Myths of the War on Terrorism and Iraq

http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/myths.html

Portuguese version: http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/mythport.html

By Pip Wilson; Researched by Jeannine Wilson* and Pip Wilson  
February 8, 2003

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Begin it now.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe[1] (1749-1832)  

Font irregularities courtesy MS Front Page 2000 (sorry folks, I tried for hours to fix them)

© Pip Wilson, updated February 28, 2003
 

May be forwarded or reproduced in not-for-profit ways, in its entirety – in fact I encourage it (and fast!), but only reprinted commercially with the written permission of Pip Wilson, Wilson’s Almanac, http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com

Introduction
Do you sometimes feel that we are not being told everything by those who are leading us all into war? Do you feel that perhaps we are even being told lies?
  I’m reminded of Detective Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) in the 1960 thriller, Psycho. Faced with conundrums aplenty, he says, “If it doesn’t gel, it ain’t aspic. And this ain’t gelling”. That’s how this feels.
  Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein might be guilty as hell. All I know is that the week the Enron scandal broke in the USA was the week that Bush turned his attention from the former to the latter, and it seems that the media followed like a pack of hounds. It sure ain’t aspic.
  I felt it necessary to jot down some of the things that don’t gel for me. I do not pretend to have the answers. I’m just glad I have questions, because our media seem to have fallen strangely dumb. Read also what Firas Al-Atraqchi has written about the bin Laden tape that Colin Powell said showed a link between bin Laden and Hussein – in translation from the Arabic it actually shows the exact opposite, that bin Laden calls for Hussein’s death, but CNN and Powell kept that from the world.
Pip Wilson

  Skip the myths,
what can one person do?

Myth: War is the only way to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
Comment: War is always a sign of a failure of human imagination and a loss of faith in human ingenuity. It should not just be the course of last resort, but the course of absolute last resort. On the whole, the global community has not been persuaded that all options have been tried. War is futile. “War is a vestige of our common ancestry with the apes, one that we can deliberately shed as surely as that vestigial, unnecessary organ, the appendix. But we need to be seriously dedicated to the task, and we need to commit serious resources to it.” [2] (Whether war is, in fact, related to our genetic heritage, is a moot point.)
  There are still many things that could be tried; let us consider one that, while imaginative, is not fanciful. A sum of money equivalent to the US military budget (approximately one trillion dollars), could be applied to an international quest for solutions to this particular problem (which might end up costing more than a trillion dollars and let loose weapons that might kill and maim hundreds of thousands of people). Only the most cynical of people could be sure that the certainty of such a quest’s failure would outweigh the enormity of its alternative. We do not teach our children to bully, but to reason, for we know that reason and not playground fights are to the advantage of all.
  Imagine for a moment how effective a reward one trillion dollars would be for Saddam Hussein to be delivered to an international court. Such a concept is outside the purview of politicians who think in obsolete modes.
  Weapons of mass destruction are more likely to be eliminated by negotiations, containment and treaties than by their use, as history has shown. The Soviet Union was not brought undone by nuking Moscow, but by these methods. Regrettably, on several occasions recently, US administration officials have publicly indicated that nuclear weapons might be used against Iraq. Such an unthinkable action would not only release toxins into the air we all breathe, it would also be similar to provoking a hornet’s nest with a stick, and much more terrorism can be expected. The most elementary mind can see that almost no conceivable circumstance on Planet Earth could justify the use of nuclear weapons, which have been roundly condemned by so many of the great thinkers of the last few decades, including many scientists who helped create them. We must let our politicians know that nuclear war talk is entirely unacceptable to humanity.

Myth: In the Gulf War of 1991, the Iraqi people were largely protected because America used ‘smart bombs’ that hit buildings and similar military targets accurately
Comment: That is how the media presented it to us, as they were managed very carefully by the US military and its public relations machine, as the George Bush Sr administration intended not to have another situation like Vietnam in which the American voters became affected by negative reporting of that war.
  In fact, 70 per cent of the 88,500 tons of bombs dropped on Iraq and Kuwait – the equivalent of more than seven Hiroshimas – completely missed their targets, falling on civilian populations.[3]
  Estimates of the numbers of people (men, women and children) killed by the coalition forces are generally in the hundreds of thousands. The lowest would seem to be General ‘Stormin’’ Norman Schwarzkopf’s 100,000.[4]
  According to a UN World Health Organization (WHO) report[5], as many as half a million civilian casualties are to be expected in the invasion of Iraq now being planned.[6]
   Non-governmental agencies, such as Oxfam[7], dealing with the tragic humanitarian crisis[8] caused in Iraq by the Western sanctions[9], report similar projections for human misery should Iraq be invaded.

