Many countries have one or two days a year that indicate a national tragedy. In the U.S., December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, is labeled a "day of infamy." Almost 60 years later, September 11, 2001 surpassed December 7 as a rallying cry for U.S. solidarity.

Iraq, a country much smaller than the U.S., and never as large a player on the international scene, can claim several days of infamy: January 17, 1991 (the beginning of Desert Storm); February 14, 1991 (the destruction of the Amiryah Bomb Shelter); March 20, 2003 (the start of the U.S. illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq); and April 9, 2003, (U.S. forces enter Baghdad) among others. But, one date that gains little international attention is imbedded in the hearts and minds of most Iraqis: June 26, 1993.

On that date, the U.S. military, under the command of Bill Clinton, ordered 23 Tomahawk guided missiles to demolish the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence services, in central Baghdad. Twenty of the missiles hit the agency complex, while "only" three missed their targets.

A jubilant Clinton took to the airwaves and proclaimed victory. He was happy that only three missed their mark. One could think he was addressing the public about the score of a sporting event.

Of the three that missed, one destroyed the home of Layla al-Attar, killing her and her husband, and blinding her daughter.

Layla al-Attar was the director of the Iraqi National Art Museum and a leading Arab artist who was revered in Iraq much the same as Norman Rockwell was in the U.S. In addition, she was a spokesperson for international peace, for the inner peace of women, and for resistance against U.S. hegemony. Layla al-Attar symbolized Iraq.

When news of al-Attar’s death broke, Iraq mourned. A special person who transcended political ideology and represented all of humankind had been assassinated.

During the Gulf War, her home was almost totally destroyed by U.S. missiles. Two years later, shortly after the completion of the house’s reconstruction, an "errant" missile finished the job that its cousin had only partially performed in earlier years.

Although never proven, it is quite easy to give credence to the theory that Layla al-Attar was the target of a missile, not merely a casualty of "collateral damage" from a misguided projectile. Every Iraqi believes she was marked, but shortly after her execution, the rest of the world forgot.

Outside the Arab world, Layla al-Attar was on the verge of becoming a top international artist. European art galleries were beginning to highlight her work. In the U.S., however, she was little known. Little international outrage was heard when she was killed.

The reason behind the attack was as bogus as any given during the Bush I years. Clinton stated that information was in-hand that showed Iraqi operatives were behind an aborted assassination attempt on former President George Bush in April 1993 at a ceremony praising him in Kuwait. Clinton added that Saddam Hussein ordered the attempt on Bush’s life. At the last minute, those who were to carry out the attack were apprehended and Clinton had to teach the Iraqis a lesson.

The big lie still persisted. Those arrested were merely drug and alcohol smugglers. In the aftermath of the June 26 missile attack, one-by-one the mythical would-be assassins were released from Kuwaiti jails, but, the U.S. media did not consider this information newsworthy. It was not as exciting as assassination plots and missile attacks.

On November 1, 1993, the New Yorker published an article by Seymour Hersh titled "A Case Not Closed." In it, Hersh went into detail about the entire event and basically showed there was no validity to Clinton’s claim.

Why did Clinton order this attack? At the time, Republicans and pro-war Democrats criticized him for being "weak" on Iraq and other invisible threats against the U.S. Clinton had to earn respect. What better target than Iraq, a defenseless country that was isolated because of U.S. propaganda?

According to Hersh:

Over the years, many people have uttered, "Saddam tried to kill Bush’s father," in defense of Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. In March 2008, the story took another turn as an unlikely organization admitted the plot was a hoax: the Pentagon.

The March 23, 2008 issue of Newsweek ran an article called "Saddam’s Files," written by Michael Isikoff. It stated:

Despite the Pentagon coming clean after 15 years of the public believing a myth about the nonexistent assassination attempt, not too much has changed in the perception and reporting of those times. In April 2008, weeks after the Pentagon announced the Kuwaiti hoax, the National Defense University, a quasi-government organization, published a report called Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath," written by Colonel Joseph J. Collins, a retired U.S. Army officer.

Collins seemed to be writing about a fantasy scenario of Iraq. His assessments were not accurate and at times, differed greatly from the facts. One of them stated: "Since the Republicans had last been in power, Saddam had tried to assassinate the elder Bush." No one challenged Collins’ statement, despite the Pentagon’s earlier declaration. It appears that no matter how many people debunk this lie, it has a life of its own and will go down in history as fact.

Hersh was quite right in his assessment of picking on the weak. U.S. citizens take pride in the fact that their society scorns bullies who pick on defenseless adversaries. However, they contradict their own philosophy by cheering on the murdering of foreign civilians who are the weakest prey of all.

These cowardly actions transcend political allegiances in the U.S. Obama (remember, the anti-war candidate), condemned Iran’s actions in putting down demonstrations. On June 23, 2009, he told the press, "And we deplore violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place.'' On the same day, neews headlines read, "Deadly ‘Drone Attack’ Hits Pakistan." It appears that at least 40 Pakistani civilians were killed while at a funeral. Obama ordered the strike. It seems that Pakistanis, Iraqis and Afghanis don’t count. The lies and hypocrisy of the blood thirst of U.S. politicians, and many civilians, remain unabated.

NOT GOOD ENOUGH

With all the occurrences in Iran taking the world headlines, two cover-ups have taken a back seat to Iranian affairs. Once the situation in Iran becomes more complacent (most probabily because of punitive actions that will be taken by the clerics in charge of the country), the subject of the two masquerades will still be with us, only at a lower level of publicity.

The current administrations of the U.S. and Great Britain are stonewalling the issue of lying to the public of both nations about the reasons for going to war against Iraq in 2003. On both sides of the Atlantic, despite previous statements of an open discussion, Obama and Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, are holding under wraps information that could implicate many people in blatant war crimes activities.

Obama’s excuse is a great sham. He has stopped the publication of pictures of U.S. military personnel torturing Iraqis. In addition, he has blocked the issuing of memos that would implicate many in the bogus buildup to the March 2003 invasion. In Obama’s case, he is sheltering those who have been the most outspoken critics of his administration: neocon Republicans. All the time he has been keeping Dick Cheney from public scrutiny, Cheney has made public statements condemning Obama’s security measures. If Obama ever possessed a backbone, it has surely been a victim of atrophy since he took the oath of office in January 2009.

Gordon Brown is also keeping locked a public and open inquiry into British lies that led to the U.S.-Britain alliance in destroying Iraq. The British public, press, and politicians of all parties are asking for an in-depth report on the shenanigans the British government pulled in 2002 and 2003 to con the public into mildly accepting an invasion of Iraq.

It’s great that the public of the two nations want to know the truth. But, the reason for asking for an open look at these documents seems to be off-base. Most people say that an honest look at the period will help insure that something like this does not happen again.

Jonathan Steele wrote a brilliant article on the British cover-up on June 15, 2009 called "Skewed and in Secret, this Iraqi Inquiry Is a Scandal." He gives many details of Brown’s deceit. However, he concluded:

Despite Steele’s astute reporting on the subject, I find his statement, "The wider issue is to insure that Britain enters no such ‘war of choice’ again," to be flawed. It’s time to stop using the excuse that the truth will stop future illegal and despicable ventures. The reason for such inquiries should be to prove the guilt of those who created the situation and bring them to justice. Once this occurs, future leaders will have second thoughts about illegally attacking developing nations if they think they may swing from the end of a noose.

Take the cases of Bush and Blair and their cronies who took glee in killing more than a million Iraqis and destroying the nation’s history and culture in the 2003 invasion and occupation. Many have written their memoirs and are bragging of their activities. Something seems wrong here. The killers become heroes and the victims are buried in graves.

In most Western societies, if a person persuades someone to murder a family and the truth emerges, the one who prompted the person who pulled the trigger is just as responsible as the killer. In such instances, I have yet to read where a judge tells the killer and accomplice, "Well, we all learned from this lesson. Don’t do it again." Why can the law of the land of Britain and the U.S. be different for the elected leaders?

The excuse that we may learn from the experience and think twice before doing it again is bogus. Take Grenada, then Panama, then Iraq, then Somalia, then Serbia, then Iraqi again. People of the left, after the truth emerged from each military incursion, took pride in getting the word out and then became complacent thinking it would never happen again. The difference in each instance is that not only did it happen again, but it happened on a grander scale.

The press was irate when it was kept away from Grenada for days. "Never again," said media personnel. "Never again" occurred in Panama in 1989 and then in Iraq in 1991. The press kept complaining, yet did nothing about it.

Then, in 2003, the U.S. administration said that the press would be allowed to follow the action. What occurred was worse than having no press coverage. The "imbedded" reporters had to have their stories authorized by the U.S. military before they could post them. What we read about was the heroic U.S. military taking on the Iraqi savages and teaching them a lesson. Fortunately, a few independent journalists defied the U.S. ban on un-imbedded reporters and did give us some idea of the truth. But, most of their stories were rejected by the mainstream press because the U.S. administration warned them about printing "anti-American" stories. Plus, the U.S. bombed the offices of Al-Jazeera News in Afghanistan and Iraq. This was to make an example of media outlets the U.S. did not admire.

There is no excuse for saying that the main reason for the truth to emerge is to make sure the same does not happen again. It always does.

Currently, there are a few war crimes tribunals in operation, most concerning little-known individuals from tiny African republics. They do not have the same propaganda machine as the leaders of the Western nations.

When the world has in place an organization with teeth that would indict and insure the attendance in a court room of George Bush I and II, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Madeleine Albright, Barack Obama, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and many others who are accomplices to murder, we would see a complete turnaround in military actions. Maybe war would become obsolete. But, it is more likely to continue with the status quo. The last lines of the great movie, "The Grand Illusion," by Jean Renoir say it all. Two French POWs escaped a German World War I prison camp. With Germans chasing them, they made it to the Swiss border, a neutral country. They were safe, temporarily. One asked the other what would happen and was told that they would make their way back to France and be assigned to another unit and then go back into battle. The other asked, "Wouldn’t it be nice if there was no war?" to which his comrade replied, "What are you, an illusionist?"

We are living the Grand Illusion in a much more severe way than Jean Renoir could have imagined.

Many people speak of the lies that led to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. However, a great number of people forget, or are not aware, that the same propaganda campaign preceded the 1991 destruction of Iraq by the U.S. Same lies, same story line, same results.

Former U.S. Attorney-General Ramsey Clark came about as close as anyone to bringing justice to the perpetrators of the 1991 massacre. He formed an International War Crimes Tribunal that received much publicity in the world, except in the U.S. media. Although he had a representative group of judges and witnesses, and went to great lengths to convene this Tribunal, those found guilty had to pay no price. The following is from my book, The Mother of All Battles: The Endless U.S.-Iraq War. Clark did not hold the trial to insure that the same mistakes would not occur in the future. He organized the event to call out publicly the names and crimes of those involved.

The most powerful forces in Desert Storm were not the bombs or missiles dropped on Iraq. Without firing a shot, the U.S. media ensured the country’s destruction. Their acquiescence to U.S. government demands stopped all discussion of a negotiated settlement of the crisis. Schwarzkopf said it all on the day after the cease-fire. At a press conference, he laughed as he told the journalists, "You printed everything just the way we said it."

If the media tried to find the truth, or gave both sides a chance to be heard, there is a possibility that there would not have been a Desert Storm. The U.S. public had no idea why Iraq went into Kuwait or the history of the area. To this day, because of biased media coverage, the American public, for the most part, thinks Saddam Hussein was attempting to take over the world.

During Desert Shield, the buildup to the massacre, there was much talk about impending military action. For months, we heard many voices, however, those who supported military action dominated the debate. Occasionally, an opponent of a military solution was given a chance to speak, but the message was usually negated by the moderators of radio and TV shows.

Politicians told the U.S. public outrageous lies about the situation. The press was remiss in challenging these untruths, so more and bigger lies followed. The media, the military, politicians and administration officials were exempt from having to tell the truth.

It would take thousands of pages to chronicle the deficiencies of the media in their lapdog role during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, but one portion of history was ignored by the U.S. press — former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark’s formation of a war crimes tribunal and the following trial and judgement against the U.S. government.

In February 1991, Ramsey Clark visited Iraq during the height of allied bombing. He did not see a pretty sight. Clark returned with much videotape and tales of horror of Iraq’s civilian population being bombed, despite the U.S. government’s denial. U.S. television stations did not show any videotape and Clark’s message went unheard and unseen.

Shortly after the cease-fire, Clark formed a Commission of Inquiry to travel to Iraq to see if there was enough evidence to put the U.S. government on trial for war crimes and crimes against peace. The Commission found a wealth of evidence and returned to the U.S.

For the next nine months, Clark and various members of the Commission traveled worldwide to gather further evidence of war crimes. The results were overwhelming. People came forward to give evidence of atrocities perpetrated against Iraq’s population, its military, the environment, and citizens of other countries. Whenever the Commission took evidence, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Middle East, the media of many countries were in attendance. Despite the large attendance at meetings, the U.S. media were absent.

On February 29, 1992, in New York City, the International War Crimes Tribunal convened to try George Bush, Dan Qualye, James Baker, Dick Cheney, William Webster, Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf and others on 19 charges of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and other criminal acts and high crimes. The Martin Luther King High School auditorium was filled to capacity (more than 1,500) and many others lined up outside to hear the proceedings over loudspeakers. The broadcast media of various countries carried the trial live, but, despite the attendance and international coverage, U.S. press disregarded the event.

The panel consisted of 21 people from assorted countries and it ruled on the following 19 counts:

• The U.S. engaged in a pattern of conduct beginning in or before 1989 intended to lead Iraq into provocations justifying U.S. military action against Iraq and permanent U.S. military domination of the Gulf.
• President Bush from August 2, 1990, intended to prevent any interference to his plan to destroy Iraq militarily and economically.
• President Bush ordered the destruction of facilities essential to civilian life and economic productivity in Iraq.
• The U.S. intentionally bombed and destroyed civilian life, commercial and business districts, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters, residential areas, historical sites, private vehicles and civilian government offices.
• The U.S. intentionally bombed indiscriminately throughout Iraq.
• The U.S. intentionally bombed and destroyed Iraqi personnel, used excessive force, killed soldiers seeking to surrender and in disorganized flight, often unarmed and far from any combat zones and randomly and wantonly killed Iraqi soldiers and destroyed materiel after the cease-fire.
• The U.S. used prohibited weapons capable of mass destruction and inflicting indiscriminate death and unnecessary suffering against both military and civilian targets.
• The U.S. intentionally attacked installations in Iraq containing dangerous substances and forces.
• President Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Panama resulting in the deaths of 1,000 to 4,000 Panamanians and the destruction of thousands of private dwellings, public buildings and commercial structures.
• President Bush obstructed justice and corrupted United Nations functions as a means of power to commit crimes against peace and war crimes.
• President Bush usurped the Constitutional power of Congress as a means of securing power to commit crimes against peace, war crimes and other high crimes.
• The U.S. waged war on the environment.
• President Bush encouraged and aided Shi’ite Muslims and Kurds to rebel against the government of Iraq causing fratricidal violence, emigration, exposure, hunger and sickness, and thousands of deaths. After the rebellion failed, the U.S. invaded and occupied parts of Iraq without authority in order to increase division and hostility within Iraq.
• President Bush intentionally deprived the Iraqi people of essential medicine, potable water, food and other necessities.
• The U.S. continued its assault on Iraq after the cease-fire, invading and occupying at will.
• The U.S. has violated and condoned violations of human rights, civil liberties and the U.S. Bill of Rights in the U.S., in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to achieve its purpose of military domination.
• The U.S., having destroyed Iraq’s economic base, demands reparations which will permanently impoverish Iraq and threaten its people with famine and epidemic.
• President Bush systematically manipulated, controlled, directed, misinformed and restricted press and media coverage to obtain constant support in the media for his military and political goals.
• The U.S. has by force secured a permanent military presence in the Gulf, the control of its oil resources and geopolitical domination of the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf region.

When the trial concluded, there was a verdict. According to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal:

How could a trial held in the U.S. against the U.S. government be ignored by the press? The subject alone should have piqued the media’s curiosity. The blackout was not due to lack of notice from the International War Crimes Tribunal — many press releases were sent and many phone calls were made in an attempt to gain publicity.

I tried to discover why there was a lack of coverage. First, I talked to Irv Cass, news director of Channel 39, and NBC affiliate in San Diego, California. He explained, "There could be a variety of reasons why we didn’t cover it. We get news from a variety of sources, such as AP, NBC Network and CNN."

Could AP (Associated Press), the agency from which thousands of television stations, radio stations, and newspapers gain their information be the culprit? According to Adrianne Weil Parks of the AP office in New York, the AP has a clean record on this issue. She said, "Sure. I put all their (Tribunal) stuff on the wire. Believe me, I’ve put them out."

Three major wire services (AP, UPI and Reuters) were given much information from the Tribunal. UPI admitted to receiving the information, but could not verify if it was sent over the wires. Reuters did send the story. According to Art Spiegleman of Reuters, "We sent out the story a couple of days before it (the trial) took place."

At least two of the three major wire services announced the War Crimes Tribunal, leaving the media one less excuse for not running the story. Paul Ahuja was the press director for the Tribunal. He mentioned some publications that did not cover the story because of its controversial nature. Ahuja recalled a conversation with Sidney Schanberg of Newsday in which Schanberg told him, "I can’t cover this story. I’d get fired."

The New York Times was just as squeamish. Staff at the publication told Ahuja, "This story is editorial suicide."

Ramsey Clark was critical of the press coverage of Desert Storm and the lack of coverage of the Tribunal. He said, "The press has totally defaulted. It began with Grenada." His reference of Grenada alluded to the U.S. government’s blackout of press coverage of the invasion of the island by U.S. forces in 1983. Clark added, "They (the press) complained for a while, but they soon forgot."

During Desert Storm, Clark was vocal about his opposition; however, he and many other opponents were totally shut out by the media. Clark said, "The press led the American people to celebrate a slaughter."

Clark called the media remiss in attempting to get the facts. He stated:

According to Clark, the journalists used the excuse of imminent danger for their exit. He said, "It’s like a fireman saying, ‘Hell, that’s a big fire. I’m not going in there.’"

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

The Iranian election results are in. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won. Those two sentences are about all the publicity that the election warranted.

Until about a month ago, his re-election seemed assured. Then, outside forces intervened and used creative fantasies to portray this as a great historical event. The Western press began to push his closest rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, as a reformist capable of changing Iran into a fair and just nation that would make friends with the world. Mousavi, a distant second in the polls at the time, was himself surprised at his designation as Iran’s possible savior. His views were similar to those of Ahmadinejad, and, with the subject of Iran’s nuclear program, were identical. The only difference appeared to be Mousavi’s declaration of toning down rhetoric and attempting to gain better relations with the West.

Then, the propaganda machines went into full gear. According to many media pundits, Mousavi’s victory would reverse all the negative aspects of Iran. They began affixing names and colors to the revolution. These were identical to the Western depictions of elections in Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet republics that the U.S. was courting. Even the bogus Iraqi "elections" of 2005 were designated the "purple" revolution.

With Iran, the same script writers emerged. They tried to affix a name to the occurrences in Iraq, such as the "velvet" revolution. But, I think that name had already been used.

A few days before the election, young Iranians took to the street to show their support of a new Iran. Few, however, realized that Mousavi did not include a revolution in his agenda.

In 1978 and 1979, millions of people took over the streets of Iran in an attempt to force the Shah from the country and change the government. It worked. There was jubilance, but it soon ceased for many Iranians who thought they were getting a new country based on democracy and justice. The movement included people of all political persuasions, especially those of the Iranian left. But, when the smoke cleared, Ataytollah Khomeini sat in the driver’s seat as the head of an Islamic republic. Many political activists who created the revolution were now left out in the cold. A program was quickly instituted in which thousands of pro-revolution activists, who were against the formation of a sectarian state, disappeared. Those who participated in recent street demonstrations seemed to forget the events of 30 years ago.

Now, there are theories about who would have been the better leader in terms of relations with the U.S. and Israel. This speculation is quite absurd. Ahmadinejad is the best choice for furthering the current agendas of both nations.

If Mousavi won and he toned down the language of the regime, Israel would have lost a major target to demonize. Because of this, Israel may have been forced to approach the Palestinian issue in a less harsh manner. But, with a dim-witted president who makes the occasional ridiculous public statement, Israel still has an excuse for its belligerence. "See, he’s threatening to blow up Israel" will still be used by Israelis to continue the nation’s despicable treatment of Palestinians. Plus, no one will question Israel’s nuclear arsenal because the West will infer that Iran is so erratic that it is a threat to Israel’s existence. I would assume that Netanyahu breathed a sigh of relief when the news of Ahmadinejad’s victory reached the media headlines.

Despite all the bluster from the U.S. administration about human rights in Iran, there is no doubt that they are comfortable with Ahmadinejad. Iran has assisted the U.S. many times over the years, all the time being cast as a rogue state by the U.S. Iran gladly accepts this designation in return for all the assistance the U.S. has given the nation.

In 1991, Iranian fighters crossed the border of Iraq and helped begin the Shi’ite insurrection in the south of the country. The U.S. knew this and kept silent. The Iraqi military finally quelled the Iranian-backed coup attempt; an operation that the U.S. thought would work and get rid of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party.

Iran’s presence in Iraq in 2003, after the U.S. invasion, was much more successful and deadly. Iranian-backed militias murdered thousands of people: scholars, doctors, professors, etc. in an attempt to get rid of the intelligentia in Iraq and make it easier for sectarian Shi’ites to come to the forefront. Hundreds of Iraqi pilots who flew for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War were hunted down and assassinated by Iranian agents and Iranian-backed militias. The U.S. had a convenient ally in taking care of dirty business without having to do the work themselves.

Iran has gained a foothold in Iraq that will be hard to reverse. Economically, Iran has benefited greatly from the venture. In the south of Iraq, many signs are in the Farsi language, not Arabic.

The U.S.-Iran tag-team is a balanced alliance, although publicly not admitted. Iran has a strong hold on Iraq and the U.S. has gained much information from Iran about Afghanistan and Iraq. Since Bush’s announcement of the "war on terror," Iran has been a willing partner.

The talk of the U.S. going to war with Iran is absurd. Both have, and continue to, help each other immensely. We can see from Obama’s actions that the public denigration, yet private collaboration with Iran has not changed since the Bush administration and shows no sign of being altered in the near future.

The people who recently took to the streets in Iran were pawns. Their making a hero out of Mousavi did nothing to help their cause. In the long run, Iranian officials may take punitive measures against the duped citizens.

The actions of the young people in Iran and those of the anti-war, progressive left in the U.S. are identical. The U.S. left took a mediocre mainstream U.S. senator and created a mystique about him. Obama became the greatest thing since Jesus roamed the Earth (if he ever existed). After his inauguration, Obama has proven millions of his supporters to be wrong. Some have openly criticized his right-of-center actions, while others, even though they know they were wrong in building up Obama, fail to admit their errors. In both cases, press hoopla began an illogical program of creating images that did not exist for Obama and Mousavi.

What if Mousavi had won? Most thinking journalists have stated that there would be little or no difference. Their reasoning is that no matter who is the president of Iran, the final say in matters comes from the nation’s clerics.

On June 13, 2009, the Associated Press ran an article that delved into the various options that would occur with a victory of either of the candidates. According to the article, "With Nuclear Dispute at Stake, World Reacts Cautiously to Iranian Hard-liner’s Re-election:

The reality of Iran’s nuclear program is that if it did have a few nuclear weapons, they would be useless. A pre-emptive nuclear strike against Israel with one nuke would invite a response in minutes of dozens of nukes against Iran. As feeble-minded as Ahmadinejad is, he realizes this fact. Plus, the real powers in Iran would not be stupid enough to unleash an out-dated nuclear weapon against Israel, who possesses limitless stocks of modern devastating weapons in addition to its several hundred nukes.

Many people spoke gleefully of a change of administration in Iran. But, as we see, the administration can only go so far and the clerics would cease any proposed actions that they did not agree with. In all the media frenzy, a report from Al-Jazeera News last week seems to have gone un-noticed. It spoke of the reality of a "revolution" in Iran and who really holds the power in Iran. The piece was called "Iran Guard Warns Reformist Groups:"

MAYBE NORTH KOREA WILL NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE

North Korea is again on the hot seat. Because of its practice of independence and it claims the rights granted to sovereign nations, North Korea is about to face deadly economic sanctions.

For the past couple of weeks, we have heard U.S. spokesperson-after-spokesperson take glee in telling the world of the various sanctions they want imposed against the small nation. In addition, talk of military actions against North Korea have also been bandied about.

According to AL-Jazeera News of June 10, 2009, in an article titled, "UN to Expand N Korea Sanctions:"

Now, a monkey wrench has been thrown into the issue. Two U.S. journalists were apprehended inside North Korea and charged with illegally entering the country as well as committing acts that harmed the nation. They were tried and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

The same people who are threatening North Korea are asking for the release of the two women who were convicted. They maintain that their case should not be mixed in with the political situation. Calls for their immediate release are coming from many sectors, especially the "progressive" element of the U.S.: the same people who once stated they were against the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the U.S., but who have said they oppose the Iraqi resistance. Not one word about the actions the women committed. Just release them.

A few days ago, a U.S. couple was arrested and charged with spying for Cuba. They were set up by an undercover FBI agent. So far, scant proof of espionage has come forth, yet the couple is being held without bail. I hear no outcry from the U.S. left to release them.

Now comes a bizarre story of similarities. I have yet to read about the parallel of an almost identical occurrence from 14 years ago in Iraq, a nation under a strict economic embargo who tried two U.S. citizens as spies and convicted them. Bill Richardson was the person who arranged for the Iraqi government to release the spies. A benevolent Saddam Hussein let them return to the U.S. Saddam received nothing in return for the release of the spies except for a stronger anti-Iraq stance from the U.S. government once they were on U.S. soil.

Saddam made a mistake in judgement in thinking the U.S. would appreciate his act of good will. If North Korea looks at the Iraqi precedent, it may try to get some concessions for a release of the two women, or make them serve their sentences. Plus, the same Bill Richardson has stated he is ready to travel to North Korea to negotiate for the release of the two convicted women. Maybe North Korea will not fall into the same trap.

