April 25, 2003
Media Compilation #132: Perpetual War, Unending Miseries
Dear journalist
Looking at the first item recommended to your attention below in "Mobilization Underway" and considering what Pilger has to say (#2 below) on the media assisted normalization of state-sponsored genocide and the ensuing devaluation of human lives, but also reading what Mattern describes in "The War Business" (#3 below) about the orgy of money wasted on armaments while countless life-saving needs go unattended, while keeping in mind all the other issues (such as the Depleted Uranium's unending legacy of miseries - #4) featured in this compilation and all the other 131 previous ones, one is left with the unmistakable feeling that our world is headed in the wrong direction and that unless men and women of goodwill and with a positive vision for our common future rise to the challenge of replacing the political Mafia now running the world on behalf of its corporate mentors and steer humanity towards a saner, fairer and truly sustainable future, then the evil ones will succeed in slowly killing this beautiful planet and extinguishing all joy and grace from our souls.
Somehow, I know deep in my heart that such a sad ending will not come to pass, that as more and more people choose the path leading to goodness, love and compassion, the choking hold of dark forces upon our collective soul will slowly release its grip and we will all rebound in time to save the world and our place in the hearts of countless generations to come.
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com
This compilation is archived at http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com/Archives2003/MediaCompilation132.htm
"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
- Mark Twain (1916)
"A public that hears only praise and no criticism will predictably answer "yes" to pollsters who ask whether the President is doing a good job."
- Mark Weisbrot , co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington D.C.
"I find it helpful to remember that the Chinese character for "crisis" is a compound word consisting of "danger" and "opportunity." The dangers in this critical juncture in history are obvious. And yet there are enormous opportunities as well, not just to expose the lies of the Bush administration and its supporters but to propose alternatives for a new foreign policy consistent with our country's stated values of human rights, the rule of law, freedom, and democracy."
- Stephen Zunes, author of Tinderbox : U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. Much more details at http://www.irc-online.org
CONTENTS
1. Mobilization Underway
2. The unthinkable is becoming normal. Do not forget the horror
3. The War Business
4. When The Dust Settles
5. The Iraq war is a continuation of the 9-11 and Afghanistan Wag The Dog
See also:
Anything into Oil (REALLY AMAZING DISCOVERY - A *MUST* READ AND REPORT ABOUT!)
http://www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html
Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year. (...) Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that. (...) "The potential is unbelievable," says Michael Roberts, a senior chemical
engineer for the Gas Technology Institute, an energy research group. "You're not only cleaning up waste; you're talking about distributed generation of oil all over the world." "This is not an incremental change. This is a big, new step," agrees Alf Andreassen, a venture capitalist with the Paladin Capital Group and a former Bell Laboratories director. Andreassen and others anticipate that a large chunk of the world's agricultural, industrial, and municipal waste may someday go into thermal depolymerization machines scattered all over the globe. If the process works as well as its creators claim, not only would most toxic waste problems become history, so would imported oil. Just converting all the U.S. agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil annually. In 2001 the United States imported 4.2 billion barrels of oil. Referring to U.S. dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East, R. James Woolsey, former CIA director and an adviser to Changing World Technologies, says, "This technology offers a beginning of a way away from this." CLIP
Rumsfeld Calls for Regime Change in North Korea (April 23)
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/index.jhtml
US Worse Than Saddam, Iraqi Shiite Leader Charges (April 23)
http://rense.com/general37/shiite.htm
A prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric, saying he was detained and beaten by US forces, charged that American methods were "worse" than those employed by the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein. "Our arrest by the Americans was worse than the arrests that Saddam ordered against our students," Sheikh Mohammed al-Fartusi told Abu Dhabi television.
THE WAR NOBODY WON Part 1: Chaos, crime and incredulity (MUST READ!)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED24Ak04.html
Very few serious observers in the Middle East, if any, expect the United States to achieve its declared aims of establishing a democratic government in Iraq. Some are openly skeptical of US intent, while others give the US the benefit of the doubt, but consider its aim a hopeless fantasy. Three days after US invasion forces officially announced the fall of the Iraqi government and proclaimed military control of the city of Baghdad, they allowed, if not encouraged, lawlessness to destroy a cradle of civilization on a scale thousands of times worse than that which the US accused the Saddam Hussein government of having done to the Iraqi nation and its people. The war itself has made a reality of harsh misery out of the abstract discontent of political oppression, the liberation from which had been the pretext for the war. Instead of saving the Iraqi people from alleged oppression, the war has brought them undeniable destruction. CLIP
Bush bars UN weapons teams from Iraq (April 24)
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/23/1050777306319.html
Where are they? Hunt for WMD draws a blank (April 24)
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/24/1050777345965.html
American forces are changing their search strategy after coming up empty at most of the top suspected weapons sites in Iraq, officials said today. And the White House appeared to be trying to scale back expectations that weapons of mass destruction will be found. Troops have searched more than 80 sites that pre-war US intelligence judged the most likely hiding places for chemical and biological weapons as well as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program, Defence Department officials said on condition of anonymity.
US Companies Quietly Caught Trading with the Enemy (April 15)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/042403A.shtml
By Rex Nutting CBS.MarketWatch.com
When individual Americans are accused of helping terrorists, they're thrown in jail and their names are dragged through the mud. But when major U.S. corporations are caught trading with the enemy, they get just a slap on the wrist from the government. WASHINGTON -- In the past two weeks, the government has revealed that 57 companies and organizations have been fined for doing business with terrorists, despots and tyrants. However, neither the government nor the companies are forthcoming with the public about the details of the illicit trade with rogue governments like Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Sudan. Read about the laws. CLIP
The making of America's Iraqi quagmire (April 24)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED24Ak03.html
For 2004, Bush's Aides Plan Late Sprint For Re-Election
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/22/politics/22BUSH.html
WASHINGTON, April 21 - President Bush's advisers have drafted a re-election strategy built around staging the latest nominating convention in the party's history, allowing Mr. Bush to begin his formal campaign near the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and to enhance his fund-raising advantage, Republicans close to the White House say. In addition, Mr. Bush's advisers say they are prepared to spend as much as $200 million - twice the amount of his first campaign - to finance television advertising and other campaign expenses through the primary season that leads up to the Republican convention in September 2004. That would be a record amount by a presidential candidate, and would be especially notable because Mr. Bush faces no serious opposition for his party's nomination.
A Bush Campaign, A 9/11 Anniversary (April 22)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/opinion/L23BUSH.html
To the Editor: Re "Bush's Aides Plan Late Sprint in '04" - It is disturbing that President Bush's political advisers intend that he begins his fund-raising and re-election campaign to coincide with the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. To harvest the human suffering of this event for his political gain, to exploit a national tragedy for re-election money, is repugnant. - Matthew Clark
MSNBC Reveals Facts on Israel's Weapons of Mass Destruction (April 21)
Most astounding web page of the week!