Myth: At least not many Western coalition soldiers suffered in the war
Comment: “As of May 2002, the Gulf War casualties include 8,306 veterans dead and 159,705 veterans injured or ill as a consequence of wartime service to our nation.[10] The official May 2002 Department of Veteran Affairs report classifies 168,011 individuals as ‘disabled veterans’. That reflects a staggering casualty rate of 29.3 per cent for combat-related duties between 1990 and 1991.”  Doctor Doug Rokke, quoting US government figures.[11]

Myth: The war in Afghanistan produced few casualties
Comment: Casualties were not low by any stretch of the imagination, and number in the thousands of innocent civilians – an estimated 2.6 civilians per ten tons of bombs[12]. More information is coming to hand all the time.[13]

Myth: The coalition forces in the Gulf War of 1991 acted honourably at all times
Comment: The Clark Commission, which investigated the Gulf war, chaired by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark[14], heard how US pilots massacred thousands of Palestinians, Bangladeshis, Sudanese, Egyptians and other nationals towards the end of the war.

Myth: In the Gulf War, CNN and other news agencies told the public in the West what was going on, honestly and thoroughly
Comment: The US military, with the aid of huge transnational public relations (PR) corporations, confined journalists away from the true events of the war. The media organizations themselves were largely compliant with this manipulation, and still are today
  Journalist John Pilger has written, “Unknown to journalists, in the last two days before the cease-fire, American armoured bulldozers were ruthlessly deployed, mostly at night, burying Iraqis alive in their trenches, including the wounded. Six months later New York Newsday disclosed that three brigades of the 1st Mechanised Infantry Division - ’The Big Red One’ - used snow plows mounted on tanks and combat earth movers to bury thousands of Iraqi soldiers – some alive – in more than 70 miles of trenches”.[15] This massacre of retreating Iraqi soldiers lives in military infamy as the ‘Highway of Death’.[16]

Myth: CNN has nothing to gain by being pro-war or compliant with military PR
Comment: CNN was scarcely known in global infotainment until the Gulf War, then it was a household word almost overnight. Following are examples of CNN-related personnel whose careers and bank accounts were hugely boosted by the Gulf War: stockholders, executives, editors, chiefs-of-staff, journalists, camera crew, on-air presenters and anchor-people, and so on. A similar situation exists today: war is excellent for journalism, even when it has been co-opted by the military. CNN is notorious amongst serious journalists for its sloppy journalism and pro-aggression politics.[17]

Myth: We can trust the media to tell us the truth about the war
Comment: Media corporations – which today are huge and powerful[18] –  rely on advertising, and some of their biggest advertisers have vested interests not only in Iraq, but in an Iraqi war. For example, that ‘family company’, Eastman Kodak, supplied Saddam Hussein with rockets, and Honeywell provided Iraq’s regime with sophisticated computer equipment.[19] Other household names, like Sperry, Dupont and Unisys, to name but a few, helped armed Saddam Hussein.[20] Oil companies, aviation companies, chemical companies, vehicle companies – big advertisers – all have dirty hands over Iraq, but you have to dig for the data.[21]
  I am sometimes asked, “Why do we not hear these things of which you speak?” When almost all of what we “hear” comes from advertising-reliant media, how can one answer this question in any way apart from raising an eyebrow?[22]
  US President George W Bush’s January, 2003 State of the Union address, which was markedly bellicose, was a case in point. CNN’s coverage was gushingly in favour of his every word. Various commentators were employed to discuss the speech, but not one of them represented a view that was against invasion of Iraq.[23]
  Furthermore, the Gulf War of 1991 and the current planned war, have been media-managed by huge public relations firms as well as the US military’s own huge PR machine.[24] Executives of the large PR firm, Hill & Knowlton[25] (the public relations firm hired by Citizens for a Free Kuwait, the Kuwaiti government front group that lobbied Congress for military intervention), were involved in arranging for a speech to be made by a 15-year-old girl, ‘Nariyah’, to the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990. To the caucus she told of being an eyewitness to babies in hospital incubators being killed by Iraqi soldiers. Even Amnesty International, normally an excellent organization, swallowed the story, which goes to show how scientific and persuasive PR is today. ‘Nariyah’ played a significant role in turning public opinion towards the George Bush Sr administration’s war plans.
  ‘Nariyah’ turned out to be the daughter of Kuwait’s Ambassador to the United States, and Congress had been conned by PR. The Congressional Human Rights Foundation was actually housed in Hill & Knowlton's Washington headquarters.[26]
  Other clients of Hill & Knowlton have included Turkey and the former dictatorship of Indonesia, when both were at the height of human rights abuses.[27]
 

