...While readers of The Nation might wish to raise more fundamental issues--such as whether the United States has a legal or moral right to initiate a unilateral assault--the concerns among the country's elite deserve widespread public attention. They can be compressed into nine critical questions... More.

The United States hit determined opposition from Russia and France over its stance on Iraq on Monday, threatening its bid for tough new U.N.-imposed arms inspection rules as experts met in Vienna to discuss them.

Russia and France, both with veto powers in the United Nations ( news - web sites) Security Council which is to consider a U.S.-drafted resolution on Iraq, separately rebuked Washington.

Russia rapped Washington for sending its warplanes to strike a southern Iraq target on Sunday, while France slammed the threat of military force contained in the U.S. draft proposal at the United Nations.

China, which like the United States and Britain also holds a veto given to the five permanent members in the 15-nation Security Council, also remained skeptical of the U.S. proposal.

An envoy from Britain, Washington's closest ally in its campaign against Baghdad, handed the draft to officials in Beijing, and China -- which has already expressed its misgivings -- was reflecting on it, a British embassy official said. More.

The tough resolution proposed by the Americans on Iraq will have great difficulty getting through the Security Council.

Already, Russia, France and China have voiced their objections.

If this resolution is passed in anything like the form proposed by the Americans, it will be seen as an ultimatum to the Iraqis.

It is difficult to see how the Iraqis could accept these terms.

So it will be an challenge designed to lead to war.

But the wording of the proposed resolution is so tough, it raises other questions. More.

Seeking to press the U.S. case, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman met Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in Moscow Saturday.

He failed to change Russia's stance.

Moscow stood firm in calling for the rapid return to Iraq of U.N. arms inspectors, with the U.S. envoy urging Russia to back the draft U.S. Security Council resolution.

"Our position is that U.N. weapons inspectors should return to Iraq as quickly as possible," Ivanov said in televised comments. "The necessary conditions for this exist. But we are prepared to look carefully at the position of all the members of the U.N. Security Council."

Ivanon steered clear of criticizing the new resolution after 90 minutes of talks, but said Russian experts were discussing it with U.S. and British officials.

Grossman appeared to make little headway on the issue in Paris Friday and Russian leaders have said Iraq's agreement to let U.N. arms inspectors return is sufficient to avoid any use of force.

In a bid to persuade China, Britain has sent officials to Beijing but itself faced protests at home. Waving anti-war banners and chanting slogans against "Bomber Bush and Bomber Blair," tens of thousands of Britons joined a big peace rally in London to oppose a military strike on Iraq.

The United States, Britain, Russia, France and China are the five permanent members of the Security Council with veto rights.

PROTESTS IN ROME

In Rome, thousands of flag-waving, whistle-blowing demonstrators took to the streets calling for peace with Iraq in a rally organized by the hard left Communist Refoundation party.

Accusing Bush of war-mongering, the crowd -- estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000 -- snaked its way through the heart of ancient Rome before holding a rally in a city-center square.

In Australia, about 1,000 people marched in Sydney to protest against possible war with Iraq and violence against Palestinians in the Middle East.

Democracy Now! interviewed ambassador who said he will vote no on invasion of Iraq. for 27 Sep 02.

The Bush administration was just where it hoped not to be. Instead of fostering a diplomatic unity that masked the underlying disparity between a United States geared for war and a majority of nations fearful of or opposed to military action, American officials warned of a "difficult debate" in the Security Council. At home, the White House found itself working hard to persuade doubting Democrats in Congress to provide an open-ended authorization for a military attack. More.

Facing the threat of war, poverty and uncertainty, Iraqis are increasingly turning to Islam. The historically secular regime has started ostentatious mosque-building programmes. These boys are asking God to protect their country.

Dear Secretary General Annan,

A military attack on Iraq is obviously criminal; completely inconsistent with urgent needs of the Peoples of the United Nations; unjustifiable on any legal or moral ground; irrational in light of the known facts; out of proportion to other existing threats of war and violence; and a dangerous adventure risking continuing conflict throughout the region and far beyond for years to come. The most careful analysis must be made as to why the world is subjected to such threats of violence by its only superpower, which could so safely and importantly lead us on the road to peace, and how the UN can avoid the human tragedy of yet another major assault on Iraq and the powerful stimulus for retaliatory terrorism it would create.

1. President George Bush Came to Office Determined to Attack Iraq and Change its Government.

George Bush is moving apace to make his war unstoppable and soon. Having stated last Friday that he did not believe Iraq would accept UN inspectors, he responded to IraqÃs prompt, unconditional acceptance by calling any reliance on it a ¦false hope² and promising to attack Iraq alone if the UN does not act. He is obsessed with the desire to wage war against Iraq and install his surrogates to govern Iraq by force. Days after the most bellicose address ever made before the United Nations--an unprecedented assault on the Charter of the United Nations, the rule of law and the quest for peace--the U.S. announced it was changing its stated targets in Iraq over the past eleven years, from retaliation for threats and attacks on U.S. aircraft which were illegally invading IraqÃs airspace on a daily basis. How serious could those threats and attacks have been if no U.S. aircraft was ever hit? Yet hundreds of people were killed in Iraq by U.S. rockets and bombs, and not just in the so called "no fly zone," but in Baghdad itself. Now the U.S. proclaims its intentions to destroy major military facilities in Iraq in preparation for its invasion, a clear promise of aggression now. Every day there are threats and more propaganda is unleashed to overcome resistance to George BushÃs rush to war. The acceleration will continue until the tanks roll, unless nonviolent persuasion prevails. More.