Here is MSNBC, giving us more information on Israel's weapons of mass destruction (WMD)than I've seen in any left-wing or peace-activist news source. Here is the mainstream U.S. media, that beast we love to hate, giving us a story that gives away the store. It's a story we expect the elite media to hide, because it is so embarrassing to U.S. policymakers. How could anyone cheer for the carnage in Iraq, where no WMD have yet been found, if they knew that Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation with a proven WMD arsenal? How could anyone approve of a U.S. policy that kills where WMD don't seem to exist and turns a blind eye where they obviously do? Far from hiding the story, though, MSNBC uses its graphic skills to put all the details just a mouse-click away. What's going on? Supporters of Israeli policy will give you an answer in a single word: anti-semitism. These folks are always amazing us with their charges of anti-Israel bias in the U.S. media, which they insist proves anti-semitism. It's silly, of course. If the media were biased against Israel, the facts about Israeli WMD would have been headline news every day during the debate about the Iraq war. Those facts were headline news in the Arab world. They were absolutely crucial, because they undermined the Bush administration's principal justification for war. But mainstream news sources here paid very little attention. See all these revelations at http://www.msnbc.com/news/wld/graphics/strategic_israel_dw.htm
Ari & I - White House Press Briefing with Ari Fleischer (April 22, 2003)
http://www.CommonDreams.org/headlines03/0422-10.htm
Mokhiber: MSNBC reported this week that Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal rivals that of France and Britain. Given that arsenal, does the President support Syria's call to make the Middle East a region free of weapons of mass destruction? Ari Fleischer: The United States has always supported the Middle East as a region free of weapons of mass destruction. Lester. Mokhiber: If I could follow up. Does Israel have nuclear weapons? Ari Fleischer: That's a question you need to ask to Israel. Lester.
Schools Not Teaching Pro-Israel Views To Lose Funding (April 21)
http://rense.com/general37/idleg.htm
Congress To Pass 'Ideological Diversity' Legislation - Republican members of the Senate are planning to introduce police-state-style "thought control" legislation designed to prohibit criticism of Israel on American college campuses. The third-ranking Republican member of
the U.S. Senate, conservative Rick Santorum (Pa.), plans to introduce so-called "ideological diversity" legislation that would cut federal funding for thousands of American colleges and universities if those institutions are found to be permitting professors, students and student organizations to openly criticize Israel, which Santorum considers to be an act of "anti-Semitism."
Israel seeks pipeline for Iraqi oil (April 20)
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4651744,00.html
US discusses plan to pump fuel to its regional ally and solve energy headache at a stroke - Plans to build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel are being discussed between Washington, Tel Aviv and potential future government figures in Baghdad. The plan envisages the reconstruction of an old pipeline, inactive since the end of the British mandate in Palestine in 1948, when the flow from Iraq's northern oilfields to Palestine was re-directed to Syria. CLIP
What Else Hasn't Israel Told America? (April 21)
http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20030421080853217
(...) It’s humbling to see a ‘great democracy’ like America drawing lessons from a ‘tiny democracy’ like Israel. But the tiny democracy should have been truly honest in teaching the United States the other half of lesson. Sure, Israeli bulldozers destroyed most of Jenin, but the camp is still fighting. True, Israel occupied Lebanon to advance its strategic interests, but it experienced a bitter defeat twenty years later. ‘Total war’ is an electrifying concept that might raise the adrenaline of the flag-waving, “nuke the Arabs” segment of the American population. But “total war”, while it can never achieve ‘total victory’, can still generate ‘total defeat’, a lesson that took Israel twenty years to learn in Lebanon, and is destined to learn in Palestine. Will America wait that long before realizing the disastrous path on which it is embarking?
"SARS is a cocktail of mumps and measles" that could not naturally occur in nature" (!!)
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1346560,00.html
Moscow - The deadly pneumonia that has killed more than 100 people around the world may be a man-made biological weapon, Russian experts said on Friday. Nikolai Filatov, head of Moscow's epidemiological services, told the Gazeta daily that he thought the pneumonia was man-made because "there is no vaccine for this virus, its make-up is unclear, it has not been very widespread and the population is not immune to it." Yet he had some reservations, since the virus has a low mortality rate - so far killing 4% of those infected -, and because it is relatively difficult to pass on - through direct contact or inhalation. The virus, according to academy of medecine member Sergei Kolesnikov, is a cocktail of mumps and measles, whose mix could never appear in nature. "We can only get that in a laboratory," he told a conference in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, quoted by RIA Novosti news agency. It may have spread because of an "accidental leak" from a lab, he added. More than 100 people have died and some 3 000 others have been infected by Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which is believed to have originated in China's southern Guangdong province.
SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) A Great Global SCAM
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ACLU Challenges Government Secrecy on “No Fly” List at San Francisco Airport http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=12439&c=206
SAN FRANCISCO - April 22, 2003 - Saying that federal officials violated privacy and public information laws, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California today filed a federal lawsuit challenging secret "no fly" and other transportation watch lists. In papers filed with the court, the ACLU said that at least 339 passengers have been stopped and questioned at San Francisco International Airport since September 2001. "At the San Francisco airport alone, hundreds of passengers were stopped or questioned in connection with the so-called ‘no fly’ list," said Jayashri Srikantiah, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. "If that number is any indication, it is likely that thousands of individuals at airports across the country are being routinely detained and questioned because their names appear on a secret government list." (...) Adams and Gordon, co-publishers of War Times, a newspaper that first began publication after September 11, 2001, said they are deeply troubled by the secrecy of the watch list. "We are deeply concerned about the government’s secret watch lists and the lack of government accountability," said Adams. "We want to find out how our names appeared on a government watch list and how we can get our names off the list. But instead of answering our questions, the federal government has refused to release any information." CLIP
Activists: War Lets Bush Aim At Environment (April 22)
http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/stories/20030422/localnews/162151.html
With the nation's attention still riveted on the war in Iraq, most Americans probably aren't aware that today is Earth Day. Some area environmentalists say the Bush administration has taken advantage of the public's distraction, pushing through an anti-environmental agenda without anyone noticing.
Local Officials Rise Up to Defy The Patriot Act...
http://www.CommonDreams.org/headlines03/0421-07.htm
Venezuela Has Proof Washington Was Behind Failed Coup (April 18)
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/030415/w041568.html
Kucinich Requests DOD Release Number of Iraqi Casualties http://www.CommonDreams.org/news2003/0421-09.htm
Playing With Death (April 21)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/042303A.shtml
Horror mine toll as Iraq's war children invent new games - The figures are frightening the reality is appalling. Most guns may have fallen silent but the death toll in Iraq continues to rise. In the city of Kirkuk in the past seven days, 52 people have been killed and 63 injured by mines and dangerously unstable unexploded munitions.