Myth: At least the Gulf War wasn’t a nuclear war
Comment: The US fired an estimated 944,000 rounds of Depleted Uranium (DU) ammunition in 
Iraq and Kuwait. Cancer and leukemia victims are the human tragedy of this ammunition.[28] 
  Senior members of the Bush Administration have made thinly veiled threats that nuclear weapons 
could be used against Iraq in the future.

Myth: Iraq is a big, oil-rich country that presents a threat to the west in general, and the USA in particular
Comment: Iraq does indeed have vast oil reserves. However, it is a poor nation, especially when compared to Western nations such as the USA..
  The GDP of the United States is $10,082,000,000,000 ($10.82 trillion).  The GDP of Iraq is $59,000,000,000 ($59 billion).  The GDP of the United States is 174 times bigger than the GDP of Iraq.
  The population of the United States is 280,562,489.  The population of Iraq is 24,001,816.  The United States has 11.7 times more people than Iraq.[29]

Myth: This surely isn’t about oil; America has plenty of its own
Comment: America produces about 8 million barrels of oil a day[30], but consumes about 20 million barrels a day. Because of its citizens’ consumer lifestyle, just one country of 190 causing more than 25 per cent of the world’s oil consumption, it is dependent upon 12 million barrels per day from outside its own borders, and increasingly so.[31] The Bush administration is attempting to allow oil wells in National Park wilderness in Alaska[32], but public and political opposition to this, on the grounds of protecting the environment, has been great, so Alaskan oil is an unreliable possibility for future consumption.
  The Chairman of British Petroleum (BP) recently in public bemoaned the fact that in a post-invasion Iraq, the spoils would go to America, and BP and other corporations would be disadvantaged.
  War will be profitable to some rich people in your neighbourhood, as in mine. Oil is at the heart of it, as we in the West are addicted to it.[33]

Myth: Iraq is a major nuclear threat
Comment: Even the UN weapons inspectors and Iraq’s detractors agree that Iraq has not one nuclear weapon. By comparison, the USA has approximately 10,000, and numerous other countries are nuclear armed already: Russia, India, Pakistan, France, Great Britain and Ariel Sharon’s[34] Israel being examples. The United States is the only country in world history to have used nuclear weapons. Senior US administration officials have stated that they are considering the use of nuclear weapons against Iraq, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2003[35], and in many other media worldwide.

Myth: Iraq has defied the world by creating chemical and biological weapons
Comment: No sane person could condone Iraq’s possession of these weapons of mass destruction, but they did not defy the international community by making them – and UN inspectors are still trying to find some evidence they exist.
  At the end of the Gulf War, the Kurds of northern Iraq were encouraged by the USA to rise up against Hussein. When they did so, the USA did not come to their aid, as the Kurds had been promised; as they feared, Hussein systematically destroyed thousands of their villages (almost every village in the north), and used poison gas against many people. At the time, the USA did not condemn Iraq for this atrocity but, according to the New York Times, actually helped Saddam Hussein.[36] In fact, according to a US Senate investigation the capability for making the weapons came from the United States.[37]
  It should be noted that many other nations also have these terrible weapons: the USA used chemical weapons in Vietnam, notably napalm and Agent Orange.

Myth: Iraq has acted badly and Western coalition nations have acted well
Comment: UNICEF reported (August 1999) that the under-five mortality rate in Iraq has more than doubled since the imposition of sanctions.[38]
  Western nations and their corporations have been instrumental in arming Saddam Hussein and supplying him with chemicals and biological agents (as affirmed by President Clinton). Donald Rumsfeld, America’s Secretary of Defense, was formerly involved in this disgrace.[39]  

Myth: In 1998, Saddam Hussein expelled UN weapons inspectors from Iraq, because they found weapons of mass destruction
Comment: Richard Butler, head of the UN inspection team, withdrew the team on his own accord, and the next day the USA commenced a bombing raid on Iraq. (Tellingly, Butler marched with about 300,000 others in the big Sydney rally and spoke in the media most vehemently against the war, in Sydney on February 15, 2003.) [40]

