader in the Palestinian territories, Abdelaziz Rantissi.

President Bush's dilemma is this: Americans may agree that a defeat in Iraq would be a disaster, but they are not convinced that democracy in Iraq is so vital that Americans should bleed and die indefinitely to attain it.

"If you look at Bush's actions towards Israel, it stems from a religious belief. It seems that Bush feels that a Jews have a role designated by God, that the Holy Land belongs to them and it is his job to preserve it."

What are Arab leaders waiting for? Why is there a macabre silence from them? Will the Arab leaders wait until Israel murders all Palestinian leaders and annexes the remaining Arab land? Will they wait until Israel rids all Palestinians from their territories?

What Bush has actually done is give way to the crazed world of Christian Zionism. The fundamentalist Christians who support Israel's theft of the West Bank on the grounds that the state of Israel must exist there according to God's law until the second coming, believe that Jesus will return to earth and the Israelis--for this is the Bush "Christian Sundie" belief--will then have to convert to Christianity or die in the battle of Amargeddon.

Because if “The Passion” is true to the Gospels and the Gospels are themselves true, then there is a painful truth to be faced. It is found in John 1:11, inside “The Last Gospel” of the Tridentine mass Mel Gibson attends. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”

This week he guaranteed that more Americans will die from terrorist attacks due to his stabbing the Palestinians in the back. He has from the beginning acted as if he were a ventriloquist's dummy and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon were the ventriloquist.

That a nationalist uprising has been under way in Iraq for more than a year, uniting at least 15 major groups, most of them opposed to the old regime, has been suppressed in a mendacious lexicon invented in Washington and London and reported incessantly, CNN-style.

It’s sobering indeed to reflect that the alternative to Bush will be a candidate even further to the left than he is: John Kerry . . . Bush has actually managed to waste one of the Republicans’ traditional assets: the assurance that they will at least try to limit federal spending. They can no longer even blame the Democrats for staggering budgets and record deficits.

In the midst of racking up an unchallengeable lead in the race to be the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Kerry is reported by the New York Times to have told Jewish leaders in an early March meeting in New York that he would continue the close ties to Israel that have often dominated policies of the Bush administration.

Any such illusion must have disintegrated for Blair last week after Sharon and Bush, operating in the exclusive club of their victimhood, made an announcement about the future of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Naturally, the Palestinians were not consulted; it is merely their land.

Likud central committeee members praised Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Saturday night for the assassination of Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz Rantisi.

Bush's blatant support of Sharon's initiative is placing the American president's political aspirations of instilling democracy in the area in great jeopardy, warned a number of Middle East observers.

Same can be said about the sell out on the RIGHT !!!

With hardly a backward glance --or forward look --the bulk of the surviving American left has blithely joined the Democratic Party center, without the will to inflict debate, the influence to inform policy or the leverage to share power.

Mr Bush's apparent change of policy over West Bank settlers could enrage the Arab world. Palestinians have already been angered by Mr Sharon's intentions to keep the main West Bank settlements.

"The Palestinian leadership warns of the dangers of reaching such an accord, because it means clearly the complete end of the peace process".

Video presentation. Watch and judge for yourself!

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949". - George W. Bush

The true villains on this earth are those who enslave and exploit, who manipulate and massacre to prove to themselves they are the superior ones, when all they are proving is that they are the weak and evil ones. This concept of elite respectability is a sham anyway, since most fortunes in this world were built on illegal activity, from British drug smugglers to Israeli arms merchants to American drug profiteers.

America's harsh tactics are already being compared to those used by the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza, which isn't surprising, since US special forces are being trained in counter-insurgency techniques by members of the Israel Defence Force.

Americans supported Bush's war because we were persuaded that the malignancy of Iraq's leader and the horrific nature of the weapons he had or was seeking meant we must destroy his regime or our country was in mortal peril. With that threat gone, what we are fighting for? Democracy in Iraq? Or is it now just to avoid defeat in Iraq?

At least 80 foreign mercenaries - security guards recruited from the United States, Europe and South Africa and working for American companies - have been killed in the past eight days in Iraq.

One might get the sense that our esteemed press corps is suffering from an acute collective lack of imagination. Here's a sampling of questions from President Bush's press conference last night:

Of course there is little false comity between Republicans and Democrats either. There is something worse: real comity. These guys are all in the same racket. They are thick as thieves for the simple reason that they are all thieves. The only real issue between them is who will distribute the booty after November.

