Harold Pinter on drama and US banditry

Posted on December 27, 2008 by Eric Verlo

“What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead?”
-Harold Pinter (1930-2008)

I’m reminded of a friend of mine who asked “You know what PTSD is? It’s a bad conscience.”

An outspoken critic of the Iraq War, Harold Pinter died Christmas Eve. Here is the address he prerecorded for his acceptance of the Nobel Prize in 2005, when he had become too infirm to attend in person.

Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth & Politics

In 1958 I wrote the following:

‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.’

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is ‘What have you done with the scissors?’ The first line of Old Times is ‘Dark.’

In each case I had no further information.

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn’t give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.

‘Dark’ I took to be a description of someone’s hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), ‘Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don’t you buy a dog? You’re a dog cook. Honest. You think you’re cooking for a lot of dogs.’ So since B calls A ‘Dad’ it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn’t know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

‘Dark.’ A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. ‘Fat or thin?’ the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark.

It’s a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author’s position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can’t dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man’s buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.

Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.

In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.

Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.

Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.

But as they died, she must die too.

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States’ actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as ‘low intensity conflict’. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America’s view of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: ‘Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.’

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.’ There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: ‘But in this case “innocent people” were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?’

Seitz was imperturbable. ‘I don’t agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,’ he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: ‘The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.’

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren’t perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about ‘a tapestry of lies’ which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a ‘totalitarian dungeon’. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. ‘Democracy’ had prevailed.

But this ‘policy’ was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It’s a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, ‘the American people’, as in the sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.’

It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what’s called the ‘international community’. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be ‘the leader of the free world’. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally – a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man’s land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You’re either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they’re interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don’t exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. ‘We don’t do body counts,’ said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. ‘A grateful child,’ said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. ‘When do I get my arms back?’ he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn’t holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you’re making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm’s way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, ‘I’m Explaining a Few Things’:

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda’s poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as ‘full spectrum dominance’. That is not my term, it is theirs. ‘Full spectrum dominance’ means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don’t quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government’s actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force – yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man’s man.

‘God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden’s God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad, except he didn’t have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don’t chop people’s heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget it.’

A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don’t have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection – unless you lie – in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called ‘Death’.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.

A 20% turnout in Georgia… (a victory for Coward Racists)

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Brother Jonah

and the Repuke-lickin PUNK COWARD ACCOMPLICE TO BUSH’S BABYKILLING WAR is claiming an “overwhelming mandate in Georgia”.
By the way, McCain and Palin, AND ANYBODY WHO VOTED FOR THEM OR BUSH OR SUPPORTS THEM IN ANY WAY IS ALSO A PUKE-EATING BABY-KILLING COWARD.

Get it right, Georgia!

Posted on November 27, 2008 by Tony Logan

A former Georgian ambassador to Russia has caused uproar in Georgia by saying his country, not Russia, started August’s war over South Ossetia. Will the messenger be killed now? Of course, Mr Kitsmarishvili still doesn’t have it right since it was the Republican Party in the US that started this war, not just the Georgian dictator, Saakashvili. That guy is just a US government puppet and not a loose cannon as the US government and media now want to portray him as being.

Now how do we try to stop new war aginst Russia being started from Washington DC, since Barack Obama and the Democratic Party is continuing the Bush foreign policy with Dubya’s Gates at the helm? Something to take up in your local ‘Peace’crat grouplet, perhaps?

Retaining Gates slam dunks the deluded USA liberals

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Tony Logan

barack-obama Oh those poor deluded liberals! All that ‘hope’ for ‘change’ and look what it got them? Obama asks Gates to stay at Pentagon

No talk of getting out of Iraq now, and the Democratic Party ‘Peace’crats simply don’t have a Plan B beyond turning out the vote again and again for DP politicians who always give them the shaft once they are elected.

No talk of a rejection of the Bush Administration’s criminality and use of torture from Barack. He just rubber stamped it all OK with his choice of Robert Gates being allowed to continue in the position provided for him by Dubya. No change at all. You can shoot down rapproachement with the Russians, too, since it simply was no fluke when Georgia was prompted to attack the Ossetian allies of Russia. The Democrats were on-board all along with the Republican Administration initiated aggression. Hello, New Cold War.