Myth: Saddam Hussein is preparing to attack the USA
Comment: No one knows what is in the head of Saddam Hussein. Certainly, if he was planning do such a thing, the CIA would have recordings by now, considering the highly sophisticated digital equipment and satellites at their disposal. However, such a ‘smoking gun’ has not been forthcoming. There are many good reasons to believe that he has no plans to attack America or arm proxies to do so. Journalist Michael Elvin considers questions about Hussein’s intentions:
 “Are these scenarios realistic? They presuppose first that he has something he will gain by doing this, and second that the US will buckle under and somehow fail to deploy an arsenal the likes of which the world has never seen before.”[41]
 

Myth: Saddam Hussein is arming Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist organization
Comment: We simply do not know this, and if Western politicians knew for sure, we would know it. There is no evidence of this that has been produced, yet such evidence should not be difficult for Great Britain and the USA, with their vast intelligence resources, to discover. In fact, officials from Iraq are adamant that their party and al-Qaeda do not share the same ideology. Like Christianity and Communism, Islam has many different and even opposing strands. It is impossible to know all the details, but it might be that the notion of Hussein arming bin Laden is as preposterous as Stalin arming Trotsky, who was also Communist, but his mortal ideological enemy.[42]
  Moreover, it does not seem likely that a poor nation surrounded by rich nation aggressors would part with his weapons at such a time. This is not to deny the evil of Hussein’s regime, nor its potential for causing damage to regional security. However, this is true of many nations that are not being invaded. Libya, for example has just been elected unopposed to the Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights.[43]
  Importantly, on February 5, 2003, the prestigious BBC News reported they had seen a leaked document from British intelligence that denies the Iraq-al-Qaeda link that Powell alleged at the UN Security Council meeting on February 7. The New York Times reported that there is division in US intelligence agencies over the same matter.[44]
  Even more strikingly, a translation of the Osama bin Laden audiotape referred to by Colin Powell on Tuesday, February 10, 2003, was not what Powell and CNN tried to convince the world In fact, it shows that bin Laden actually calls for the killing of Hussein![45]

Myth: When a nation defies United Nations resolutions, they should be invaded and forced to comply
Comment: No nation that now intends to invade Iraq has applied this dictum to the nation of Israel, which for decades, by its illegal occupation of Palestine, has defied many significant UN resolutions.[46] American allies such as Morocco and Turkey[47] flout UN resolutions, but their citizens and those of Israel appear in no imminent danger of a superpower conflagration.  
 

Myth: The Hans Blix[48] weapons inspection team progress report[49] of January, 2003, condemned Iraq for its weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s opposition to assisting his team
Comment: The report of Mr Blix’s United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC)[50] did no such thing. Most media reports sounded like the journalists had not even read it, which might well have been the case. While not exonerating Iraq, Blix made a point of stating that Iraq had been very helpful. In fact, Blix took issue with what he said were US Secretary of State Colin L Powell’s claims that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent their discovery. He said that the inspectors had reported no such incidents.[51]
  Colin Powell’s speech before the Security Council of the United Nations on February 5, 2003[52], which supposedly presents reasons for this massive war, is so unpersuasive as to be risible. Mr Powell seems to want to us believe that a water pistol is a smoking gun. Saddam Hussein, we all know, is a monster, like many dictators in the world today. However, no evidence has been given that indicates he is a danger to anyone but the benighted inmates of Iraq.
    It is worth noting that President Bush has been planning the invasion for quite some time, long before Hans Blix appeared on the scene.[53] Sad to relate, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and other senior Bush administration officials have repeatedly said that the forthcoming invasion will not be determined by any evidence reported by Blix’s team.[54] No evidence is evidence; heads we invade, tails you get invaded.