On March 13, 1995, two U.S. citizens (William Barloon and David Daliberti) were captured inside Iraq. Both worked for U.S. civilian contractors and maintained they lost their way trying to visit a friend in Kuwait.

At that time, the Iraq/Kuwait border was heavily reinforced by a deep ditch with towering fences on each side. The pair was well inside Iraq and it would have been almost impossible for them to have accidentally wandered into Iraqi territory.

They were taken to Baghdad and tried on charges of espionage. The couple received a sentence of eight years in prison. The Clinton administration then began its cover-up efforts. Spokespeople said the Americans were not spies because they did not have road maps with them at the time of their arrest. Most of the U.S. public believed the administration’s assessment. There is one aspect that few people took into consideration: spies do not go on a mission with roadmaps. They have memorized exact locations. If a spy used a roadmap, he/she would be put in the same category as Inspector Clouseau of Pink Panther notoriety.

With two of its citizens, accused spies, in Iraqi hands, one would think the U.S. would have been a little humble in its attempts to get them released. No such luck.

According to Douglas Jehl, author of "Americans in Iraq Given 8-Year Term," in the March 26, 1995 edition of the New York Times:

On March 27, 1995, the ante was raised. Steven Greenhouse wrote an article for the New York Times, "U.S. Vows to Press Hard on Iraq to Free Americans," in which he said:

For the entire time this story gained headlines, the U.S. press called Barloon and Daliberti "hostages." There is a substantial difference in meaning between the words "hostages" and "prisoners," but the subliminal message created by calling them hostages raised the ire of the U.S. citizens.

On March 30, 1995, the Iraqi government allowed a Polish diplomat and a reporter for CNN to visit the pair in prison. They stated that the prisoners were in good health.

On July 17, 1995, Bill Richardson, at the time a U.S. congressman, visited Baghdad to try to obtain the release of the pair. Saddam Hussein granted a pardon and allowed them to leave Iraq.

Despite the act of goodwill on behalf of the Iraqi government, the U.S. continued a barrage of insults toward the country. Warren Christopher, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, assured the public that the U.S. promised nothing in return for the pair’s release.

Bill Richardson returned to the U.S. as a hero and was in the media spotlight, but, his statements about Saddam Hussein changed immensely and he made many jokes about the Iraqi president.

During the negotiations, Richardson crossed his legs and had the bottom of one shoe pointing right at Saddam, who left the room and returned so see Richardson with both feet on the floor. Saddam’s aides explained to Richardson that the bottom of a shoe was one of the gravest insults in the Arab world. A similar effect would occur if someone negotiating with the U.S. president held his middle finger aloft during the conversation. When Saddam returned, the negotiations continued. He was gracious enough to leave the room and allow his assistants to quickly explain this aspect of Arab culture to the congressman.

When interviewed by PBS, Richardson mentioned the incident. Then he made fun of the affair and said he thought his life may have been in danger and that his Iraqi hosts may have imprisoned and tortured him for the gaffe. Richardson and the program host laughed and made fun of the Iraqis.

Over the next few years, Richardson made many disparaging remarks about Saddam Hussein:

• "This allowed Iraq to starve its own people and blame the sanctions for their suffering. Under the oil-for-food program, we have taken this excuse away from Saddam." (March 1999)
• " … and multilateral sanctions are central to our efforts to contain Saddam." (March 1999)
• "But I also believe it is important that Saddam’s oil revenues be used to relieve the suffering of the Iraqi people rather than by Saddam Hussein for his own criminal purposes." (December 2002)
• "Well, Saddam Hussein, you can never predict what he is going to do, but it is obvious that he is going to put his foot forward; he is going to say, ‘We have no illegal weapons.’" (December 2002)

Very few national leaders would have released two convicted spies with nothing to show in return. There were no "thanks, Saddam" messages coming from the U.S. Instead, Iraq received more threats and many denigrating remarks from the person who visited the country to secure the release of the two prisoners. Until the obvious became clear, Richardson maintained that Iraq had stockpiles of doomsday military equipment.

One aspect of this scenario was not put in place until long after Richardon’s visit to Iraq. While he was negotiating with Saddam Hussein, cinemas, bus stops, schools and other venues were being blown up in Baghdad by terrorists. The perpetrators were eventually caught. They were members of the CIA-backed Iraqi National Accord (INA), a group of Iraqi exiles who attempted to create chaos in Baghdad in an effort to ripen discord and sow the seeds for a coup against Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath government.

The leader of the exile group was Ilyad Allawi, who later became a U.S.-appointed prime minister of Iraq. By the time the terrorist attacks in Baghdad were thwarted, about 150 Iraqi civilians were killed. This reign of terrorism was financed and supported by the U.S. administration.

While Iraqi civilians were being killed by a U.S.-sponsored program, Richardson gained the release of two U.S. prisoners held in Iraq. The current version of Western history of this time makes Saddam Hussein look like the bad guy and Richardson the good guy. The facts contradict the history.

There was one moment in which Saddam Hussein claimed verbal victory over Richardson. Laura Blumenfeld wrote an article, "A Little Diplomacy Goes a Long Way," for the Washington Post of December 13, 1996. She stated:

Monday-Thursday, June 8-11, 2009

I have read many comments from British people on Internet message boards concerning the statements of Murphy-O’Connor. One, in particular, brought up a quandary for the Church. The writer asked that if a Christian had a sexual encounter with an atheist, would he/she be practicing beastiality. Leave it to the Brits for creative criticism.

TORTURE IS IN THE EYES OF THE BEHOLDER

Lately, the subject of torture has been resurrected. Many U.S. citizens do not consider waterboarding to be torture. However, some have challenged the naysayers to experience waterboarding. The results are laughable. Celebrities such as Christopher Hitchens and Erich "Mancow" Muller, who once stated that waterboarding is not torture, underwent the procedure before cameras. Muller lasted four seconds. Hitchens was a much harder person to subdue: he lasted six seconds. After their experiences, both admitted that waterboarding is indeed torture.

Now, we have a quandary. The President of the United States, Barack Obama, called for the release of dozens of unpublished photos of torture of Iraqis in military prisons other than Abu Ghraib, showing the practice was widespread. Once and for all, the subject would get a hearing and U.S. methods would change. However, within a few days of the announcement, Obama declared the photos would not be made public. In basketball terms, he faked us out.

Obama’s reasoning is quite illogical. He states that by showing the photos, the rest of the world will be up in arms at the actions of the U.S. military in torturing individuals. That’s exactly why they should be shown. To clear the dust and change barbaric actions. In addition to keeping the pictures away from the public, Obama is also keeping documents once scheduled for release under wraps. During the presidential campaign, Obama promised to open the flood gates on this portion of U.S. history and clear the air. He lied. So much, in fact, that the situation is even murkier than before.

The first inkling of prisoners being tortured came forth with the publishing of the initial batch of photos taken at Abu Ghraib prison. The world was shocked. The U.S. government called these actions the work of a few "misfits." Further research, however, showed that the orders came from the top. Now, Obama is trying to save the asses of the miserable semi-humans who organized and implemented torture.

In the case of Abu Ghraib, more than 90% of the prisoners were non-combatants who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. U.S. soldiers were ordered to arrest any male of military age. So, when reading the transcripts below, realize that these people were ordinary Iraqis who were rounded up for no reason other than breathing.

If one U.S. prisoner of war were tortured, missiles would be fired and bombs dropped. However, the torture of thousands of innocent Iraqis is not even worthy of discussion in the U.S. halls of government.

It is amazing how an overweight halfwit drug addict can proclaim idiotic statements and be taken seriously. When the Abu Ghraib scandal first emerged, Rush Limbaugh, the darling of U.S. beer swillers and owners of pickup trucks with gun racks, made the following assessment:

In many of the original Abu Ghraib pictures, a person with horned-rim glasses appears performing myriad atrocities on the prisoners. His name is Charles Graner. When this information was made public, Spec. Joseph M. Darby, who reported the photos to higher authorities, asked Graner about the pictures. Graner explained:

Who’s the pervert? Maybe Limbaugh should take a page out of the book of those celebrities who experienced waterboarding and have someone make the rotund talk-show host piss himself.

Below is Appendix VII from my book The Mother of All Battles: The Endless U.S.-Iraq War. They are transcripts of prisoners who were tortured at Abu Ghraib. Keep in mind, these people were non-combatants who were picked up off the street.

"I always knew the Americans would bring electricity back to Baghdad.

I just never thought they'd be shooting it up my ass."

—Young Iraqi translator, Baghdad, November 2003

The following are statements from only a small number of Iraqi prisoners who were mistreated by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib Prison. Once the totality of the torture became known, it became evident that incidents such as those below were widespread and common.

IRAQI PRISONER OF WAR TRANSCRIPTS

The following were taken at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by prisoner interview/interrogation teams from the 10^th Military Police Batallion, 3^rd Military Police Unit. The translators, assigned to the team, were Mr. Johnson ISHO and Abdelilah Alazadi of the Titan Corporation, a civilian contractor.

"On the third day after five o’clock, Mr. Grainer came and took me to Room #37, which is the shower room, and he started punishing me. The he brought a box of food and he made me stand on it with no clothing, except a blanket. Then a tall black soldier came and put electrical wires on my fingers and toes and on my penis, and I had a bag over my head. Then he was saying, ‘which switch is on for electricity?’ And he came with a loudspeaker and he was shouting near my ear and then he brought the camera and he took some pictures of me, which I knew because of the flash of the camera. And he took the hood off and he was describing some poses he wanted me to do, and that I was tired and I fell down. And then Mr. Grainer came and made me stand up on the stairs and made me carry a box of food. I was so tired and I dropped it. He started screaming at me in English. He made me lift a white chair high in the air. Then the chair came down and then Mr. Joyner took the hood off my head and took me to my room. And I slept after that for about an hour and then I woke up at the headcount time. I couldn’t go to sleep after that because I was very scared."

"On the date of November 5, 2003, when the U.S. forces transferred to Isolation, when they took me out of the car, an American soldier hit me with his hand on my face. And then they stripped me naked and they took me under the water and then he made me crawl the hallway until I was bleeding from my chest to my knees and my hands. And after that he put me back into the cell and an hour later he took me out from the cell the second time to the shower room under cold water and then he made me get up on a box, naked, and he hit me on my manhood. I don’t know with what, then I fell down on the ground. He made me crawl on the ground. And then he tied my hands in my cell naked until morning time until Joyner showed up and released my hands and took me back to my room and gave me my clothes back. About two days later my interrogation came up, when it was done a white soldier wearing glasses picked me from the room I was in. He grabbed my head and hit it against the wall and then tied my hand to the bed until noon the next day and then two days later the same soldier and he took all my clothes and my mattress and he didn’t give me anything so I can sleep on except my jump suit for 3 days. Then Joyner came and gave me a blanket and my clothes for a second time."

"I am going to start from the first day I went into A1. They stripped me from my clothes and all the stuff that they gave me and I spent 6 days in that situation. And then they gave me a blanket only. 3 days after that, they gave me a mattress, and after a short period of time, approximately at 2 at night, the door opened and Grainer was there. He cuffed my hands behind my back and he cuffed my feet and he took me to the shower room. When they finished interrogating me, the female interrogator left. And then Grainer and another man, who looked like Grainer but doesn’t have glasses, and has a thin moustache, and he was young and tall, came into the room. They threw pepper on my face and the beating started. This went on for a half hour. And then he started beating me with the chair until the chair was broken. After that they started choking me. At that time I thought I was going to die, but it’s a miracle I lived. And then they started beating me again. They concentrated on beating me in my heart until they got tired from beating me. They took a little break and then they started kicking me very hard with their feet until I passed out.

"In the second scene at the night shift, I saw a new guard that wears glasses and has a red face. He charged his pistol and pointed it at a lot of the prisoners to threaten them with it. I saw things no one would see, they were amazing. They come in the morning shift with two prisoners and they were father and son. They were both naked. They put them in front of each other and they counted 1, 2, 3, and then removed the bags from their heads.

When the son saw his father naked he was crying. He was crying because of seeing his father. And then at night, Grainer used to throw the food into the toilet an said, ‘go take it and eat it.’ And I saw also in Room #5 they brought the dogs. Grainer brought the dogs and they bit him in the right and left leg. He was from Iran and they started beating him up in the main hallway in the prison."

"I am the person named above. I entered Abu Ghraib prison on 10 Jul 2003, that was after they brought me from Baghdad area. They put me in the tent area and then they brought me to Hard Site. The first day they put me in a dark room and started hitting me in the head and stomach and legs.

"They made me raise my hands and sit on my knees. I was like that for four hours. Then the Interrogator came and he was looking at me while they were beating me. Then I stayed in the room for 5 days, naked with no clothes. They then took me to another cell on the upper floor. On 15 Oct 2003 they replaced the Army with the Iraqi Police and after that time they started punishing me in all sorts of ways. And the first punishment was bringing me to Room #1, and they put handcuffs on my hand and they cuffed me high for 7 or 8 hours. And that caused a rupture to my right hand and I had a cut that was bleeding and had pus coming from it. They kept me this way on 24, 25 and 26 October. And in the following days, they also put a bag over my head, and of course, this whole time I was without clothes and without anything to sleep on. And one day in November, they started different type of punishment, where an American Police came in my room and put the bag over my head and cuffed my hands and he took me out of the room into the hallway. He started beating me, him, and 5 other American Police. I could see their feet only, from under the bag. A couple of those police they were female because I heard their voices and I saw two of the police that were hitting me before they put the bag over my head. One of them was wearing glasses. I couldn’t read his name because he put tape over his name. Some of the things they did was make me sit down like a dog, and they would hold the string from the bag and they made me bark like a dog and they were laughing at me. And that policeman was a tan color, because he hit my head to the wall. When he did that, the bag came off my head and one of the police was telling me to crawl in Arabic, so I crawled on my stomach and the police were spitting on me when I was crawling and hitting me on my back, my head and my feet. It kept going on until their shift ended at 4 o’clock in the morning. The same thing would happen in the following days.

"And I remember also one of the police hit me on my ear, before the usual beating, cuffing, bagging, dog position and crawling until 6 people gathered. And one of them was an Iraqi translator named Shaheen, he is a tan color, he has a moustache. Then the police started beating me on my kidneys and then they hit me on my right ear and it started bleeding and I lost consciousness. Then the Iraqi translator picked me up and told me, ‘You are going to sleep.’ Then when I went into the room, I woke up again. I was unconscious for about two minutes. The policeman dragged me into the room where he washed my ear and called the doctor. The Iraqi doctor came and told me he couldn’t take me to the clinic, so he fixed me in the hallway. When I woke up, I saw 6 of the American police.

"A few days before they hit me on my ear, the American police, the guy who wears glasses, he put red woman’s underwear over my head. And then he tied me to the window that is in the cell with my hands behind my back until I lost consciousness. And also when I was in Room #1 they told me to lay down on my stomach and they were jumping from the bed onto my back and my legs. And the other two were spitting on me and calling me names, and they held my hands and legs. After the guy with the glasses go tired, two of the American soldiers brought me to the ground and tied my hands to the door while laying down on my stomach. One of the police was pissing on me and laughing on me. He then released my hands and I went and washed, and then the solider came back into the room, and the soldier and his friend told me in a loud voice to lie down, so I did that. And then the policeman was opening my legs, with a bag over my head, and he sat down between my legs on his knees and I was looking at him from under the bag and they wanted to do me because I saw him and he was opening his pants, so I started screaming loudly and the other police started hitting me with his feet on my neck and he put his feet on my head so I couldn’t scream. Then they left and the guy with the glasses comes back with another person and he took me out of the room and they put me inside the dark room again and they started beating me with the broom that was there. And then they put the loudspeaker inside the room and they closed the door and he was yelling in the microphone. Then they broke the glowing finger and spread it on me until I was glowing and they were laughing. They took me to the room and they signaled me to get on the floor. And one of the police he put a part of his stick that he always carries inside my ass and I felt it going inside me about 2 centimeters, approximately. And I started screaming, and he pulled it out and he washed it with water inside the room. And the two American girls that were there when they were beating me, they were hitting me with a ball made of sponge on my dick. And when I was tied up in my room, one of the girls, with blonde hair, she is white, she was playing with my dick. I saw inside this facility a lot of punishment just like what they did to me and more. And they were taking pictures of me during all these instances."

"I am Ameen Sa’eed AL-SHEIKH. I was arrested on the 7 Oct 2003. They brought me over to Abu Ghraib Prison, the put me in a tent for one night. During this night the guards every one or two hours and threaten me with torture and punishment. The second day they transferred me to the hard site. Before I got in, a soldier put a sand bag over my head. I didn’t see anything after that. They took me inside the building and started to scream at me. They stripped me naked, they asked me, ‘Do you pray to Allah?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘Fuck you’ and ‘Fuck him.’ One of them said, ‘You are not getting out of here health, you are getting out of here handicap.’ And he said to me, ‘Are you married?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘If your wife saw you like this, she will be disappointed.’ One of them said, ‘But if I saw her now, she would not be disappointed now because I would rape her.’ Then one of them took me to the showers, removed the sand bag, and I saw him, a black man, he told me to take a shower and he said he would come inside and rape me and I was very scared. Then they put the sand bag over my head and took me to cell #5. And for the next five days I didn’t sleep because they use to come to my cell, asking me to stand up for hours and hours. And they slammed the outer door, which made a loud scary noise inside the cell. And this black soldier took me once more to the showers, stood there staring at my body. And he threaten he was going to rape me again. After that, they started to interrogate me. I lied to them so they threaten me with hard punishment. Then other interrogators came over and told me, ‘If you tell the truth, we will let you go as soon as possible before Ramadan,’ so I confessed and said the truth. Four days after that, they took me to the camp and I didn’t see those interrogators any more. New interrogators came and re-interrogated me. After I told them the truth they accused me of being lying to them. After 18 days in the camp, they sent me to the hard site. I asked the interrogators why? They said they did not know. Two days before Ied (end of Ramadan), an interrogator came to me with a woman and an interpreter. He said I’m one step away from being in prison forever. He started the interrogation with this statement and ended it with this statement. The first day of Ied, the incident of ‘Firing’ happened. I got shot with several bullets in my body and got transferred to the hospital. And there the interrogator ‘Steve’ came to me and threaten me with the hardest torture when I go back to the prison. I said to him, ‘I’m sorry about what happened.’ He said to me, ‘Don’t be sorry now, because you will be sorry later.’ After several days, he came back and said to me, ‘If I put you under torture, do you think this would be fair?’ I said to him, ‘Why?’ He said he needed more information from me. I told him, ‘I already told you everything I know.’ He said, ‘We’ll see when you get back to the prison.’ After 17 or 18 days, I was released from the hospital, went back to Abu Ghraib, he took me somewhere and the guard put a pistol to my head. He said, ‘I wish I can kill you right now.’ I spend the night at this place and next morning they took me to the hard site. They received me there with screaming, shoving, pushing and pulling. They forced me to walk from the main gate to my cell. Otherwise they would beat my broken leg. I was in a very bad shape. When I went to the cell, they took my crutches and I didn’t see it since. Inside the cell, they asked me to strip naked; they didn’t give me blanket or clothes or anything. Every hour or two, soldiers came, threatening me they were going to kill me and torture me and I’m going to be in prison forever and they might transfer me to Guantanamo Bay. One of them came and told me that he failed to shoot me the first time, but he will make sure he will succeed next time. And he said to me they were going to throw a pistol or a knife in my cell, then shoot me. Sometime they said, ‘We’ll make you wish to die and it will not happen.’ The night guard came over, his name is GRANER, open the cell door, came in with a number of soldiers. They forced me to eat pork and they put liquor in my mouth. They put this substance on my nose and forehead and it was very hot. The guards started to hit me on my broken leg several times with a solid plastic stick. He told me he got shot in his leg and he showed me the scar and he would retaliate from me for this. They stripped me naked. One of them told me he would rape me. He drew a picture of a woman on my back and makes me stand in shameful position holding my buttocks. Someone else asked me, ‘Do you believe in anything?’ I said to him, ‘I believe in Allah.’ So he said, ‘But I believe in torture and I will torture you. When I go home to my country, I will ask whoever comes after me to torture you.’ Then they handcuffed me and hung me to the bed. They ordered me to curse Islam because they started to hit my broken leg, I cursed my religion. They ordered me to thank Jesus that I’m alive. And I did what they ordered me. This is against my belief. They left me hang from the bed and after a little while I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I found myself still hang between the bed and the floor. Until now, I lost feeling in three fingers in my right hand. I sat on the bed, one of the stood by the door and pee’d on me. And he said, ‘GRANER, your prisoner pee’d on himself.’ And then GRANER came and laughed. After several hours, GRANER came and uncuffed me, then I slept. In the morning until now, people I don’t know come over and humiliate me and threaten that they will torture me. The second night, GRANER came and hung me to the cell door. I told him, ‘I have a broken shoulder and I am afraid it will break again cause the doctor told me, "don’t put your arms behind your back." He said, ‘I don’t care.’ Then he hung me to the door for more than eight hours. I was screaming from pain the whole night. GRANER and others used to come and ask me, ‘Does it hurt?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘Good.’ And they smack me on the back of the head. After that, a soldier came and uncuffed me. My right shoulder and my wrist was in bad shape and great pain. (When I was hung to the door, I lost consciousness several times.) Then I slept. In the morning I told the doctor that I think my shoulder is broken because I can’t move my hand. I feel severe pain. He checked my shoulder and told me, ‘I will bring another doctor to see you tomorrow.’ The next day, the other doctor checked my shoulder and said to me he’s taking me to the hospital the next day for X-rays. And the next day he took me to the hospital and X-rayed my shoulder and the doctor told me, ‘Your shoulder is not broke, but your shoulder is badly hurt.’ Then they took me back to the hard site. Every time I leave and come back. I have to crawl back to my cell because I can’t walk. The next day, other soldiers came at night and took photos of me while I’m naked. They humiliated me and threaten me. After the interrogators came over and identify the person who gave me the pistols between some pictures. And this guy wasn’t in the pictures. When I told them that, they said they will torture me and they will come every single night to ask me the same question accompanied with soldiers having weapons and they point a weapon to my head and threaten that they will kill me; sometimes with dogs and they hang me to the door allowing the dogs to bite me. This happened for a full week or more."

"In the name of God, I swear to God that everything I witnessed everything I am talking about. I am not saying this to gain any material thing, and I was not pressured to do this by any forces. First, I am going to talk about what happened to me in Abu Ghraib Jail. I will not talk about what happened when I was in jail before, because they did not ask me about that, but it was very bad.

"They stripped me of all my clothes, even my underwear. They gave me woman’s underwear, that was rose color with flowers in it and they put a bag over my face. One of them whispered in my ear, ‘Today I am going to fuck you,’ and he said this in Arabic. Whoever was with me experienced the same thing. That’s what the American soldiers did, and they had a translator with them, named Abu Hamid and a female soldier, who’s skin was olive colored and this was on October 3 or 4, 2003 around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. When they took me to the cell, the translator Abu Hamid came with an American soldier and his rank was sergeant (I believe). And he called me ‘faggot’ because I was wearing the woman’s underwear, and my answer was ‘no.’ Then he told me ‘Why are you wearing this underwear?’ Then I told them ‘because you make me wear it.’ The transfer from Camp B to the Isolation was full of beatings, but the bags were over our heads so we couldn’t see their faces. And they forced me to wear this underwear all the time, for 51 days. And most of the days I was wearing nothing else.

"I faced more harsh punishment from Grainer. He cuffed my hands with irons behind my back to the metal of the window, to the point my feet were off the ground and I was hanging there for about 5 hours just because I asked about the time, because I wanted to pray. And then they took all my clothes and he took the female underwear and he put it over my head. After he released me from the window, he tied me to my bed until before dawn. He took me to the shower room. After he took me to the shower room, he brought me to my room again. He prohibited me from eating food that night even though I was fasting that day. Grainer and the other two soldiers were taking pictures of every thing they did to me. I don’t know if they took a picture of me because they beat me so bad I lost consciousness after an hour or so.

"They didn’t give us food for a whole day and a night, while we were fasting for Ramadan. And the food was only one package of emergency food.

"Now I am talking about what I saw.

"They brought three prisoners completely naked and they tied them together with cuffs and they stuck one to another. I saw the American soldiers hitting them with a football and they were taking pictures. I saw Grainer punching one of the prisoners right in his face vary hard when he refused to take off his underwear and I heard them begging for help. And also the American soldiers told to do like homosexuals (fucking). And there was one of the American soldiers they called Sergeant (black skin) three was 7 to 8 soldiers there also. Also female soldiers were taking pictures and that was in the first day of Ramadan. And they repeated the same thing the second day of Ramadan. And they were ordering them to crawl while they were cuffed together naked.

"I saw (name blocked out) fucking a kid, his age would be about 15-18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw (name blocked out), who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid’s ass. I couldn’t see the face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures. (Name blocked out), I think he is (blocked out) because of his accent, and he was not skinny or short, and he acted like a homosexual. And that was in cell #23 as best as I remember.

"In the cell that is almost under it, on the North side, and I was right across from it on the other side. They put the sheets together again on the doors. Grainer and his helper they cuffed one prisoner in Room #1, named (name blocked out), he was Iraqi citizen. They tied him to the bed and they were inserted the phosphoric light in his ass and he was yelling for God’s help. (Name blocked out) used to get hit and punished a lot because I heard him screaming and they prohibited us from standing near the door when they do that. That was Ramadan, around 12 midnight approximately when I saw them putting the stick in his ass. The female was taking pictures.

"I saw more than once men standing on a water bucket that was upside down and they were totally naked. And carrying their chairs over their heads standing under the fan of the hallway behind the wooden partition and also in the shower.

"Not one night for all the time I was there passed without me seeing, hearing or feeling what was happening to me.

"And I am repeating the oath / I swear on Allah almighty on the truth of what I said. Allah is my witness."