International

Blair's "dossier" of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" was written mostly in Washington by the disgraced intelligence agencies that offered America not a hint of warning of the attacks of September 11 last year. The Foreign Office here has not even bothered to change the American jargon. Its 50 pages began with an outright distortion, as a Mirror editorial pointed out on Wednesday, claiming that a report by the International Institute of Strategic Studies "suggested Iraq could assemble nuclear weapons within months."

IN fact, the Institute's report concluded that Iraq was years from even developing, let alone perfecting and making, nuclear weapons.

Too much has been said and written about this absurd exercise in propaganda, which has made a fool of Blair and may well finish him politically. The weapons issue always was a fake, a diversion. Any remaining doubt about this was dispelled a week ago by US Secretary of State Colin Powell when he announced that America might block the return of United Nations" weapons inspectors to Iraq: the very thing that he and Bush and Blair had been demanding.

The Americans are justifiably fearful that Iraq's unconditional offer to the inspectors will "damage the coalition." In other words, they will no longer have their fig leaf, their excuse, to capture what one Bush administration official described recently as "the big prize... oil and construction: you name it". More.

What is known about any links?

The report from the Czech authorities that one of the 11 September hijackers, Mohammed Atta, had met an Iraqi agent in Prague in April 2001. This was never proved or disproved, as is the nature of such evidence. It simply remains on the table, undeveloped.

A suggestion in some circles that Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, escaped from New York on a false passport provided by Iraqi intelligence. Again, by its nature, this allegation is impossible to verify or disprove.

A claim that al-Qaeda refugees from the war in Afghanistan have found refuge in Iraq. Some of this relates to a group called Ansar al Islam (Partisans of Islam) which has taken over a small area near the Iranian border. This part of Iraq, however, is in Kurdish hands and outside the direct control of the Iraqi Government. Iraq is said by defectors to have links to the group, but Iraq, of course, could make contacts in order to encourage it to fight the Kurds.

The Christian Science Monitor, in an article reproduced by the US State Department, interviewed one Ansar activist Rafed Ibrahim Fatah, now in Kurdish hands, who spoke of meetings in earlier years between the group and al-Qaeda leaders, though not Osama Bin Laden himself. This however does not necessarily implicate the Iraqis.

The Sunday Telegraph in London said that Rafed Fatah and a senior al-Qaeda operative captured in Morocco, Abu Zubair (known as The Bear), underwent training in Iraq and would feature in the British Government's dossier against Iraq. They were not mentioned in the report. Nor was any alleged link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. One has to conclude that, in the absence of more evidence, the links are tenuous. More.

In addition, Saddam Hussein has not previously shown a fondness for Islamic extremists. He comes from a revolutionary, but secular socialist background.

The action was the largest of its kind in the UK in 30 years. It was dramatic, and so large that it was truly impossible to guage its size. Certainly it numbered in the hundreds of thousands of people of every ethnicity, age and class.

Recent polls show that 70 percent opposed Britain joining a U.S.-led military action. "There is not just opposition to the prospect of war--there is boiling anger," asserts Andrew Murray, chair of the Stop the War Coalition.

The turnout was a shot across the bow of Prime Minister Tony Blair and a preview of next weeks Labor Party Conference.

The demonstration was jointly sponsored by the Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain. It was endorsed by 12 national trade unions, numerous Muslim and anti-racist organizations, Members of Parliament and the Mayor of London.

Organizers have called for another massive "Don't Attack Iraq Day" for Oct. 31.

"Opposition to this war in this country is the most incredible coalition I have ever seen," says Jeremy Corbyn, a Labor MP.

A US envoy has ended talks in Moscow with no sign that he has won Russian support for a tough new draft UN resolution on Iraq.

Speaking after the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Moscow "still favours the quickest possible return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq". More.

French President Jacques Chirac has resisted US and British attempts to win his country's support for a tough new draft UN resolution on Iraqi disarmament.

Despite intensive lobbying in Paris on Friday, Mr Chirac told US President George W Bush by telephone that he still opposed a new UN resolution that would provide for the automatic use of force if Iraq fails to co-operate with UN demands.

The US and Britain have launched a joint diplomatic offensive to win the support of France, Russia and China - the three other permanent members of the UN Security Council - for the draft resolution.

Mr Chirac restated France's preference for a two-step process - one resolution on the return of UN weapons inspectors and a second one authorising force if Iraq failed to comply.

Mr Chirac told President Bush that France favoured a resolution that was "simple and firm, showing the unity and determination of the international community," according to his spokeswoman Catherine Colonna.

Mr Chirac "reiterated that France remains more than ever in favour of a two-step approach and that this is the view of the majority of the international community, given the seriousness of the decisions to be taken and their consequences," she added. More.

REBEL Labour MPs sought to increase the pressure on the Government yesterday by outlining plans for a huge anti-war rally on the eve of next weekÃs Labour Party conference. The organisers, George Galloway and Jeremy Corbyn, claimed that it would be BritainÃs biggest anti-war demonstration and would prove that the Prime Minister did not have public support.