It was Sartre, in his introduction to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, who said, “The native cures himself of colonial neurosis by thrusting out the settler through force of arms. When his rage boils over, he rediscovers his lost innocence and he comes to know himself in that he himself creates his self. Far removed from his war, we [the privileged white metropolitans -SG] consider it as a triumph of barbarism; but of its own volition it achieves, slowly but surely, the emancipation of the rebel, for bit by bit it destroys in him and around him the colonial gloom. Once begun, it is a war that gives no quarter. You may fear or be feared; that is to say, abandon yourself to the disassociations of a sham existence or conquer your birthright of unity. When the peasant takes a gun in his hands, the old myths grow dim and the prohibitions are one by one forgotten. The rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity.”

The State of "Israel" does not represent the voice of Judaism and/or the Jewish people. The Torah clearly forbids the formation of a State, for the Jewish people, in their time of exile.

As Michael Schwartz, a sociologist and student of insurgency, makes all too clear below, you only had to read Iraqi coverage in my hometown imperial newspaper through to the last paragraphs to catch a whiff or two of what was happening in Shia Iraq.

IGC calls for political settlement as US troops massacre hundreds of Iraqis 450 dead, over 1,000 wounded is the balance of one week of fighting in Fallujah, provoking the US-appointed IGC to call for a truce while a political settlement is brokered.

A North Carolina newspaper meant to chastise Republican Vernon Robinson when it declared: "Jesse Helms is back! This time, he's black."

Coinciding with this week’s White House visit by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox “Neturei Karta” organization will be protesting outside the White House to “proclaim and clearly state that Sharon and the State of Israel are illegitimate and they do not represent the Jewish people.”

And just as the Israelis created their own proxy army -- the South Lebanon Army -- a ragtag compilation of deserters from the Lebanese army and Christian militias who quickly disintegrated when Israel withdrew back across the border in 2000 under Hezbollah pressure, similarly, some of the newly created Iraqi units refused to engage alongside American Marines in Fallujah.

Sharon portrayed his disengagement plan as a "mortal blow" for the Palestinians. "When they see it as the end of their dreams, then perhaps they will take the necessary steps".

The Americans appear to have decided that the eradication of Al-Sadr and the Sunni resistance is now necessary for the success of their project of the "new Iraq". For just about everyone else the resort to military might masks a failure of politics.

“I want YOU to invade Iraq,” said an apocryphal recruiting poster featuring Osama bin Laden that circulated on anti-war web sites after 9/11. And so we did. Historian Barbara Tuchman had a phrase for it: “The march of folly,” which she defined as “the pursuit of policy contrary to self-interest.”

We have entered a new Dark Age of Politics, in which dissident American politicians will be routinely sent to prison on the most flimsy pretext.

George W. Bush has given Osama bin Laden everything he could ever have wished for. Bush invaded a Muslim country without just cause and in defiance of practically the entire world, and delivered to bin Laden a terrorist recruitment poster for the ages.

[Editor's note: In order to understand the context of this column, you need to read (or at least skim) this column first.] Immediately the U.S. should stop its humanitarian efforts in Tel Aviv. There should be no more loans. Instead, we should isolate the city and cut off its supplies and its power. It should be a city under siege.

Globalisation and the US pose a more serious threat to the world than war and terrorism, according to a BBC poll.

If China decides to use force to reunify the mainland with what it terms a breakaway province, the window of opportunity is believed to be 2006. This would give China a couple of years to clean up the mess before the 2008 Summer Olympics. Most analysts estimate that China's military strength will surpass Taiwan's defense capabilities by 2005. So 2006 - the Year of the Dog - is clearly the year to fear.

Each year USAID gives $200 million to the Egyptian government in cash handouts to do with as it pleases. The money is theoretically conditional upon economic reforms in problem areas such as deregulation, privatization, and free trade.

IGC elder statesman Adnan Pachachi, who is especially close to the State Department, denounced the offensive against Fallujah as "illegal and totally unacceptable," while Iyad Allawi, a prominent Shiite and longtime favorite of the US and British intelligence service, abruptly resigned from the council without explanation, as did the IGC's human rights minister, Abdel Basit Turki.

http://www.hslda.org/legislation/national/2003/s89/default.asp
S. 89—Universal National Service Act of 2003

Israeli officials believe the section of this letter from Bush referring to final status borders is highly significant. They believe it constitutes U.S. recognition of Israel's future annexation of West Bank settlement blocs and the negation of a right of Palestinian refugee return to Israel.