"In the name of God, I swear to God that everything I witnessed, everything I am talking about, I am not saying this to gain any material thing, and I was not pressured to do this by any forces. First, I am going to talk only what happened to me in Abu Ghraib Jail. I will not talk about what happened when I was in jail before, because they did not ask me about that, but it was very bad.

"They stripped me of all my clothes, even my underwear. They gave me woman’s underwear, that was rose color with flowers in it and they put the bag over my face. One of them whispered into my ear, ‘today I am going to fuck you,’ and he said this in Arabic. Whoever was with me experienced the same thing. That’s what the American soldiers did, and they had a translator with them, named Abu Hamid and a female soldier, whose skin was olive colored and this was on October 3 or 4, 2003 around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. When they took me to the cell, the translator Abu Hamid came with an American soldier and his rank was sergeant (I believe). And he called me ‘faggot’ because I was wearing the woman’s underwear, and my answer was ‘no.’ Then he told me ‘why are you wearing this underwear?’ then I told them ‘because you make me wear it.’ The transfer from Camp B to the isolation was full of beatings, but the bags were over our heads, so we couldn’t see their faces. And the forced me to wear this underwear all the time, for 51 days. And most of the days I was wearing nothing else.

"I faced more harsh punishment from Grainer. He cuffed my hands with irons behind my back to the metal of the window, to the point my feet were off the ground and I was hanging there, for about 5 hours just because I asked about the time, because I wanted to pray. And then they took all my clothes and he took the female underwear and he put it over my head. After he released me from the window, he tied me to my bed until before dawn. He took me to the shower room. After he took me to the shower room, he brought me to my room again. He prohibited me from eating food that night, even though I was fasting that day. Grainer and the other two soldiers were taking pictures of every thing they did to me. I don’t know if they took a picture of me because they beat me so bad I lost consciousness after an hour or so.

"They didn’t give us food for a whole day and a night, while we were fasting for Ramadan. And the food was only one package of emergency food.

"Now I am talking about what I saw.

"They brought three prisoners completely naked and they tied them together with cuffs and they stuck one to another. I saw the American soldiers hitting them with a football and they were taking pictures. I saw Grainer punching one of the prisoners right in his face very hard when he refused to take off his underwear and I heard them begging for help. And also the American soldiers told to do like homosexual (fucking). And there was one of the American soldiers they called Sergeant (black skin) there was 7 to 8 soldiers there also. Also female soldiers were taking pictures and that was in the first day."

"Before Ramadan, Grainer started covering all the rooms with bed sheets. Then I heard screams coming from Room #1, at that time I was in Room #50 and it’s right below me so I looked into the room. I saw (name blocked) in Room #1, who was naked and Grainer was putting the phosphoric light up his ass. (Name blocked) was screaming for help. There was another tall white man who was with Grainer, he was helping him. There was also a white female soldier, short, she was taking pictures of (name blocked). (Name blocked) is now in cell #50."

"I went to the Solitary Confinement on the Sep/10/2003. I was there for 67 days of suffering and little to eat and the torture I saw myself. When I asked the guard Joyner about the time and he cuffed my hand to the door and then when his duty ended the second guard came, his name is Grainer, he released my hand from the door and he cuffed my hand in the back. Then I told him I did not do anything to get punished this way so when I said that he hit me hard on my chest and he cuffed me to the window of the room about 5 hours and did not give me any food that day and I stayed without food for 24 hours. I saw lots of people getting naked for a few days getting punished in the first days of Ramadan. They came with two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and Grainer was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures from top and bottom and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners. The prisoners, two of them, were young. I don’t know their names."

"One day while in the prison the guard came and found a broken toothbrush, and they said that I was going to attack the American Police; I said that the toothbrush wasn’t mine. They said we are taking away your clothes and mattress for 6 days and we are not going to beat you. But the next day the guard came and cuffed me to the cell door for 2 hours, after that they took me to a closed room and more than five guards poured cold water on me, and forced me to put my head in someone’s urine that was already in that room. After that they beat me with a broom and stepped on my head with their feet while it was still in the urine. They pressed my ass with a broom and spit on it. Also a female soldier, whom I don’t know the name was standing on my legs. They used a loudspeaker to shout at me for 3 hours, it was cold. But to tell the truth in daytime Joiner gave me my clothes and at night Grainer took them away. The truth is they gave me my clothes after 3 days, they didn’t finish the 6 days and thank you."

"One of those days the guards tortured the prisoners. Those guards are Graner, David and another man. First they tortured the man whose name is Amjid Iraqi. They stripped him of his clothes and beat him until he passed out and they cursed him and when they took off of his head I saw blood running from his head. They took him to solitary confinement and they were beating him every night.

"The evening shift was sad for the prisoners. They brought three prisoners handcuffed to each other and they pushed the first one on top of the others to look like they are gay and when they refused, Graner beat them up until they put them on top of each other and they took pictures of them. And after that they beat up an Iraqi whose name is Asaad whom they ordered to stand on a food carton and they were pouring water on him and it was the coldest of times. When they torture him they took gloves and they beat his dick and testicles with the gloves and they handcuffed him to the cell door for half a day without food or water. After that they brought young Iraqi prisoners and Graner tortured them by pouring water on them from the second floor until one of them started crying and screaming and started saying ‘my heart.’ They brought the doctors to treat him and they thought he was going to die. After they brought six people and they beat them up until they dropped on the floor and one of them his nose was cut and the blood was running from his nose and he was screaming but no one was responding and all this beating from Graner and Davis and another man, whom I don’t know the name. The doctor came to stitch the nose and the Graner asked the doctor to learn how to stitch and it’s true, the guard learned how to stitch. He took the string and the needle and he sat down to finish the stitching until the operation succeeded. And then the other man came to take pictures of the injured person who was laying on the ground. Every time one of them fell on the ground, they drag them up to stand on his feet. Graner beat up a man whose name is Ali the Syrian and he was beating him until he gotten almost crazy. And he was telling him go up to the second floor as he was naked. And they opened the prisoners cells to see him running naked. And after they put him in his cell for four days they were pouring water on him and he couldn’t sleep. Before that he was in cell number 4. They hanged him and he was screaming but no one helped him.

"There was a translator named Abu Adell the Egyptian. He was helping Graner and Davis and others whom I don’t know, like they were watching a live movie of three young guys being put up by Abu Adell on top of each other. And everyone was taking pictures of this whole thing with cameras. This is what I saw and what I remember to be true."

THREE STRIKES AND YOU’RE OUT

The United States Supreme Court got one right. On Monday, May 25, a case concerning the San Diego Board of Supervisors was thrown out of court.

In 1996, the voters of the State of California overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative that made the use of marijuana legal for medical reasons. At the time of passage, the first step was to obtain a prescription from a doctor for the weed that has numerous medical uses. Once it became state law, various County Boards of Supervisors were ordered to begin a program in which people with a prescription would be granted identity cards. For recreational purposes, the use of marijuana was still illegal.

Most counties came on board and put together an identity card program. However, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors remained mute on the subject.

Then, in 2006, the San Diego County Board said it would refuse to grant identity cards. The reasons used were quite bizarre.

Bill Horn spoke of the horrendous impact that this would have on San Diego. He said that kids would be able to buy marijuana at locations solely designated for medical distribution. Then he said that San Diego would quickly become laden with violence and crime. Plus, according to Horn, any marijuana user would quickly graduate to the use of hard drugs, such as crack cocaine, heroin, or LSD.

This action opened up the flood gates for arrests of marijuana suppliers, who prior to the Supervisor’s decision, were not targeted by federal agents. Despite the law in California, the federal government still considers the use of marijuana to be a crime. Shortly after the Board’s announcement, federal agents swarmed San Diego and arrested users and suppliers alike, despite the state deeming its use for medical purposes to be legal. According to the federal authorities, a prescription alone did not get someone off the hook. They had to have an identity card issued by the County. Catch 22.

The next step was for the County Board of Supervisors to take the case to court and use the federal government’s laws on medical marijuana use as a basis for not giving identity cards. This was laughable. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors consists of five ultra-conservative members who have been on board for years. Many times, they have criticized the federal government for putting its nose into state and county business. To them, Washington was a hotbed of communism. Now, they switched their opinions and said they did not want to break federal law.

Before the first court case, many experts told the Board that they did not have a leg to stand on and suggested they drop the suit. They didn’t. The Board lost the first case and then appealed to a higher court, where they again lost. They spent millions of dollars on a losing case. This is the same group who, in the 1990s, almost shut down the County Medical Help services, causing thousands of people to be put on the street. Many died as a result. The reason for doing this was that the Board did not want to waste taxpayer money. But, spending millions of dollars on a superfluous legal battle was okay.

The last hope was that the U.S. Supreme Court would hear the case and rule in favor of the Supervisors. On Monday, word came out that the Supreme Court failed to even put the case on the docket. According to the North County Times of Monday, May 25, 2009:

The end of the game for the Board of Supervisors is the beginning of the game for patients and suppliers alike. They now can adhere to the wishes of the people of the state and also state law without having to look over their shoulders.

When Bill Horn first made the statement in 2006 about the County not issuing identity cards, I called the consulate of The Netherlands in Los Angeles to ask for materials about the Dutch government’s attitude toward cannabis use. I then quoted Bill Horn. The woman asked me, "Your putting me on, aren’t you?" I assured her that I was giving the exact quotes of Horn and cited the date of the report in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

I received a box in the mail a few days later. Inside was all sorts of information on the Dutch model of using cannabis. In addition, there were pages of scientific data compiled over the years that stated marijuana was not a "gateway" drug. The report concluded, "Cannabis use in The Netherlands harms neither the user nor society."

There is only reason I can think of that could have made the San Diego Board of Supervisors react to marijuana in such a manner. They may have attended a showing of the 1936 film "Reefer Madness" that depicted marijuana as a tool of the devil and a killer drug. When the movie came out, anti-drug people thought it would be an educational movie to keep people from using marijuana. That ploy backfired. Today, many people will show up to watch the movie at film festivals or local cinemas to enjoy a great laugh at the ridiculous stupidity of the film.

SOLD OUT

Lately, atheists in the U.S. have been quite happy to see that polls show the growth of non-belief in the U.S. A couple of decades ago, it was rare to see more than five percent of U.S. citizens admit to having "no religion." In the past few years, the number has grown considerably.

Some recent polls show that anywhere from 15-20% of U.S. citizens now say they do not practice a religion. It is almost impossible to say how many are atheists, agnostics or non-theists, particularly because of the stigma of the word "atheist" in the U.S. Many atheists still keep themselves deeply inside the closet.

Over the years, U.S. atheists have been highly critical of our Preachers-in-Chief. While campaigning for president in 1988, George Bush I said that atheists should not be considered U.S. citizens because they do not believe in God and the nation was built on a belief in God. Bill Clinton stated that he would never appoint an atheist to any position in government. Then, came Bush II who alleges that God chose him to run and that God told him to eliminate Osama bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein.

The biggest gripe atheists had with Bush was his implementation of the Faith Based Initiative. It came into existence by presidential decree, not a vote in Congress. Since its inception, billions of taxpayer dollars have been given to religious groups to administer social services. A few billion, as I have written about in the past, have gone to faith groups for overseas work. This money has been used to wreak havoc in Iraq and Afghanistan where Christian missionaries, military personnel and civilian alike, have tried, and still are trying, to convert Muslims to Christianity.

After the 2008 primaries, when the presidential race came down to McCain and Obama, a phenomenon occurred that I could not foresee: atheists began to speak about Obama in positive terms and almost turned him into a god-like figure.

I began to ask atheists why Obama was the panacea for the U.S. government and the Christian religion to finally dissolve their close relationship; one that was illegal and brought violence to foreign nations. I then asked if they saw any of Obama’s speeches or read about his views on religion and government. If they had, they would not have been so blindly supportive.

I asked if they knew that Obama’s mother had defied the laws of physics: she changed her religious views after her death. In 1995, Obama said she was "a lonely witness for secular humanism" in Indonesia. Many of her friends said she referred to herself as an atheist. It was evident that she did not rely on religious belief.

In 2006, Obama stated: "For all her professed secularism, my mother was in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I’ve ever known." A year later he was gaining more attention as a presidential candidate and he called his mother, "a Christian from Kansas."

Obama’s presidential campaign, at times, resembled a religious rally conducted by evangelical Christians. Then, a few days before the election, an event occurred in Pennsylvania that should have had all atheists up in arms. At a presidential rally attended by about 1,000 people, McCain and Obama sent spokespeople to put their cases forth. An atheist asked an Obama representative if, as president, Obama would meet with atheists and discuss the separation of religion and government. The Obama mouthpiece stated: "Senator Obama is no wacko atheist who wants your kids to marry trees."

When I mentioned this to atheist Obama supporters, they said that it was not Obama who said this, but a spokesperson. I assured them that the statement would not have been made if the spokesperson was not sure he was on firm ground.

After the election, atheists who supported Obama said we would now see the real Obama. In their fantasy world, they claimed that Obama would either scrap or considerably diminish the Faith Based Initiative. Obama spoke much of the Initiative, but, instead of annulling it, he announced a great enhancement to the program, including a hefty escalation of revenue. Most atheists still held out hope and became even stronger advocates of Obama.

Then, it happened. In Obama’s inauguration address, he spoke of the makeup of the U.S. citizenry. He said it consisted of "Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers." Many atheists thought our day of liberation had arrived. Two words meant that Obama would change the relationship between the government and religion. When all the atheists chirped these two words to me, I asked if they read the rest of Obama’s speech. None had. For the next few minutes, he heralded commitment by the U.S. public to be good citizens and participate in government activities. But, he constantly mentioned that people of faith would be at the forefront of the new America. In other words, atheists were good enough to be acknowledged as existing, but not good enough to participate in government. According to a USA Today article of January 22, 2009:

Since his inauguration, Obama has appointed many people to administer the burgeoning Faith Based initiative. His commitment to bring religion even closer to government is blatantly evident.

In the past few weeks, we have seen horrendous events unfold in which U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force personnel are teaching their military underlings that they can only be good soldiers or airmen if they fight for Jesus. Many military people (atheists, Jews, Muslims, and Christians) have come forth and spoken of disciplinary actions taken against them because they complained about the religious aspect being shoved down their throats. Obama knows of these programs, but he has been silent about them.

A few years ago, a film called "Christian Embassy" emerged. It showed many U.S. Department of Defense and Department of State staff speaking of this entity, situated in the Pentagon. It shocked many people. One of the participants in the film was Secretary of the Army, General Pete Geren. When Obama was finally seated in the White House, various secular groups thought they were on strong ground in asking Obama not to re-appoint Geren. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Geren is still Secretary of the Army.

A few days ago GQ Magazine published secret memos sent to George Bush by Don Rumsfeld during April 2003 that gave up-to-date information, with pictures, of military action in Iraq. Above each picture was a biblical quote depicting how it was the right thing to bring Christianity to Iraq. They have been publicly shown, so Obama must know about them. Again, silence.

Two words bought off atheists. This is the most horrendous and ridiculous purchase since the Dutch bought Manhattan for $24 from the Native American population. Our votes and support came cheap. But, in the long run, we will pay much for our actions.

I don’t blame Obama as much as I do those atheists who built him up to be something he isn’t. He gave no indication that he was going to upset the right-wing Christian/U.S. government alliance, yet many atheists succumbed to suspension of disbelief. They went against their strongest intellectual trait of skepticism.

Here are the links to the video "Christian Embassy" and the photo images of Rumsfeld’s messages to George Bush. They are quite shocking and should be a wakeup call for all of the U.S., not only atheists.

http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/Media_video/christian-embassy/index.html

http://men.style.com/gq/features/topsecret

CHRISTIANITY AS WEAPON

There is a storm brewing because of U.S. soldiers bringing bibles into Afghanistan and distributing them to the local population. According to Al-Jazeera News in a report on May 4, 2009, called "Probe Call in Afghan ‘Convert’ Row:"

This may be news for some, but I have been following the religious activities of the U.S. military for years. There is an in-depth program that has been in place for some time in which officers indoctrinate soldiers to fight in the name of Jesus.

Currently, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force are heavily involved in teaching their underlings that a soldier can only be considered to be a good combatant if he/she is fighting for Jesus. Merely obeying military rules and going to war when ordered are not sufficient. Jesus is the soldier’s 18-star general.

I mention Christianity because this is the only religion being taught by the officers in the indoctrination. Muslims, Jews, and those who practice a religion other than Christianity, even though they are in the U.S. military, are being ostracized.

In the past year, several atheists stepped forward to complain. They were told by the higher-ups that this is not happening. Subject closed. Most received disciplinary actions for making such outrageous statements. Then, a Jewish soldier reported that he was beat up by other soldiers, while their sergeant looked the other way, because he complained about the Christian indoctrination. Finally, some Christians came forward and said they were offended that their religion was being used to justify the killing of people. In all instances, the aggrieved parties wrote to the Department of Defense, only to be told that it is illegal to do the things they stated and that the U.S. military does not have any part of it. In other words, the soldiers were told they were lying.

Many atheists in the U.S. are well aware of such occurrences. We have read report-after-report from soldiers who have been ostracized. Some send our groups letters asking what they can do. We refer them to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a watch-dog organization for stopping religious indoctrination in the U.S. military. In the past two years, the number of cases the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received from military personnel has risen dramatically. All complaints talk of the escalation of the Christian preaching they are receiving. So far, despite hundreds of pieces of correspondence, the replies from the Department of Defense to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is basically the same as those given to the individuals: this is illegal and it isn’t happening.

Iraq has undergone a bombardment of imported bibles and Christian missionaries. One soldier in Afghanistan stated, "... the expressions that I got from the people in Iraq [were] just phenomenal, they were hungry for the word." I recently read that the allegations of sending bibles to Iraq came as a surprise to U.S. officials. This is nothing more than pure horseshit. In addtion to the articles I have written about the influx of bibles into Iraq, the Boston Globe daily newspaper has run several piece since 2003 concerning bibles in Iraq as well as billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars funding missionary work to convert Iraqi Muslims to Christianity.

Because I am aware of the background of military religious indoctrination, I don’t see these missionary actions as being incredible. However, I do find it quite outrageous that very little publicity has been given to these activities until now. Christians have wreaked havoc in Iraq with their evangelistic zeal. Tens, or hundreds, of thousands of bibles have been sent to Iraq, causing much chaos in the Christian community as well as the Islamic community. For some reason, the U.S. Christian missionaries thought they would be welcomed with open arms by Iraqi Christians. Instead, they were welcomed by the bottom of a shoe.

In my book, The Mother of All Battles: The Endless U.S.-Iraq War, I devote more than 25 pages to the use of Christianity as a weapon in the buildup to and the execution of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Military officers attended church services, in uniform, at which they spoke of the merits of invading Iraq. Some held a picture of Saddam Hussein and said he was "satan."

Below is an article I wrote four years ago about the quandary of trying to export evangelistic Christianity to Iraq. It’s too bad that it took four years for the public to learn of the religious mission of the U.S. military. The unfortunate aspect of this is that many U.S. citizens support such efforts.May 23, 2005

JUST WHAT EVERY IRAQI NEEDS: A BIBLE

Enough is enough for the Christian community in Iraq. The head of Iraq’s largest Christian community, Patriarch Emmanuel Delly, recently scathingly attacked the evangelical Christians who have taken their crusade to Iraq since the illegal U.S. invasion of March 2003.

Delly told Al-Jazeera News on May 19 that Iraq did not need Christian missionaries because its churches dated back long before Protestantism. He objected to the aspect of trying to convert Muslims and said, "You can’t even talk about that here."

According to Delly, the evangelicals attract poor youths with displays of money and then "take them out in cars to have fun. Then, they take photos and send them here, to Germany, to the United States and say 'look how many Muslims have become Christian.’"

Delly was a strong opponent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. When he was asked if he had contacts with U.S. authorities, he said:

Frankly, I try to avoid meeting them as much as possible. They are the occupiers. The occupied don’t want to be occupied. That’s human nature.

To me, it is problematic that Christian evangelical organizations from the United States are now flooding Bibles into Iraq when, prior to March 2003, few knew the location of the country, and fewer still could point out Iraq on a map. In fact, many cheered on the March 2003 invasion.

Pat Robertson was openly hostile toward Iraq. He accused the U.S. administration of being soft on Iraq. Yet, his group had thousands of Bibles to take to the country once the U.S. destroyed it.

Jerry Falwell, another U.S. icon to the evangelical citizenry of the U.S. was in on the venture as well. In 2002, he said that, according to his interpretation of Christianity, Mohammed was a terrorist. Therefore, kicking the merde out of a country populated by a Muslim majority was necessary in the fight against terrorism.

In July 2002, I interviewed George Galloway, the peace activist who recently won a seat in the British Parliament. He told me how religious groups in England and Europe were paramount in the peace effort. Then, I told him how many U.S. religious organizations were calling for war and he was quite surprised. We talked for a while on the difference between U.S. evangelical Christianity and the Christianity practiced in Europe.

By the autumn of 2002, various U.S. groups had placed orders for thousands of Bibles, in the anticipation of an invasion. Robertson bragged about how many thousand he had on hand to use when the time came.

After the invasion, Iraq was flooded with Bibles and U.S. citizens teaching the Iraqis the errors of their ways. They would save the morally-corrupt Iraqis and get them away from their religion of Islam.

The missionaries have paid a price. In March 2004, four U.S. Baptist missionaries were killed in Iraq. The following month, seven South Korean Presbyterians were kidnapped, but eventually released. Two months later, a South Korean evangelical Christian was beheaded.

When word gets back to the U.S. about such violence, it only adds fuel to the already rabid ideas of the evangelicals. To them, their warped opinions had been proven: the barbarians must be tamed and only Christ can do that.

As an atheist, I am neutral about religion. I do not denigrate the aspect of various faiths unless, as in the case of some fundamentalist Christians, the concepts of science or knowledge are under threat. Or, if a religion is outright racist or homophobic, I will state my opposition to those aspects. But, I do not consider one religion to be superior to another.

Today, evangelical Christianity has been self-appointed to change everyone in the world and make them adhere to the evangelical mode of Christianity. This is where it differs from most world religions. Just imagine a hoard of Muslims arriving in the U.S. with thousands of copies of the Koran and publicly stating they were about to save the population of the country. Within hours, there would be many new cells erected at Guantanamo and the Muslims would have an all-expenses paid trip to Cuba.

Campus Crusade for Christ is an outfit based in Orlando, Florida. The name is fairly well-known and little-criticized because most people assume they do good work. The name of the organization sounds benign, however, its work is far from harmless. On its website, you can see dozens of pictures of Bible-thumping in Iraq. Also, there is the mandatory "Send us your money" message.

Let me highlight a few statements made from its "Bibles for the Middle East" section:

* People in this part of the world are desperate for such materials. 2004 was declared the Year of the Bible throughout the Arab world and interest is high. Thousands of people are seeking to receive a copy of the Bible.
* So, with a new year before us and so many opportunities on the horizon, would you consider a gift of $50 to get 25 Bibles into the hands of people in spiritually dark countries? Whatever you could do would be a tremendous blessing during a time of great spiritual hunger.
* People in these nations are hungry for God’s Word, our staff are willing to risk their lives to deliver it.

Another section called "Iraq Schoolbags" offers the following statements:

* Praise God with me. Because thanks to your prayers and gifts, the doors are open to share the love of Christ with the next generation of Iraqis — young boys and girls who are open to new ideas and who are the future teachers of their nation.
* Continuing a strategy first launched last year, their goal is to distribute 100,000 school bags to these little ones, each fitted with urgently needed paper, pencils, and other school materials, along with evangelistic children’s books. In this way, just weeks from now, thousands of future Iraqi leaders will have the opportunity to come to know Christ.
* I’m sure you praise God with me for this excitement and for the fact that, thanks to this distribution, a generation of Iraqis is finally hearing the Truth about Christ.

From 1991 until 2003, Iraq was unable to import paper and pencils for its students. Many times, the Iraqi government pleaded with the world to rectify this injustice. Where was the Campus Crusade for Christ? Most of its affiliated groups are ultra-conservative and supported the sanctions against Iraq.

Today, the organization takes credit for bringing pencils and paper to Iraq. But, inside the package is the obligatory Christian propaganda. I would commend them if they supplied only pencils and paper, but if that were the criteria, the group would stay home in Florida.

Iraq’s Christians have been in existence for almost 10-times longer than the United States. The country is well aware of Christianity.

Until March 2003, Iraqi Christians and Muslims lived in peace. Neither side tried to convert the other. Even Jews lived in Iraq in harmony. But, the new Iraq is on the verge of sectarian violence that could become ugly. All because of the intervention of the U.S.

Christian evangelists who travel to Iraq to save the savages are merely taking a cue from their masters in Washington. They are so ignorant that they think Iraqis have never heard of Christ and must be taught to see the light. In reality, most Iraqi Christians and Muslims are probably more knowledgeable about Christianity’s history than the light-skinned invaders from the Florida group.

U.S. bombs and missiles destroyed the physical portion of Iraq. Now, zealous missionaries are trying to destroy the belief system of Iraq. Fortunately, for the Iraqi people, neither ploy has worked to destroy their will. Resistance works at many levels.

UNLIKELY SUPPORTERS OF FAIRNESS TO IRAQ (BEFORE MARCH 2003)

On May 2, Jack Kemp died. He is now receiving the standard accolades. Mostly, he is being mentioned as the great conservative who supported the programs of Ronald Reagan and successive political conservatives. This may be so, but not one word has been written about his efforts in the 1990s for a quick end to the Iraqi embargo. To me, along with his great prowess in the sport of American football, this should be his greatest legacy.

Most people forgot about Iraq’s plight after March 1991. After all, the U.S. had just kicked the Iraqis out of Kuwait and there was an embargo affixed. Few realized just how severe the embargo would turn out and also that if Iraq, which it did, acquiesced to the terms of the embargo it would not be lifted as long as Saddam Hussein was in power. There was no document stating this, but it was well-known.

Many armchair leftists blame two Bushes for the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq and consequently all the suffering the people endured during the embargo. The facts, however, show this is a fallacy.