Previous anti-war and anti-bomb protests in London have attracted huge numbers of people. In 1968 80,000 protested against the Vietnam War, and in 1981, 250,000 joined a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament rally.

"If Tony Blair thinks he has got Parliament on his side, he has not. If he thinks heÃs got the country on his side . . . he has not.

"Tony Blair does not speak for the ordinary people of this country. He speaks for a relationship with George Bush. We speak for the peace-loving people of this country and thatÃs the message that will be going out on Saturday."

The rally, organised by the Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association, is also to focus on the Middle East peace procss. More.

The Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, today rejected British and US attempts to link Iraq with the al-Qaida terrorist network. Responding to the dossier published this week by the prime minister, Tony Blair, Mr Ivanov also reiterated Moscow's opposition to a proposed UN security council resolution authorising the use of military force against Saddam Hussein.

Mr Ivanov said he remained unconvinced about the extent of President Saddam's weapons programme and dismissed allegations tying Saddam to Osama bin Laden's terror network.

"There is no definite proof of that in the report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was recently presented in London," Mr Ivanov told a news conference.

"This is why Russia is so persistently pushing for the quickest return of international inspectors to Iraq, so that the inspectors, in line with the UN security council resolutions, could answer these allegations." More.

The US has been trying to build diplomatic support for military action to topple the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Click on the map to find out where key countries stand on the issue. More.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats won Germany's closest postwar election Sunday, after a campaign that focused on fears of a war with Iraq and unleashed anti-American rhetoric.

Schroeder, whose outspoken defiance against war with Iraq was credited with giving him a late-push in the tight campaign, said he won't back down. He has insisted he would not commit troops for a war even if the United Nations backs military action.

"It seems to me that for the relationship and the Iraq issue itself there's no doubt that Schroeder was trying to tap radical pacifist and anti-American sentiment in the population and preliminarily it doesn't seem to have hurt him. And it may have even helped him," said Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute think tank in Berlin. More.

Clare Short, the International Development Secretary, today delivered her most powerful warning yet about the dangers of going to war against Iraq, putting new pressure on the Prime Minister as he prepares to make his case for military action in Tuesday's emergency Commons debate.

In an interview with GMTV this morning, Ms Short said: "We cannot have another Gulf war. We cannot have the people of Iraq suffering again. They have suffered too much. That would be wrong."

Her remarks follow those of Robin Cook, Leader of the Commons, who warned Tony Blair not to back unilateral US military action.

Mr Blair's attempts to build a consensus within the Commons will be further frustrated by the publication of an inconclusive dossier of evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Government insiders admit the document will neither link Saddam Hussein's regime to al-Qa'ida and the 11 September terror attacks nor prove that he has a nuclear bomb. Ministers say it will not quell growing dissent over the threat of war, which is even taking hold among some prominent Conservatives. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the Conservative former foreign secretary, said he had serious concerns about unilateral action. "I can see very powerful advantages in regime change in Iraq, but I would be reluctant to see the United States going in by itself or with just the United Kingdom or a handful of other countries."

Ms Short, speaking on the Sunday programme said: "We have to find a way of enforcing, quite rightly, UN resolutions. Saddam Hussein should be frightened, and the elite around him. We should frighten them.

"We should be ready to impose the will of the United Nations on them if they don't co-operate, but not by hurting the people of Iraq. More.

With war drums in Washington beating ever louder, four major Canadian development organizations are urging their government to stick with the United Nations as the only mechanism by which to resolve rising tensions over Iraq.

In a communiquª issued Thursday, the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC), the North-South Institute (NSI), the United Nations Association in Canada (UNA-Canada), and the Mennonite Central Committee, one of the few international relief groups operating in Iraq, called on Canadian leaders to focus UN efforts on disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, rather than on ousting the government of President Saddam Hussein, as United States President George W. Bush is urging. More.

The trap is sprung. The name of the game is containment. Contain the wild man, the leader with the messianic and relentless glint who is scaring the world. Surround him, throw Lilliputian nets on him, tie him up with a lot of United Nations inspection demands, humour him long enough to stop him from using his weapons and blowing up the Middle East.

But this time, the object of the containment strategy is not Saddam Hussein, but George Bush, the president with real bombs, not the predator with plans to make them. More.

"It appears that the U.S. administration is dead-set on a war against Iraq no matter what," Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois in Chicago, told IPS. Boyle said that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has already made it clear that inspections were really not the issue. The United States is bent on "regime change" in Iraq, which Boyle points out, "is prohibited under the terms of the United Nations charter". More.

There was a strange sense of complacency apparent when I first arrived (on the 5th). The Iraqis did not seem to really believe that the US will really attack. Iraq is so cut off, and theyÃre so believing in their own propaganda, that they had no idea.

There are so few international players in Iraq, it seems like everyone is meeting with Tariq Aziz or some (other high official). The climate is totally controlled. No one has any leeway. Of course, there are very few business delegations, as foreign investment is suspended. And the foreign press corps numbered only about 15 people- BBC, NBC, London Evening Standard, ABC (Australia), some Spanish journalists, myself, and a few others, mostly Arabic. More.