How American Power Girds the Globe with a Ring of Steel (April 21)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,940308,00.html
New Bases Take Pentagon's Armed Presence Far And Wide
When Did Poisoning Foreign Farmers Become US National Security Policy? (March 7)
http://www.drugwar.com/pdyncorplawsuit.shtm
While discussions about the long term effects of Monsanto's Agent Orange are underway in Vietnam now, another of the company's chemical brews is beingsprayed on Colombia by the corporation Dyncorp under US government contract as part of the US-backed Plan Colombia. Dyncorp in turn is being sued in a class action suit in US federal court, filed September 11, 2001, by plantiffs representing up to 10,000 Ecuadorian indians living along the Ecuador/Colombia border in the Province of Sucumbios, who have received fallout from the extremely dangerous chemicals being used ostensibly to kill coca and poppy plants. Citing horrific examples of fevers, diarrhea, skin rashes, eye irritations, body aches, outbreaks of sores, vomiting, bleeding from the intestines, even 4 dead children in the area, not to mention all the dead dogs, cats, horses, pigs, cows, corn, coffee, yucca and other crops, the subsistence farmers, teachers, and other plaintiffs want the spraying into Ecuador stopped, economic recompense from Dyncorp for injuries sustained by themselves and their environment, and medical attention. (...) "This poison does not know the difference between corn and cocaine." Made up of glyphosate, the generic term for Monsanto's herbicide Round-Up, and a surfactant to make the herbicide stick to the plants, the spray used in Colombia has never been tested on human beings to gauge its effects, according to Beers' testimony. CLIP
Our Fateful Choice
http://www.presentdanger.org/choice.html
Through its work with the Present Danger Project, the Interhemispheric Resource Center has analyzed the origins of Bush's assaults on international law and has worked in coalition with other groups to craft an alternative framework for U.S. foreign and military policy.
ORANGE ALERT (April 17)
http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=1026
The U.S. military sprayed twice as much herbicide on Vietnam during the war there than previously estimated, according to a study published last week in the journal Nature. Relying on previously unexamined military documents and new assessments of dioxin concentrations, the study found that an additional 1.8 million gallons of toxic herbicides, mostly Agent Orange, were used by the Armed Forces. From 1961 to 1971, more than 10 percent of what was then South Vietnam was sprayed with defoliants in an effort to destroy food crops and remove forest cover from combat areas. An estimated 14 percent of Vietnam's forests were obliterated, and the herbicides have been blamed for birth defects and illnesses in both Vietnamese citizens and American veterans. The U.S. compensates veterans for diseases associated with the spraying in Vietnam but has refused recompense to the Vietnamese until more data are available.
EUROPE PAEAN (In the New York Times, April 20)
http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=1036
Major American corporations may be getting off easy on environmental regulations in the U.S. these days, but they're being forced to toe the line in Europe. Rules adopted this year will require all electronics manufacturers doing business in European Union countries to eliminate use of lead, mercury, and other heavy metals from their products, and makers of electronics and appliances to pay to recycle their goods at the end of their useful lives -- changes that U.S. companies say could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Also in the works are E.U. laws that would encourage energy conservation and require chemical manufacturers to run safety and environmental tests on some 30,000 chemicals. Lobbyists for U.S. companies are finding that techniques they've long used at home to fend off environmental protections don't work with European regulators. Many Europeans, unhappy about what they say is the Bush administration's arrogant unilateralist actions, regard American corporations with suspicion these days; recent corporate accounting scandals are causing further problems for the companies.
Iraq's Missing Items
http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/iraq.html
This is a web-site that is cataloguing the items missing from the Baghdad Museum
The day of the jackals (April 19)
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2003-04-19&id=3011&searchText=
The conservative British weekly, The Spectator, suggests the looting of the Iraqi national museum may have been organized by unscrupulous American art collectors, and hints at Pentagon collusion in the theft.
GROWING GM CROPS IS AN IRREVERSIBLE ACT OF ECOLOGICAL FOLLY
http://MondeDiplo.com/2003/04/14gmo
Europe's harvest of contamination - The European Commission is failing to protect Europe against determined pressure from the United States to accept genetically modified organisms, preferably without any rules on their traceability or labelling.
Scientists solve the secrets of malaria (April 22)
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$I2JLGG1GUAMYHQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2003/04/23/wmozzy23.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/04/23/ixworld.html
Scientists are ready to develop drugs which can fight resistant strains of malaria, thanks to an advance reported yesterday. The reason the malaria parasite can survive some existing drug treatments has been discovered by a team at the University of Edinburgh's Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology and the Biotec Institute in Bangkok. CLIP
WHO Demands Bigger Effort Against Malaria (April 24)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030425/sc_nm/health_malaria_dc_2
LONDON (Reuters) - The world must fulfil its pledges to do more to combat malaria and not fail another generation in Africa, where a child dies of the disease every 30 seconds, the World Health Organization said on Friday. In a report published to coincide with Africa Malaria Day, the WHO and the U.N. children's fund Unicef said the disease's death toll was "outrageously high." (...) The report said malaria killed 3,000 African children a day, or more than two a minute, and threatened 20 percent of the world's people. It said insecticide-treated mosquito nets were effective at prevention but not widely available, and reliable anti-malarial drugs were likewise rare. Treatments and preventive measures that are known to be effective are still out of the reach of most on the continent.
Underwater Stone Platform Discovered at Andros Island in Bahamas
http://www.edgarcayce.org/am/androspressrelea.html
Atlantis Rediscovered? Include a full press release on the April 2003 discovery of a huge underwater stone platform at Andros.
13-year-old adding college degree to long resume - A *MOST AMAZING* STORY!!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/21/tech/main550399.shtml
ASHLAND, Virginia (AP) - He was solving math problems at 14 months, reading and correcting adults' grammar by 2 - the same age he decided to become a vegetarian.
The truth about 911
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/jpdesm/pentagon/investigation77.htm
List of links to documented evidence of high level US complicity in the attacks of September 11, 2001
1.
From: http://vialardi.org/IRAQ/pdf/roster_of_all_Nat.G_R.pdf
Mobilization Underway
Those concerned should pay serious attention to this listing of USA Reserve and National Guard units mobilized for active duty as of March 26, 2003. This reserve mobilization is far larger than the 1990 Desert Storm call-up. More ominously, there is a complete qualitative difference in the types of reserve units being called up. This difference shows the current effort is merely a preliminary to a far vaster general mobilization on the order of World War II. "The Roster" shows four broad categories of reserve units that have already been mobilized. The total 'package' is clearly designed as a balanced First Wave of mobilization to prepare for still further mobilization. And this is precisely how the USA began war mobilization in 1940. Now it's being done again.
Category I. Round out reserve units for active regular units. This grouping has some combat units and many more logistics support units. These are explainable in the context of "Operation Iraqi Freedom". Thus they are not exceptional if "Gulf War II" is considered in isolation. It's much less understandable since the overwhelming majority did not go there per Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Perle's specific directions. Almost all are still in the USA with their parent regular units.