Myth: In December, 2002, the USA demanded from Iraq a complete written survey of Iraq’s military capabilities. Iraq was slow to comply, and when the report was received, UN members condemned it for the weapons of mass destruction it revealed
Comment: Iraq handed over a 12,000-page report to the UN, but America commandeered it (much to the dismay of many other nations in the UN). To do so, it had to obtain the permission of the tiny nation of Colombia, which in December, 2002 was the President of the UN Security Council. The USA released only 3,000 of these pages; most UN nations, including major powers such as Germany (which opposes unilateral US action against Iraq), were not privy to the contents of the missing 75 per cent of Iraq’s document.[55]

Myth: Saddam Hussein is deliberately making things difficult for the USA, much like the Taliban did when it would not hand over Osama bin Laden
Comment: Many people have forgotten that the Taliban dictatorship of Afghanistan consistently offered to hand bin Laden over to a neutral third country for trial in the World Court if damning evidence about his role in the September 11, 2001 outrage were provided.[56] Just as consistently, President George W Bush refused to give Afghanistan’s rulers a ‘smoking gun’, and he is repeating that formula in the case of Iraq: the formula implies that war plans have not been related to the casus belli (ostensible cause for war) in either case. Ulterior motives must be suspected.
  The fact that many have forgotten the Taliban’s offer is, no doubt, a consequence of the negligible reporting that it received in mainstream media, which was as gung-ho to invade Afghanistan as it is to invade Iraq.
  It must be remembered that bin Laden consistently denied responsibility for 9/11[57],[58], although it is quite usual for terrorist groups to glory in their crimes. The Taliban also claimed that bin Laden could not have been involved in the terror attacks because there is no flight training school in Afghanistan and because the regime had cut off bin Laden's communications with the rest of the world.[59]
  One cannot conclude whether al-Qaeda performed the outrage or not, because to this day the Bush administration expects you and me to take it on trust. Osama bin Laden might or might not be the culprit, but not one shred of evidence – no ‘smoking gun’ – has yet been given you, me, nor the relatives of the victims. By what stretch of the imagination must we believe that the US administration, with the most sophisticated and highly funded intelligence agencies in the world, could not find incriminating evidence? By what stretch of the imagination must we believe that it would not flaunt a smoking gun?

Myth: Like Afghanistan, Iraq should be punished for September 11
Comment: No Iraqis or Afghans were on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.[60] They were mostly Saudi citizens. Saudi Arabia is an ally of the USA and a major source of oil for US industrial and domestic consumption, but is under no threat of invasion at the time of writing.

Myth: Neighbouring states in the Middle East fear Iraq enough to want it invaded
Comment: According to the Wall Street Journal[61], 80-90 per cent of people in Turkey, Iraq’s neighbour, NATO member, and the closest ally to the United States in the region, do not support an invasion of Iraq.

Myth: Most people in the West want this war
Comment: US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, even acknowledged that the war is unpopular even before it has begun. In January he said:
"You know what the opinion polls are in various countries," Mr. Powell acknowledged in an interview last week. "People would rather not see a war. You can look at our own opinion polls and there's, you know, there's ambivalence about it. There's more than ambivalence. People would rather not see a war."[62]
  There is a huge and growing groundswell against the war[63], but much of the media is under-reporting it. Every day there are rallies of thousands of people protesting the invasion of Iraq. This is happening in countries that are not committed to war, as well as those that are, such as Great Britain[64].
  For example, in my own small (50,000 population) and conservative-voting town of Coffs Harbour[65], Australia, on Sunday, February 1, 2003, fully 3,000 people rallied and marched against the war.[66] It was, however, not reported widely as the significant news story that it was. Rallies of tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Great Britain, the USA, and elsewhere, have scarcely made the back pages of most newspapers, many of which have been editorialising in favour of war.
  The Australian government is preparing to be part of the invasion coalition of nations, but for this its Prime Minister has been censured by the Australian Senate with a no-confidence motion supported by the other three major parties, all of which are firmly against the current plans.
  On January 18 hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated[67] against the war across much of the United States.  Almost 50 American cities[68] have passed resolutions against the war. February 15 will be a day internationally on which rallies will occur against the war. (I publish important details below, so spread the word please)[69] Even families of victims of 9/11 have been demonstrating.[70]
  Time magazine ran an informal online poll[71], asking which nation the readers considered to be the greatest threat to world peace: Iraq, North Korea, or the USA. Approximately 70 per cent, a remarkably high figure, voted for the USA. Poll after poll shows that most Westerners do not support[72] President Bush’s apparent personal obsession.
  A fast-growing movement has begun to impeach president George W Bush[73]. Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General during the Johnson Administration has drafted articles of impeachment setting forth high crimes and misdemeanors by President Bush and other civil officers of his administration.