CAFOD, the Catholic Aid Agency, says that any pre-emptive military strike against Iraq will create a humanitarian catastrophe, adding immeasurably to the sufferings of the Iraqi people. It will exacerbate the dangers of terrorism in the Middle East and undermine the authority of the United Nations. In a detailed report released today (August 12th) - Iraq, Sanctions and the War on Terrorism - which charts the history of sanctions and their impact on the Iraqi people in the context of events since September 11th, the agency also expresses concern at the lack of public debate around the issue in the United Kingdom, and calls for regional approach to the crisis and for a new relationship to be established between the international community and Iraq...

The report concludes: "The danger of unilateral action, in the form of a pre-emptive strike by the United States (possibly with the support of the UK) cannot be underestimated. It would be difficult to imagine a single, more effective way of wreaking further devastation on an already devastated country—..and creating a major humanitarian crisis with hundreds of thousands of innocent victims. A militaristic or purely security approach to the problem of international terrorism is unimaginative and doomed to failure. Only if the world is prepared to tackle the root causes of conflict, liberation struggles, terrorism (including state terrorism) is there a chance of arriving at durable and sustained solutions". More.

...Unlike the 1991 Gulf War, when Washington had broad Arab support for ousting Iraqi forces from Kuwait, Bush has failed to persuade the region Iraq is part of an "axis of evil" he vowed to vanquish after attacks on Washington and New York last year. More.

from The Telegraph (London), 06/09/2002

Domestic/U.S.

Fighting a war with Iraq could cost the United States between $6 billion and $9 billion a month, with preparing for a conflict and winding down after it adding another $14 billion to $20 billion to the total, congressional budget analysts said on Monday.

The Congressional Budget Office report comes as U.S. lawmakers debate President Bush's recent request for authority to use force if necessary to disarm Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein.

It is the latest in a series of war cost estimates, some ranging as high as $200 billion, which have garnered attention on Capitol Hill in light of growing U.S. budget woes.

The CBO said it could not assess how long any U.S. military action against Iraq would last and warned that any attempt to estimate its cost was, therefore, "highly uncertain."

But it said deploying U.S. forces to the Gulf region would likely cost between $9 billion and $13 billion and bringing them home after the conclusion of hostilities would add another $5 billion to $7 billion.

Fighting a war would cost $6 billion to $9 billion a month, while mounting a possible occupation of Iraq afterward would cost between $1 billion and $4 billion a month, it said. More.

Iraq's bioweapons program that President Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to government records getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war against Iraq.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program, CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s show. Iraq had ordered the samples, claiming it needed them for legitimate medical research.

The CDC and a biological sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples of other deadly pathogens, including the West Nile virus. More.

GEORGE BUSH PLANS HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS: Why We Are Marching on October 26th

By Carl Messineo and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard

[The authors, attorneys and co-founders of the Partnership for Civil Justice - LDEF, are members of the national steering committee of the A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) Coalition.]

George W. Bush has declared his intention to wage a 'preemptive' war against Iraq and is now seeking to strong-arm the international community, the U.N., and the Congress into support and submission. As members of Congress rush to show their obedience and member states of the U.N. line up to receive the anticipated spoils of war, the administration is now waging a campaign to convince the people of the United States to fall into step and finance with money and blood this war brought for conquest on behalf of the corporate and oil interests that make up Bush's true constituency.

Bush's preemptive war is a war of aggression. The U.S. policy supporting the war is not the rule of law, but the rule of force.

But no U.N. resolution and no Congressional resolution can legalize an illegal war. With pen to paper and votes of support, they can only commit to wilful ratification, complicity and responsibility for illegal acts by endorsing a criminal enterprise.

A war of aggression violates the United States Constitution, the United Nations Charter, and the principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal. It violates the collective law of humanity that recognizes the immeasurable harm and unconscionable human suffering when a country engages in wars of aggression to advance its government's perceived national interests. More.

Republican and Democratic Senate offices report "overwhelming" opposition from their constituents to war with Iraq. This comes as Congress prepares to pass a war resolution granting President Bush sweeping powers to invade Iraq.

The national news radio show Democracy Now! conducted an informal survey on Thursday of 70 Republican and Democratic Senate offices.

Of the 26 offices which responded to our inquires, 22 reported an overwhelming majority - in some cases up to 99 percent -- of constituents opposed war in Iraq; three said the response was split and just one office reported a majority called backing the war. Among the findings:

Democrats

* Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl: Aides say they are receiving 1,000-2,000 calls per week with the overwhelming number opposed to an attack on Iraq.

* Washington Sen. Patty Murray: Over 5,000 letters and phone calls were received last week on Iraq, aides say. Only about 100 came from constituents who supported an attack.

* California Sen. Dianne Feinstein: Staff in her San Francisco office reported about 200 calls a day with 99 percent of the callers opposing the war.

* New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman: The D.C. office has been receiving at least 1,300 calls a day with about 70 percent opposed to war.

Republicans

* North Carolina Sen.Jesse Helms: Staff declined to give figures but said the "majority is against" when it comes to calls on Iraq.

* Nebraska Sen. Charles Hegal: According to aides, constituents favor diplomacy over war at a rate of 5 to 1.

* Virginia Sen. John Warner: About 150 constituents a day are calling into the D.C. offices. "A very small minority supported military action," said one aide.