President Bush II had much more time for his Gulf build-up than President Bush I did for his. The first one had from August 1990 to January, 1991. That's 5 1/2 months. The second one had from October, 2002 until late March, 2003. That's around 6 months. And President Bush II has better and more fast sealift ships available than his daddy did. Acquiring such ships was one of the priority improvments made after Desert Storm. Consequently CENTCOM's small force size is the result of a fully conscious policy choice by the National Command Authority. It does not arise from mere logistics limitations.
Category II. Mobilization and garrison support units. These are US Army Reserve units whose function is to provide stateside base support. The sheer numbers of Army Reserve Garrison Support, Mobilization Support, Finance, Adjutant General and Replacement units are inexplicable except on the assumption many more bases are going to be filling with still more people. This means yet more mobilization is anticipated to occur. Supporting a large wartime mobilization is the only reason these units exist. The existing peacetime bases already have their own large bureaucracies.
Category III. US Army Reserve Training Divisions. These are numbered 'divisions' such as the 85th USAR Division in Illinois/Indiana, the 87th USAR Division in Florida/Georgia and so on. They're sub-divided into Brigades and Battalions. Despite their historic combat unit numbers these 'divisions' are not combat units any more. These are units of drill sergeants and skill trainers organized to serve as the teaching cadre staffs of individual replacement training centers. These units are only called up when 'They' are planning to do a lot more training of more civilians. This means training more civilians than the Department of Defense's existing peacetime training establishment can handle. The mobilization of such units is a critical milestone on the road to mobilizing a far larger combat army. So has this happened? Let's check 'The Roster'. And deah dey iz, Rastus. Divisions and divisions of reserve drill sergeants and soldier trainers summoned to active duty.
In Category II we saw the support cadres for more base bureaucracies. Here in Category III we see the trainers needed to teach new trainees. So where are these ''trainees"? Can you say draft? This too is already being talked up by the appropriate authorities, meaning Congress. It should be clear already that nothing these training units could do would influence "Operation Iraqi Freedom" as planned by Donald Rumsfeld. This fact was already well known to those responsible for mobilizing them.
Category IV. Leading edge Army National Guard combat battalions. This means combat units not attached to existing regular units as 'roundouts'. Without spreadsheeting The Roster there seem to be about 100 reserve combat battalions mobilized so far. All the different combat branches (infantry, armor, artillery, air defense) are represented. So why mobilize so many reserve combat battalions when so many Regular Army and Marine battalions are still in North America and 'unemployed' in "Iraqi Freedom"? More precisely, why does the Secretary of Defense mobilize them all and then get involved in a public dumbshow posing as McNamara sending Westmoreland too few active combat units?
There are several answers to these questions. The first answer is to conserve forces for a much larger expected campaign. The next answer is to bring the reserve combat units up to full training efficiency, and especially their leadership cadres. See the list again and do some internet spot checking. Most of these battalions were only summoned in December, 2002, or later. The plans for "Operation Iraqi Freedom" were already fairly final by then. Many other National Guard combat battalions remain to be called up. Back in 1940 National Guard mobilization proceeded in several waves, too. It didn't happen all at once. Ultimately many of these units will receive still more troops.
Another thing these units can do if required is to spawn still more combat units. In this process they subdivide just like bacteria. One battalion extrudes a cadre of experienced officers and sergeants who are promoted on the job to the next higher level. Then these form one or two more identical battalions. Newly trained privates for these newly formed combat units stream in from individual replacement training centers. These centers are operated and can only be operated by the training units discussed in Categories II and III above.
This is how it was done in World War II, also. Some National Guard divisions (all called up in 1940) were subdivided so many times to form more units that the original unit (with 90% new personnel by then) didn't reach combat until 1944 or 1945. The 38th Infantry Division is a good example. It was mobilized in 1940 but didn't reach a Pacific combat area until 1944. In the interim period it extruded cadre levy after cadre levy for many of the 88 other US Army combat divisions that were created.
The current reserve mobilization has summoned forth precisely the required machinery to begin the above process again. Many of these units have been "in reserve" for half a century without being called up. They were preserved to retain an option that is now being exercised. ZOG is putting very heavy stakes on the table. And it is doing so in a way that can be understood by most of the world's general staffs and military intelligence agencies.
The extreme statements made by Ariel Sharon, by George Bush and his Jewish- Zionist advisors, by the current and now by a former director of the CIA concerning long term vast Warre, "clash of civilizations" and "World War IV" are well known. Now we see specific miitary actions being taken to turn these Words into horrible Reality. They are taking this seriously. Self-perceived targets are taking this seriously.
Are you taking it seriously?
World War IV Warning. This is not a drill.
2.
THIS COURAGEOUS AND STRIDENT MORAL VOICE SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING FOR ALL HUMAN BEINGS ON THIS PLANET, LEST WE ALL FORGET THE MURDEROUS CRIMES JUST COMMITTED IN IRAQ UNDER THE PRETENSE OF LIBERATING THIS PEOPLE AND DENYING A FORMER AMERICAN PUPPET DICTATOR THE USE OF NON-EXISTENT (so far) WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION...
From: http://argument.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=398722&host=6&dir=140
John Pilger: The unthinkable is becoming normal. Do not forget the horror
The saving of one little boy must not be a cover for the crime of this war
Independent (London) 20 April 2003
Last Sunday, seated in the audience at the Bafta television awards ceremony, I was struck by the silence. Here were many of the most influential members of the liberal elite, the writers, producers, dramatists, journalists and managers of our main source of information, television; and not one broke the silence. It was as though we were disconnected from the world outside: a world of rampant, rapacious power and great crimes committed in our name by our government and its foreign master. Iraq is the "test case", says the Bush regime, which every day sails closer to Mussolini's definition of fascism: the merger of a militarist state with corporate power. Iraq is a test case for western liberals, too. As the suffering mounts in that stricken country, with Red Cross doctors describing "incredible'' levels of civilian casualties, the choice of the next conquest, Syria or Iran, is "debated'' on the BBC, as if it were a World Cup venue.
The unthinkable is being normalised. The American essayist Edward Herman wrote: "There is usually a division of labour in doing and rationalising the unthinkable, with the direct brutalising and killing done by one set of individuals ... others working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalise the unthinkable for the general public.''
Herman wrote that following the 1991 Gulf War, whose nocturnal images of American bulldozers burying thousands of teenage Iraqi conscripts, many of them alive and trying to surrender, were never shown. Thus, the slaughter was normalised. A study released just before Christmas 1991 by the Medical Educational Trust revealed that more 200,000 Iraqi men, women and children were killed or died as a direct result of the American-led attack. This was barely reported, and the homicidal nature of the "war'' never entered public consciousness in this country, let alone America.
The Pentagon's deliberate destruction of Iraq's civilian infrastructure, such as power sources and water and sewage plants, together with the imposition of an embargo as barbaric as a medieval siege, produced a degree of suffering never fully comprehended in the West. Documented evidence was available, volumes of it; by the late 1990s, more than 6,000 infants were dying every month, and the two senior United Nations officials responsible for humanitarian relief in Iraq, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, resigned, protesting the embargo's hidden agenda. Halliday called it "genocide". As of last July, the United States, backed by the Blair government, was wilfully blocking humanitarian supplies worth $5.4bn, everything from vaccines and plasma bags to simple painkillers, all of which Iraq had paid for and the Security Council had approved.