What is left for the Democratic Party liberals to hang onto now? Sure, they can continue to play the fools (though they do not play the fool so much as they just simply are fools), and most will continue to look for some sort of sugar coating on the policies of the Democratic Party Administration, but there is none really. The chumps that told us to vote Democratic Party like it was some sort of religion of theirs will simply be inactive, inactive, inactive in the weeks and months ahead. They have nothing really much left to say.

This was all so easy to see ahead of time, but the ‘Peace’crats don’t want to stand out of the American crowd, and actually denounce US foreign policy in an effective manner. They wanted to just go out and vote even though the voting is rigged to keep power in power. The voting is rigged to just rotate back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans, both of which do mostly the exact same things.

The US Left needs to just say goodbye to the duplicitous intellectual leaders that now control the Antiwar Movement. It’s time to say goodbye to the United for Justice and Peace Democrats and build an effective Antiwar Movement that will build large and continual national mobilizations against The War that just keeps on going, and going, and going. I told you so. Hate me for that if you want? Voting when The System has rigged the vote before hand, is simply not really voting. It takes action to do that, and action that is outside of electorialist play acting.

Palin/Stevens ticket Loses in Alaska, America WINS- Big Time.

Posted on November 19, 2008 by Brother Jonah

Even if you’re convinced that it’s all symbolism anyway. It’s really contrarian of me as judged by D or R standards, but the main reason we win is because the Ice Princess Barbie has no chance now of getting into the halls of Federal Power.

Al Franken of Minnesota is putting some seriously advanced Whoopage on Norm Coleman, a Republican Incumbent whose campaign was based not on any accomplishment of his own, but on trashing Al Franken.

His campaign is nearly as nasty and Hate-filled as Palin’s was.

and then… There’s Georgia…

How can you describe Chambliss, a man who couldn’t get a majority in GEORGIA, Greater Redneckistan, because he is so repulsive.

Somebody who, if you threw him into a Tankful of Live Great White Sharks they would throw him back, with a court order for Cease and Desist, because they won’t Eat Junk food and we should stop dumping garbage in their dinner bowl.

One Republican comment on another website got my attention “Al Franken and Begich winning the recounts is “what I fear the most…” and “my only hope is that Chambliss wins in Georgia”

They’re so TERRIFIED of “That One” having such a consensus in Congress they would hold their noses and vote for Chambliss.

It’s (almost) expected that people on anti-war bulletin boards and blogs would dismiss the notion of somebody having his legs and one arm blown off in a war automatically making him a hero.

I think it’s a tragic reminder of what war is like, and aside from 9/11 people like Max Cleland are our only daily reminder of how badly war affects a Nation.

But Chambliss is a ChickenHawk. He proudly claims to have supported the Viet-Nam war, just, you know, not with his presence.

And proudly supports the current wars, just, you know, not with his presence.

Or, since he’s a U.S. senator, not with funding for rehabilitation of the people who DO go “over there” and leave pieces of themselves before coming back. Or for their long term health care, education, things like that.

Believes that “Born on the Fourth of July” is a Commie Propaganda play, and that Ron Kovic deserves far worse treatment than he got.

…and likewise Max Cleland, because Cleland spoke against going to war in Iraq.

Fellow Republican Senator John McCain, who rode the War Hero Horse into politics, gave him a stern tsk-tsk’ing for his slanderous attacks on Cleland.

And now, when it’s politically convenient for him to do so, is joining his Accomplice Chambliss in continuing such attacks. Against a fellow Viet-Nam veteran named Jim Martin.

Real Republican “moral values” in action.

El Paso County votes country bumpkin

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Parts of the country which favored McCain/Palin, by how much. El Paso County in no position to make fun of hicks in Kentucky or Tennessee.
Mississippi, Oklahoma 66%; Wyoming 65%; Idaho, Utah 63%
Alaska 62%; Alabama 60%
Arkansas, Louisiana 59%
EL PASO COUNTY 58%
Kentucky, Tennessee 57%
Nebraska, Kansas 57%
Texas, West Virginia 56%
Arizona, South Carolina 54%
North Dakota, South Dakota 53%; Georgia 52%; Montana 50%

The population centers along the Front Range and along the I-70 corridor appear to have gone to the Democrats. The Front Range interrupted only by El Paso and Douglas counties.