In 1993, Warren Christopher, Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of State, said many times that the embargo would not be lifted with Saddam in power. Nobody listened, but he was accurate.

His successor, Madeleine Albright, was even more vocal. In a nationwide interview, she was asked if the deaths of three-quarters of a million children were worth keeping the embargo in place. She coldly answered, "Yes."

Bill Richardson, a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under Clinton, ordered his staff never to speak to any Iraqi at the U.N.

Shortly before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Scott Ritter came clean in putting facts in place that occurred during the inspection years. He concluded that Iraq had done everything asked of it to lift the sanctions, but they would never be lifted under Saddam’s leadership.

Imagine, three million deaths because of the ethnocentric actions of various U.S. governments. It was evident that few, if any, U.S. politicos had any idea about the country of Iraq. They had never spoken to an Iraqi, except for Ahmed Chalabi, and this was a big game of oneupsmanship.

During the 1990s, even the peace groups in the U.S. opposed making an issue of the Iraqi embargo. When I called the San Diego ones and invited them to attend demonstrations, they let it immediately be known they would not touch "the Iraq thing." However, in late 2002 and early 2003, they came to the forefront and opposed the upcoming invasion. It was too late. They are hypocrites and only speak up when it is in vogue to do so. They are just as much to blame for Iraq’s plight today as the warmongers.

However, there were a few unlikely players in the 1990s who actually thought it was disgusting to keep the embargo in place. No, they were not solely the usual people, such as Ramsey Clark, who consistently tried to keep the message in the public arena. Two, in particular, were conservatives: the late Jude Wanniski, who died in 2005 at his computer while writing an article about Iraq and the conservative Republican, Jack Kemp, former U.S. vice-presidential candidate, who died a few days ago.

Below, I have reprinted a few columns by Wanniski who adamantly supported the immediate cessation of the sanctions. In addition, he researched and wrote the truth about Iraq and its government at a time when that was not a popular pursuit in the U.S.

Kemp was a retired U.S. football player. He was magnificent on the field. After retiring, he became involved with politics and was known for his conservative views. Let me make the distinction between conservative and an idiot. Kemp was a man of integrity and fairness who espoused conservative economic policies. Many so-called Republican conservatives are idiots. Kemp was in the minority. In fact, he ran afoul of many of his Republican cohorts because of his opposition to racism and his support of helping the poor and unemployed in the U.S.

In 1996, when no one wanted to run for vice-president with the presidential candidate Bob Dole, Kemp volunteered. It was clear that Dole was about to get thrashed and anyone running with him would end his/her political career. Kemp stepped forward for the good of his party, yet few today acknowledge his act of self-sacrifice.

In 1997, when Kemp asked the Clinton administration why the Iraq issue could not be quickly dealt with and the embargo ended, he was told not to touch the issue. He was irate when told that every U.S. person attached to the U.N. team from the U.S. was given orders not to talk to an Iraqi at the U.N. If they were approached by an Iraqi, they were to immediately leave the area without saying a word. Kemp questioned how the years-long issue of the embargo could be addressed if no one could talk to an Iraqi. He began to speak of the issue and tried to get enough backers to go along with him. Sadly, few followed his lead.

Following are various articles written by Jude Wanniski about Iraq and Kemp’s ordeal of trying to end the embargo. They range in dates from 1997 to 2005. Wanniski had contacts at all levels of government and the press. He was far ahead of his time. These are chronicles of two conservative Republicans who put more effort into dealing fairly with Iraq than all the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, governorships, mayorships, and city councilpeople combined.

November 19, 1997

Memo To: Norman Smith
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Saint Saddam

In your note this morning, remonstrating with me for defending Saddam, you suggest my contrariness would go down easier with you if I did not present him as "a perfectly reasonable statesman." First of all, I do not believe Saddam is a demon, nutcake or madman. He does have a narrow view of the world, which we have to take into account in dealing with him. It has been in the process of demonizing Saddam, in order to cast our foreign policy in a way that could justify starving the people of Iraq in hopes they would rise up and pull him down, that our political establishment drew the caricature of him that you carry in your mind. I don’t think of heads of state as good guys or bad guys. They are the products of their times, their cultures, and their people’s needs and concerns. To me, evil is ignorance. Hitler and Stalin were greatly evil in the enormous ignorance of their attitudes and behavior. It was also evil of our forefathers to enslave the black man on the grounds that he was a subspecies of the white man. Holocausts take different forms throughout history, always based on evil.

The Prince of Darkness blinds us to reality in order to make us sin. When we refuse to listen to an enemy’s arguments and opinions, by plugging our ears or jamming his radio waves, we are acting in the spirit of that Prince. In this case, it is our government and our Establishment that is plugging its ears, fearful that the American people will discover the evil we have done in the last seven years by conducting a cynical foreign policy against Iraq. Does it matter to you that several hundred thousand Iraqi children have died of disease and malnutrition because Iraq can’t buy the calories to feed them? I ask the question seriously, Norman, because I’m shocked to find so many people who are asked that question say it does not bother them in the least. When Louis Farrakhan compared the suffering of the children of Iraq to the Holocaust, he was called anti-Semitic. When Madeleine Albright, then UN Ambassador, was asked if it was worth the lives of 500,000 children to pull down Saddam, she said it was. What else could she say, confronted with the UN report?

If you agree with my definition of evil, do you not agree that our government is acting in the spirit of the Prince of Darkness, by refusing to allow our U.N. Ambassador, Bill Richardson, to talk to his Iraqi counterpart? Is it not evil for us to kill any request that Iraq be allowed to take the stand in its own defense at the Security Council before we issue the death penalty and carry out its execution? Do you think it is possible for the United States to act in evil ways? Or do we get a free pass? Here is The Wall Street Journal this morning, my alma mater, making the arguments to its readers, the ruling elite, that the reason we are getting no support from our old allies in the coalition is that they are afraid of Saddam. If we could only ask them by secret ballot, they would all agree we should execute Saddam and all his progeny. It never seems to occur to those who make this argument that the same people who they say are afraid of Saddam now that he is defeated, crippled and broke were perfectly willing to join us in coalition when we knew he had a million men under arms, and we suspected he had weapons of mass destruction at his immediate disposal.

This is evil sophistry, a shadow of darkness having fallen over our political Establishment, which now believes its own propaganda. This justifies our acting alone, does it not, for we can tell ourselves that the rest of the world, no matter what it says about us openly and at the UN, really wants us to kill this man as we have been killing the Iraqi people? Don’t you think Hitler was able to persuade the people of Germany through propaganda that the rest of the world would secretly be happy to be rid of the Jews once and for all? Wasn’t Stalin able to persuade the people of the USSR that the blood he was forced to spill was in order to rid the world of the evil capitalists? We defeated these twin evils and now we are at the top of the world, triumphant, and all I see, Norman, are signs that we can justify our behavior not on any international rule of law or guiding principles of common law, but by the fact that we have the means to get what we want, when we want it. The WSJournal this morning says again that we should have broken our word to the UN and the Arab League in 1991 and marched all the way to Baghdad. The author of the same editorial says history shows that Eisenhower should have marched to Berlin (and then to Moscow?) instead of halting at the Elbe. We should have marched to Beijing instead of halting at the 38th parallel in the Korean war.

Civilized behavior to me suggests the Golden Rule, that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. When civilization breaks down in wartime, all is fair. But when we become triumphant in peacetime, the Golden Rule should apply. That means we must be prepared to hear the petitions of those who we like the least. It is easy to hear the petitions of those we love. On a scale of one to a hundred, with your wife being number one, I have no doubt that Saddam is number one hundred. As an individual, you can hope for the untimely death of Saddam and so might I, but as a nation, we must bind ourselves to standards of behavior that will be recognized as good, not evil, by the other people of the world.

It has been my experience throughout my 61 years of life that political people are often sanctified for insufficient reason, and are then found by history to have been evil, while others are demonized, and found after their executions to have been innocent. It is a contrarian role I play, and I admit I am not always happy with those I choose to defend, but what has made us the greatest country in the history of the world is our willingness to submerge our individual passions and hatreds to a transparent system of justice, where the least of us is given his day in court, with a lawyer if need be, paid by the taxpayers.

MEXICAN INFLUENZA OR ISRAELI STUPIDITY?

Every day, we read about the escalation of a new strain of swine flu. Citizens of various countries have been diagnosed with it. But, this is not the first time the swine flu has struck. After World War I, cases broke out. In 1976, a U.S. soldier was diagnosed as having swine flu. Forty million U.S. citizens took precautionary measures and were inoculated. In 2007, areas of The Philippines saw the flu come to fruition.

With a history of outbreaks, one would think that the halting of its current spread would be the most important item on the agenda for the health of human beings. However, not all people consider these actions to be as important as the name of the malady. According to an Associated Press article of April 27, 2009, called "Israeli Official: Swine Flu Name Offensive:"

This short statement is untrue, illogical, non-scientifically-based and outright racist. First, the swine flu is contracted by humans who handle afflicted pigs, not Mexicans. Then it is spread by germs emitted from the person who handled the pig. The meat of the pig is safe to eat and has nothing to do with the spread of swine flu. In some areas of the U.S., those who have the flu, as well as those who have been in contact with them, are in quarantine.

I find it quite troubling that an Israeli official would consider himself qualified to speak for the religion of Islam. Many Israeli officials have contributed to the extinction of Muslims. However, Litzman included Muslims as victims of this alleged misnomer.

Before I wrote this article, I called four Muslim colleagues and asked if the word "pig" or "swine" was offensive. They laughed and said, "of course not." Just because they don’t eat pork does not mean the use of the name of a mammal is offensive. One even told me that he has heard Muslims state they are happy that the name of the flu is "swine" because it enforces their beliefs against eating pork. My colleague did not agree with this denigration, but he thought it quite ridiculous that an Israeli would comment on behalf of Muslims.

The story doesn’t end there. A day after the Israeli objection, U.S. officials pondered changing the name of virus. According to an Associated Press article of April 28, 2009 (What’s in a Name? Government Says "Swine Flu Misrepresents Nature of Virus, Wants to Change Name):

Swine flu has been called swine flu since it was discovered. A few years ago, we had the bird flu. No one complained of naming the flu after the creatures who spread it. Now, Israel officials are offended.

The official reason behind the U.S. desire to change the name is that it may harm the pork industry. But, coming about 24 hours after the Israelis’ complaint, and with no one ever suggesting a change of nomenclature before, one can question whether the Israelis pressured the U.S. government. It may be just coincidence, but the time-frame of events leads to legitimate questioning of the U.S. desire to rename the swine flu.

Porky Pig has been a cartoon character for many decades. He appeared in filmed cartoons as well as print versions. The friendly and helpful pig was not a trickster like some of this colleagues, such as Daffy Duck. He was the universal "good guy."

He did have one quirk, however, that made him famous: he stuttered, but he always recovered and ended his talking with coherence. At the end of a Porky Pig cartoon, he would appear and say, "Th … Th … That’s All Folks." This statement, usually without a stutter, has become commonplace in the U.S. version of the English language. When a TV show ends, or a sports event, or a social meeting, someone always says, "That’s All Folks."

If one looks online, you will see various books for sale in Hebrew in which Porky Pig is the star. He is a well-known and liked character in Israel. But, if Litzman has his way, we may soon see Porky Pig on Israeli TV for his retirement program telling the Israeli citizens, "That’s All Folks" for the last time.

CLINTON IS ON THE WRONG TRACK

Hilary Clinton has changed her views on Iraq so many times that she would make a leopard who changed his spots jealous. Let’s look at the quote she made on October 10, 2002 about Iraq:

The following day, the U.S. Senate voted to give George Bush a green light to use military force against Iraq. Clinton voted "yea" with the majority. Only 23 senators opposed the legislation.

After things began to turn sour for the U.S. in Iraq, Clinton became a vocal opponent of the war. However, she never admitted to being wrong on her Senate vote. When asked why she opposed the war while voting for it a few years before, she never gave a coherent answer.

U.S. public opinion began to swing in favor of a U.S. withdrawal. On January 13, 2007, Clinton made a trip to Iraq and concluded that the war was a losing cause for the U.S. She was now a "peace" candidate. After meeting al-Maliki, she met the press and gave some juicy quotes to ABC News:

• In an exclusive interview with ABC News in Baghdad, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., called the situation in Iraq "heartbreaking" and said she doubts Congress and the American people believe the mission here can succeed.
• "I don’t know that the American people or the Congress at this point believe this mission can work," she said. "And in the absence of a commitment that is backed up by actions from the Iraqi government, why should we believe it?"
• "I’m skeptical that the Iraqi government will do what they have promised to do, and that I think is the concern of all of us who have heard this before," she said. "All the promises, and intentions in the world don’t substitute for action and we haven’t seen a lot of action."

The article also mentioned: Clinton traveled wearing body armor and surrounded by a phalanx of soldiers and security guards.

There is one thing for sure that Ms. Clinton never mentioned. If she decided to leave the Green Zone and take an unguarded tour of the city of Baghdad dressed as she was in the Green Zone, she probably would be found chopped to pieces in some alley way with a message such as "pervert" written on her body. If this is the "right track," I wonder what would have to happen until she would say that Iraq was on the wrong track. Actually, she did say that, but not about today’s Iraq. She implied the "wrong track" about the non-violent and productive Iraq prior to the March 2003 invasion. I’ll leave it to the reader to assess which Iraq was going on the "right track."

CALLING A SPADE A SPADE

The U.S. prides itself on the concept of freedom of speech. So much so, that it invades nations and tells the world that the vanquished countries did not practice freedom of speech.

But, this self-admiration is far from the truth. Freedom of speech American style only exists if the words spoken by foreigners, or by their own citizens, agree with the words the powers-to-be select. We’ve seen this time-and-again when countries the U.S. does not admire votes "the wrong way."

The recent conference on racism in Geneva is a case in point. The U.S. did not even attend. Worse still, the delegates of various countries left the conference when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the attendees and stated that Israel had a "cruel and repressive racist regime."

Now, Ahmadinejad may not be the brightest person on the block, but his statement was quite accurate. Anyone who has not been in a coma for the past decade has seen the inhumane and bloody treatment of Palestinians and Lebanese as they were the recipients of cluster bombs and phosphorous weapons. Many Israelis themselves have condemned their government’s apartheid system as well as its heavy-handedness toward Arabs.

To me, an international conference on racism should be wide open. If someone accuses a nation of practicing racism, the offendee should rise and debate the issue. No, this conference was not set up for that. It was merely a show for some nations to get together and have the delegates pat each other on the back.

The hypocrisy was rampant. I am sure that if some delegate called Robert Mugabe a racist, the U.S. would have applauded, even though it did not attend. Every nation is open for being labeled "racist," except Israel.

Now, let’s look at the responses from some of the enlightened people who were offended by the statement against Israel. Many called Ahmadinejad a "Nazi." Others said he was as bad as Hitler.

According to an Al-Jazeera News report of April 21, 2009:

Dershowitz is representative of the thought process of many in the West: if you criticize Israel, you hate Jews and want to kill them. Never was the term "Jew" mentioned in Ahmadinejad’s address; only criticism of the Israeli government.

Here we have an outrage against a statement made about Israel’s policy. But, the "enlightened" progressive liberals uttered far more hate in their statements than Ahmadinejad. "Hitler’s successor," to me, is far more denigrating and hate-filled than what the Israeli government was called.

A couple of columns ago, I carried an article written by Husayn al-Kurdi about Israel’s large nuclear weapons program. It’s there, but no one wants to talk about it. The same goes for Israel’s discriminatory actions: they are kept silent.

A delegates of a bunch of countries left the speech in protest of Ahmadinejad’s statement. Here is the list. It’s almost hilarious to see the delegates of some of these countries who, until recently, occupied foreign lands. They had to be coerced into allowing the indigenous people to be able to run their own affairs. Yet, saying the Israeli government represents a "cruel and repressive racist regime," is out of bounds. Take a look at the nations involved with the walkout and you will see illogic and hypocrisy at its utmost.

Austria, Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Morocco, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Sweden.

A large portion of these nations at one time held real estate in other countries. Remember, there was a time when Portugal and Spain were trying to outdo each other in claiming discoveries of lands that had been in existence for thousands of years. The pope became a mediator and he drew a line that created two halves of the planet. Spain was to be awarded one half and Portugal the other half. Other nations on the list who may not have been imperialists have been bought off by the U.S. Today, the U.S. and Israel have replaced the pope as arbitrator in the distribution of the planet’s land.

GOING WAY TOO FAR

From the age of eight until 34, I was immersed in baseball. I played in various leagues in the U.S. and from 1975 to 1982, I promoted and coached baseball in England and The Netherlands. When I walked off the field after the last game of the 1982 season in Rotterdam, I knew I would never step foot on a baseball field again. I was burned out.

When I returned to the U.S. and relocated to San Diego, I still had some affinity to baseball and I occasionally went to see the San Diego Padres major league baseball club play.

In all my years of active baseball, I never had to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S., or any other, flag. There was never one religious or patriotic song played at the venues I played in. However, when I attended the San Diego Padre games, I had to listen to the U.S. National Anthem that was played prior to the start of the game. I felt very uncomfortable with this mixture of patriotism and baseball, so I would go down the ramp to the snack bar area while the song was being played. There always were a few people doing the same thing. We never talked to each other, but we all knew why we were there. Once the song ended, we returned to our seats.

For years, there was a tradition in U.S. major league baseball in which the song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" was played during the seventh-inning stretch; a time in which the game was two-thirds completed and everyone stood up to stretch. Some sang along with the song, while others just listened. This was baseball. Nobody shoved patriotism or God down the fans’ throats.

That all changed after 9-11. Most clubs began playing "God Bless America" at their home games. But, after a while, they reverted to playing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

The New York Yankees have kept the religious and patriotic song as part of their repertoire. To this day, each Yankee home game consists of the playing of "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch.

I have written about the sport of baseball in the U.S. becoming a pro-war political statement. A few times a year, the San Diego Padres take to the field dressed in military camouflage. Other clubs have "Support the Troops" nights. This is bad enough, but the New York Yankees have surpassed all the other patriotic antics of other clubs.

According to an Associated Press article, "Fan Cries Foul Over Ejection from Yankee Stadium," published on April 15, 2009:

A "SADDAM APOLOGIST"

On August 22, 2007, Jonathan Schwarz wrote a column for his website, www.tinyrevolution.com, called "Advancing the Debate on My Faith in Saddam Hussein." In it, he related to a recent dialogue he had with Michael Cohen, a former speechwriter for the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. during the Clinton administration.

Evidently, Cohen had written a few false statements about Iraq and Schwarz pointed out his errors. For instance, Cohen said that Saddam Hussein kicked out U.N. inspectors from Iraq in 1998. Also, he stated that Iraq never publicly admitted it was free of WMD.

From reading Schwarz’ account, he is knowledgeable of these subjects as well as other information concerning the lies about Iraq and Saddam. During the dialogue, Cohen stated, "Why you put so much faith in the words and deeds of Saddam Hussein is beyond me."

Cohen’s response is identical to those of many who, when confronted with facts, immediately dismiss them because they concern Saddam Hussein. When these people become cornered with reality, they can only rely on the trump card of denigrating Saddam.

One thing about this article stood out: the title. Rarely does a Western scribe admit that Saddam told the truth and the U.S. lied. Logically, with a track record of lies vs. truth, Saddam should come out on top in the information war. But, it is so simple that people do not want to believe the truth.

For years, I have been writing and speaking about the lies put forth about Saddam Hussein that were thrust upon him and his regime by the U.S. government and media. Don’t think for one minute that I have had a smooth and positive experience in defending truth vs. deceit, a much more comprehensive and accurate description than solely defending Saddam Hussein.

In the buildup to Desert Storm, I read or heard about so many preposterous atrocities attributed to Saddam that I discounted them. Hindsight shows I was right. Only a duped individual could believe that Saddam enjoyed watching people boil in acid, or that Iraq’s soldiers threw babies from incubators in Kuwait and they died on the hospital floor. I did not realize that the general public would be sucked into such fables. But, in reality, there were millions of duped individuals; more than there were people with clear thinking who use logic.

In 1992, I decided to write a book on the buildup to and the execution of Operation Desert Storm. The book, The Sledgehammer and the Ant was published in early 1993.

This was my first book and I had to gain publicity, so I arranged various speaking engagements at bookstores and universities as well as presentations to various social groups. The fun was about to begin.

One of my first engagements was to speak to a Humanist group in San Diego. The event drew more than 100 people. After my presentation, I took questions and answers. The first person said, "You’re a paid agent of Saddam Hussein," and he left the building. The next one said, "George Bush should have nuked Iraq," and he left the building.

I was 0 for 2, but I kept calling on people who wanted to make a statement or ask a question. The third person’s message was a surprise. He stood up, looked at the crowd, and said:

He did not leave the room. Then, a few people began to ask legitimate questions.

I realized that speaking to groups would entail sticking up for the Iraqi government in the subject of truth vs. lies. This was my first experience in seeing that the public still had not understood the reality of the U.S. propaganda against Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

Shortly after, I held a booksigning at a San Diego bookstore. The place was packed. When I was done, I announced the question and answer segment and did not know what would happen.

The first person I called on, a woman who stated that she was Jewish, said, "I can’t think of anything more scary than Saddam Hussein with an atomic weapon." I quickly remarked, "I can." She then asked, "What?" My immediate response was, "Israel with 600." Everybody in the room, except the Jewish woman, cheered.

After a few engagements, I began to be comfortable in my presentations. I also realized that I had to have my facts in order so I could rebut any ludicrous statement about Saddam’s lust for human flesh. I had to have a comprehensive knowledge of the lies and the debunking of them. There was no room for factual error.

Over the years, I gained a reputation of being a Saddam sympathizer. But, not all the people who listened to me took that as a negative. Every time I spoke, a few people would approach me and tell me that they held similar views but were afraid to publicly mention them. I told them that it was not my style to be in the closet. Most thanked me and said I gave them the courage to speak out.

During the 1990s, El Cajon, CA, a city of 100,000 people, was the home of several Iraqi-American clubs and organizations. If I entered an anti-Saddam club with an Iraqi friend, people would whisper and point at me. I was known to them as a "pro-Saddam" agent. On the other hand, when I entered a pro-Saddam club, people ran up to me and invited me to their tables and offered me food. Instead of people at tables pointing at me, these Iraqi-Americans waved to me and gave me a thumbs-up.

My initial response in 1990 to ignore the ridiculous allegations against Saddam Hussein were prompted by common sense, not research. Today, I can say that I have put in thousands of hours of research on Iraq and its struggle against U.S. imperialism and that my sixth sense in 1990 has been corroborated by my scrutiny.

Many journalists who opposed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq have written about the excellent Iraqi education system prior to the bombing of the country in 1991. But, there is always a disclaimer. A standard statement is, "Iraq had a fine education system. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sticking up for Saddam Hussein." This illogic is a main reason why Iraq was destroyed by the U.S. One cannot speak of the former education system of Iraq without attributing it to the legacy of Saddam Hussein. The education system was outstanding because of, not despite, Saddam Hussein.

Not everybody denigrated Saddam. The late Jude Wanniski, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, wrote tens of thousands of words defending Saddam Hussein. He did his research and debunked every lie put out against the Iraqi president. The truth about Iraq and Saddam was a passion for Wanniski.

Wanniski challenged each and every politician who made preposterous statements about Saddam. Not one could refute Wanniski other than accusing him of being a "Saddam dupe."

The automatic denigration of someone who says anything good about Saddam Hussein has led to the atrocities occurring in Iraq today. All one has to say is "Saddam did it" and the subject then is closed. With no opposition, the myths become facts.

I interviewed Captain Eric May, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer about the deception put forth by the U.S. government about Iraq. Here is a question I asked him and his reply:

Captain May hit the nail right on the head. To this day, if one wants to shut up a war critic, all he/she has to do is say, "Well, at least Saddam is gone," and the discussion ends.

It is precisely because Saddam is gone that Iraq is in such a diabolical state: a condition that may be irreversible. To some Iraqis, the country of Iraq no longer exists. There is sound reasoning and evidence to justify this theory.

Recently, Eric Margolis, an internationally-known foreign correspondent, was interviewed about Iraq. He made the point of truth vs. lies as he stated that President Saddam Hussein told the truth about WMD and President Bush and Vice President Cheney lied. He pulled no punches. Then, he added the most important aspect of the argument; an aspect that is not even considered a possibility with today’s U.S. government. Margolis said that there is much speculation and jockeying for position among the newly-converted anti-war Democrats as to who is more anti-war. But, not one has said, "The war was wrong."

This has been my point since March 2003. Not one U.S. politician has said "The war was wrong." They only criticize the war strategy, not the concept of the war.

Those of us who have researched the subject of Iraq in detail must repeatedly state "The war was wrong." We must do it in an unapologetic manner. When speaking of the positive aspects of Iraq prior to its destruction by the U.S., we must not use qualifying statements such as, "I’m not sticking up for Saddam." The facts must be put forth without an apology. Most importantly, we must say, "Iraq was better off under Saddam," over and over again.

If the truth about Iraq is not allowed to be heard without qualifying statements, the truth will be lost. If the truth is lost, there will be more horrendous U.S. attacks against innocent countries in the future. The script is the same each time: demonize a leader and the public will think the U.S. has launched an epic battle against the most diabolical person in history. It worked with Ghadaffi; it worked with Noriega; it worked with Aidid; it worked with Milosevic; and it certainly worked, and still is working, with Saddam Hussein. It appears that the campaign against al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, and Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president is beginning to escalate. Once military actions against these African nations begin, we will hear the same story: "We are liberating the people from a brutal dictatorship."

My conscience is clear. In all my writing about Iraq, I never qualified a statement or apologized for my words. If telling the truth and exposing the lies about Iraq and its government earns me the moniker "Saddam defender," "Saddam apologist," "Saddam dupe," so be it. At least I did not sell out or succumb to the lies or find myself in a position of assisting the pro-war and imperialist agenda of the U.S., all the time being an opponent to the war.

A CHANGE OF HEART OR JUST CROCODILE TEARS?