Last month's attack by the two greatest military powers on a demoralised, sick and largely defenceless population was the logical extension of this barbarism. This is now called a "victory", and the flags are coming out. Last week, the submarine HMS Turbulent returned to Plymouth, flying the Jolly Roger, the pirates' emblem. How appropriate. This nuclear-powered machine fired some 30 American Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraq. Each missile cost
700,000: a total of 21m. That alone would provide desperate Basra with food, water and medicines.
Imagine: what did Commander Andrew McKendrick's 30 missiles hit? How many people did they kill or maim in a population nearly half of which are children? Maybe, Commander, you targeted a palace with gold taps in the bathroom, or a "command and control facility", as the Americans and Geoffrey Hoon like to lie. Or perhaps each of your missiles had a sensory device that could distinguish George Bush's "evil-doers'' from toddlers. What is certain is that your targets did not include the Ministry of Oil.
When the invasion began, the British public was called upon to "support'' troops sent illegally and undemocratically to kill people with whom we had no quarrel. "The ultimate test of our professionalism'' is how Commander McKendrick describes an unprovoked attack on a nation with no submarines, no navy and no air force, and now with no clean water and no electricity and, in many hospitals, no anaesthetic with which to amputate small limbs shredded by shrapnel. I have seen elsewhere how this is done, with a gag in the patient's mouth.
One child, Ali Ismaeel Abbas, the boy who lost his parents and his arms in a missile attack, has been flown to a modern hospital in Kuwait. Publicity has saved him. Tony Blair says he will "do everything he can'' to help him. This must be the ultimate insult to the memory of all the children of Iraq who have died violently in Blair's war, and as a result of the embargo that Blair enthusiastically endorsed. The saving of Ali substitutes a media spectacle of charity for our right to knowledge of the extent of the crime committed against the young in our name. Let us now see the pictures of the "truckload of dozens of dismembered women and children'' that the Red Cross doctors saw.
As Ali was flown to Kuwait, the Americans were preventing Save The Children from sending a plane with medical supplies into northern Iraq, where 40,000 are desperate. According to the UN, half the population of Iraq has only enough food to last a few weeks. The head of the World Food Programme says that 40 million people around the world are now seriously at risk because of the distraction of the humanitarian disaster in Iraq.
And this is "liberation"? No, it is bloody conquest, witnessed by America's mass theft of Iraq's resources and natural wealth. Ask the crowds in the streets, for whom the fear and hatred of Saddam Hussein have been transferred, virtually overnight, to Bush and Blair and perhaps to "us''. Such is the magnitude of Blair's folly and crime that the contrivance of his vindication is urgent. As if speaking for the vindicators, Andrew Marr, the BBC's political editor, reported: "[Blair] said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right.'' What constitutes a bloodbath to the BBC's man in Downing Street? Did the murder of the 3,000 people in New York's Twin Towers qualify? If his answer is yes, then the thousands killed in Iraq during the past month is a bloodbath. One report says that more than 3,000 Iraqis were killed within 24 hours or less. Or are the vindicators saying that the lives of one set of human beings have less value than those recognisable to us? Devaluation of human life has always been essential to the pursuit of imperial power, from the Congo to Vietnam, from Chechnya to Iraq.
If, as Milan Kundera wrote, "the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting", then we must not forget. We must not forget Blair's lies about weapons of mass destruction which, as Hans Blix now says, were based on "fabricated evidence". We must not forget his callous attempts to deny that an American missile killed 62 people in a Baghdad market. And we must not forget the reason for the bloodbath. Last September, in announcing its National Security Strategy, Bush served notice that America intended to dominate the world by force. Iraq was indeed the "test case". The rest was a charade.
We must not forget that a British defence secretary has announced, for the first time, that his government is prepared to launch an attack with nuclear weapons. He echoes Bush, of course. An ascendant mafia now rules the United States, and the Prime Minister is in thrall to it. Together, they empty noble words - liberation, freedom and democracy - of their true meaning. The unspoken truth is that behind the bloody conquest of Iraq is the conquest of us all: of our minds, our humanity and our self-respect at the very least. If we say and do nothing, victory over us is assured.
---
See also:
Saddam Was key in early CIA plot
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2849.htm
U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials. CLIP
Yes, U.S. Helped Iraq Get Chemical, Biological Weapons (April 20)
http://www.belleville.com/mld/newsdemocrat/5674107.htm
(...) Yet even after Saddam began gassing his own people in Northern Iraq, the flow of goods continued. In November 1989, Bush approved $1 billion in loan guarantees for Iraq in 1990, and from July 18, 1989, to Aug. 1, 1990, the U.S. approved $4.8 million in advanced technology sales. CLIP
3.
THIS IS A MOST EXCELLENT, WELL RESEARCHED AND VITALLY IMPORTANT ARTICLE. NOT ONLY DOES DOUGLAS MATTERN DESCRIBE VERY WELL THE HYPER-WEAPONIZATION PROBLEM OUR WORLD FACES BUT HE ALSO OUTLINES SOME ELEMENTS OF SOLUTIONS NOTABLY THROUGH THE CREATION OF A THIRD GENERATION UN, A GOAL THE ENTIRE WORLD MUST URGENTLY SET UPON TO ACCOMPLISH.
The War Business
Everything About it is Appalling
By Douglas Mattern, President, Association of World Citizens worldcit@best.com>
04/13/03
We are now in the third year of the new century and we stand bewildered by what happened to the wonderful expressions of hope and joy that were expressed in the millennium celebrations. Today the world is a mirror image of the 20th century, which was the most brutal and destructive in human history. A major factor is the war business that promotes militarism and conflict while producing enormous financial profit. A tragic indicator of the values of our civilization is that "There's no business like war business."
Just think of all the missiles, bombs, etc. that will be replaced for profit by the armament industry after the current U.S. military assault on Iraq. In the first 14 days the U.S. dropped over 8,700 bombs, including more than 3,000 cruise missiles. This includes cluster bombs, which is one of the most barbaric weapons ever created by the human mind.
Cruise missiles cost over $500,000 each. The Apache Longbow Helicopter costs about 22 million dollars each. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle costs over 1.2 million dollars. Each B-1 Stealth bomber costs over $2 billion.
Today it's Iraq on the receiving end of U.S. bombing. This country seems to have a proclivity for bombing small developing countries. Over the past several decades the list includes: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba, Indonesia, Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Bosnia, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Congo, and Iraq the first time around.
Since 1992, the U.S. exported over $142 billion dollars worth of weapons to states around the world. This macabre world market is dominated by the U.S., which accounted for nearly half of all weapon sales in 2001, more than $12 billion dollars for U.S. manufacturers. The Center for International Policy estimates that about 80 percent of U.S. arms exports to the developing world go to non-democratic regimes.