"It's extraordinary that, as Senators work with the Bush Administration to draft a war resolution, their constituents are expressing overwhelming opposition an attack against Iraq," said Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now! "Unfortunately we are hearing very little about this in the media. These calls represent the silenced majority, not the silent majority."

The U.N. Security Council on Friday issued a bland appeal to respect a U.N. resolution after the United States blocked a push to single out Israel for ignoring a council directive to end its siege of Yasser Arafat, council diplomats said

Syrian Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe, acting at the request of Arab nations, had called on the council during a closed-door session to summon Israel's U.N. envoy and tell him to respect the council's wishes, the diplomats said.

Instead the council issued a statement calling for "the full implementation" of a resolution it passed on Tuesday, demanding that Israel end its siege of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah. More

The first world war of the 21st century is already underway. Bush and the oilmen who run his government have given orders to make the oilfields of the Middle East safe for America. The US military are deploying their unimaginably powerful flotilla of death against Iraq, a country they have been bombing and denying medicine to for over 10 years. The corporate media are spinning their lies and whipping up war fever in exactly the way they always do. With its overwhelming military superiority, and without the Soviet Union or any other competing superpower to restrain its ambitions of world domination, the United States is not even pretending to conform to international law. It is left to Blair, like a gangsterÃs shiny-suited lawyer, to come up with pseudo-legal justifications for the violence thatÃs already been agreed on. Capitalism doesnÃt get much more naked than this.

For the vast majority of humanity itÃs perfectly clear what the United States is doing. The most powerful nation on earth, and capitalism in general, is totally dependent on oil to keep it running - and most of that oil is in the Middle East. Since 1945, the US has armed and relied on puppet Arab regimes like Saudi Arabia to ensure the cheap oil has kept flowing for the WestÃs ecologically suicidal way of life. It has armed the Israeli State to terrorise its Arab neighbours and ensure that the people of the potentially richest region in the world (the Middle East) are kept in poverty. More.

Making the case for United Nations intervention against the United States, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami told the organization yesterday that military action will be "unavoidable" unless the U.S. agrees to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.

In a much-anticipated speech to a special session of the U.N. General Assembly held in Brussels, Khatami launched a blistering attack against American leader George W. Bush, accusing him of defying U.N. resolutions and using his country's wealth to line the pockets of wealthy cronies at a time when the people of his country make do without such basic social programs as national health insurance.

"Nearly two years ago, the civilized world watched as this evil and corrupt dictator subverted the world's oldest representative democracy in an illegal coup d'ªtat," said Khatami. "Since then the Bush regime has continued America's systematic repression of ethnic and religious minorities and threatened international peace and security throughout the world. Thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Basic civil rights have been violated. This rogue state has flouted the international community on legal, economic and environmental issues. It has even ignored the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war by denying that its illegal invasion of Afghanistan--which has had a destabilizing influence throughout Central Asia--was a war at all." More.

Peace groups say they are gearing up against the Bush administration's growing war efforts, with plans for leaflets, rallies, marches and political lobbying. They intend to be loud, and they intend to be everywhere.

For now, the aim is to have successively more intense rallies from one end of the nation to the other, culminating with giant demonstrations around Oct. 7, the anniversary of the date that U.S. forces began bombing Afghanistan.

But organizers are looking toward the long term -- doing everything they can to keep their country from going to war in the Middle East, and to make the government stick to diplomatic attempts to tamp down threats like Saddam Hussein.

"Bush's speech to the U.N. was the line in the sand," said Medea Benjamin, founding director of Global Exchange, a national anti-war group based in San Francisco. "Since Sept. 11, people were very cautious about the way they were judging the Bush administration, but then came the call for an unprovoked war in Iraq in violation of everything from our own Constitution to the U.N. charter -- and that was it." More.

Indeed, the fact that the greatest opposition to the war is centered in the military brass, the source of the most damaging leaks of the administration's battle plans--as well as in the upper reaches of the State Department and among the foreign policy veterans of the first Bush administration--has made the hawks extremely sensitive to the question of their own military service, or, rather, lack of it.

"It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know anything about war," observed Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican Vietnam veteran whose skepticism about an Iraqi adventure has made him persona non grata to the neoconservatives who are leading the charge, now popularly called Chicken Hawks. More.

Surely he isn't saying that Saddam Hussein has developed intercontinental ballistic missiles, and thus poses a threat to American lives. For months we have heard the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" repeated like a mantra by the War Party, but they almost never tell us where these weapons, if they exist, will be aimed: not at New York, or Chicago, or even Riyadh and Amman, but at Israel.

So, we must go to war to save Israeli lives: that, in so many words unspoken, is what the President is saying. More.

When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf - to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait - part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.

Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid-September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.

But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border - just empty desert...

"That [Iraqi buildup] was the whole justification for Bush sending troops in there, and it just didn't exist," Ms. Heller says. Three times Heller contacted the office of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney (now vice president) for evidence refuting the Times photos or analysis - offering to hold the story if proven wrong.

The official response: "Trust us." To this day, the Pentagon's photographs of the Iraqi troop buildup remain classified. More.

A year ago today, Americans were stunned by a brutal attack that revealed deep resentment against US power. America - from a pinnacle of military, economic, and political might unmatched in history - responded with force. In what it has cast as a battle between good and evil, the US toppled the Taliban and is now threatening 'regime change' in Iraq. But Americans see their global role differently from the way others see it. So the Monitor asked people in 16 countries this question: 'Is America the good guy?' More.