The very notion that the US might have made mistakes never seems to cross anyone's mind, let alone being publicly acknowledged.

How has that been allowed to happen? Why did Mr Bremer play so easily into the hands of America's opponents? One answer probably is that hardline civilians in the Pentagon retain their control of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which they have staffed with fellow neo-conservatives who share their over-simplistic agendas for Iraq.

In the journal Foreign Affairs that in 1917 a British general had occupied Baghdad and proclaimed: "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators" . . . Within just a few months of the formal British takeover of Iraq, there was a full-scale anti-British revolt.

Reading Soren Kierkegaard, George Orwell, and Fyodor Dostoevsky speak volumes as to how both the United States and Russia understand (or misunderstand) history.

He said the best way of settling the current crisis in Iraq is to bring an end to the bloodshed and the military action by the occupation forces in the war-ruined country.

The threat to expel Palestinians from within Israel could, in the long run, prove to be even more provocative than the threat against Arafat.

The IGC, the CPA and the occupying forces are in agreement: the Iraqis are not yet ready for elections. The climate is ripe for civil war, they say. So we are faced with the likelihood that the existing IGC members and their chosen ministers will be at the core of the next government, which will be run "informally" by American officials.

For American citizens who feel themselves demoralized by defeat, they need to hear a similar message. The actions of the Bush administration and its disastrous war are not the actions of our country as such. It was a few misguided fanatics who do not have an appreciation for the value of freedom. They used the events of 9-11 to live out their ambitions to expand the hegemon (as Rice once again admitted in her testimony: "Bold and comprehensive changes are sometimes only possible in the wake of catastrophic events – events which create a new consensus that allows us to transcend old ways of thinking and acting").

This situation makes clear how even the best laid plans can go awry. Far from being garlanded by the Iraqis, the American soldiers are now paying the price of a political blunder by the Washington neocons.

The US closure of an irregularly published newspaper with just 5,000 readers seemed a tiny moment in the struggle for stability in Iraq. But the March 28 move to close Al Hawza, controlled by militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, now looks like the edge of a violent storm.

Yesterday, three Japanese journalists, eight South Korean church ministers and two Arab-Israelis were unfortunate enough to discover that harsh reality. We all wonder who it will be tomorrow.

The truth be know, Al-Qaeda is a military-industrial complex creation. It is a wholly manufactured threat to be used to scare Americans and people of the world into submission. The 9/11 commission is a joke. Chairman Keen is in business Bin Laden's brother-in-law. Almost every member of the commission and top staffers were involved in the 9/11 cover-up prior to the commission being formed.

“My job isn’t to assess the government’s information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq’s arsenal.” - Judith Miller

This was a counter-terrorist act of psychological warfare that sent two subliminal (say it, Dubya) messages to Bush:

1) it said that American civilians in Iraq would, from now on, bear the cost of underwriting Israeli terrorism in Palestine--the precipitating event was Ariel Sharon's terrorist act of assassinating Hamas leader Yassin; and

2) it was a signal that after a year of anything but benign liberation, the Underground has figured out the identity, organization, and movements of CIA officers and informants--and is willing to strike at them.

Well you wouldn't know it from all the tributes to the tenth anniversary in the media, that within two days of the Rwandan tragedy, the US knew not only what was going on but who did it and where and when they did it.

"Good bye, good riddance" said The London Daily Telegraph's Washington correspondent Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. Such was the title of his parting shot at the current U.S. Administration, published in his home newspaper when he was recalled to London. In that editorial, Evans-Pritchard gave a penetrating and stinging analysis of the state of American politics as seen through the eyes of a foreigner who is apparently capable of discerning the "forest for the trees."

There were no terrorists in Iraq before the invasion, but they are there now. There was no open warfare between the religious factions in Iraq before the invasion, but now blood runs in the streets. Bush and his people ballyhooed the 'international coalition' that participated in this invasion, but the truth is we are all alone.

And it is essential that we all believe that our soldiers exist to defend the Constitution, because if we understood clearly that they really exist to enrich themselves and the people they really work for, we might think twice about the $800 billion or so that America spends on “national security” each year.