Of the active conflicts in 1999, the U.S. supplied weapons or military training to parties in 39 of 42 conflicts. Other leading nations in this "merchants of death" business include Russia, France, Great Britain, China, Germany, and to a lesser degree, Sweden, Israel, Belgium, Belarus, Italy, North Korea, and more.
For U.S. companies, even larger profit is in the annual Pentagon budget.
Over $60 billion was allocated to purchase new weapons for 2003. The Pentagon spends over $30 billion annually in research and development for new weapons.
The U.S. armament industry is the second most subsidized industry after agriculture.
The administration's FY 2004 military budget is a big increase over 2003 at nearly $400 billion when including funding for nuclear weapons that is under the Department of Energy (DOE) Budget. Moreover, military spending is scheduled to increase over the coming years with projections of a $502 billion budget in FY 2009.
Steven Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, says, "We've come to the point where we're spending more money than we spent during the Cold War." This money is to pay for a new generation weapons, including the militarization of space, which is a dream of never ending profits for the weapons industry.
The top lobbyist for the 2000 elections was Lockheed Martin at $2.8 million.
In 2001, Lockheed-Martin had $14 billion in sales of weapons to the U.S. and foreign buyers. Moreover, Lockheed Martin recently received a $3.5 billion contract to sell F-16 jet fighters to Poland. As a new member of NATO, Poland, along with Hungary and the Czech Republic, agreed to modernize their military and purchase new weapons. For the Lockheed sale, the U.S. Government loaned Poland $3.8 billion. The expansion of NATO is a vehicle to sell U.S. weapons, and not surprising, the weapons industry is the biggest lobbyist for NATO expansion.
The small arms trade is also a lucrative business, totaling between 4-6 billion dollars per year. The leading exporters in terms of value are the U.S. and Russia. But this business is spread around the world with over 1,000 companies in some 98 countries involved in the production of small arms and/or ammunition. Small arms kill over 500,000 people a year in conflicts.
The violence and obsession with armaments goes down to rifles and handguns, with the U.S. leading the parade. There are more than 65 million handguns in the U.S., and some 192 million in total firearms. In 1998 alone, dealers sold an estimated 4.4 million guns in the U.S., nearly two million of them handguns. The result was 12,102 people murdered by firearms.
The nuclear weapons industry may soon get a new boost as the Bush team is threatening to resume nuclear testing at the Nevada underground site to develop new nuclear weapons, including "bunker busters" for use against hardened underground targets.
The Cold War ended over a decade ago, but the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports the world nuclear stockpile in 2002 totaled over 30,000 warheads. In addition to deployed nuclear warheads, thousands more are held in reserve and are not counted in official declarations. Moreover, thousands of U.S. and Russian warheads are on a hair-trigger alert, ready for launch in a few minutes notice. The Center for Defense Information reports the United States spends $27 billion annually to prepare to fight a nuclear war.
Today the war business is in full swing with thousands of scientists and engineers going to work daily with the task of building or developing new weapons, including space-based weapons that would turn the heavens above into a new source of terrorism for humanity below.
At the same time, UN Secretary General Koffi Annan reminds us that half of humanity lives in poverty, existing on an average of $2 a day. The Arias Foundation reports that world military spending increased from $798 billion in 2000 to $839 billion in 2001. Half of the world's governments spend more on the military than for health care. This expenditure is a monumental waste of our wealth, resources, and intellectual talent for the means of destruction and astonishing profits for the armament companies. The war business is the world's ultimate criminal activity.
We are at a pivotal point in history, thus the decision by the U.S. and Britain to wage war on Iraq, rather than working tirelessly for a civilized resolution through the United Nations, is a step backward to the barbarism of 20th century warfare. Time is crucial! It's imperative that we do all that is necessary to initiate a dramatic change to end the violence and war that now threatens the very fabric of our civilization.
This requires that we pull down the curtain on the "architects of destruction" and put the war business permanently out-of-business. And it means ending the foolish quest to establish an American empire. We must put our energy and priority into strengthening and building a new United Nations. As former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali puts it, a third generation UN.
The first generation, the League of Nations, represented governments only. The current second generation UN is also comprised of governments which have the power, but it also includes a tremendous input and dependence on Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). The third generation UN must be democratic and also include the representation of the world's people and NGOs, and with some corporate responsibility. This could include a two-tier Parliament. One tier comprised of governments, and the second tier comprised of civil society.
The imperative change in the third generation UN must be the ability to resolve conflicts between nations and peoples through the framework of world law. There is no workable alternative to end the war system with all of its political, economic, and cultural elements.
"The age of nations is past, the task before us now, if we would survive, is to shake off our ancient prejudices and build the earth."
- Teilhard de Chardin
Douglas Mattern is president of the Association of World Citizens (AWC); a San Francisco based international peace organization with branches in 50 countries, and with UN NGO status.
The website for AWC is http://www.worldcitizens.org/
Douglas is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant.
Sources for material in this article include: Center for Defense Information (CDI)
Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIRPI)
United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
United Nations Department for Disarmament
U.S. State Department
Find more articles by Douglas Mattern in the Liberal Slant Archives at
http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/pubarchive.php?haney
The views expressed herein are the writers' own and do not necessarily reflect those of Liberal Slant
http://www.liberalslant.com
4.
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,937902,00.html
When The Dust Settles
Ian Sample and Nic Fleming - The Guardian
17 April 2003
Depleted uranium may be far more dangerous than previously thought - and we could be dealing with the fallout for many generations to come.
The change in wording seems innocuous at first. During the 1991 Gulf war, US army guidelines recommended surgeons do their best to remove fragments of depleted uranium (DU) shrapnel from soldiers struck by flying chunks of metal from armour-piercing shells. In practice, that meant smaller bits of shrapnel were rarely removed. Getting those out just caused more damage to surrounding muscle and other tissue. Today, the guidelines are different: surgeons should be "aggressive" in removing any fragments of depleted uranium.
The small change betrays a big leap in understanding the threat posed by depleted uranium. Evidence is building that DU causes more genetic damage than scientists suspected - even at levels deemed so low as to be non-toxic.
Depleted uranium shells are designed to be lethal: the metal is so dense it can crash through the heavy armour of a modern battle tank. But those who escape the intended effect face other risks. When the depleted uranium rod inside an armour-piercing shell disintegrates, it showers toxic and weakly radioactive dust and fragments over a wide area.
It is not just soldiers who risk exposure. In Iraq, land where people once lived, and will doubtless return to, is now littered with the stuff. In 1991, armour-piercing shells containing around 340 tonnes of DU were fired at targets too tough to take out with standard shells. Hundreds more tonnes have been added to that during the past four weeks. People returning to places where the shells were used breathe in the dust as it is churned up by wind and traffic. The metal can also seep into water supplies, contaminating them for years.