Myth: It will be good for the economy of the USA and the world to have a war
Comment: There is a respectable, but contested, school of thought in political and economic circles that war is good for the economy, and that that is precisely why war happens so regularly. This school of thought basically says that capitalist economies require ‘booms and busts’, and war is an assured way to have a ‘boom’. However, there are very good reasons (such as to oil trafficking, and the Venezualan oil strike[74] that has seriously depleted reserves[75]) to believe that even the global economy[76] could be severely damaged by an invasion of Iraq.[77]

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Myth: It is worth giving up a few freedoms to prevent terrorism
Comment: From time immemorial, governments and regimes have used various societal fears in order to increase their own power. Many Western nations are now experiencing this phenomenon, especially since September 11, 2001. Australia’s government is progressively removing long-hallowed rights enshrined in common law, and citizens are no longer assured of the support given them by previous governments.[78]
  In the United States of America, the Total Information Awareness Office[79] part of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)[80], has been established under the leadership of convicted felon John Poindexter[81], and there are grave concerns about the massive and widespread computerized surveillance the American people may now expect as normal and usual.
 

Myth: The invasion and conquest of Iraq will help put an end to terrorism
Comment: A moment’s reflection will almost certainly reveal that the reverse case is true. While many countries and their citizens are no friends of Saddam Hussein, there is a common feeling of outrage against this war, and this is especially true in the worldwide Muslim community[82]. While most people of the Muslim faith practice Islamic values of peace and tolerance, there seems little doubt that there is a considerable number of fanatical ‘Islamists’ who do not, and for whom this war, based on the flimsiest of causes, will be an outrage worthy of retaliation.
  The commission of massive acts of terrorism does not require organizations (such as al-Qaeda). This option is available to a single disaffected and angry individual or a small band, who can cause untold grief and havoc with implements cheaply and readily obtained.

Myth: A US-led coalition will invade Saddam Hussein
Comment: Saddam Hussein is not being invaded. In a sense, it is not even Iraq, because in many ways, nations are just abstract concepts.
  It is millions of men, women and children who will be invaded. Family members who, as I write, are no doubt beginning to dig shelters in their backyards, and watch the skies for signs of raining death – the same death that took scores of thousands of their fellows not so long ago. These are mostly abjectly poor people who have already lost relatives. Even the soldiers will quite likely have been conscripted against their will, or have taken a job so they can send money to their families for food.
  We cannot afford to dehumanise and demonize the people who happen to have been born in Iraq. To do so is to lose part of our own humanity. I happen to have been born in Australia; had I been born in Iraq, I would probably think like an Iraqi. War is obsolete in the 21^st century, and bridge-building between people is the only way that you and I, as well as they, will survive. Our grandchildren depend on our wisdom at this juncture in history. I believe that Mr Bush, for all his qualities, is not exercising wisdom, but is acting like a hothead. In his passionate obsession with the man who tried to kill his Daddy, he seems to have entirely forgotten that multitudes of human beings will be his targets, and he has dragged his whole Cabinet with him. Mr Bush, this is not ‘Gunsmoke’, this is us you’re playing with.

Myth: The US-led coalition will liberate Iraq
Comment: The wrong people will probably get hold of the reins of power. There are many undesirable people waiting in the wings[83], and how can we be sure they are truly democratic? Indeed, how can we know that they are not pawns or leaders of the oil industry?
  One must ask how an occupying force led by the USA can maintain stability in Iraq. We are now witnessing the devastation being caused in most of Afghanistan (except Kabul) by the warlords who have returned to power following the American-sponsored ‘regime change’ there. As much, if not more, opium than ever is being grown, and armed bands and militias are popping up throughout that benighted country. Top-down transformation of societies does not have a good track record in world history; usually only a few rich people at the top ever benefit, and the poor get poorer.

Myth: We are powerless to stop this war
Comment: Society and nations are made of individuals. The American anthropologist, Margaret Mead, once said, “Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”[84]
  “Where can I start?” is the question that comes to most of us sooner or later. Don’t be dismayed or fearful, there is much each of us can do, and the institutions are already in well place so that we don’t need to struggle alone.
  As you are probably reading this on the Internet, you are already halfway there. The Net is the most powerful tool for peace and humanity that has ever been devised, but it is also a tool being used by negative forces, so our participation is needed today.