As the Bush administration debates going to war against Iraq, its most hawkish members are pushing a sweeping vision for the Middle East that sees the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq as merely a first step in the region's transformation.

The argument for reshaping the political landscape in the Mideast has been pushed for years by some Washington think tanks and in hawkish circles. It is now being considered as a possible US policy with the ascent of key hard-liners in the administration - from Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith in the Pentagon to John Hannah and Lewis Libby on the vice president's staff and John Bolton in the State Department, analysts and officials say.

The United States is knowingly violating Article 54 of the Geneva Convention which prohibits any country from undermining "objects indispensable to the survival of (another country's) civilian population," including drinking water installations and supplies, says Thomas Nagy, a business professor at George Washington University. More.

Amid the elegies for the dead and the ceremonies of remembrance, seditious questions intrude: Is there really a war on terror; and if one is indeed being waged, what are its objectives?

The Taliban are out of power. Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, blooms once more in Afghan pastures. The military budget is up. The bluster war on Iraq blares from every headline. On the home front the war on the Bill of Rights is set at full throttle, though getting less popular with each day as judges thunder their indignation at the unconstitutional diktats of Attorney General John Ashcroft, a man low in public esteem.

Too bad it never happened. The babies in the incubator story is a classic example of how easy it is for the public and legislators to be mislead during moments of high tension. It's also a vivid example of how the media can be manipulated if we do not keep our guards up.

The invented story eventually broke apart and was exposed. (I first saw it reported in December of 1992 on CBC-TV's Fifth Estate - Canada's "60 Minutes" - in a program called "Selling the War." The show later won an international Emmy.) But it's been 10 years since it happened, and we again find ourselves facing dramatic decisions about war. It is instructive to look back at what happened, in order that we do not find ourselves deceived again, by either side in the issue. More.

Though members had been participating in vigils since last October, when the bombing of Afghanistan began, many expressed qualms about marching into the thick of their hometown's annual patriotic celebration. But fifty activists showed up on the Fourth and got the surprise of their political lives. Along the mile-and-a-half parade route through downtown Greensboro, they were greeted mostly with applause, and, at the end of their march, they were honored by parade organizers for "Best Interpretation of the Theme." More

Three Democratic U.S. congressmen said on Sunday from Baghdad that Iraq would provide unfettered access to U.N. inspectors, but Republican senators were skeptical.

Congress is expected to begin debate this week on a resolution giving President Bush ( news - web sites) the power he wants to attack Iraq. Some Democrats want the Republican Bush to exhaust diplomatic measures before going to war, and to limit the president's war powers.

With the November U.S. mid-term elections looming, Iraq has stolen the national spotlight from the sluggish economy and other troublesome domestic issues.

Democratic Representatives Jim McDermott of Washington, Mike Thompson of California and David Bonior of Michigan, in Iraq to assess the humanitarian situation, said Baghdad should be allowed to comply with U.N. demands without the looming threat of U.S. military action. More.

Lawmakers have yet to settle differences about the threat posed by Iraq and how to confront it, despite White House hopes Congress soon will pass a resolution authorizing military force to topple Saddam Hussein.

Republicans and Democrats appearing on the Sunday talk shows said they hoped a resolution would win overwhelming support, even as they sparred over the United Nations' role and the severity of the threat from the Iraqi president.

GOP lawmakers, lining up behind President Bush, said it is unlikely that Saddam will allow inspectors unfettered access to search for weapons of mass destruction.

"He is not going to allow them back in, because he has these weapons and materials and laboratories and he isn't about to give them up," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Democrats, including House members visiting Baghdad, urged the Bush administration to work closely with the United Nations and to let inspectors resume their work.

"You don't start out by putting the gun to their head and saying we're going to shoot you if you blink," said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., speaking from Iraq. More.

African-Americans in Congress are emerging as a key center of opposition to President Bush's push for war with Iraq.

Although it cannot stop congressional approval of a resolution paving the way for war, the 38-member Congressional Black Caucus issued a joint statement Thursday cautioning against what many members see as a headlong rush into the use of military force.

One of the highest-profile members of the caucus, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., accuses Bush of ignoring the nation's pressing needs for health care, education and environmental protection to focus instead on a unilateral military campaign against Iraq.

"We cannot look to our president to address these problems," Lewis said in a speech scheduled for delivery today at Howard University here. "He is too busy pounding the drums of war." More.

Democrats said on Saturday that even as the nation prepared for a possible war with Iraq, lawmakers should not ignore the challenges facing the U.S. economy and pressing health care issues.

"The president rightly seeks to marshal our national resolve against the purveyors of hatred and violence who have made America their target," Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey said in the weekly Democratic radio address. "But shouldn't we be equally as vigilant about attacking the economic challenges we now face?"

Torricelli, whose ethics lapses put him in a tight race for reelection, said the nation's challenges include record job losses, weak economic growth, declining business investment, falling stock prices, shrinking retirement accounts as well as rising health care costs.

He also mentioned poverty increasing for the first time in eight years, rising home foreclosure rates and budget deficits that mean lawmakers are dipping into Social Security to fund other programs.