In the past couple of weeks, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has been vocal about war crimes committed by Israel in its invasion and destruction of Gaza. Currently, the group is featuring Israel’s use of white phosphorus, a chemical agent that burns people alive, and is illegal under international laws of combat to use against civilians. According to the Huffington Post of March 26, 2009:

Normally, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are long on accusations of human rights violations by countries not in the U.S. sphere of influence. Rarely, if ever, is Israel mentioned. But, HRW appears to be going for the jugular in this case.

Many fair-minded people should be quite happy to see such vigilance by HRW against Israel’s use of white phosphorus. But, there are a couple of lingering incidents that can allow people to be dubious about the reason behind HRW’s allegation.

In 2004, Fallujah was a major battlefield for the U.S. against Iraqis who opposed the U.S. occupation. Untold thousands of Iraqis died. The U.S. made liberal use of white phosphorus. We saw many bodies that consisted mostly of bones with melted skin hanging from them. At first, the U.S. denied using the chemical weapon, but eyewitnesses and many photos came forth to prove the horror.

Where was HRW when this was occurring? I checked dozens of pages on search engines before I wrote this story to see if I had missed any reports of HRW condemning the U.S. for its use of white phosphorus. There was not one line of any article that showed HRW spoke of the atrocities inflicted against the people of Fallujah.

It is evident that HRW is no fan of the Arab world, so it was quite surprising to see them put so much time and effort into reporting Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. My assessment is that HRW is bigoted against Iraqis more than other Arabs. And, although usually unspeakable against Israeli war crimes, they stepped forward to criticize them. But, U.S. actions of the same dimension, or worse, still remain unreported. Logic tells me that HRW hates Iraqis more than other Arabs, and will sacrifice its normal lack of candor against Israel for the sake of being mute about U.S. war crimes.

Human Rights Watch is the same group that assessed the figure of 182,000 Kurds killed by the Ba’ath regime during 1988 in the Anfal Campaign. The major problem with this assertion is that not one HRW person went to Iraq to try to find the evidence. Another problem was the lack of bodies, but these "minor" points did not stop HRW from using the long publicly-accepted number of 182,000.

In November 2003, the U.S. and U.K. governments announced that more than 400,000 bodies had been discovered in mass graves in Iraq. A few months after, the disclosure of the finding of almost a half million bodies, something occurred that drastically altered the story. On July 18, 2004, the headline of the day for the British newspaper, The Independent, stated: "British Prime Minister Admits Graves Claim Untrue." According to the article:

Even though almost five years have passed since the truth emerged, the 400,000 figure is still included in the USAID website, along with other absurdities such as:

The same July 18, 2004 article from The Independent delved into the allegations of elevated figures attributed to Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath regime in the north of the country. For instance, it mentioned that Human Rights Watch admitted that it had to drastically decrease the figures of deaths and could not give an accurate figure.

Hania Mufti, who performed research and produced the original inflated figures of deaths in the north of Iraq, stated: "Our estimates were based on estimates. The eventual figure was based in part on circumstantial information gathered over the years."

Human Rights Watch was silent over the deaths of many Iraqis in Fallujah, but it was very vocal in attributing 182,000 fictitious deaths to the Ba’ath regime. Any group who can come up with such an enormous number of deaths and state that its proof was "estimates based on estimates" and on "circumstantial information" must remain suspect in its reason for accusing Israel of war crimes. I hope the proof they have against Israel is more credible than that of the group’s still-believed number of Kurds killed in 1988 in Iraq.

WHERE ARE WE TODAY?

For the past five years or so, Iraq was always in the headlines. In the past few months, the plight of the country is mentioned less-and-less. President Obama has told us all that Afghanistan is the number one threat to the U.S.

Pundit-after-pundit has hailed the diminishing violence in Iraq. There is a Santa Claus. Iraq is now peaceful and the Iraqi people are free. This newly-assessed theory about Iraq is false. There is still much violence, only the players may have changed. Many U.S. forces stick close-by their barracks as the new Iraqi police and military forces take over security. There has been a recent increase in resistance attacks that has devastated some Iraqi police forces and military personnel. We are not reading about this in the West. Plus, electricity and clean water supplies are just as minuscule as they were after the March 2003 invasion.

If an Iraqi lapsed into a coma before March 2003 and recovered today, he/she would not recognize Iraq. Plus, the person would probably prefer to relapse because of the horrible nightmare that is today’s Iraq.

The country has no leadership. There is a U.S.-appointed "government" that must reside in the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. If any of the members stroll outside this area without the benefit of being guarded by tanks and other military hardware, his/her life-span would be measured in minutes.

Women are prisoners in their own homes. Since 2003, hundreds have been killed and thousands have been raped and tortured because of "immoral" behavior: dressing in an un-Islamic manner. The U.S. prides itself on the progress of women in its society, but it has yet to utter one word of condemnation of the plight of Iraqi women.

Iraq has an education system that is in shambles, despite it having been the finest in the Arab world for decades prior to 2003. Electricity is a luxury that millions of Iraqis have for only a few hours a week. Raw sewage is rampant and is the cause of many illnesses.

The new Iraq that emerged after the U.S.-led "Operation Iraqi Freedom" is not free and it holds little resemblance to the Iraq it replaced. If it were not so horrendous a result, the new Iraq could be considered a bad joke. However, no one is laughing.

By mid-2008, the U.S. heralded a diminishing of violence in Iraq. The numbers of U.S. casualties have decreased. The reason for this is not because Iraq is becoming more sedate. The U.S. has pulled many of its troops away from the battle areas and replaced them with Iraqi forces. Mosul was a venue of heavy fighting in 2008 as the U.S. and Iraqi stooges tried to tame the city. In one battle, the Iraqi resistance killed more than 450 Iraqi military personnel. In the West, this was not mentioned because Iraqis took the place of what once would have been U.S. troops. Mosul is still yet to be "tamed" by the occupiers or the quislings.

In the first three years of occupation, more than 15,000 Iraqi police were killed by the resistance because they were considered collaborators. If one police person is killed on duty in the U.S., there is a national mourning.

Even the terminology has been tweaked to evade reality. During World War II, the French resistance was considered a patriotic entity because it fought the German occupiers. The same is true of the Iraqi resistance, yet the U.S. is the occupier and calls those who participate in the resistance "terrorists."

In 1973, Iraq nationalized its oil. It finally became free of the imperialist stranglehold placed on it by the West decades earlier. The nationalizing of Iraqi oil was the main reason behind the miraculous growth of the nation’s economy, infrastructure, and social services. In 2008, the stooges in Baghdad, prompted by their puppet masters in Washington, D.C., began to negotiate to sell off Iraqi oil rights to foreign firms. One U.S. oil executive said, "We’ve waited 35 years for this and now we’re back."

The March 2003 invasion of Iraq created conditions in which Iraq lost its past. Antiquities were destroyed by the new appointed "government" and Iraq’s history has been re-written in Washington, D.C. The selling off of Iraqi oil rights has produced a situation in which Iraq has also lost its future.

Many foreigners benefited financially from the invasion of Iraq. A few Iraqis, most of whom had not lived in the country for decades, did as well. However, Iraq benefited from nothing. There has not been one positive aspect of the invasion.

The Iraqi resistance is still up and running. According to experts, the groups have enough military hardware to conduct a formidable resistance for at least 40 years. This equipment came from the stockpiles of conventional weapons that were pre-positioned by the former Iraqi military. The Ba’ath Party executed this maneuver fight under the noses of the occupiers who were claiming victory. The mother of all battles is far from over

THE WORLD’S BIGGEST LIES AND THE DISASTROUS RESULTS

Very soon, we will be commemorating the sixth anniversary of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. The reasons given by the U.S. for the invasion were fairy tales, but the results were anything but the usual happy ending of fictitious fables.

The lead-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was laden with lies, deceit, bribes, attempted bribes and so many ludicrous incidents that a fiction writer would be envious of the plot. Unfortunately, the scenario was real and deadly.

The U.S. government stated that Iraq was about to attack its neighbors. Then, the east coast of the U.S. would eventually be a target for Iraqi bombers. The ante was upped even more as Condoleezza Rice told the world:

Shortly after Rice made her allegations, numerous sources came forth to dispel her statement about aluminum tubes by pointing out that the aluminum tubes could only have been used for standard rockets and were in no way able to be used for nuclear weapons programs. Dick Cheney told the U.S. public that Iraq was thinking of bombing the east coast of the U.S. because the Iraqi government purchased road maps from Australia. Then, he said that Iraq had a fleet of drone airplanes to perform the task. When these allegations hit the world press, Iraq showed the world its dastardly drone aircraft: three or four drones made from balsa wood that had a range of about 20 miles. They were used for mapping purposes.

Despite these absurd allegations, most people did not see or hear about the quick rebuttals, so the original messages stuck in their minds. A major problem of these horrendous lies being thrust on the public was the so-called "opposition" party, the Democrats. Instead of jumping on the lies and holding the administration accountable, most remained mute during the buildup to the March invasion.

The U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was, to many U.S. citizens, held in high esteem. To them, he was the one "clear thinker" of the Bush administration. When he began to put forth incredible stories about Iraq, many who would have opposed an invasion, took his word as truth and eventually supported the war.

The world saw Powell at the UN making all sorts of allegations. One time, he questioned why an Iraqi building had a roof. Another time, he showed a satellite photo of an Iraqi convoy and asked what the Iraqis were moving. Shortly after each incident, reporters in Iraq went to the scenes of Powell’s queries. For the roof, the building manger said, "We have a roof to keep the sand and rain out of the building." The convoy was approached by the press and shown that it consisted of tomatoes. Few questioned how the U.S. Secretary of State could make such outrageous remarks about convoys and roofs and not be lambasted by the press.

On February 5, 2003, Powell made his most dramatic appeal for war. The world watched as he spoke at the UN and accused Iraq of many violations of agreements and then added that the Iraqis had a fleet of mobile biological weapons factories. He received accolades from the entire U.S. government and those all over the world who wanted Iraq to be invaded. There was one problem, however, he lied. Today, we all know about the deceit and Powell has called this performance "the lowest point in my life."

The White House considered Powell’s speech the crown jewel for making the case for war. On February 5, 2003, Powell’s statement appeared on the official White House website. It was called "Denial and Deception" in reference to the Iraqi government. We know now that the only denial and deception came from the U.S., yet the article is still listed. The original big lie is now part of "official" history in the U.S.

Three days before Powell laid out his agenda of lies at the UN, Saddam Hussein was interviewed by former British Labour MP Tony Benn, who asked him, "Mr. President, may I ask you some questions? The first is, does Iraq have any weapons of mass destruction?" Saddam Hussein replied:

Today’s revisionists blame Saddam Hussein for trying to hoodwink the world into thinking Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) after the country destroyed them. On February 2, 2003, he made it clear that Iraq was free of banned weapons. Many times prior to this statement, officials from the Iraqi government publicly made the same assertions. Because the British and U.S. governments lied about Iraq’s compliance to UN resolutions, they created the fabrication that the Iraqi president was not forthright in denying the existence of the weapons. Facts show that he and his spokespeople for more than a decade publicly declared Iraq free of WMD, yet history has again been rewritten by the British and the U.S. governments and press to reflect a lie that created the destruction of Iraq and the deaths of many Iraqis as well as U.S. and British soldiers. The victors again rewrote history. But, in this case the victory statements were premature. The real war began after the declarations of triumph by the "coalition of the willing."

Circumstances became even more bizarre. George Bush gave Saddam an ultimatum: leave Iraq within 48 hours or face a massive invasion. This was another lie. The invasion of Iraq began about a dozen hours before Bush’s "get out of Iraq" decree expired. The U.S. thought it had Saddam Hussein and his sons in its crosshairs and decided to bomb an area where U.S. intelligence said Saddam was holding a meeting. The bombs and missiles arrived and killed innocent people. Neither Saddam nor his sons were there.

On April 9, 2003, the world awoke to see a statue of Saddam Hussein being destroyed in Baghdad. Bush equated this to the toppling of the Berlin Wall. What the press did not do was to show the entire context of the statue’s demise.

There were few Iraqis at the scene. The U.S. rented an audience by bringing in a few outsiders, including Ahmed Chalabi and his crew. When pictures of the setting were scrutinized, it showed that most of the people were from the press corps (the U.S. military rounded them up from local hotels) and U.S. military.

How about the heart-rendering picture of a muscular Iraqi breaking the base of the statue with a sledgehammer? He was Iraqi weightlifting champion Kadhim al-Jubouri.

Four years after his image was seen worldwide, al-Jubouri had a change of heart. In the article, "The Regrets of the Man Who Brought Down Saddam," published on March 19, 2007, by The Guardian:

Another widely-published picture showed an Iraqi tying a chain around Saddam’s neck for the tanks below to pull down the statue. The person who affixed the chain was Ibrahim Khalil. On the fifth anniversary of the toppling of the statue, Khalil echoed similar statements to those of al-Jubouri. According to the article "Khalil Regrets Toppling of Statue of Saddam," published on April 9, 2008 by Agence France Presse:

On the fifth anniversary of the toppling of the statue in Firdoos Square, the area was almost deserted. There was a ban on vehicles imposed by the Iraqi and U.S. authorities to prevent resistance attacks. Every April 9, the square is off-limits to most Iraqis. The original plan was for George Bush to ride in a victory parade at Firdoos Square on the first anniversary of the destruction of the statue. He envisioned a couple of million Iraqis cheering him on while he waved from his limousine. Hundreds of millions (possibly billions) of people saw the original photos of Iraqis assisting the U.S. in tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein, yet few read the follow-up articles of four and five years after the fact.

On July 3, 2003, George Bush was asked at a press conference about Iraqis resisting the U.S. occupation. He said, "There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is 'bring them on." A few months after that statement, a large-scale resistance was underway and U.S. casualties were mounting. On a video released by a resistance group, a spokesperson stated, "Mr. Bush said to ‘bring them on,’ and so we have in such a way that he could not imagine."

On July 22, 2003, the world was again shown the brutality and inhumanity of the occupation of Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed in a six-hour raid on the house in which they were staying. The military actions consisted of hundreds of U.S. soldiers accompanied by helicopters. Thousands of rounds of ammunition as well as rockets and missiles struck the house. When the fireworks were over, the bullet-ridden bodies of the Hussein brothers were taken to a morgue and their gory pictures were shown on television to the world. What the U.S. did not allow to be shown was the body of Qusay’s 14-year-old son who was also chopped to pieces.

The U.S. is the same country that lambasted Somalis for showing pictures of citizens dragging a dead U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu. The Somali actions were called despicable and horrendous. However, with the Hussein brothers, the words changed and the U.S. bragged to the world about their demise. The Somali demonstration was barbaric, yet the U.S. took pride in showing bodies that looked like they were minced in a meat grinder.

When the U.S. captured Saddam Hussein in December 2003, they heralded the event as the beginning of the demise of the Iraqi resistance. Just the opposite occurred. Instead of the Iraqi public considering Saddam a "spent force," many rallied in his support. Demonstrations broke out in praise of the Iraqi president. Even though the U.S. tried to denigrate Saddam and said that he was found in a "spider hole," the Iraqi public did not believe the scenario. In fact, Saddam Hussein was captured in a friend’s house.

The public display of a disheveled Saddam angered even some of the Iraqis who opposed him. Later, it was discovered that the photos were taken after the U.S. drugged Saddam. In this instance, the lack of knowledge of Arab culture again hurt the U.S. and made the public even more resistant to the occupation.

From 2004 on, the resistance grew. But, there were new entities that sprung up that made Iraq a violent nation. Those to whom the U.S. entrusted power, many Iran-supporting Shi’ites, escalated the violence by allowing death squads to take over parts of the country.

Prior to the March 2003 invasion, Baghdad was the crown jewel of the Arab world. It had endured occupations, wars, natural disasters and embargoes, yet it always remained the capital of the Arab world. The U.S. occupation changed all that.

From 2004 onward, the city of Baghdad became a venue of ethnic cleansing in which tens of thousands of citizens were killed or had to flee the city. Month-after-month saw the escalation of the destruction. U.S. actions, by supporting the death squads, made it possible to destroy the capital.

Today, Baghdad is in shambles. Six years after the invasion, electricity still remains a luxury that most citizens only have for a couple of hours a day. All the previous neighborhoods have changed. What has not been destroyed, looks entirely different. Many sections are defended by citizen militias. Plus, 28 areas of the city have been surrounded by 12-foot-high concrete walls. The inhabitants must pass checkpoints just to leave their area.

Baghdad is no longer Baghdad and there is little to show that the future will bring the city back to its former greatness.

The U.S. gambled that the Iraqis would welcome its soldiers as liberators. They lost the gamble. The big losers are the Iraqis who bore the brunt of lies and deceit as well as missiles, bombs, bullets, rockets, and chemical weapons.

More than six years after an invasion that the experts said would take only a few weeks, Iraq is in turmoil. Sectarian differences are the rule and there is no program to stop these actions that once were unheard of in Iraq. One thing is sure, the occupation did not go according to U.S. plans and the Iraqis have not been the only recipients of violence. An Iraqi resistance comprised of various factions is strong enough to keep the U.S. hands tied in Iraq for years. Only when the occupation forces totally leave Iraq will there be a solution to the internal affairs of the country.

One person’s assessment of what would occur after an invasion was very precise, however. Mohammed Sahaff, the Iraqi Information Minister, aka "Baghdad Bob," told the world:

Shortly after the statement, a reporter laughed at Sahaff and pointed to an area behind him and said, "Look. There are already Americans in Baghdad." Sahaff looked and saw a U.S. tank and said, "We’ve got them just where we want them." The audience of reporters laughed loudly and Sahaff left the podium for the last time.

The world scoffed at Sahaff’s statement. Internet sites sprung up making fun of the Minister. Coffee mugs and t-shirts were being sold that mocked his words. Today, there are few websites offering such items

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: AN INTERVIEW WITH GLEN FORD ABOUT BARACK OBAMA

Part One

ML: I’m going to start with a quote from your recent article: "Obama supporters make a great noise about imperialists in general while pledging undying solidarity in the struggle against such criminals, yet in their daily practice, labor mightily to absolve President Obama of culpability for his crimes." How did you come to that conclusion?GF: It was quite simple. I was attracted to the petition in calling for an end to sanctions against Zimbabwe, hands off Zimbabwe, no intervention in Zimbabwe. I was attracted to the letter itself. Then I looked at the signers and I recognized five people with whom I had been debating recently about Barack Obama and his policies. And there they were. These were Barack Obama supporters. I’m not just talking about people who just tended to give the new regime a break, but some of whom behaved as if Barack Obama was the second or third coming, or the very last coming. The final coming.

It was just amazing to see those names of those Obama worshippers juxtaposed with a letter that charged that those who have initiated sanctions against Zimbabwe are war criminals. The letter was fine, it was the signers who were all wrapped up in contradictions.

Zimbabwe is just one part of the vast contradiction. Within that letter, the signers talk about the people of Zimbabwe and the people of the United States facing a common enemy and they point the finger at the bankers, etc. Well, who is in bed with the bankers? This administration, that surrounds itself with bankers. Bankers are the crafters of this administration’s economic policy. This administration seems to exist for the purpose of resuscitating the investment banking class.

Yet these black Obama supporters have the nerve to say that they are in solidarity with everybody who is being oppressed by the banks. It makes no sense. It’s maddening, in fact.ML:How do they explain themselves when you confront them with this?

GF: They don’t. That is what is so frustrating. They will not explain themselves. At the last debate in December, in Harlem, some of them were saying, "Black people have spoken." And that was it. "Black people have spoken," that is Obama got 94% of the black vote, so therefore, "Shut up."

They refuse to do an analysis because they know. I’m sure they know that they show up badly in their own analysis. If they were honest, they would say that. But, if they were honest they wouldn’t have had those contradictory views in the first place.

Our great frustration was that they would not put forward a coherent argument. That’s one of the reasons, quite frankly, that we wrote that article … To call them out and we’re going to continue to call them out by name.

We are going to have those debates on both coasts. We are daring them to come. They can come or not come, but we are going to talk about these issues. They can punk out if they choose, or they can arrive and defend their positions.ML: How much of Obama was created by his followers and how much is actually a con by his changing views? For instance, all these progressives said, "Obama is great for this and that," and I said he wasn’t. I said, "Look at his voting record." I have not met a leftist or progressive, or whoever, who knew the answer to this question: " Did you know that Obama supports the death penalty?" The responses were, "Really?" That’s one of the key issues for the left. How can such a blatant thing like that pass them by? How much was it Obama’s supporters not wanting to know the truth and how much of it was Obama himself? Did he know this and did he use this denial astutely in his campaign?GF: He’s a very clever guy. I think we ought to really separate his black support from his progressive white support. People can get to the same place from very different roads. Obama knew very well that at the end of the process, that if he got far enough along in the process to become "viable," he knew very well that he was going to get the vast majority of the black vote. I’m sure he was clever enough to know that.

Certainly, Bruce Dixon, my managing editor, and I did back in 2003 when we first began to scrutinize Obama. It was clear that his senatorial campaign, as it was evolving, made the assumption that he would get the black vote, and, therefore, made no real outreach to it. It was the correct assumption. He was not required by anyone to make any substantive outreach to black folks. That is to address, up until this campaign, a perennial demand for a Marshall Plan for the inner cities. He has never made a real endorsement of affirmative action. Not a real endorsement. Always a hedged one.

The period in the presidential campaign leading up to South Carolina was quite ugly because it was not about substance. It was about labeling the Clinton campaign as racist. In fact, the Clinton campaign deserved that label on occasion. It didn’t have anything to do with urban issues or historical black issues. The fact that these two were essentially identical meant that we didn’t have a substantive discussion on anything in the latter part of the campaign.ML: Didn’t we hear Obama consistently mention God and how many times he goes to church during the campaign?GF: That’s right. That’s what happens when you get two Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) candidates running against each other. There’s no light between them. The only difference was race. ML: How about the supporters in the black community and in the leftist community who praised him immensely? Some are now saying, "We didn’t know he’d do this."GF: They made it all up. On the black side, one of the signers of that Zimbabwe letter, Dr. James McIntosh, told black audiences that Obama is "winking at them." And he actually believes this. He actually imagines as Obama makes these statements that are centrist, or right-wing, that Obama is simultaneously winking at black folks, meaning, "I have to do this, but my heart is with you. Don’t worry about it, it’s going to come out all right in the end."ML: I’ve heard the same excuse from many people: "He has to do this to get elected."GF: Now he is elected. Now why is he doing it? They’ll keep that up and then they’ll say, "Well, watch what he does in his second term when he doesn’t worry about getting re-elected. Then you’ll see the real Obama." I remember when there were certain elements saying that about Clarence Thomas. Despite all the evidence that he really was what he seemed to be, a reactionary tool of the worst elements of the right in this country, once he got that lifetime job that he could not be fired from, some black folks said, "We’ll see the real Clarence Thomas." Certainly if there were some black folks who could believe that with a specimen as vile as Clarence Thomas, there would be a much larger group who believe its own wishfulness with a specimen as attractive and clever as Barack Obama.ML: We heard the same about Bill Clinton: "Once he gets in office, he’s going to change." He did change. He went further to the right.GF: Obama goes steadily further to the right every day. Although he didn’t have to step too far. Bruce Dixon and I first zeroed in on Barack Obama in June 2003. Two things happened in the first week of June. I was going through my perusal of the membership list of the Democratic Leadership Council to check and see what new black recruits they’d gathered. Whose name do I see but Barack Obama’s? I called Bruce Dixon, who was in Atlanta. I was eager to give him this news and he said, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I’ve got something to tell you." He told me that he just went to Barack Obama’s campaign website and Obama had taken down his famous anti-war speech of October. Of course, we know what that meant. These things don’t just happen by accident. So, he backed off his anti-war speech by taking it off his website. Remember, by this time, Bush had announced "Mission Accomplished." The polls now switched because Americans love a war they think they’ve won. The war was now popular and he took the anti-war speech off his website and the DLC was bragging that he was a member.

Certainly, we had to challenge him on this. Bruce, having been to Obama’s wedding and worked with him on the 1992 massive voter registration campaign, had his number. We called him and we confronted him At first, he denied that taking the speech off the website meant a change of heart on his part. He just said it was routine. We knew that was a lie. Then he denied that he knew that the Democratic Leadership Council had put his name on their list and he said that he wasn’t a member. We urged him to have them take it off immediately. He actually hemmed and hawed. It took two or three weeks for him to finally request that they do take his name off. We went back and forth with him on the phone. He also sent us two or three letters, which we published. One can go to the archives of Black Commentator and read them.

After about three weeks of this, we gave Obama a test. We decided that he wasn’t being straight with us about his views on the war or his affiliation with the DLC, but we couldn’t prove it, so, why don’t we give him a test? We called it a bright line test. We presented him with three questions: If he is elected to the senate will he introduce legislation for universal healthcare. Two, to withdraw immediately from Iraq and three, to withdraw from NAFTA. If he answered these questions correctly, then he shouldn’t be in the DLC. If he answered them incorrectly, he ought to be in the DLC. That was our bright line test. He actually flunked the test with sleazy, slimy, dodgy, hemming and hawing answers, but, I gave him a passing grade because we didn’t want to seem to be the crabs in the barrel, holding the brother down. We rationalized it by saying, "Let’s see how the campaign progresses." He hadn’t even won the Democratic nomination for the senate. Actually, we punked out on him. That’s a great admission on our part. Not too long after, as he kept going further and further to the right, we finally did change our ways and behaved like real reporters and real citizens of the left and did an honest analysis of him. But most people on the left never did. ML: They didn’t know how he voted and what he stood for in the Senate.GF: They didn’t want to know.

He called the war in Iraq "dumb." He made it quite clear that he was not against war. Certainly, he does not admit that the U.S. is an imperialist power. He just thought it was a dumb war. Give him the war and he’ll do something smart with it. And that’s what he thinks he’s doing now.

ML: How do you see the militarizing of the U.S. culture? Today, kids dress in military camouflage. The San Diego Padres wear camouflage jerseys in some of their games. The playing of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh inning stretch at major league parks has been replaced with "God Bless America."