What can one person do?
Use the Internet to join the movement
The Internet can connect you to groups already working for peace, and they are calling out for support. Join one of these groups, help them, and make new friends. If you are a very private person, and if you prefer, you can join them and stay in the background and not socialize much if at all. But you can make a difference. If your politics are quite conservative, you will not necessarily be mixing with counterculture freaks: in the words of Rene Ciria-Cruz,  “It’s not yesterday’s Peace Movement”[85] – it is much more mainstream these days.
  Soon, Wilson’s Almanac will be publishing a directory of groups and institutions that are working for the good of humanity, but in the meantime, here’s a 5-minute way to connect and unleash that idealism that might not yet be fully realised – I am confident you have this quality or you probably would not have read this far. Here’s what to do:
  Go to http://www.google.com and type in keywords such as peace, “peace group”, and your local town. If this doesn’t deliver what you are looking for, get creative with your keywords. When you find groups that you can connect with, don’t delay – the war is scheduled for a date within a few weeks. Join up, send money or volunteer your services to do whatever you can do. Maybe it’s just to seal envelopes and lick stamps, but you will be welcome like you have never been welcome before, because things are moving very fast now and human energy is needed. Remember, the ocean is made of drops of water, and a beach is made up of grains of sand. That’s me I’m talking about – and you.

Spread the word
If you think this article might help add a grain of sand to the scales in favour of peace and humanity, I ask you to forward it. How many people are in your email address book? Please send this article on. You might help by using http://www.google.com to find radio stations, TV channels and newspapers in your town and in your state. Within most websites of these media organizations, you will soon find email addresses of individual journalists, disk jockeys and presenters. Send them this article, someone else’s article, or a personal letter explaining how you feel about the plans for a war that could turn nuclear. That is how things change in 2003.
  You could go to http://www.google.com again, and look up the names of your political representatives. Send them something like this article today, with your personal passionate (but polite) message  – their staff are counting the emails and letters they get, you’d better believe it. That is one thing that politicians do take notice of – votes and voters. Look up priests and preachers and send them things as well. Remember, their sermons reach many people at one time; maybe you can be their ‘research officer’ by sending them facts like these on this page.
  And remember, research has shown that taking part in demonstrations might be good for your health![86]

Acknowledgements
A number of people have provided information that I have used in this article. I would like especially to thank Jeannine Wilson, whose column in Wilson’s Almanac ezine (http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com), Daily Planet News, is unfailingly an essential resource for lovers of peace and this Planet Earth. Jeannine’s research forms the greater part of the citations in this article.
  The webpage, Is Iraq A Threat to the United States? by Lawrence McGuire (Dissident Voice, January 27, 2003, http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/McGuire_Iraq.htm) inspired me to write this article and provided many good ideas and links.

(Ends)

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[25] “The man running Hill & Knowlton's Washington office was Craig
Fuller, one of Bush's closest friends and inside political advisors.” Stauber, John and Rampton, Sheldon,
The Selling of the Gulf War, http://www.io.com/~patrik/gulfwar1.htm 

[28]  “DU is not only radioactive. It is a toxic heavy metal which, when penetrating armour plates of

tanks, becomes an aerosol that disperses with the wind. By some estimates, more than 300 tons blanket

the area surrounding Basra in southern Iraq.

  According to the British Guardian newspaper, the Basra maternity and pediatric hospital reported an increase 
in cancer cases from 80 in 1990 to 380 in 1997. More than half the Iraqi childhood leukaemia cases occur in 
the region, which has less then 20 percent of the country's population.”   

Casualties increase from depleted uranium, 
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/sep1999/gulf-s08_prn.shtml  

"Unborn children of the region [are] being asked to pay the highest price, the integrity of their DNA." - 
Ross B. Mirkarimi, The Arms Control Research Centre, from his report: The Environmental and Human 
Health Impacts of the Gulf Region with Special Reference to Iraq, May 1992, http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html 

Operation Northwoods  
US Joint Chiefs of Staff and State Department suggested terrorism

The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government . . . and to develop an image of a threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere … In as much as the objective is overt military intervention … both overt and covert operations [should] be assigned [to] the Joint Chiefs of Staff … Harassment and deceptive actions to convince the Cubans of imminent invasion would be emphasized. Our posture throughout execution of the plan will allow rapid change from exercise to intervention … We could develop a Cuban terror campaign … in Washington … Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue … It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate that a Cuban aircraft has shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the US to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela … It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that Communist Cuban MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack … It is understood the Department of State also is preparing suggested courses of action to develop justification for US military intervention in Cuba.
(emphasis mine)  
In March, 1962, Operation Northwoods, with the written approval of all of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were calling for a campaign of terror in the USA to be manufactured and blamed on Cuba   More  and More

Addendum, August 6, 2003
Thank you MAS for sending it in

Here are some key facts that you can quickly and easily verify on the informative website www.wanttoknow.info. You can verify each statement by using the links provided to the original articles on major media websites. These statements raise the question, "Was 9/11 allowed to happen?" This message is sent with the hope of creating a better future for all of us.