"We have the opportunity to address these issues now," Torricelli said. "For example, guaranteed Medicare prescription drug coverage for all seniors would not only give older Americans greater security, but would place downward pressure on prescription drug prices.

As the White House and Congress debate a possible U.S. military attack against Iraq, Democrats are pushing to focus voters' attention on the economy and other domestic issues ahead of congressional elections on Nov. 5 that will determine which party controls Congress. >More.

With the U.S. Senate set to launch its debate next week on a resolution authorizing a military strike against Iraq, Sen. Edward Kennedy and other Democrats stepped up opposition on Friday to President Bush's call for a possible unilateral attack.

One of the Senate's leading liberal voices, Kennedy broke his silence on the issue in a speech saying war with Iraq could backfire by provoking the use of weapons of mass destruction, lead to a wider war in the Middle East, and weaken efforts to destroy the al Qaeda network blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. More.

AL GORE, remarkably, has stepped into a leadership vacuum and said several things that most congressional Democrats may well believe but have been too fearful to utter.

Gore, speaking Monday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, warned that unilateral action against Saddam Hussein would "severely damage" the more urgent war on terrorism and "weaken our ability to lead the world." Gore declared that the president has turned the broad reservoir of good will for America "into a deep sense of misgiving and even hostility." In a pointed dig at President George W. Bush's go-it-alone cowboy rhetoric, he added, "If you're going after Jesse James, you ought to organize the posse first." More.

A key Democrat urged the Bush administration Friday to proceed cautiously on war with Iraq as the White House continued its push for a congressional resolution of support for disarming Saddam Hussein.

Trouble brewed for the administration at the United Nations, as well. There, a tough resolution prepared by the United States and Britain to threaten Iraq faces stiff opposition from France, Russia and China, who hold veto power in the U.N. Security Council. More.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle accused President Bush on Wednesday of playing politics with the debate over war in Iraq, and demanded the commander in chief "apologize to the American people." More.

Congressional Democrats uneasy with what they view as a precipitous move toward war are trying to come up with alternatives to President Bush's request for broad powers to eliminate the threats posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Opposition to the draft resolution that Bush sent to Congress on Thursday, under which Congress would authorize him to use all appropriate means to disarm Iraq, range from the party's most liberal to some of its moderate, pro-defense members.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi ( news, bio, voting record) of California, the House's second-ranked Democrat, said Monday she didn't think Democrats would offer a single alternative to the Bush proposal. Her party, she said, was working on a number of different approaches she hoped would become a part of the resolution Congress finally votes on.

"They're talking now about liberation. Those are troublesome words," Pelosi said. "Certainly the American people are averse to our taking unilateral action." More.

Senior Republican Party officials say the prospect of at least two more weeks of Congressional debate on Iraq is allowing their party to run out the clock on the fall election, blocking Democrats as they try to seize on the faltering economy and other domestic concerns as campaign issues.

At the same time, Republicans said that as they entered the final six weeks of contests in which control of Congress is at stake, they did not want to be perceived as exploiting the talk of war for political gain. They said they were urging candidates not to do anything that might give Democrats ammunition to turn the war issue against them.

The emerging dynamic has produced growing if quiet optimism among Republicans that they will be able to turn back the Democratic drive to take control of the House, if only because Democrats are running out of time to make their case.

Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who once led his party's campaign arm in the Senate, said, "I do believe the issue of terrorism and Iraq will be very much on the mind of voters going in to Election Day."

Tony Blair's "dossier" on Iraq is a shocking document. Reading it can only fill a decent human being with shame and outrage. Its pages are final proof ³ if the contents are true ³ that a massive crime against humanity has been committed in Iraq. For if the details of Saddam's building of weapons of mass destruction are correct ³ and I will come to the "ifs" and "buts" and "coulds" later ³ it means that our massive, obstructive, brutal policy of UN sanctions has totally failed. In other words, half a million Iraqi children were killed by us ³ for nothing.

This terrible conclusion is the only moral one to be drawn from the 16 pages that supposedly detail the chemical, biological and nuclear horrors that the Beast of Baghdad has in store for us. It's difficult, reading the full report, to know whether to laugh or cry. The degree of deceit and duplicity in its production speaks of the trickery that informs the Blair government and its treatment of MPs.

Here is one example of the dishonesty of this "dossier". On page 45, we are told ³ in a long chapter about Saddam's human rights abuses ³ that "on March 1st, 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, riots (sic) broke out in the southern city of Basra, spreading quickly to other cities in Shia-dominated southern Iraq. The regime responded by killing thousands". What's wrong with this paragraph is the lie is in the use of the word "riots". These were not riots. They were part of a mass rebellion specifically called for by President Bush Jnr's father and by a CIA radio station in Saudi Arabia. The Shia Muslims of Iraq obeyed Mr Bush Snr's appeal. And were then left to their fate by the Americans and British, who they had been given every reason to believe would come to their help. No wonder they died in their thousands. But that's not what the Blair "dossier" tells us...

If these pages of trickery are based on "probably" and "if", we have no business going to war. If they are all true, we murdered half a million Iraqi children. How's that for a war crime? More.

President Jacques Chirac appeared to dismiss Britain's Iraq dossier yesterday, saying he still had "no proof, only indications" that Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction.