I think we can see the surge of militarism from the first Gulf War from that long buildup of bombing, which made war look sanitized, look like a video game, look like what kids like to do. Certainly, there was no blood and gore and people screaming with their intestines all over the ground. That blended in quite well with television culture. I think that was kind of a watershed moment. It needs to be said at this point in the conversation there were five military public high schools in Chicago, put together under Barack Obama’s now Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, when he was superintendent of schools in Chicago. Five schools that are directly run in conjunction with the U.S. military. These are public schools. The military is not just in the schools, it has essential control of five of them. This is Obama’s great friend and education secretary.

* * * * * * * * * *

If you want to read more of Glen Ford’s views, as well as those of an astute staff of writers who have researched matters thoroughly, go to www.blackagendareport.com. There is no fluff on the site, only well-presented articles written in an honest and thought-provoking manner.

HE’S AT IT AGAIN

In Italy, there is a 38-year-old woman who has not spoken a word in 17 years. She is brain-dead and has no chance of recovery. Her father has fought for 10 years to have machines shut off that keep her alive in a coma.

According to an article by Agence Press France of February 4, 2009:

Now, the Vatican has become involved. They oppose the taking away of the medical instruments that have kept Ms. Englaro alive for 17 years. Pope Benedict XVI calls the impending shutdown of the life support systems "an assassination." He then called euthanasia a "false answer to suffering."

The current pope has mentioned over-and-over how important life is and that humans should not use birth control. He has failed to take into account the multitude of African youngsters who have died because of hunger or lack of medical treatment who were born because their mothers had no access to birth control. There is a full-court press in Africa by the Catholic Church to keep birth control knowledge as well as items away from the Africans: all in the name of "pro-life." I would not be so harsh in my assessment of the anti-birth control efforts if the Vatican paid for and ensured the health of African children who were conceived because their mothers were not allowed to practice birth control. But, that will never happen. This scenario, like many others perpetrated by the human race, is begun by a group of people who, once the adverse effects come forth, are far away from the scene.

Each year, thousands of individuals die in The Netherlands under the country’s euthanasia program. One can not just go see a doctor and ask for the termination of his/her life. There is much scrutiny for each patient. In all cases, the underlying factor is that the patient’s suffering is unbearable and there is no prospect of improvement.

This entire event is laden with hypocrisy. Over the past few years, the pope has denigrated Muslims, Native Americans of South America, atheists, and even Christians who are not of the Catholic faith. Many of his words have been filled with hatred.

Let’s talk about the term "pro-life." Pope Benedict XVI has uttered a few words about Iraq. Most are his condemnations of the deaths of Muslims conducting a holy pilgrimage or the killing of Iraqi Christians. Hardly any words have been uttered about Iraqi death squads that target everyone, not just religious pilgrims.

He seems to be obsessed with converting Muslims to Christianity. On March 28, 2008, according to an Associated Press article titled, "Pope Calls for Peace in Tibet, Iraq, Holy Land," with a sub-headline "Benedict XVI Praises Conversions to Christianity in Rainy Easter Address:"

Where was the pope’s recent outcry over the assassinations of more than 1,300 Palestinians? We never saw him in front of the TV cameras denouncing Israel’s slaughter. However, at the time, there was a rift between the Vatican and Israel. Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with the Israeli destruction of the people and the infrastructure of Gaza. According to the Times Online of January 8, 2009:

Pathetic, indeed. While Israel was thrashing Gaza, the Vatican was more concerned with travel restrictions on Catholic officials and the removal of taxes on their property. Most Gazans had no property left after the invasion, yet the Vatican cried about its real estate being taxed.

I began this article with the sad case of a man who loved his daughter and tried for more than a decade to put her out of her misery. The pope put his unasked-for two cents into the issue and is attempting to further his own agenda at the price of making a family suffer further. And he has the nerve to speak of "family values."

CLINTON BLEW IT

The title of this column is a perfect example of both the beauty and the curse of the English language: many times, a word construes more than one meaning.

Take the title. It could mean that Clinton blew on his saxophone. Or, change the name Clinton to Monika and put the former president’s name at the end of the statement, and we have "Monika blew Bill." Again, a correct statement.

But, today’s column has nothing to do with sex or music. It is about blown (there it is, another variant of that word again) chances for settling the Iraq issue during his second term.

Today, all I hear from the Democrats (officials and the general public) is how George Bush is a murderous thug who invaded Iraq under dubious circumstances. The fairy tale is that the honorable Democrats would have handled the situation much differently.

Hogwash!

During her tenure as Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright stated time and time again that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). She was a broken record. However, in 2005, in Sweden, she told a group that if Al Gore was elected president in 2000, he would not have gone to war because "we knew Saddam did not have these weapons." One of those statements must be a lie.

Now, let’s look at how many Iraqis have been killed by the U.S. because of military action and the embargo that was in place from 1990 to 2003. Almost three million.

Let’s look at how many were killed under three administrations, two Republican and one Democrat. Hmmm. It appears that many more died from January 1993 to January 2001. But, this was a Democratic administration. In other words, the Democrats have as much, if not more, blood on their hands than the Republicans in the 1990-2003 period of the U.S.-Iraq War.

By the way, the war is still going on. There is no official document calling for the end of the war, making this conflict a 18-year battle, and still going.

Let’s get back to Clinton. History now shows us that Iraq was telling the truth from 1992 on when it said, "We don’t have any more illegal weapons." Even the term "illegal" is wrong, but Iraq swallowed its pride and consented to the terms of a 1991 agreement. These same weapons are not deemed illegal in the countries that possess them (most countries in the world), yet Iraq had to sign away certain aspects of defending itself.

Let’s go to 1997. By now, the embargo had killed more than one million people under the watch of Bill Clinton. But, there were certain quarters that were trying to get the embargo ended.

One person who was at the forefront of ending the embargo and welcoming Iraq back into civilization was Jack Kemp. That’s right, the conservative former congressman who was Bob Dole’s choice for vice president in 1996.

Although he espoused conservative issues, Kemp is basically a good human being. He is not a racist and neither is he xenophobic. He is fair. An aspect of his vice-presidential run in 1996 is rarely brought up: that of him knowingly throwing away any chances of ever being president by being on the same ticket as Dole, a sacrificial lamb to the Republican Party because they knew they would be trounced. Kemp put the good of the party above his own personal future.

In 1997, Kemp was aghast to find out that U.S. personnel at the U.N. were ordered never to utter one word to an Iraqi on the diplomatic staff. If they saw an Iraqi, they were to ignore him. He questioned Clinton on this because he thought the only way to settle the Iraq-U.S. dispute was through diplomacy. But, no one could practice diplomacy if one side was considered non-existent.

Kemp put forth an initiative through is organization, Empower America, to seriously discuss an end to the embargo. He advocated a six-month period of "snap inspections" in which U.N. inspectors would hold unannounced sessions anywhere in the country.

By 1998, the Kemp plan was growing. Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter joined Kemp in making a plan to end this period of history.

At the time, the late Nizar Hamdoon was the Iraq’s Ambassador to the U.N. He had the assurances from his government that the Kemp plan was acceptable and desired. But, the administration turned a blind eye to any talks with Iraq.

To this day, I still don’t know the reason why Clinton did not take the opportunity offered in 1998. He and his cohorts never made public Kemp’s offer. Instead, they upped the ante. Bill Richardson, then the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. rejected any deal with Baghdad. But, the U.S. signed a piece of paper in 1991 stating the sanctions would be lifted once the weapons were destroyed. Richardson said that the embargo would remain as long as Saddam was in power. The 1991 agreement, like most U.S. treaties, was not worth the paper it was singed on. Just ask the U.S. Native American community; what’s left of it.

During what could have been a dynamic time for a bold move to ensure peace and the cessation of genocide against Iraqis, the Clinton administration was mute. Then, in October and November of 1998, Clinton began to make allegations against Iraq and the public thought war was just around the corner. In December, the U.N. pulled its inspection team from Iraq and the U.S. launched Operation Desert Fox, a military campaign that further eroded Iraq’s infrastructure. Hundreds of buildings were bombed and after the air show stopped, Clinton said the U.S. destroyed much of Baghdad’s chemical weapons stockpile.
What stockpile? As we now know, in 1991 the Iraqis destroyed it themselves, so all the destruction of the 1998 bombing and missile attacks destroyed anything but chemical weapons.
Then, in the aftermath, the myth of "Saddam kicked out the inspectors" began to take hold. The inspectors were ordered to leave by the U.N. and the U.S.: they were not kicked out by the Iraqi government.

Backdoor negotiations made Iraq think the light at the end of the tunnel was now visible. But, it received a whack instead. It is no wonder the Iraqis would not trust any words uttered by the U.S.

The tragedy of this is that the U.S. public still believes the horse dung we have been fed by successive administrations.

It’s too bad Monika wasn’t blowing Bill while he was blowing a chance at becoming a person of integrity and vision. It just may have kept his mind off bombing Iraq.

Today, there is a new face in Washington and many people are heralding Barack Obama as "another Clinton," in reference to the abominable Bush years. If this is a correct analogy, Iraq may not exist at the end of his term.

AN ALTERNATIVE LOOK AT GOD

Over the years, I have received hundreds, maybe thousands, of letters requesting information. The subjects varied. Many came from people who were interested in sports when I was a sports administrator. As the editor of a weekly newspaper, I opened many an envelope containing letters. For the past 13 years, I have been president of the Atheist Coalition of San Diego, a post that carries the responsibility of answering numerous queries.

The following letter was addressed to the Atheist Coalition of San Diego. I must admit, that concerning the writer’s position in society and the eloquence of his request, this is probably the most creative letter I have ever received. I am sharing it with you to show that there are still some people who can write in an imaginative manner; a trait that has almost disappeared in the U.S. I did not include the name of the writer because of the social standing of the author.

* * * * *

Dear Sir/Madam,

Recently, I read a magazine pertinent to non-believers, and I was astounded at my own reaction to the well-reasoned concepts depicted in those eloquently written literary works.

For unfolding reasons, I have always had a personal problem with the "GOD" concept since early childhood; I was raised within a devout Catholic environment. Subsequently, the only aspect of "GOD" that I found appealing was U.S. currency bearing the logo "IN GOD WE TRUST." Ironically, I am now serving a prison sentence for the offense of bank robbery.

To my dismay, the offense didn’t monetarily yield as planned, and I am left without any funds to purchase a few much aspired literary works pertaining to non-believers.

Accordingly, if at all possible, please send me a book or two that may be new, used, or otherwise not suitable for sale, i.e., minimally damaged, out-of-date, etc. The prison’s policy would not foreclose my receipt of a book so long as the mailed package bears your organization’s name and return address.

Your time and assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated. Thank you kindly.

Sincerely

(Name withheld)

TROUBLE AHEAD

For the past couple of weeks, the eyes of the world have been riveted on the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians. Most Western governments turned their heads on the issue and pretended it wasn’t there. However, massive demonstrations worldwide proved that the people are now aware of Israel’s untouchable status in the eyes of the West.

Because of the publicity about Israel, few people realized that one name came up from two African leaders last week: Susan Rice, Obama’s choice for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe mentioned her in unflattering terms. Omar Bashir, president of Sudan, said that there could have been no worse a pick for the position. Both should know. From 1997 to 2001, Rice served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. During her tenure, she pulled many behind-the-scenes shenanigans in trying the ostracize Mugabe and Bashir from the international community. They were not her only targets. For the most part, she opposed true revolutionary movements and supported Western-backed actions to create havoc in Africa.

Rice is a person in the same mold as Paul Bremer and April Glaspie in her working for years in the background for the U.S. government. Few people heard of them until they were given their center-stage appointments. Her views are similar to those of Madeleine Albright, with whom she was close during the Clinton years. They both support genocide against Arabs or Africans and are proud of their actions. Don’t forget, Albright is the same person who told a worldwide audience that killing a million and a half Iraqi children through the embargo was "worth it" for U.S. security.

Rice also is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the most powerful group in the world in determining who gets destroyed and who doesn't in the international arena. Colin Powell is also a CFR member. Rice’s policies seem to be a combination of those of Albright and Powell.

On October 4, 2006, Rice was a guest on National Public Radio (NPR). She was in a hawkish mood about Sudan. According to NPR:

Last week’s statement by Bashir went, for the most part, unheard. In addition to calling Rice the worst choice for the UN post, he maintains that the U.S. is already planning military action against his country. His assessment may be accurate because some times in the past, before the U.S. has used military action, there was a lull in public demonizing of the country. Then, the fireworks began. We may soon see President Obama addressing the public and stating that a U.S. bombing campaign has begun in Sudan to help stop terrorism and he will end the speech with, "God bless America." The same scenario has been played over and over by George Bush I, Bill Clinton and George Bush II. There does not need to be a new script written because the old one still works with the gullible U.S. public.

A few months ago, I wrote a column called "Re-Conquering Africa," in which I mentioned that Africa is ripe for a program to strip it of oil and uranium. Obama is the perfect front-man for such an undertaking. If a white U.S. president would implement it, there would be some outcry from the left that it was a racist move. Enter Obama. He will not be criticized about racism because he is black. Now, he will have Rice, a black woman. right beside him.

In the past few years, many Western Christian missionaries have flooded Africa. A substantial number are spies with whom the missionaries collaborate. They have similar goals: the spies want to take over the raw materials of Africa and the missionaries want to take over the spiritual beliefs of Africans. Plus, billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are now being used by missionary groups in Africa to assist in the transformation of the continent. (See "Destroying Christianity to Save It In Iraq" in my archive section.)

The media are not putting Sudan in the forefront yet. Come January 20, 2009, a black president will be inaugurated in Washington D.C. Many herald Obama's victory as the beginning of a "new Camelot." Africans, however, will not have the same opinion once the Obama-Rice tandem take on Sudan and Zimbabwe, and then expand their operation on the continent. To them, the U.S. foreign policy will represent a resurrection of the genocide the West thrust on Africa in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

YES, THERE WAS LINKAGE

In August 1990, after Iraqi troops had crossed the border with Kuwait, President Saddam Hussein made an offer to order Iraqi troops out of the emirate and return to Iraq. His proposal was quite simple: he would withdraw troops from Kuwait if discussion of the Palestinian issue could begin. Immediately, George Bush I told the world that Saddam did not care about the Palestinians and that his offer was bogus. He coined a term that became a cliché in the West: no linkage.

Because few people outside the area knew of the history of the Palestinian struggle, the perception that Saddam Hussein was not interested in the plight of the Palestinians became part of Western folklore, disguised as history.

From the beginning of the Ba’ath rule in Iraq, Saddam Hussein consistently mentioned the Palestinians.

On June 5, 1975, Saddam Hussein gave a speech about the progress of the Ba’ath revolution. He told of the importance of defending one’s land, but he also gave it a new slant when he stated:

After the cease-fire between Iran and Iraq in 1988, Iraq’s economy was in terrible shape. On March 28, 1990, an Arab summit was held in Baghdad. Despite the hard times being endured by Iraq, Saddam Hussein put forth a proposal to help the Palestinians:

In hindsight, Saddam’s willingness to help support Jordan was a mistake. It became a haven for U.S. spying operations and was in the forefront of attempting to overthrow the Iraqi president. However, his contribution to the PLO was earnest and a great help to the Palestinian people.

During the embargo years, Saddam Hussein kept up his support for the Palestinian cause. He contributed $25,000 to any Palestinian family who lost a member while fighting Israel. Even this was twisted by the U.S. and held against him. During the buildup to the March 2003 invasion, it was widely reported that Saddam gave money to the families of suicide bombers, therefore, he supported terrorism. The overwhelming majority of funds given to families of Palestinian martyrs went to families whose members were killed by Israeli military actions. But, that information did not make its way into Western headlines.

Many Palestinians lived in Iraq during the Ba’ath years. They were treated with respect and led productive lives. That all changed after April 9, 2003. Many were killed and those who had to stay in Iraq because they had no way of leaving, began to experience horrendous conditions, having no homes and rummaging through trash cans for enough food to exist. The traitors who were appointed to run the country by Washington D.C. put Palestinians at the top of their list of those to be hunted.

Let’s get current. I don’t have to write about the horrendous events now occurring in Gaza. Many others have.

But, where is the outrage from Arab leaders? It is non-existent. When one does criticize Israel, it is with the audio level of the squeak of a mouse.

If Saddam Hussein were alive today, I am sure we would see many news clips of him displaying his outrage over the current Israeli actions. We would see multitudes of Iraqis volunteering to go to Gaza to help the Palestinians.

I find it inconceivable that the quislings in Baghdad today have not uttered one word in protest of Israel’s actions. Even Iran, who helped create the terrible situation in Iraq has publicly denounced Israel. Yet the Iranian-backed Iraqi "government" has not uttered a syllable.

Saddam Hussein considered the plight of Palestine to be the same as the plight of Iraq. From early in his reign, we see in his speeches his linking the future of both entities. His support of Palestine was evident from the first day of his presidency until seconds before his death. While the gutless hooded hangman was putting a noose around Saddam’s neck, the president stated: "Long live Iraq and long live Palestine, Arab and free, from the river to the sea."

COMMEMORATION

Last year at this time, a couple of dozen friends and acquaintances met in an Iraqi restaurant in El Cajon, California, to commemorate the first year anniversary of the murder of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. It was not a somber affair. Those assembled spoke of the great strides Iraq made under the Ba’ath regime led by Saddam.

We were about to do the same this year and I called the restaurant to assure me that it would be open. The owner said he would be closed for the first time ever on New Years Day because of the minuscule business normally conducted on the holiday. No problem. My wife stepped forward and offered to cook for the people and suggested we hold the event at our house. In one day, she made several home-made dishes that eventually led all to rave of the quality of food..

After we overate, the people assembled on my porch to listen to accolades about President Saddam from various individuals of several countries. Let me give an explanation of those who attended. They were mostly U.S. citizens of a European background, with equal representation of male and female. Yet, they all support the resistance in Iraq to U.S. occupation as well as commend the Ba’ath government for its outstanding accomplishments. Among them were an engineer, a philosopher, a university professor, a retired professional wrestler, a journalist, a university student activist, a publisher, a concrete truck driver, a retired fireman, an accountant, and others. They represented a good slice of humanity and did not come from a single background. Their admiration for Saddam Hussein and their disgust at his murder were the common denominators.

Husayn al-Kurdi, president of News International, read statements from colleagues and then gave a short presentation about his views. He ended his speech with a profound article written by Saddam Hussein in 2006 called "A Message to the American People."

Most of those assembled had read my book, The Mother of All Battles: The Endless U.S.-Iraq War, so I did not have to elaborate on certain matters. I gave a short introduction and then read statements from various people who wanted to share their admiration of Saddam with those at my house. Even though the attendees came from a few miles from my house, the event now turned into one with international participation. I will condense some of the tributes:

Layla Anwar of Arabwomanblues said:

Ibrahim Ebeid of al-moharer.net stated:

Ali Baghdadi of ArabJournal added:

Hussein Al-alak of the Iraqi Solidarity Campaign told us:

At today’s event, I read the entire pieces sent to me, not just the summaries above. I would like to thank comrades Eibeid, Baghdadi, Anwar and Al-Alak for sharing with me and my comrades in the San Diego area their astute and heartfelt views on President Saddam Hussein on the second anniversary of his murder.

Since 1993, I have given many speeches about Iraq and I have been included in many debates. The venues have been small meeting halls to modern TV and radio stations. My audiences have consisted of numbers from a dozen to tens of thousands. However, today, with a couple of dozen friends, and the assistance of four comrades from outside the area, I felt more satisfied with the results than I have with any other presentation about Iraq. For a couple of hours, Saddam Hussein’s vision and accomplishments were present in a house in La Mesa, California.

DESTROYING CHRISTIANITY TO SAVE IT IN IRAQ

About a year after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, I was having a conversation with a Chaldean (Iraqi Christian) in San Diego. By then, violence and murder had become a part of the fabric of Iraq.

I asked the Chaldean what he thought of the state of affairs and was surprised when he told me that he really didn’t care. When I asked about his indifference, he said, "Fuck ‘em. They’re all Muslims."

I knew that I was not dealing with someone who had an astute knowledge of politics, but I tried to bring to him some sense of reality. I asked him, "Don’t you see that it soon will be the Christians who will be murdered or forced to flee Iraq?" He said that would never happen.

Soon, churches were blown up. Then, Christians in Iraq were being targeted and many were killed, with tens of thousands fleeing either the country or their area of Iraq.

The Chaldean community of San Diego, many of whom welcomed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, now began to question the violence. Once their co-religionists became targets, their thought processes changed. But, they still did not see that the bloodshed in Iraq had its roots in the invasion. No one was exempt from the violence that the overthrow of the legitimate government of Iraq created.

Today, we all know the plight of Iraqi Christians. Mass movements of Christians are still underway. It is ironic to see that one of the first groups of Christians in the world, who maintained a presence for almost 2,000 years, may disappear from Iraq. There are many more Iraqi Christians living outside Iraq than inside.

The obvious culprits of the devastating of Iraqi Christianity are evident: Shia death squads, Iraqi stooge government employees, and the chaos created and cheered on by the U.S. However, there is a major player involved in this scenario that is rarely acknowledged: U.S. Christian groups.

Many U.S. Christians have visited Iraq since 2003 and have begun programs to not only spread "the word" of Jesus in Iraq, but to destroy the long tradition of Christianity in Iraq. In other words, they are trying to destroy Christianity in Iraq to save it.

Once the Bibles and missionaries began to invade Iraq, the Iraqi Christians called "foul." In May 2005, the head of Iraq’s largest Christian community, Patriarch Emmanuel Delly, scathingly attacked the evangelical U.S. Christians who had taken their crusade to Iraq.

On May 19, 2005, Delly told Al-Jazeera News that Iraq did not need Christian missionaries because its churches dated back long before Protestantism. He objected to the aspect of trying to convert Muslims and said, "You can’t even talk about that here."

According to Delly: the evangelists attract poor youths with displays of money and then "take them out in cars to have fun. Then, they take photos and send them here, to Germany, to the U.S., and say ‘Look how many Muslims have become Christian.’"

There are many U.S. groups who have gone to Iraq with carton-loads of Bibles, yet they do not even mention Iraqi Christians. They point out that they must save the Iraqi Muslims from themselves by converting them to Jesus. In the meantime, the Iraqi Christian community is adversely affected by the actions of the U.S. zealots. They admittedly go to Iraq, quickly drop off their Bibles and other propaganda, and leave. All the time, Iraqi Christians are targeted for the activities of the outsiders.

Much of the demise of Iraqi Christians has been financed by U.S. taxpayers without them even knowing. In 1991, George Bush proclaimed that he wanted to create a "faith-based" program that would allow religious institutions to receive cash from the U.S. government for supplying social services. Many members of the U.S. Congress stated their disapproval and it was evident that such a program would not pass in Congress. So, Bush created the "Faith-Based Initiative" by presidential decree.

Since its inception, the initiative has been a dismal failure, costing the U.S. public about $10 billion. The recipients of the money can openly discriminate in hiring and are not required to adhere to safety regulations and staffing rules that are necessary for non-faith-based companies or individuals. Under the Faith-Based Initiative, some groups have started drug rehabilitation programs without having one qualified person on the staff. This has applied also to many other areas of social services. Some programs have opened in buildings in which safety inspectors reported water in electrical outlets and cracks in the walls and ceilings. A regular business would be shut down for safety violations and hazards, yet the faith-based programs are exempt from disciplinary actions.

Finding out where the monies have been distributed is a difficult task because of the accounting methods and the fact that the U.S. government wants to keep some activities out of pubic view. But, if one looks hard enough, there is information that shows that the Faith-Based Initiative has given money to groups to pursue their evangelical quests overseas. According to the article "Court Bars Suit on Faith-Based Plan," written by Michael Kranish on June 26, 2007, for the Boston Globe:

In the three years following the Globe’s findings, much more money has been allocated to faith-based groups. Without having exact figures to work with, it is logical to assume from the figures from 2001 to 2005 that several billions of dollars have made their way into Christian missionary work overseas, including Iraq.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) plays a crucial role in helping Christian groups acquire government money to use in overseas programs. The group has a section that deals exclusively with marrying religious groups with taxpayer money. USAID gives detailed information to the groups on how to obtain the finances, and it is not shy in promoting the U.S. evangelical movement in foreign countries.

You may say, "Well, Lagauche is just a disgruntled atheist who opposes good work done by religious groups." Quite the contrary.

Let’s look at USAID. It is a government agency laden with operatives who, in addition to the giving out of a few bags of rice to African nations, has a goal of promoting U.S. foreign policy at all costs, even outright lying.

On November 20, 2003, Tony Blair announced to the world that 400,000 mass graves had been discovered in Iraq since the occupation began. This proclamation astounded the world. USAID quickly came out with a publication titled Iraq’s Legacy of Terror, Mass Graves. In it was the statement:

Saddam Hussein was compared to the much overused Jewish holocaust. He was Pol Pot and Hitler in one person.

On July 18, 2004, Tony Blair again spoke to the press about Iraqi mass graves. He said that his previous quote on bodies was not accurate. The new figure was 5,000 (most of whom were killed in the Kurdish civil war of the 1990s and by U.S. bombs in 1991). This incredible statement did not make its way into the U.S. media. Even the so-called "left" and anti-war camps paid little or no attention to it, despite it being one of the most important statements ever made during the entire demonizing of Iraq from 1990 until Blair came clean.

How did USAID treat the revised figures? They ignored them. If you go to the USAID website today, the 400,000 figure is still mentioned and not one word has changed from the original publication.

In July 2002, I interviewed George Galloway, the British politician who tried to galvanize world opinion against an attack on Iraq. He spoke of the great support he received in Britain from various Christian churches. I told him that just the opposite was occurring in the U.S. At that time, many preachers used their pulpits as a pro-war weapon. The vast majority of the Christian U.S. public called for an invasion of Iraq. Once the resistance began in Iraq, many of these same people began to oppose the war, but it was too late. Christian groups in England were instrumental in trying to stop a war, while many Christian organizations in the U.S. were pro-war government dupes.