America’s top military leaders drafted plans to commit acts of terrorism in US cities to trick the public into supporting a war against Cuba in the early 1960s. [ABC, 5/1/01]
15 of the 9/11 hijackers should have been denied entry to the US for faulty visa documents. [Washington Post, 10/22/02, ABC, 10/23/02] Two top Republican senators say that if State Department personnel had merely followed the law, 9/11 would not have happened. [AP, 12/18/02]
In Oct 2000, a drill was carried out based on a hijacked plane crashing into the Pentagon. [Military District of Washington, 11/3/00] Yet after 9/11, security officials repeatedly said they were shocked that terrorists hijacked airliners and crashed them into landmark buildings. [New York Times, 10/3/01]
In the three months before 9/11, Russia, Germany, and Israel all warned the US of suicide plane hijackings against US targets. [Fox News, 5/17/02, Los Angeles Times, 9/20/01]
On Sep 10, 2001 top Pentagon officials canceled travel plans for the next day. [Newsweek, 9/24/01, fifth to the last paragraph]
Recovery experts extracted data from 32 damaged WTC (World Trace Center) computer drives revealing a surge in financial transactions on 9/11. Illegal transfers of over $100 million may have been made through WTC computer systems immediately before and during the disaster. [Reuters, 12/18/01]
Several of the 9-11 hijackers may have had training at US military installations, including lead hijacker Mohamed Atta. [Newsweek, 9/15/01, Washington Post, 9/16/01, New York Times, 9/15/01]
Bin Laden's family was taken under FBI supervision to a secret assembly point where they left the country on a private charter plane three days after the 9/11 attacks. [New York Times, 9/30/01]
Members of Congress said that the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department were not cooperating with the 9-11 inquiry. The president opposed an independent inquiry. [New York Times, 10/5/02, CBS, 5/23/02]
Big American bases set up in Afghanistan are almost identical to the projected route of the oil pipeline to go through the country. [Chicago Tribune, 3/18/02] As caring citizens, we have a responsibility to know what is going on in the world. For more on these and other eye-opening facts, go to the two-page 9/11 timeline at www.wanttoknow.info/9-11cover-up, or even better, go straight to the information-packed 10-page timeline at www.wanttoknow.info/9-11cover-up10pg. For empowering ideas on how we can create a better world, see www.wanttoknow.info/newparadigm.

Addendum, October 30, 2004

Revealed: War has cost 100,000 Iraqi lives
"The first scientific study of the human cost of the Iraq war suggests that at least 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since their country was invaded in March 2003.

"More than half of those who died were women and children killed in air strikes, researchers say. Previous estimates have put the Iraqi death toll at around 10,000 - ten times the 1,000 members of the British, American and multi-national forces who have died so far. But the study, published in [the prestigious medical journal] The Lancet, suggested that Iraqi casualties could be as much as 100 times the coalition losses. It was also savagely critical of the failure by coalition forces to count Iraqi casualties."   Source

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Who controls the media?

 

General Electric Primary military product: Jet engines Annual Sales: $1.7 billion in 1996 for military sales Primary customers: Egypt, Israel, Kuwait Famous/infamous for: Political clout as a media giant and billion-dollar arms dealer Major campaign contributions (1997-98): $1,215,550 from General Electric and related PACs

"As both a billion-dollar arms dealer and owner of the NBC network, America's General Electric is uniquely positioned to profit from the new arms race – and simultaneously to influence what the public knows about the weapons buildup.

"GE had aircraft-engine sales in excess of $2 billion during 1996. That's not an insubstantial amount – but it's only 2 percent of the corporate giant's $79.1 billion in overall sales that year ...

"GE's defense holdings, media interests, and sheer overall size give it huge political clout ..."
Geov Parrish

* Carlyle Group and Bush http://www.angelfire.com/indie/pearly/htmls/bush-carlyle.html

Read about media manipulation

Democracy, General Electric style

Bush lied on 9-11: Video Proof

The Complete 9-11 Timeline

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