As long ago as last November, senior U.S. military intelligence analysts told UPI they expected the Sunni Muslim guerrilla revolt focused on central Iraq to continue at its existing level and predicted that even Saddam's capture would not significantly reduce it, contrary to the beliefs and predictions of their civilian masters in the Bush administration.

"outsourcing" means "hiring foreign employees." Or, if you want to attack the practice, "outsourcing American jobs".

"I consider it my job, my responsibility, to convince (Russians) that NATO has no ulterior motives. NATO wants to cooperate. NATO needs Russia and Russia needs NATO".

The Carlyle Group, run by Frank Carlucci, was strategically placed before Sept 11th to maximize profits by controlling almost every sector of the police state's architecture in America.

The attack against Iraq was planned long before 9/11 - the Bush family had some unfinished business with Saddam Hussein, the man Washington had placed in Baghdad as the equilibrium point between various forces of chaos.

"One of the awkward questions we faced," one participant in the planning of the program explains, "was whether to reconstitute Congress after a nuclear attack. It was decided that no, it would be easier to operate without them."

If al-Sadr is successful, all eyes will be on al-Sistani to see whether he endorses al-Sadr's strategy. Al-Sistani will have difficulty saying no since hatred against the U.S. is a popular rallying cry in Iraq. If al-Sistani endorses al-Sadr, then the past 12 months of the occupation will look awfully peaceful compared to what is still to come.

The presidency has become a huge cancerous growth, one that has resisted every form of chemo. The highest doses of radiation can't stop it and no scalpel cuts all of it away. It just keeps growing back, bigger and more offensive.

Norway is studying the option of pulling its þþtroops from Iraq after ending its mission due to the worsening of the security þþsituation.

Lately, Senator John Kerry has been reassuring voters that he will be as pro-Israel as President Bush . . . Barring a sudden change of heart and a burst of courage, we must sadly assume that a President Kerry will be at least as pro-Sharon as President Bush.

"Every independent journalist I spoke with in Iraq reported the same thing; the majority of Iraqis, already incensed at the Americans' failure to re-build and coping with the aforementioned abuses and hardships, have run out of patience with the occupying forces."

Increasing antagonism between the world's largest oil producers and the Bush administration will keep world oil supply lean through at least the end of 2004. With supply diminished, oil demand, particularly in Asia, will remain strong, pushing international oil prices above US$40 per barrel.

George Bush subscribes to the concept of an international dialectic.

Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. Saddam had no role in 9-11, no ties to al-Qaida, no WMD . . . Must the United States remain in Iraq until it succeeds there? No. If the Iraqis reject U.S. support through their own government or if they engage in civil war, no one will fault the United States for exiting.

President George W Bush is throwing baseballs and focusing his speeches on love and jobs - almost anything but the turmoil in Iraq - as Washington insists that talk of a crisis is overblown.

SUNNI and Shi'ite residents of two Baghdad suburbs, once fierce enemies, said overnight they had put their differences aside to unite in their fight to oust the US occupying force from Iraq. "All of Iraq is behind Moqtada al-Sadr, we are but one body, one people".

Last week, U.S. occupation authorities closed down Al Hawza, Sadr’s newspaper, charging that it had incited violence in Iraq. Yet the paper did not advocate attacks on Americans. As the U.S. authorities put it, the paper was guilty of “false reporting.”

The US needs a hate figure, now that Saddam is out of commission. Moqtada al-Sadr fits the bill.

Richard Armitage stated, “We are opposed [to assassination] and we have made that very clear to the government of Israel,” he was rebuked by Israeli Internal Security Minister Tsahi Hanegbi, who defended Sharon’s comments: “The United States should be the last one to preach to us about how to implement our right to self-defense.”

There is only one cause for the recent unrest in Iraq that left up to 250 people dead or injured: the incompetence of U.S administrator Paul Bremer in managing the country’s affairs.

Despite the political backlash from several states, the federal government continues to push its nationalized education agenda.

Kofi Annan and his underlings at the UN den of corruption on New York’s East River must be held accountable, but no internal UN audit or investigation will ever expose this global cesspool of graft and terror.