I have confronted many Christians about their reasons for wanting war and, to this day, some still maintain that there were massive amounts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Saddam was the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks. I am curious why they supported, and some still support, the March 2003 invasion. After all, I’ve been told that Christianity is a religion of peace and brotherhood.

Numerous people have told me that they support life and are against abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. Even though I disagree with their views, I can respect them if they are consistent. I have asked all the same question, but have yet to receive an answer: "If you are against killing, how can you justify supporting the killing of more than three million Iraqis?" Silence always follows my question. I also state that those who opt for euthanasia chose to do so. The millions of Iraqis killed by U.S. bombs had no say in the matter.

Let there be no ambiguity. Some U.S. Christian organizations, for evangelical reasons, are destroying Iraqi Christianity, many times paid for by U.S. taxpayer money from public funding. They care not about Iraqi Christians and bypass them while fomenting turmoil for the diminishing Iraqi Christian community.

During one of my conversations with a Christian acquaintance, he became upset because of my statement that U.S. Christians were instrumental in the destruction of Iraq. He said, "The pope opposed the war." I then asked him, "Did you?" He meekly answered, "Well, no." Enough said.

Saddam Hussein’s Greatest Legacy: December 2003 to December 2006

Part Three

After Saddam’s execution, the press had a field day in analyzing and editorializing the incident as well as Saddam himself. Most were writing well out of their league and their ignorance of history showed. Because most U.S. readers do not know the history of Iraq, the scribes’ words were taken as true.

The theme of many articles was that justice was not achieved because Saddam was hanged for a lesser crime than the major ones assessed against him. The "progressive" writers wanted to see him tried for gassing incidents so they could tie together U.S. involvement with the "misdeeds" of Saddam Hussein. Article-after-article mentioned Rumsfeld’s visit to Iraq in the 1980s and said the U.S. gave Iraq the technology for Iraq’s WMD programs during the Iran-Iraq War, however, not one questioned the reason for the war. They all blamed it on Saddam and wrote as if Iran was a benign and aggrieved country. Also, not one writer mentioned that Saddam was quickly hanged before the gassing incidents could come to court. Many people accuse Iran, not Iraq of gassing the Kurds at Halabjah. If Saddam was dead, these items could not be addressed, so the truth behind the myth of "gassing his own people" went to the grave with Saddam. Further, not one mentioned that Saddam’s Iraqi attorney, Khalil al-Dulaimi, the only defense lawyer able to speak in the courtroom, had been approached twice in the previous year by Iranian agents who tried to persuade him not to mention Halabjah at the trial. On his first encounter, in Jordan, he was offered $10 million to keep the subject off the agenda. Later, in Paris, the Iranians upped the ante by offering him $100 million. The only way to keep the subject away from public scrutiny was to kill Saddam on bogus charges. Shortly after he died, the court dropped the genocide charges against Saddam Hussein.

But, in most of the reporting, a visible part of history was missing. At the same time Saddam Hussein and Rumsfeld met, Iran was killing Iraqi soldiers and civilians with missiles supplied by the U.S. The U.S. had already made the deal with Iran to sell them missiles and other military material, with Israel getting the obligatory 10% for being the middleman. Iraq and Iran were both supplied by the U.S.

After Saddam’s execution, some writers mocked him and again, re-wrote history. In "So Long to ‘Our Tyrant,’" Andrew Cockburn stated in Common Dreams on December 30, 2006:

Cockburn, of all people, should know that after Desert Storm, many plots to get rid of Saddam emerged.. For instance, even Scott Ritter, once head of the U.N. inspection team, stated that the goal of the U.S. personnel on the inspection contingent was to overthrow Saddam. He admits that he was part of the scheme.

John Simpson of the Sunday Times relayed more historical revision in his piece "Tyrant Met His End with Fortitude:"

The glaring mis-representation in this piece is the depiction that his ministers, the officers in his army and police force consisted mostly of Sunnis. In fact, 60% of the Republican Guard officers were Shi’ite. As were two-thirds of the Iraqi ambassadors assigned to the U.N. during Saddam’s tenure. Iraq’s mouthpiece to the world in March and April 2003, Mohamed Sahaff (the Iraq Information Minister) was Shi’ite. In the infamous deck of 55 playing cards created by the U.S., 35 individuals were Shi’ite. Plus, Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi foreign minister, was a Christian. Justice could have been better portrayed if Simpson took a few minutes to research facts before he made such erroneous allegations.

In the article, "Rule of Noose," in The Nation of December 31, 2006, Bruce Shapiro wrote:

Shapiro packed much rancor into such a short span of words. "Depraved and sadistic" stick out. I doubt that Shapiro has an education and background in psychology, but he tries to dissect Saddam Hussein’s brain. On December 30, 2006, the only "depraved and sadistic" Iraqis we saw were the ones who taunted Saddam and those who pulled the lever for his hanging.

On the other hand, some articles contained realistic information. According to Robert Dreyfuss, in his article, "The Consequences of Killing Saddam," in The Nation, December 31, 2006:

Michael Boldin spoke of the lies and deceit of the U.S. administration in his piece "Saddam Was Right and Bush Was Wrong," published online by www.populistamerica.com on December 30, 2006:

Boldin is one of the few writers who went right to the core of the problem of the demonizing of Saddam Hussein. If those who accused Saddam of myriad atrocities had been exposed as liars about virtually every aspect on Iraq, how could they transform themselves into purveyors of truth in describing Saddam Hussein and his regime?

Al-Quds of al-Arabi assessed the situation in a logical manner. Its editor, Abdel Bari Atwan, told Aljazeera News:

The pundits had a great time writing about Saddam Hussein’s execution. Many work for huge publications with limitless resources for research, yet they chose to re-hash old discredited information and add a few new untruths as well.

These represent only a few statements made in the Western press. But, in newspapers from Brazil to Russia, from India to Indonesia, from Pakistan to Venezuela, and many other nations, the media were much kinder to Saddam Hussein and the barbaric end he experienced.

Many Western observers are not aware that Saddam Hussein was well-regarded in much of the world. Brazilians remembered that thousands of their countrymen were recruited by Saddam to build the advanced highway and bridge systems that once crisscrossed Iraq. Egyptians did not forget that more than two million of their countrymen owned and worked land in Iraq prior to January 1991. Indians did not forget the reciprocal dealings with Iraq and how the Ba’athists gave support to Indian causes. The Lebanese remembered the dozens of Iraqi trucks that showed up daily at the Lebanese border during that country’s civil war. They were laden with food and clothing for any Lebanese person in need. The convoys’ recipients included all Lebanese, not a certain faction of those battling in the civil war. Most Palestinians display a picture of Saddam Hussein on their walls. Over the years, many nations have temporarily supported the Palestinian cause, only to withdraw aid once threatened by the U.S. Saddam Hussein, even during the embargo years, supported the Palestinians with no exception, while other Arab regimes did not want to get involved because they did not want to upset their puppeteers in Washington and Tel Aviv.

It didn’t take long for the world to see how quickly the bogus court that tried Saddam became unraveled. On March 9, 2007, the headlines for Al-Jazeera News read, "Saddam Judge Flees Iraq." Raouf Abdel-Rahman was the judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein, Barzan al-Tikriti (Iraq’s former intelligence minister) and Awad Hamed (former head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court) to death. All were hanged.

Abdel-Rahman was the second judge on the trial in which the defendants were accused of crimes against humanity for the execution of 148 people from the city of Dujail in 1985. The first judge, Rizgar Amin, resigned. He accused the U.S.-allied Iraqi officials of scripting the trial for him. When Abdel-Rahman came on board, the so-called trial turned into a fiasco. He constantly kicked the defendants and their lawyers out of the court room. He made public statements before the end of the trial in which he stated that Saddam was guilty. When a defense witness came forth with a video tape showing how the head prosecutor, Jaafar al-Musawi and a prosecution witness, Ali al-Haidari had lied, Abdel-Rahman confiscated the video tape and had the witness, along with three other defense witnesses, arrested and tortured.

When the appeals court turned down the request of Saddam’s defense team about the death verdict, Abdel-Rahman had to set an execution date within 30 days of the appeal verdict. Saddam was hanged within four days, on the date of the beginning of a Moslem holiday.

For a few months, Abdel-Rahman relished in his image as a no-nonsense, tough judge. The truth differs. He stood against everything a judge is supposed to represent: to find the truth. He lied and he was a fraud. He was brave while he was protected by the U.S. Army in the Green Zone, but once the hangings were conducted, it appears that Abdel-Rahman must have lost some of his protection. He fled to Great Britain.

There is one aspect of this mockery that is confusing. Abdel-Rahman asked for "political asylum" in Great Britain. Political asylum is usually requested by citizens of countries in which they are not allowed political, social or religious rights that other citizens enjoy. Abdel-Rahman was a product of the quisling Iraqi government. He was right in the middle of all the shenanigans and violence the pretenders thrust on Iraq. Why did he ask for "political asylum" when he was a mainstream player in the sordid politics of Iraq?

It is probable that there were many Iraqis who were offended by Saddam Hussein’s show trial and hanging and some were probably picking up the stench of Abdel-Rahman’s scent. Even the U.S. and the Iraqi stooges would have been unable to give him enough security to ensure that he would be alive at retirement age.

Abdel-Rahman may have been the temporary victor because of his actions in an unfair Iraqi courthouse that led to the hanging of Saddam Hussein. But, in death, Saddam Hussein won the battle against him as Abdel-Rahman made a secret and cowardly exit from Iraq.

At the time of the writing of this book, a very ill Tariq Aziz is being tried on false charges. Out of nowhere, Abdel-Rahman reappeared in Baghdad. It appears that no one wanted to be the judge who orders the hanging of Aziz, so the quisling Iraqi government made a deal with the person who handed down Saddam Hussein’s death sentence. It will be interesting to see Abdel-Rahman’s actions after the trial. He may well return to England for his extended vacation.

Saddam Hussein knew how his life would end, but he was well aware that his legacy would be part of the equation that will resurrect Iraq. He never sold out, not even at the end when he was offered chances to be freed from prison. He knew that if he sold out, he would have sold out Iraq.

Long after his execution, Saddam Hussein still gained ludicrous press coverage. On the first anniversary of the hanging, two British newspapers ran stories about the one-year anniversary.

On December 31, 2007, the British daily newspaper, The Telegraph, ran an article called "Few Gather to Remember at Saddam’s Tomb." It was written by Akeel Hussein and Colin Freeman. Here are a few statements:

This pieces is a horrible example of journalism, especially coming from such an established newspaper as The Telegraph. The tone of mockery is normally never seen in a feature article. Plus, the inaccuracies are glaring. Even from Saddam’s naysayers I have never seen the last words attributed to him that this stooge tag-team wrote. However, the facts are true: only a few dozen people showed up at Saddam’s grave.

Now, let’s go a few miles across London and see how The Times handled the same story. Deborah Haynes and Ali Hamdani collaborated on the article "Thousands Prevented from Visiting Saddam Tomb on Anniversary of Execution" that was published on December 30, 2007.

Let’s take a look at a sampling of this article:

Two stories used basic facts (and some fiction on the part of The Telegraph) in depicting the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s murder. However, only one stated why there were so few people at Saddam’s grave.

If Saddam Hussein is a spent force in Iraq, why does the U.S. and its quisling allies keep people from visiting his grave? They are cowards with absolutely no integrity and can only function surrounded by tanks and enough military hardware to incinerate the entire country of Iraq. So much for "bringing democracy to Iraq."

Saddam Hussein’s Greatest Legacy: December 2003 to December 2006

Part Two

When the verdict of death for Saddam was announced on November 5, 2006, many groups, individuals and governments were outraged. They tried to get the U.N. to intervene, but to no avail.

Many quotes came forth from foe and friend of Saddam. The most preposterous came from Nouri al-Maliki, the so-called Iraqi prime minister:

That statement was outrageous, but many people will believe it. For the preceding year, hundreds, if not thousands, of professors, scientists and doctors were killed in Iraq by agents of the Maliki government. During Saddam’s time, those professionals flourished and were the pride of Iraq. Maliki added them to the long list of fictitious victims of Saddam Hussein’s rule.

The announcement of the verdict backfired. The U.S. thought it would further erode Saddam’s importance to the Iraqi public, but just the opposite occurred. The website www.al-moharer.net posted this message shortly after the announcement:

The U.S. media failed to show photos of these incidents, yet the international press displayed many. Within a few more hours, the demonstrations escalated and U.S. vehicles were targeted by the crowds.

The only hope that Saddam Hussein had to stop his date with the gallows was an appeal from his defense team to an appeals court. The defense had a time limit in which to file the appeal, yet the court that tried Saddam did not give his defense the necessary information. Weeks went by without the court even giving the defense team a summary of the charges. When Saddam’s team received the necessary information, it only had a few days to file an appeal. The defenders had to create an appeal in a few days that normally would take a month or two to construct. Every obstacle was put in place to keep justice from seeing even a ray of daylight.

The appeals court took two days to read 1,500 pages of documents presented by the defense and then issued a denial for the appeal on December 26, 2006.. No court in the world can decipher this number of pages in such a short time.

Despite there being no time limit for the appeals court to reach a decision, it made one in two days. The next step was to affix a date for the execution. It had to be within 30 days of the announcement of December 26^th.

No one was surprised by the verdict against Saddam Hussein because of the knowledge this was a foregone conclusion. However, the appeals court outdid itself by ruling on the Iraqi vice president, Taha Yasin Ramadan. He was sentenced to life in prison by the court that convicted Saddam, but the appeals court took it upon itself to change the sentence to death, even though the case was not on the docket.

From the first day Saddam Hussein stepped foot in court until the day he was hanged, the entire system was stacked against him. Many of the laws the court made for itself were illegal in the eyes of international law and the court even breached some of its own illegal laws. Dr. Curtis Doebbler, a noted international human rights attorney, was on Saddam’s legal team from the start. Shortly after the announcement of the appeals court, he stated:

After the appeals verdict, almost everybody in the U.S. was in the lynching mood. Pundits were frothing at the mouth when they discussed the upcoming execution. There was a collective air of jubilation and even anti-war activists cheered on the impending hanging. Many politicians of the Democratic party who jumped on the anti-war and anti-Bush wagon said that Saddam "deserved it." Not one discussed the legality or fairness of his trial, Leftist journalists were trying to outdo each other in demeaning Saddam. Not only were they reporting the standard fare of Saddam Hussein myths, they made up new fables of atrocities.

Many people have stated that George Bush lied about everything to do with Iraq: weapons of mass destruction; the Bin-Laden/Saddam Hussein link; Iraqi involvement with 9-11; fictitious biological weapons trailers; the Iraqi imprisonment of a U.S. pilot since 1991, etc. Yet, the same people who question Bush’s lies about Iraq broadcast the myths about Saddam Hussein and his regime. If Bush had lied about everything else, why should one believe his statements about the Ba’ath Party and Iraq’s president? Logic would argue that he lied about Saddam as well.

The scenario did not make sense. The people who consistently made the most absurd and untrue statements about Iraq (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Bremer, Powell, Rumsfeld, et al) and who stole tens of billions of dollars that belonged to the country of Iraq, proudly spoke of creating a new Middle East based on U.S. aggression or were conducting book-signing tours for their memoirs. The results of their lies led to the killing of more than a million Iraqis; a cost of about a trillion dollars to the U.S. public; and the destruction of a country’s culture and infrastructure. Even the history of Iraq was re-written by people in Washington D.C.

On the other hand, the guy with the moustache who told the truth about all the lies and adhered to the U.N. request for inspections, as well as supplied a 12,000-page report that documented in detail every aspect of Iraq’s former WMD programs, sat in a jail cell awaiting execution.

On December 14, 2006, the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies (ICRSS) released the results of a poll it conducted for several weeks. The ICRSS is an independent organization based in Baghdad and run by Sadoun Dulaimi, an Iraqi expatriate until 2003. Using a base of more than 2,000 Iraqis, the majority of whom were Shi’ite Moslems, 90% stated that the country was far better off under Saddam Hussein than it was in 2006.

The ICRSS is definitely not a shill for the Ba’ath Party. U.S. government agencies as well as many media outlets referenced its results over the years. The conclusions showed a dramatic difference between the opinions of the Iraqi people and those put forth by the U.S. administration and media.

From the announcement of the guilty verdict on November 5, 2006 until 6:00am on December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was the freest man in Iraq although he was behind bars. His mind was clear and he awaited death with dignity. Not once did he crack under torture or pressure.

.Saddam Hussein was not a slave, although his incarceration kept him imprisoned. He was not allowed to see his family, unless, like his sons and grandson, they were shot to death with hundreds of bullets.

At 6:00 a.m. Baghdad time, on December 30, 2006, a mere four days after the appeals court ruling, Saddam Hussein was hanged. Until the lever was pulled, he displayed courage and integrity. The U.S. had waited since 1990 for Saddam to admit defeat or show any sign of capitulation or fear. He never did.

The hanging was the last chance for the U.S. to attain its goal. Administration members hoped he would cringe or break down. Just the opposite occurred. Saddam went to the gallows and refused to wear a hood over his head, although his hangmen were hooded.

A sanitized version of the execution was broadcast to the world. It showed the executioners putting a noose around Saddam’s neck and then the hanging. There was no sound. Shortly after, a real view of the execution came forth. Someone in the room recorded the event on a cell phone.

In the crowd were hecklers. They taunted Saddam Hussein, yet he never allowed himself to be degraded. When one of the executioners shouted, "Long live Muqtada al-Sadr," Saddam mocked the Shi’ite upstart, then he began to recite an Islamic verse and the hangman pulled the plug.

The final act in the U.S. vendetta against Saddam Hussein backfired. The western media reported it as an accomplishment, but people worldwide took to the streets in protest. Millions in India and Brazil demonstrated. Most of the Arab world was laden with protestors. National days of mourning were announced and even Muammar Gadhafi of Libya, not exactly a close comrade of Saddam, announced that his country would erect a statue in his commemoration.

The last 15 minutes of his life made Saddam Hussein the ultimate resister of imperialism to hundreds of millions of people on the Earth. The word "martyr" was now common in describing him.

In the U.S., a few video clips of people celebrating in Sadr City were shown on television. However, no clips of the massive pro-Saddam demonstrations made it past the cutting room floor. Most Americans do not realize that Saddam Hussein was not perceived in much of the world as a ghastly perpetrator of genocide and a brutal sadist.

Saddam Hussein held a 90% approval rating almost four years after his country was destroyed by an illegal invasion but he was hanged, while the U.S. president who was obsessed with the Iraqi president’s demise, and who at the time had an approval rating of 28% of his own country-people, was still alive and ordering the murder of many more Iraqis.

There are various reasons for these macabre and illogical turn of events. Vilified by Western analysts, politicians and journalists for years, it is nothing short of miraculous that Saddam lasted as long as he did. Many of the left are just as responsible for his death as are the neocons they lambaste. Scribe-after-scribe demeaned Saddam Hussein since 1990, most of the time relaying lies and myths about the man and his Ba’ath Party. No lie was too big if it was sensational enough to acquire headlines. Even when some of the lies were uncovered, such as those of the human shredding machine, or the mobile biological weapons labs, or the aluminum tubes for Iraq’s non-existent nuclear weapons program, the press did not acknowledge the truth. They went along making up new allegations. Because it normally took months to investigate the falsehoods, when the truth emerged, the public read little. To them, the original story stuck in their minds. Many people should be considered murderers for Saddam Hussein’s hanging: not just the hangman, but everyone who fueled the fire of hatred against him, including members of the "progressive" press who helped pass on the lies.

The events leading up to Saddam’s execution are preposterous, almost surreal. A bunch of one-time Iraqis, who had not lived in the country for decades, were flown into Iraq by the U.S. to run the country. A bible-toting, combat-boot-wearing administrator with no knowledge of any Arab country or culture (Paul Bremer), changed the country’s laws and constitution, as well as took away state-ownership of crucial industries.

When the Ba’athist agenda took hold in the 1970s, the government introduced many revolutionary aspects to Iraqi life: the equality of women; universal education; universal healthcare; much-improved public transportation; emphasis on science, etc. By the 1980s, Iraq was thriving and the crown jewel of the Middle East. But, along with the improvements came jealousy and greed. The U.S., because of its no-questions-asked affinity to Israel, had to take Iraq back a few notches. Oil was quickly becoming a symbol of world power, not just something to keep a country’s energy requirements in place.

In other words, Iraq was now worth fighting for. It no longer was the antiquated nation of a few decades ago. Saddam Hussein was the driving force behind the transformation of Iraq. Gradually, the U.S., with other Western powers, wanted some of Iraq’s black gold. Little-by-little, the country was degraded, beginning on January 17, 1991. Twelve years of an embargo weakened it further, but it did not kill Iraq. It took a massive invasion in 2003 and a ruthless occupation to finish the country off.

Iraq has been totally destroyed, not just physically, but emotionally. All of Saddam Hussein’s enemies hold equal responsibility in the destruction. They not only murdered Saddam, but Iraq as well. Shortly after March 2003, some people and institutions, such as Ahmed Chalabi and Haliburton, made a quick financial killing. Those days are gone. Today’s thieves in the stooge government can only count on small change to steal. The Iraqi people had everything they own, physically and emotionally, stolen.

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S GREATEST LEGACY: DECEMBER 2003 TO DECEMBER 2006

Part One

Saddam Hussein was Iraq’s leader from 1973 (officially becoming Iraq’s president in 1979) to April 2003. His legacy is two-fold. On the one hand, he and the Ba’ath Party were the impetus behind turning Iraq from an Arab nation indistinguishable from its Arab neighbors to the most advanced Arab country in history. From 1973 to 1990, the literacy rate in Iraq rose from 35% to over 90%. Thousands of miles of roads were built and the country was completely electrified. Excellent universal health care and education from primary school to university were available at no cost. Foreign scholars and writers were invited to visit Iraq and write about the country, as well as the Arab world. The Iraqi government gave them housing and paid their salaries so they could gain and disseminate information. In 1987, the New York Times called Baghdad "The Paris of the Middle East." (See Appendix V: Interview with Salah al-Mukhtar, the former Iraqi ambassador to India and Vietnam. He goes into detail about the history of Iraq’s transformation in the 1970s.)

On the other hand, after the U.S. attack on Iraq in 1991 that destroyed much of the country, and a 12-year devastating embargo, Saddam Hussein’s critics blamed him for the demise of the country that once was the jewel of the Arab world: the country his leadership produced.

Saddam Hussein’s name was used by mainstream Western media to depict a barbaric and sadistic person. The scribes conveniently forgot, or did not take the time to learn about, the years in which Iraq was the premier Arab state that offered more human rights to its public than other Arab nations, especially in the area of freedom of religion and the liberation of women.

This section is not a history of his regime, but a view of him and his steadfastness after April 9, 2003, the date to which many people refer as "The Fall of Baghdad."

On April 9, 2003, Saddam Hussein made his last public appearance. He was surrounded by tens of thousands of supporters in Baghdad who raised him up to the roof of his car so he could wave to them all. Then, the car sped away.

Speculation was rampant for the next few months. Was Saddam alive or dead? Was he involved with the quickly-growing resistance? Nobody seemed to know.

Then, in December 2003, we all saw the photos of a disheveled Saddam Hussein after he was pulled out of a "spider hole" in a town near Tikrit. The administration laughed and the U.S. public made jokes about him and his hiding place.

The room was dirty. There was an empty can of Spam. The story was that he was holed up there and was totally irrelevant to Iraq. His day was done and he was now in the hands of Iraq’s liberators. What you saw wasn’t real. Nothing of this scenario was true.

On March 8, 2005, United Press International (UPI) ran a short press release titled "Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction." It received little publicity in the U.S., but some foreign news agencies did run the story

The UPI press release consisted of quotes from an ex-U.S. Marine of Lebanese descent, Nadim Rabeh. In addition to the U.S. version of the capture date being off by two days, during an interview in Lebanon, Rabeh stated:

Rabeh recounted how Saddam fired at them with a gun from the window of a room on the second floor. Then, the Marines shouted at him in Arabic, "You have to surrender. There is no point in resisting."

How did we come to see the pictures of the hole and a scruffy-looking Saddam Hussein? According to Rabeh, "Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam’s capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well."

The former Marine’s account mixes with the rendition Saddam Hussein gave his lawyer when they had their first meeting. Saddam told him that he was captured in a friend’s house and that he was drugged and tortured for two days, hence the pictures of Saddam looking bedraggled.

All the major news networks and publications showed pictures of the hole and a beleaguered Saddam: Time Magazine, CNN News, magazines, daily newspapers, etc. You name it and they published it. But, they were all wrong. Not one publication took the time to research the story. They ran the pictures supplied by the U.S. military and parroted the lines they were given.

This was not the first time something similar has occurred. After the 1989 invasion of Panama, the U.S. allowed the press to enter Manuel Noriega’s office. He was portrayed as a sexual pervert. In the office were pictures of young boys, a picture of Hitler, red underpants and pornographic magazines.

A few months later, the first Marine to enter Noriega’s office was released from the Corps. He eventually talked to a reporter and gave his story of the encounter. He maintained that the contents of the office included only a desk, a telephone, a chair, and a typewriter.

With Saddam, the props were changed. They were made to make Saddam look like a caged animal on the run who only had the basic elements to survive. No one asked questions of what should have been obvious. For instance, how did Saddam Hussein come into possession of a can of Spam? There was absolutely no place in Iraq where Spam was sold. It contains pork, a food forbidden from a Moslem’s diet.

A few months after his capture, a picture was widely distributed that gained much publicity. It showed a bunch of U.S. soldiers standing next to an Iraqi building on which a painted illustration depicted the blowing up of the World Trade Center. The inference was that Iraqis took glee in the acts of the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9-11-2001.

If one looked close, it was evident that the soldiers were standing on the base path of a disused baseball field. There were no baseball fields in Iraq. Upon closer scrutinizing, the trees were typical southeastern U.S. types that are not indigenous to Iraq.