Alexandra Miller at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, is due to complete an investigation into DU for the US department of defence next year. Already she has some insight into the damage it can do. Last year she showed that depleted uranium from pellets implanted in rats dispersed all over the animals' bodies, turning up in bones, muscles, kidneys and liver. Rats breeding six months later had fewer offspring than normal.
Her latest study reveals something even more unusual. When human bone cells are exposed to DU, some suffer immediate genetic damage. The type of damage varies but often fragments break off chromosomes, the strings of genes in almost every cell, and form tiny rings of genetic material. This much was expected. But as other cells evidently undamaged by the depleted uranium started to divide, creating new cells, Miller noticed the genes in some of these new cells were damaged. More than a month after the DU was removed, new cells were forming with broken chromosomes or other genetic damage. The DU was having a delayed effect.
More intriguing still is Miller's latest suspicion that DU punches above its weight in terms of the damage it does to genes. She knew that depleted uranium could damage genes not only by emitting radiation, but by its chemical make up - like nickel, it can switch on cancer genes by its sheer toxicity. But she found that tiny amounts of DU, too small to be toxic and only mildly radioactive, cause more genetic damage in cells than either the toxicity or radiation could explain. Her latest results suggest that the toxicity and radioactivity of DU reinforce one another, causing more damage than the two just added together. It's no small difference either. "You can get more than an eight-fold greater effect than you'd expect," she says. In other words, more than eight times as many cells suffer genetic damage than predicted. Without taking the effect into account, the health risk of DU could be grossly underestimated.
"People have always assumed low doses are not much of a problem, but they can cause more damage than people think," says Miller. It may be some time before the risk of DU is revised though. "None of these studies has yet impacted on the regulations."
Opinion among scientists is divided about the dangers of the genetic damage caused by DU. "There's a debate in the field. It looks like DNA damage in cells will make them weaker and more susceptible to becoming cancerous. But some say this could just be the cells adapting to the radiation," says Miller.
One person who is convinced DU-induced genetic damage causes real health problems is Albrecht Schott, a biochemist who recently retired from the Free University of Berlin. The day before the start of this Gulf war, he published a study carried out with scientists at the University of Bremen. The study, the first of its kind, looked at genetic damage in the white blood cells of 16 former soldiers who believed they had been exposed to DU in the 1991 Gulf war or in the Balkans. They found that damage to chromosomes in the white blood cells was on average five-and-a-half times higher in the veterans than the rest of the population.
Kenny Duncan, one of the soldiers tested, was 21 when he served with the Royal Corps of Transport, helping to shift Iraqi tanks destroyed by DU shells in the 1991 Gulf war. He believes his exposure to DU has left his family with a painful legacy. His eight-year-old son suffers constant headaches and has deformed ears and toes. His two other children also have deformed toes and both suffer bowel and bladder problems. One is also partially deaf.
The reason is likely to be down to DU, says Schott. "The high levels of genetic damage we observed do not occur naturally. I believe alpha radiation from DU to be the cause of these chromosome aberrations.
"Uranium molecules in the blood can travel to every part of the body, including the areas where sperm and eggs are. This, and the presence of chromosome aberrations, increases the probability of cancer and other genetic conditions significantly. They lead to a higher probability of genetic damage in the person's babies and then damage can be passed on to the children's children."
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence dismisses the study. "We consider the tests undertaken in Germany neither well thought out nor scientifically sound," he says.
Miller also has doubts about the Bremen study. The soldiers suspected they had been exposed to DU, but how could they be sure? "How do they know they weren't exposed to something else, like weapons cleaning fluid?" she asks.
Virginia Murray who heads the chemical incident response service at Guy's hospital, London, and contributed to the Royal Society's investigation into DU last year says the effects of DU on people can only be assessed accurately if the amount they were exposed to is known precisely. The society's report recommended that in any future conflict when DU was used, levels of uranium should be regularly monitored in soldiers exposed to the metal and their kidney function checked to ensure it is not impaired.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence says soldiers who believe they have been exposed to DU in Iraq can have their urine tested on their return. If they test positive for DU, they can have follow-up checks on their kidneys.
Next week, the United Nations environment programme will publish a study into the environmental dangers posed by the war on Iraq, including those from DU. Pekka Haavisto, chair of Unep's Iraq task force said scientists would take soil, water and air samples and test them for traces of DU. "Based on previous experience, we have seen that in targeted areas, this type of ammunition poses possible environmental and health risks. We found that DU can corrode in the soil and exist for a long time in the dust." Without a clean up, and the Pentagon says they have no plans for one, people returning to DU hotspots might find themselves unwitting volunteers in testing just what effects depleted uranium really has.
---
See also:
Scientists Urge DU Clean-Up To Protect Civilians (April 17)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,938336,00.html
Royal Society spells out dangers of depleted uranium - Hundreds of tonnes of depleted uranium used by Britain and the United States in Iraq should be removed to protect the civilian population, the Royal Society said yesterday, contradicting Pentagon claims it was not necessary. (...) DU has been suspected by many campaigners of causing the unexplained cancers among Iraqi civilians, particularly children, since the previ ous Gulf war. Chemicals released in the atmosphere during bombing could equally be to blame. Among those against the use of DU is Professor Doug Rokke, a one time US army colonel who is also a former director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project, and a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University. He has said a nation's military personnel cannot wilfully contaminate any other nation, cause harm to persons and the environment and then ignore the consequences of their actions. He has called on the US and UK to "recognise the immoral consequences of their actions and assume responsibility for medical care and thorough environmental remediation". The UN Environment Programme has been tracking the use of DU in the Balkans and found it leaching into the water table. Seven years after the conflict it has recommended the decontamination of buildings where DU dust is present to protect the civilian population against cancer. Up to 2,000 tonnes of DU has been used in the Gulf, a large part of it in cities like Baghdad, far more than in the Balkans. Unep has offered to go to Iraq and check on the quantities of DU still present and the danger it poses to civilians.
Royal society Report on DU
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/policy/cur_du.htm
5.
From: http://mindprod.com/iraq.html
CLIP - Several heart-wrenching pictures of bleeding Iraqi children are first displayed...
Introduction
The Iraq war is a continuation of the 9-11 and Afghanistan Wag The Dog.
The Motives
"Cui prodest scelus, is fecit - The one who derives advantage from the crime is the one most likely to have committed it."
- Seneca
There are two classes of motives, the ones that serve the self interest of George Bush Jr. and the altruistic motives used to sell the war to the public. I contend there is not a compassionate or altruistic bone in George Bush's body, and these altruistic motives are 100% hypocrisy.