Immigration once built this nation, but today, it is destroying the foundation of our country in a myriad of ways. Whereas citizens once learned English, assimilated and became Americans—today with California the leading edge of our nation’s demise—immigration is a crisis facing all Americans.

There is evidence that the killing of these mercenaries was not random, and that it was done in retaliation for the American-sponsored assassination of the head of Hamas (which killed eight people and wounded twenty-four others), ordered by the Israeli government.

The "Bricker Amendment" was straightforward:

Section 1. A provision of a treaty which conflicts with this Constitution shall not be of any force or effect.

Section 2. A treaty shall become effective as internal law in the United States only through legislation which would be valid in the absence of treaty.

Section 3. Congress shall have the power to regulate all executive and other agreements with any foreign power or international organization. All such agreements shall be subject to the limitations imposed on treaties by this article.

Section 4. The congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

This three-part series conveys with clarity the situation in present-day Iraq. This article covers the Dead and Wounded, the Resistance and Failed Policy.

We should not be wasting US tax money and taking on more military obligations expanding NATO. The alliance is a relic of the Cold War, a hold-over from another time, an anachronism. It should be disbanded, the sooner the better.

As an inadvertent consumer of political propaganda, and also as a citizen, you will have to think hard and sort out the truth from the falsehoods. I've always argued that democracy gives us the government we deserve, but the real question is, can we survive what we deserve?

Weeks ago, during the Knesset's discussion, Arab-Israeli MKs accused Sharon of kindling a civil war in Palestine. He did not deny the accusation, and he said yes, we want a civil war. In order that kindling a war becomes possible without obstacles, national symbols that might prevent the civil war must be absent.

The United States’ continuing toleration of warlords such as Fahim and General Abdul Rashid Dostum—an alleged war criminal and gunrunner who, after being offered millions of dollars by Washington, helped defeat the Taliban in the fall of 2001—mystifies many who have long experience in Afghanistan.

The congressman has been making rounds across the country with Republican and immigration reform activists.

Singapore no longer has a military presence in Iraq after the last of its troops returned home on Monday from a two-month stint in the war-torn country.

The simplest solution would be to allow "carte blanche access to the [Secret Internet Protocol Router Network] SIPRNET", the report said, although this was unfeasible because it would expose sensitive US data.

Washington's Hidden Agenda: Restore the Drug Trade

"We're going to end up with a civil war in Iraq if in fact we decide we can turn this over, including the bulk of the security, to the Iraqis between now and then". Joseph Biden . . . We ask the Senator: What do you think is already happening?

The chief Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, opposes the interim constitution, approved by the Interim Governing Council under Paul Bremer's guidance.

Frontline battle troops, most of whom have been in the military for about a year, earn less than $16,000 a year – which puts them at about the level of theater ushers and Wal-Mart clerks.

"An Oct. 27, 2000 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, using available and verifiable numbers, gives cumulative aid to Israel from 1949 through FY 2000 (which ended Sept. 30, 2000) at $81.38 billion. On the other hand, last year the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs estimated total aid to Israel through FY 2000 at $91.82 billion .."

That so serious a conservative as Sue Myrick feels she would like to quit shows how much the climate has changed on Capitol Hill since she and other bright-eyed new Republican House members were sent there by the 1994 election.

As we attempt to reshape the politics of Iraq and reorient its foreign policy to American ends, we must realize that what we are practicing is imperialism . . . What do we do if we impose democracy on Iraq, and the Iraqis use their freedom to vote to throw us out and confront Israel and claim Kuwait as their long-lost province? We should be thinking about it, because it may just happen.

More and more analysts are coming to accept that the United States' current foreign policy may be invigorating a whole movement of Muslim religious fanatics bent on retaliatory action. Since the primary recipients of U.S. military strikes have been Muslims, many Muslims throughout the world have begun to equate the U.S.' "war on terrorism" with a "war on Islam." If the invasion had gone as planned, the backlash against the United States would have been limited. But the aftermath of the U.S. invasion shows that the Bush administration has already put the stick too far into the hornet's nest of religious fervor.

It is chaos that makes this whole system possible. Without the chaos, Iraqis would not allow the country to be sold off wholesale, or allow the US troops to remain after the June 30 "transfer" of sovereignty.

The Coalition decision to provoke a fight with Muqtada al-Sadr's movement only three months before the Coalition Provisional Authority goes out of business has to be seen as a form of gross incompetence in governance.