The photo was bogus. It was filmed in the U.S., but, the harm had been done. Many news agencies had distributed the picture. Its contents inflamed U.S. citizens even more about the Iraqi people.

When Saddam was captured, U.S. authorities said he was a spent force and he had no say in the ever-growing resistance. This was another propaganda exercise because subsequent information shows he was heading the resistance and called many shots. For instance, on Paul Wolfowitz’ first visit to Baghdad, he stayed at the Hotel al-Rashid. A rocket fired at the building killed a U.S. colonel on the floor just above Wolfowitz, who was visibly shaken by the incident. Saddam Hussein personally ordered that strike.

Many Iraqis challenged the scenario of Saddam’s capture. The U.S. administration thought that by humiliating him, the Iraqi public would discount his presence. Just the opposite occurred. On the evening of the announcement of Saddam’s capture, pro-Saddam Hussein rallies sprung up. His supporters, who, instead of looking at him as a humiliated ex-leader, showed their admiration for him because they knew the U.S. story of his capture was fabricated. Students in schools brought pictures of Saddam to class. In one instance, U.S. military personnel surrounded a Baghdad school and apprehended a few dozen 14-year-old students, whom they tortured for a few hours.

The image of a cowardly Saddam giving up without a fight did not set well with Iraqis. A retired colonel in the Iraqi army sent me the following responses to the capture:

• Saddam’s inside wear was very clean, which gives the impression he was not in a hole.
• At the time they said the captured him, no dates were available, but the trees they showed in the films had fresh dates on the palm trees and this was not possible.
• My house is in the Adhamiya and I can say that I saw Saddam after they announced the fall of Baghdad. I saw him myself. He was standing on the bonnet of a car. He was giving smiles to the people around him who were encouraging him by their loyalty, which they always had.
• As I know, Saddam was on top of the battle at the airport.
• What I heard was that he was on top of many assaults against the Americans.

Iraq Screen published an article shortly before Saddam Hussein’s assassination. The author interviewed an Iraqi officer of the Republican Guard who participated in the battle for the airport in Baghdad in April 2003. The officer recalled:

From various sources, we now have a totally different story from the one force-fed to us by the U.S. administration. Instead of Saddam Hussein being a coward who fled and was caught in a hole in the ground, he was now the president, who, under siege, met publicly with his people on April 9, 2003 (video of this was shown on U.S. television) after personally being involved with several battles against the invaders, and who created a network of resistance while tens of thousands of U.S. military people were looking for him.

Shortly before his hanging, Saddam spoke of his days on the run with his lawyers. For nine months, he openly conducted the resistance, many times right under the noses of his would-be captors. He told of swimming in the Tigris River or using a small boat if he needed to maneuver in the area.

Most 66-year-old men would be contemplating retirement. But, Saddam Hussein lived off his wits, the land, and with comrades for nine months, all the time coordinating a resistance against illegal invaders of his country. Most men half his age would not be able to withstand the physical challenges of such a routine. It is hard to conceive how a man of his age endured more than a lifetime of hardship, torture and personal bereavement in just three-and-a –half years without losing his mental faculties or selling out to his opponents.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government is in possession of all of Iraq’s records prior to April 2003. Not one word will be mentioned that will contradict the U.S. rewriting of Iraq’s history. At best, we will have to rely on anecdotal accounts and eye witnesses. It is neither the best nor the most accurate form of history, but it’s all we have now.

On November 5, 2006, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging. The verdict came after what could possibly be called the worst travesty of justice ever seen in a courtroom.

For his first few months in captivity, he was not allowed to see a lawyer. In that time, he was tortured and questioned. He also was offered deals by the U.S. that would have obtained him a "get out of jail free" pass if he cooperated and gave the captors information about the resistance. He never capitulated.

Saddam Hussein was not allowed to see his family. Most of his correspondence to them was either not delivered, or highly censored. By now, most human beings would be willing to say anything their kidnappers desired.

In 2004, Frank Morrow, producer of one of the finest political shows ever seen on U.S. TV screens, Alternative Views, was asked about Saddam’s plight in comparison to that of another president kidnapped by the U.S., Manuel Noriega. He discussed how Noriega collapsed after a few days of U.S. incarceration. Morrow then stated, "Saddam is made of sterner stuff."

On his first day in court, Saddam was a few minutes late. The judge asked him why he was not on time and Saddam told him that the elevators of the building were not working. The judge then said he would ask the Americans to try to fix the faulty lifts. Saddam looked the judge in the eye and said, "Don’t ask them. You tell them. You are an Iraqi." The judge was silent. The accused gave him a lesson in citizenship.

This was Saddam Hussein’s first court appearance and it was televised. The U.S.-appointed collaborators thought televising the trial would humiliate Saddam in the eyes of the Iraqi public. The ploy backfired. Saddam’s chastising of the judge intrigued the viewers. In future sessions, the sound of the broadcasts were cut if the judge did not want the public to hear what Saddam had to say. The first judge must be given credit for fairness. It appeared that he was giving both sides time to present their cases. Then, he resigned. He publicly stated that the Iraqi government had pressured him and given him instructions not to be fair with Saddam. The next judge was a travesty and he made it be known from his first day that there would not be a fair trial for Saddam Hussein.

We have read page-after-page of the illegality of Saddam’s trial in various media. The anomalies are for too many to address here. However, with each preposterous turn, Saddam kept his ground and never capitulated to the court. (See Appendixes X and XI for an interview with Curtis Doebbler, a member of Saddam Hussein’s legal team, and the U.N. report that vilified the U.S. and Iraqi governments concerning the fairness of the trial.)

For months, every conceivable scenario emerged: Saddam was dragged out of court; his lawyers were kicked out of court; defense witnesses were tortured by the court; the judge destroyed a videotape that clearly showed the head prosecutor was lying; and Saddam and a few of his comrades went on hunger strikes.

Still, he showed up in court with the wit and physical appearance of a man decades younger. All the atrocities committed against him never made him appear to be desperate and he never showed signs of caving in.

Several times, Saddam was approached by U.S. officials to make a deal. The Iraqi resistance had grown to a formidable foe and the U.S. knew that Saddam still held enough power to persuade a major portion of the resistance to lay down its weapons. Instead of accepting an offer for his freedom on some small island in the Pacific, Saddam retained his dignity. Other Ba’ath Party members who were imprisoned were given chances to be freed and made wealthy if they testified against Saddam. They refused to sell out.

ASTRONOMY ANSWERS MANY QUESTIONS

Throughout humankind’s existence, the sky has always played an important role. Until about 10,000 years ago, humans were baffled by the sky. They understood little about the stars and planets and were mostly scared by items that depicted quick change, such as eclipses, meteors, or comets.

When humans began to form civilizations and to record their existence, the sky took on new dimensions. The peoples of the Middle East watched the stars and, although still superstitious, began to notice that certain positions of stars and planets would indicate certain times of the year with regularity. They realized that the annual re-emergence of some constellations indicated it was time to plant crops. Other constellations heralded he beginning of a rainy season or a dry season. In other words, the beginning of astronomy had occurred.

Centuries after the beginning of astronomy, another of humankind’s inventions occurred that became a major opponent of astronomy — monotheistic religion. The story of the sky began to change. Comets were bad omens. So were solar or lunar eclipses. Meteor showers were heralded as ominous threats to humankind. Today, we understand that a comet is nothing more than a bunch of ice and rock that orbits the Sun. Meteorites are pieces of iron, rock or silicon that occasionally fall to Earth. And, the dastardly eclipses are caused either by the Earth’s shadow blocking the moon’s image, or the moon blocking the Sun’s image.

We must remember that the almost two-millennia practice of ignorance of the sky was not always so. Prior to the advent of monotheism, much progress had been made in the field of astronomy by ancient cultures. For instance, archaeologists have found depictions from ancient Babylon that show Jupiter and four of its moons. No person has eyesight so keen that he/she could see even one of Jupiter’s moons without a telescope. The telescope’s invention was not credited, however, until almost 5,000 years after the drawings were made in Babylon. Many scientists today believe that the ancient Babylonians had invented a basic telescope.

Let’s talk about electricity. Archaeologists have found that electricity was used to plate coins over 5,000 years ago in Iraq. In China, at about the same time, the same electricity had been discovered and put into making crude batteries.

Once Christianity gained a foothold in society, the Church tried alter science to fit its theology. True science was declared the enemy. Judeo-Christian pseudo-science became standard fare for more than a millennium.

In 391 A.D., Christian activists burned the libraries and museums in Alexandria, Egypt. In these institutions was most of the world’s knowledge, including scientific, that had been gathered over the centuries from many countries and cultures. It has been estimated that about 90% of the world’s knowledge, including astronomy, went up in smoke. It took almost 1,500 years for the world to regain knowledge that already existed at one time — knowledge in the fields of astronomy, science, anatomy, architecture, plumbing, public works, etc.

According to the fifth book of Historia Ecclesiastica:

In ridding the world of "pagan" ideas, the Church eliminated thousands of years of knowledge. Christianity now had an open hand at keeping the western world ignorant of science for the next millennium.

Astronomy turned into astrology. Any legitimate research was a thing of the past. Comets, eclipses and meteors reverted to a "bad omen" status.

In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, real research again came forward. However, those who crossed the line of Church doctrine were put out of business. Galileo had to renounce his findings to save his life.

Prior to the re-invention of the telescope in the early 17^th century, a flurry of astronomers began to see the overall picture. They used mathematics an what they could see with the naked eye to enhance knowledge. At the time, they were not interested in challenging the Church, but only to further astronomical knowledge. It was proven and finally accepted that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but, it was still blasphemy to state that the Earth was not at the center of our solar system. That information would take longer to emerge, although some astronomers were quietly hinting this as a fact.

Many of us today are under the assumption that the great scientists of these times were atheistic, but that’s not true. Most were attempting to combine their religious faith with science. For instance, Sir Isaac Newton is credited with discovering the laws of gravity. He had a few predecessors who came close, but it was Newton whose theory of gravity became known as the most accurate.

Contrary to what one may think, Newton was a very religious man. He wrote millions of words on biblical subjects and was intrigued by Hebrew scripture.

Recently, some of Newton’s lesser-known works have come forward that show he predicted the end of the Earth in the year 2060. He made his calculations based on the Bible. Researchers admit that there are still thousands of volumes of Newton’s works that have yet to be scrutinized. Despite his prolific scientific work, Newton still embraced religion in his research and findings.

The re-discovery of the telescope changed astronomy forever. Astronomers were able to see the physical characteristics of planets as well as their moons. The could now see nebulae and multiple stars. They also saw things they could not explain, but the telescope was the one instrument that heralded the beginning of making sense of the universe.

By the beginning of the 20^th century, the knowledge of astronomy was astute, although still not as comprehensive as today’s standards. The Church had been inundated with too much information to keep saying that the Earth was flat, or that the Earth was at the center of the solar system. Despite new evidence, however, the Church still denied many reasons for what astronomy observed.

In 1923, a discovery was made that irreversibly changed the way we look at the universe. Prior to this new discovery, astronomers had figured out much about the solar system and its movements. They knew that our solar system was but a small portion of the universe. They even knew that our solar system lies near an edge of the Milky Way galaxy, not at its center. But, they thought the Milky Way was the entire universe.

Larger telescopes were being introduced. Some showed unidentified dots of light just beyond the edge of the Milky Way. At first, astronomers considered these specks to be wayward stars or nebulae that were on the outskirts of our galaxy, making them appear to be on the edge of the universe as well.

That vision was shattered in 1923. Astronomers came to the conclusion that these items were other galaxies. Since then, with the advent of even newer and more powerful equipment, billions more galaxies have been discovered. Almost overnight, the size of the known universe increased a trillion-fold.

Today, we know that the Milky Way is an average-sized galaxy in a universe with billions of similar galaxies. Our galaxy, like billions of others, consists of billions of stars. It is about 100 million light years wide, making it an average galaxy consisting mostly of average stars.

Despite all the advances, it was not until the 1990s that a real opening came for seeing the entire universe and its history. The Hubble telescope has been in the forefront of these findings. In addition, recent technology has made it possible for land-based telescopes and others in space to equal the Hubble instrument in their observations.

We have seen the science fiction movies about life in other parts of the universe — the green men with long tentacles, or robot-like beings, etc. However, many people, including astronomers, had concluded that the Earth, with its life-sustaining environment, is a one-time fluke in the universe. Plus, many religions have always stated that life in unique to Earth.

This conclusion is now quickly changing. Since the 1980s, various astronomers have predicted that some stars may have planetary systems. But, this was still only speculation.

Then, in the late 1990s, the first planet orbiting a star outside our solar system was discovered. Then another. And another. Currently, hundreds of stars outside our solar system have been identified and named. New ones pop up almost daily.

It is now known that the vast majority of stars, including our own Sun, are formed in the same manner. After their formation, they spew gases and chemicals into space and his debris collides and forms planets. It is speculated that most stars have planetary systems. Many top astronomers and scientists now conclude that with trillions and trillions of stars experiencing a similar beginning and end, and most with a planetary accompaniment, that life is common in the universe. One British astronomer stated, "Life is probably as common as muck."

Because of the vast differences involved in the universe, we may never encounter intelligent life. Theoretically, the speed of light is the fastest speed possible, making it virtually impossible for other intelligent life to communicate with Earth. If a star is a million light years away from Earth, it is considered close to our planet. And, if a civilization had figured out the technology to travel at the speed of light, it would take a million years just to reach Earth. Life probably is common, yet our species may never find out what other creatures in the universe look like.

Life, however, is not restricted to what we know as intelligent life. Basic forms of life appeared on Earth over two billion years ago in the guise of bacteria. These bacteria, after millions and millions of years, became the building blocks of other life forms. So, there may be life in the form of bacteria in non-Earthly settings that we do have a chance of discovering.

The subject of life on the planet Mars has always held humankind’s curiosity. After we first saw close-up detailed pictures of the planet, it was assumed that it was a huge dead rock.

Recently, the subject of life on Mars has taken on a new life. NASA’s Mars Odyssey space probe showed gullies on that planet that could have been etched by melting snow. Astronomers are now of the opinion that much snow may have existed on Mars at one time and, when it melted, it left these huge gullies.

"Snow acts as a miniature greenhouse and provides a wonderful abode for life," said Philip Christensen of Arizona State University. He added, "Imagine an environment where there is sunlight. There are temperatures above those of freezing liquid water. All of those make a potential for life."

Let’s go to current findings about our universe. The conclusion of a NASA probe five years ago that looked back to almost the beginning of the universe showed that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. Before this conclusion, the age of the universe was measured at between 12 and 15 billion years. However, the NASA probe is precise in its assessment. Every time a space project takes on the task of determining the age of the universe, the results become more specific.

Astronomers call these findings a passage from speculation to precision. The data strongly confirm the "big bang" theory. They also show that the first stars were formed only 200 years after the big bang, not from 500 million to two billion years, as was previously thought. In addition, the movement of the early universe has solved another problem; that of the end of the universe. The scientific community was split into two camps; those who said the universe would expand indefinitely leading to a cold, lifeless universe, and those who maintained that the universe would implode in a chaotic and fiery ending. The former theory was proven correct in the recent study. The universe will expand indefinitely until it becomes so cold that everything will end up as chunks of ice or rock.

There have been distinct findings in astronomy that changed the way we looked at the universe. They include the invention of the telescope and the discovery that the Milky Way is not the entire universe, among others. Almost daily, we are being told of new discoveries, some mundane and minor, and others virtually Earth-shattering.

Not only can we discover knowledge about our cosmic neighbors with astronomy, but we know much more about the Earth. Satellite photography has made it possible to predict weather much more precisely. It also has given us knowledge of plate tectonics that we can use to predict future changes in the Earth.

What does the Church think of such information? I have not heard Pope Benedict speak much of the subject. However, a few years ago, he said that human beings did not evolve from apes. He added that anyone who thinks so is part of a vast "atheistic conspiracy." A little more than 16 centuries ago, it was the pagans whom the Church blamed for putting bad ideas into humans’ heads. Today, atheists hold the same place as pagans did in 391. At least the Church is consistent in its illogic.

Science is the best tool for making sense of life. It is not perfect, but it is the best we have.

PRECEDING "FITNA" AND "OBSESSION"

In the past year, we have seen much publicity about two anti-Muslim movies: "Fitna" and "Obsession." Although Obsession was released a few years ago, it did not make headlines until the 2008 U.S. election campaign when a group paid for the insertion of 28 million DVDs of the movie into U.S. daily newspapers.

Both movies were long on bigotry and short on facts. I have written about both and pointed out some of the vast number of historical mistakes as well as outright lies.

In 2006, another film along the same lines, "Suicide Killers," was released by Pierre Rehov. It was just as slimy. And, it appealed to the same clientele: radical Jewish organizations and individuals, and far right U.S. Christian groups.

Rehov was interviewed in 2006 just before the movie’s release. Rehov’s statements are, for the most part, incredibly bigoted and absurd. His views are present today in various guises of Islamophobic hatred. Web sites, such as www.jihadwatch.org have opened and have a large following. They are well-supported financially.

Unfortunately, the lying methods used by these bigots are finding many recipients. They are propaganda at its worst. In the past few months, I have spoken to people who are decent human beings with integrity and exemplary morals who have bought into the lies. At first, they say that I may not be aware of the dangers of Islam taking over the world. Some have taken my advice to challenge the veracity of the absurd allegations and they have told me that they were conned and were ashamed.

There is a definite danger concerning Islam and its status in the world. However, the danger does not come from Islam, but from those bigots like Rehov who use scare tactics to try and convince people that Islam’s goal is to create terrorists from its followers and then take over the planet. This paranoia produces much more violence and hatred than any suicide bomber and the results are much more disastrous. Just look at the score sheet: in the past 20 years, a few thousand people have been killed in suicide bombing attacks (including 9-11), but more than three million Muslims have been killed by U.S. and British bombs, missiles, bullets, and rockets. If the millions were not murdered, there probably would have been no 9-11 or other instances that would drive someone to the point of being a suicide bomber.

Rehov and those who use tactics similar to his are responsible for those suicide bomber who carry out their tasks. The citizens of Western countries have allowed their governments to create havoc against countries with a predominately Muslim population because of the desensitizing of killing Muslims. When one Muslim kills a Westerner, he/she is a terrorist. When the U.S. or Britain use phosphorus bombs to kill thousands of Muslims in a short period of time, it is called "defending our nation."

Here is the interview with Rehov:

SAME SHIT DIFFERENT CENTURIES (Part Five)

A Native American author, William Apes, of the Pequot tribe wrote Eulogy on King Philip and delivered the speech in Boston in 1836 to a group of descendants of the original pilgrims of 1620. It was about racism, deceit, slaughter and imperialism. King Philip was the Anglicized name of the Wampanoag chief, Metacomet.

One may think that Eulogy on King Philip is merely an historical account of the white man’s imperialism, but it is far more. Apes’ address in Boston was delivered in 1836 and he told of events that occurred from 1620 to 1676. But, his words are uncannily precise in describing the world today. One can change the dates and places and see an accurate view of today’s imperialistic aspirations of the U.S.

This is the fifth of five parts of "Eulogy on King Philip. For more than a year, the Wampanoag won battle-after-battle against the pilgrims. But, disease and lack of food helped destroy what the pilgrims couldn’t: the Wampanoag tribe.

Even in this, the methods used were almost identical to those employed by the U.S. today in showing victory. Metacomet’s wife and son were captured and sold into slavery. Once the U.S. occupied Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s wife and daughters quickly left the country before they were captured. Today, they live in exile and are on Interpol’s list of wanted terrorists.

Metacomet’s whereabouts were exposed to the pilgrims by an Indian. According to Apes:

The murders of Uday and Qusay Hussein occurred because of an Iraqi telling the U.S. military where they were. As with Metacomet, a traitor sold out his country.

Without knowing exact figures, I would guess the only difference between the deaths of Metacomet and the Hussein brothers would be in the amount of compensation paid to the traitors. Metacomet’s betrayer was given the head and one hand of Metacomet. For a few years, he was allowed to show them to the whites of southern New England and gain pocket change in donations. The Husssein brothers were chopped to pieces by hundreds of U.S. military personnel who shot bullets, rockets, missiles and bombs into the house where they were staying. The stooge, a distant family member, received a $30 million payday from the U.S. Despite the variance in pay, in both instances the bodies were dismembered and shown to the world as one would show a trophy for a sporting achievement.

In my opinion, no finer piece has been written by anyone in describing the horrors of the imperialistic actions of a government. Apes’ words were uttered almost two centuries ago, yet they are precise today.

(Part Five)

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After Philip had his wife and son taken, sorrow filled his heart; but not withstanding, as determined as over to be revenged, though was pursued by the duped Indians and Church, into a swamp; one of the men proposing to Philip that he had better make peace with the enemy, upon which he slew him on the spot. And the pilgrims being also repulsed by Philip, were forced to retreat with the loss of one man in particular, whose name was Thomas Lucas, of Plymouth. We rather suspect that he was some related to Lucas and Hedge, who made their famous speeches against the poor Marshpees, in 1834, in the Legislature, in Boston, against freeing them from slavery, that their fathers, the pilgrims, had made of them for years.

Philip’s forces had now become very small, so many having been duped away by the whites, and killed, that it was no easy surrounding him. Therefore, upon the 12^th of August, Captain Church surrounded the swamp where Philip and his men had encamped, early in the morning, before they had risen, doubtless led on by an Indian who was either compelled or hired to turn traitor. Church had now place his guard so that it was impossible for Philip to escape without being shot. It is doubtful, however, whether they would have taken him if he had not been surprised. Suffice it to say, however, this was the case. A sorrowful morning to the poor Indians, to lose such a valuable man. When coming out of the swamp, he was fired upon by an Indian, and killed dead on the spot.

I rejoice that it was even so, that the pilgrims did not have the pleasure of tormenting him. The white man’s gun missing fire lost the honor of killing the truly great man, Philip. The place where Philip fell was very muddy. Upon this news, the pilgrims gave three cheers; then Church ordering his body to be pulled out of the mud, while one of those tender-hearted Christians exclaims, what a dirty creature he looks like. And we have also Church’s speech upon that subject, as follows: For as much as he caused many a pilgrim to lie above ground unburied, to rot, not one of his bones shall be buried. With him fell five of his best and most trusty men; one the son of a chief, who fired the first gun in the war.

Captain Church now orders him to be cut up. Accordingly, he was quartered and hung up upon four trees; his head and one hand given to the Indian who shot him, to carry about to show. At which sight it so overjoyed the pilgrims, that they would give him money for it; and in this way obtained a considerable sum. After which, his head was sent to Plymouth, and exposed upon a gibbet for twenty years; and his hand to Boston, where it was exhibited in savage triumph; and his mangled body denied a resting place in the tomb, as thus adds the poet,

I think that as a matter of honor, that I can rejoice that no such evil conduct is recorded of the Indians; that they never hung up any of the white warriors, who were head men. And we add the famous speech of Dr. Increase Mather; he says, during the bloody contest, the pious fathers wrestled hard and long with their God, in prayer that he would prosper their arms, and deliver their enemies into their hands. And when upon stated days of prayer, the Indians got the advantage, it was considered as a rebuke of divine providence, (we suppose the Indian prayed best then) which stimulated them to more ardor. And on the contrary, when the prevailed, they considered it as an immediate terposition in their favor. The Doctor closes thus: Nor could they, the pilgrims, cease crying to the Lord against Philip, until they had prayed the bullet through his heart. And in speaking of the slaughter of Philip’s people at Narragansett, he says, "We have heard of two and twenty Indians captains slain, all of them, and brought to hell in one day. Again, in speaking of a Chief who had sneered at the pilgrims’ religion, and who had withal, added a most hideous blasphemy, immediately upon which a bullet took him in the head, and dashed out his brains, sending his cursed soul in a moment among the devils and blasphemers in hell forever." It is true that this language is sickening, and is as true as the sun in the heavens, that such language was made use of, and it was a common thing for all the pilgrims to curse the Indians, according to the order of their priests. It is also wonderful how they prayed, that they should pray the bullet through the Indian’s heart, and their souls down to hell. If I had any faith in such prayers, I should begin to think that soon we should all be gone. However, if this is the way they pray, that is bullets through peoples’ hearts, I hope they will not pray for me; I should rather be excused. But to say the least, there is no excuse for their ignorance how to treat their enemies, and pray for them. If the Dr. and his people had only turned to the 23^rd of Luke, and 34^th verse, and heard the words of their Master, whom they pretended to follow, they would see that their course did utterly condemn them; or the 7^th of Acts, and 60^th verse, and heard the language of the pious Stephen, we think it vastly different from the pilgrims; he prayed, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. No curses were heard from these pious martyrs.

I do not hesitate to say, that through the prayers, preaching, and examples of those pretended pious, has been the foundation of all the slavery and degradation in the American Colonies, towards colored people. Experience has taught me that this has been a most sorry and wretched doctrine to us poor ignorant Indians. I will mention two or three things to amuse you a little; that is, as I was passing through Connecticut, about 15 years ago, where they are so pious that they kill the cats for killing rats, and whip the beer barrels for working upon the Sabbath, that in a severe cold night, when the face of the earth was one glare of ice, dark and stormy, I called at a man’s house to know if I could not stay with him, it being about nine miles to the house where I then lived, and knowing him to be a rich man, and with all very pious, knowing that if he had a mind he could do it comfortably, and with all we were both members of one church. My reception, however, was almost as cold as the weather, only he did not turn me out of doors; if he has I knew not but I should have frozen to death. My situation was a little better than being out, for he allowed a little wood, but no bed, because I was an Indian. Another Christian asked me to dine with him, and put my dinner behind the door; I thought this was a queer compliment indeed.

About two years ago, I called at an inn in Lexington; and a gentleman present, not spying me to be an Indian, began to say they ought to be exterminated. I took it up in our defence, though not boisterous, but coolly; and when we came to retire, finding that I was an Indian, he was unwilling to sleep opposite my room, for fear of being murdered before morning. We presume his conscience plead guilty. These things I mention to show that the doctrines of the pilgrims has grown up with the people.

But not to forget Phi