Altruistic Motives
Bush compassionately wanted to liberate the Iraqis from the evil Saddam Hussein. US soldiers planted the American flag on Iraqi soil signifying conquering not liberation. Bush bombed the water treatment plant in Basra in order to kill children and civilians. This is hardly the work of a compassionate man. His minions on the net scream "Kill all the sand niggers" and "Kill all the sand maggots" These people claimed to be liberating Iraq but they surely don't sound as if they valued the lives of Iraqis in the least. Bush claimed self defense. Saddam had nukes and he had to be disarmed. Bush was caught three times perjuring the USA an the UN presenting phony evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Inspectors found nothing after 300+ inspections. Saddam has not used nukes even after the US attacked, so it seems unlikely he has them. He may have a little poison gas left that he bought on credit with Rumsfeld's and Cheney's blessing from a Florida company prior to Gulf War I. Inspectors destroyed 95% of Iraq's remaining weapons at the end of Gulf War I. Iraq was never able to kill even a single American in 12 years of sanction bombings. If Iraq has such weapons, why don't they use them? They won't even use them when attacked, so surely they would not have used them had they been left alone.
Selfish Motives
Iraq is sitting on $20 trillion in oil reserves. Bush wants to control them, guarantee low oil prices, and cut out the French, Germans, Russians and Chinese who were buying the oil prior to the war. The economic victims of the war are France, Germany, Russia and China who will have their oil supply stolen by the USA. $20 trillion is an astounding amount of money, $70,000 for every man woman and child in the USA, though of course only a handful of billionaire oil investors will get their hands on it. Bush has already given Halliburton, Cheney's company, the go ahead to rebuild Iraq's oil equipment. He did this without going to public tender. Iraq will be paying through the nose to Cheney to repair the damage that Bush did. Talk about adding insult to injury. The Iraq war has been in the works since 1996. Cheney even tried to sell the idea to Clinton. Various key players even wrote books about their imperialist plans long before Bush took office. An Israeli Hebrew language newspaper claimed that 1/2 of Democratic campaign contributions and 1/3 of the Republican ones come from the pro-Israel lobby. Bush was bribed to fight a war on behalf of Israel. The United States gives an astounding amount of money in foreign aid to Israel in the form of money, weapons (which Israel sometimes sells to the Chinese) and loan guarantees which Israel has always defaulted on. Bush's ratings in the polls shot way up. War always helps boost an unpopular or incompetent president's popularity. It takes the spotlight off his scandals and incompetence with the economy. It provides an excuse to further curtail civil liberties. Bush has closed down websites that opposed him and even assassinated the entire ITV news team under cover of the war.
The Defense Department claims 12 nations with nuclear weapons programs, 13 with biological weapons, 16 with chemical weapons, and 28 with ballistic missiles as existing and emerging threats to the United States. But only one of those countries sits atop the second largest oil reserves in the world. [Iraq] ~ Charles Peña, Senior Defense Policy Fellow of the Cato Institute, for The Chicago Tribune
Excuses For The War
Bush has proposed a four bogus excuses to help sell his war:
1. Take the WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) motive.
Bush was caught falsifying evidence three times. Even after the war started, and no WMDs were used or found, this did not dampen the enthusiasm for this deception one iota. America wants to deceive itself. After stating solemnly that this is the "single question", Bush-Powell went on the next day to announce that it wasn't the goal at all: even if there isn't a pocket knife anywhere in Iraq, the US will invade anyway, because it is committed to "regime change."
2. Take the kill-Saddam-to-save-Iraqis motive.
Saddam was originally selected by the CIA as will be his replacement. There are dozens of brutal dictators even worse that Saddam. But Saddam was the only one sitting on $20 trillion in oil. The war carried on just as furiously after he was dead. Just like his father, Bush Jr. targeted the very children he was supposedly liberating with attack on the Basra water supply. Bush trained his troops to "kill kill kill" and hate all Iraqis, even though this was supposedly a compassionate war to liberate them. Again Americans failed to notice this motive was bogus. America wants to deceive itself. At the Azores summit, where Bush-Blair issued their ultimatum to the UN, they made it clear that they would invade even if Saddam and his gang left the country. So "regime change" cannot be sufficent motive either.
3. Take the Democracy motive.
Bush announced his plans to set Iraq up as a "protectorate" aka colony run by 43 American bureaucrats headed by viceroy American General Jay Garner to be later replaced by dictator Amad Chalabi, a convicted embezzler. Bush refers to this slave colony status as "democracy".
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
- George Orwell
Philip J. Carroll chief executive of Shell Oil is the one most likely to be tapped to oversee Iraq's oil production. Bechtel, Halliburton (Cheney's company) and Shell have all been given blank cheques on the Iraqi treasury to bleed the country dry. Everyone knew America has not left a democracy in its wake since WWII, especially Afghanistan, the latest broken promise. Again Americans failed to notice this motive was bogus. America wants to deceive itself.
"Since the Second World War, the US has bombed China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Guatemala (again), Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala (third time lucky), Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia - in that order - and in not a single case did the bombing produce a democratic government as a direct result." ~ Terry Jones
Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to Bush Sr, just repeated the obvious: "What's going to happen the first time we hold an election in Iraq and it turns out the radicals win? What do you do? We're surely not going to let them take over."
4. Take the Revenge-For-9-11 motive.
bin Laudin was a Saudi Wahabi fundamentalist Muslim. Saddam is an Iraqi secular ruler. Proprosing a conspiracy between these two makes about as much sense as a conspiracy involvolving the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. They hate each other intensely. On at least two occasions bin Laden's organisation tried to assassinate Saddam. There is no evidence the two ever were in cahoots. So killing Iraqi citizens in revenge for 9-11 makes about as much such as kicking the dog because the cat peed on the sofa. Racists don't care; any excuse to kill brown skinned people will do. Bush has all but abandoned his search for bin Laden.
"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." ~ George Bush Jr. 2001-09-13 "I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." ~ George Bush Jr. 2002-03-13
5. To make an example.
When a new crime boss takes over, he may have some hapless victim publicly and brutally beaten. This establishes his authority. The PNAC (Project for the New American Century) plan is for America to dominate the world through military intimidation. Iraq was a good choice for show intimidation because she was utterly defenseless, having been disarmed by the UN. Bush lied to the American people claiming that Iraq had a military superior even to America's so that his deed would look more powerful. The actuality was that, before Gulf War II, Iraq ranked #35 not #1 as a military power, and America spent 283 times as much each year on the military as Iraq. "We will emerge victorious against the world's greatest military [Iraq]." ~ George Bush Jr.
Now consider the true motive, the oil motive. Cheney's company, Halliburton, got the contract without tender to rebuild Iraq. Conflict of interest? What does that mean? The heist will net America $20 trillion in oil deposits, enough to repay the national debt three times over. Yet Americans piously pretend it is not about the oil. What hypocrites! They are the beneficiaries of the crime, $70,000 each approximately. No wonder the all play innocent OJ Simpson and smilingly expect he rest of the world to play along just because they are so darn lovable. Americans know perfectly well this motive is the true one, however, accepting it would be very painful. The mirror would show them to be a nation of of muggers and child abusers.
History of Iraq
CLIP - Read the rest (quite long!) at http://mindprod.com/iraq.html
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