"That is one reason why I want UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq and verify if there are weapons of mass destruction," the French leader said, adding that he believed war was still avoidable and was in any case "always the worst solution".

"We believe we should give peace a chance," Mr Chirac said. He reiterated France's position that the crisis "must be treated in a UN framework" to ensure "unconditional return of inspectors". More.

The United Nations is likely to throw into disarray America's war plans for Iraq by introducing a timetable for weapons inspections that could give Saddam Hussein a breathing space of almost 12 months.

The extended timetable, which would allow the inspectors first to deploy in Iraq and then to begin and complete their complicated mission, could exhaust the patience of Washington, which envisages attacking the country much earlier, probably in February. Yesterday the Bush administration asked Congress to endorse the military option before the UN makes its move.

President Bush "reserves the right to act in the interests of the United States and its friends and allies", his spokesman said.

Such a disavowal of the United Nations by the United States would spell both war and diplomatic disaster for the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who helped to persuade Washington to bring the crisis back under the UN's umbrella. Britain's global influence depends largely on its permanent seat at an effective and respected UN Security Council. The organisation will be shunted into irrelevance, diplomats fear, if President Bush unilaterally goes to war. More.

A key piece of evidence in the Bush administration's case against Iraq is being challenged in a report by independent experts who question whether thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes recently sought by Iraq were intended for a secret nuclear weapons program.

The White House last week said attempts by Iraq to acquire the tubes point to a clandestine program to make enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. But the experts say in a new report that the evidence is ambiguous, and in some ways contradicts what is known about Iraq's past nuclear efforts.

The report, from the Institute for Science and International Security, also contends that the Bush administration is trying to quiet dissent among its own analysts over how to interpret the evidence. The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, was authored by David Albright, a physicist who investigated Iraq's nuclear weapons program following the 1991 Persian Gulf War as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspection team. The institute, headquartered in Washington, is an independent group that studies nuclear and other security issues. More.

he has been very vocal about what really led to UNSCOM's failure to complete its mission ¤ a failure Ritter largely blames on Washington ¤ and how weapons' inspectors must be allowed back in to avert what will certainly be a brutal, bloody war. He insists that, if the Bush administration has evidence showing that Saddam is building nukes, then the American people have a right to see it before they sacrifice their lives.

So, naturally, CNN talking head Miles O'Brien on Sunday questioned Ritter on his loyalty.

"As an American citizen, I have an obligation to speak out when I feel my government is acting in a manner, which is inconsistent with the ¤ with the principles of our founding fathers," said Ritter. "It's the most patriotic thing I can do."

Not in this climate. Not when there's the ironically named U.S.A. Patriot Act which abrogates civil rights. Not when those who criticize the administration are considered to be "with the terrorists." Not when the U.S. media let President George Bush's advisers ¤ who, with the exception of Secretary of State Colin Powell, have never served their country as Ritter has ¤ gallop all over the airwaves. More.

Iraq is incapable of producing weapons of mass destruction and should prove it by allowing in U.N. weapons inspectors, an American who was once on the inspections teams said Sunday.

With his comments during a visit to Baghdad, Scott Ritter - who has been a sharp critic of U.S. policy on Iraq - joined a long list of officials from European and Arab nations who have urged Iraq to accept inspectors to defuse a crisis with the United States. More.

The decorated ex-Marine is used to the hostility. Once branded as a CIA agent by Saddam Hussein because he often surprised Iraqi intelligence with aggressive, no-notice inspections, Ritter claims he survived three assassination attempts during his days as a U.N. weapons inspector there.

He resigned his U.N. post in 1998, publicly scolding the Clinton administration for undermining efforts to root out Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. A registered Republican, he voted for George Bush in 2000. But his 1999 book "Endgame: Solving the Iraqi Problem Once and for All" (Simon & Schuster will reissue the book next month) has since alienated many Republicans and Bush supporters because it advocates a diplomatic solution to the Iraqi standoff. More.

Thoughts

"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism." Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is from Isthmus, April 3, 1992, apparently a newspaper or magazine published in Madison, Wisconsin. "Pull the Plug!" was reprinted in the Winter 1992 issue of "S.E.T. Free: The Newsletter Against Television." Pull the Plug! by Gar Smith In the final analysis, the smartest way to save energy and promote a healthy and wise planet is to unplug the television set completely. A recent study by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst suggests that exposure to television not only subjects viewers to electromagnetic radiation, it also induces measurable amounts of stupidity. Researchers found that the longer test subjects watched TV coverage of the Iraq war, the more they supported the war but the less informed they became. Pro-war couch potatoes were twice as likely as critics to claim (incorrectly) that Kuwait was a democracy; only 31% knew that Israel had an army of occupation in neighboring territories; only 3% were cognizant of Syria's occupation of Lebanon; and only 2% recalled that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait had been prompted by Kuwait's lowering of oil prices and theft of oil drilled from wells in Iraqi territory. In the words of the researchers, "We discovered that the correlation between TV watching and knowledge was a negative one."		We discovered that the correlation between TV watching and knowledge was a negative one. Researchers found that the longer test subjects watched TV coverage of the Iraq war, the more they supported the war but the less informed they became. ...only 2% recalled that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait had been prompted by Kuwait's lowering of oil prices and theft of oil drilled from wells in Iraqi territory.