In Colorado news, Mark Udall’s IN and Marilyn Musgrave’s OUT; but crooked SOS Mike Coffman is promoted to Congress.

El Paso County lost its 1A jail money, but kept squeaky idiot Doug Lamborn in Congressional District 5.

SENATE DISTRICTS: 4, 9, 10, 11 & 12
Mark Scheffel, (Tim Schultheis), Bill Cardman, (John Morse -D), Keith King

HOUSE DISTRICTS: 14-21
Kent Lambert, Mark Waller, Larry Liston, Dennis Apuan (D), Michael Merrifield (D), Marsha Looper, Amy Stephens, Brian Gardner

BBC reports how US forces murdered Ossetian civilians in Tskhinvali

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Tony Logan

south-ossetia-world-map Just like how the Bush Administration just got though murdering Syrian civilian children in an unlawful attack on a foreign country, the US led forces of Georgia’s US puppet leader, President Mikhail Saakashvili, targeted, attacked, and murdered Ossetian civilians in that area of our world, too. Georgia accused of targeting civilians

And there’s worse, as this despicable US political party, The Republicans, is even running a torturer of Iraqi civilians for Congress! Once again we turn to the British media for a report about this. Allen West oversaw the brutal treatment of an Iraqi. Now he is running for Congress And the Democratic Party went alongside and worked alongside the Republican Party these last 8 years, following their Clinton regime of murder of Iraqi children by ‘sanctions’, their prepping of the lies the Republicans used to invade and occupy the country, and their votes that most often were directly with the Republicans in funding this huge atrocity, all which is now bankrupting our own economy here at home.

Yes, the Democratic Party under Obama, Pelosi, and Clinton, sit by and do absolutely nothing to oppose any of these moves by the Republcian Party, even as these murderous attacks on Syrians and Ossetians seem even to be almost partisan engagements on behalf of trying to get John McCain elected! What a sorry group of louts!

Two-edged sword of imperative morality

Posted on October 26, 2008 by Brother Jonah

Because there’s the argument that we have a Moral Imperative to make war.

Funny how those wars Usually always involve the Capture of More Wealth for those who insist that it’s our Duty To God to spread our Superior Civilization to the Unwashed Heathen.

When McCain admitted at the end of the 2nd debate that the real reason for the U.S. propping up Georgia was exactly the same as the reason the Russians propped up South Ossetia, … because of the pipeline and which Economic Power would get to run it, and thus make the Other eat crap and die.

Or similar sentiments.

He showed clearly that we didn’t have the Moral Imperative to take up the sword.

And the reverse is true, we didn’t have Imperative Morality.

The necessary Moral High Ground to decide that we must Punish Russia for daring to act in the national interests of Russia rather than that of America.

Nor the same for “our” actions in Iraq. nor, obviously, “our” supposed Moral Imperative to “Force N. Korea and Iran to bend to OUR Imperial Will”

Because, really, when you have to FORCE somebody to bow to your Superiority, …

… you didn’t have any such Superiority to begin with.

That bit about the Unwashed Heathen is basicly a huge joke.

The guys who spew their Hate masked as Noble Concern For the Darker Races, like to point to the Pilgrims.

Not wanting to admit that the Pilgrims needed the Indians more than the other way round, “they were spreading the blessings of English Moderation, Liberty and Christian Enlightenment”…

And one of the things the Savages did which shocked the Pilgrims, the “far superior European Civilization”… was that the Indians actually had the “unnatural habit of bathing regularly”.

Yep, I just took a whole herd of Sacred Cows and lined them up in front of a Belt-Fed Water Cooled Machine-gun.

Obama endorsed by infamous UN liar

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Eric Verlo

“Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax, a little bit about this amount — this is just about the amount of a teaspoon –“

Colin Powell perjured himself at the UN, playing the leading role in encouraging the invasion of Iraq which resulted in the deaths of over a million Iraqis. Now he’s lauded for endorsing Barack Obama? What hope is there that Obama will seek a just resolution to the war in Iraq?

Let’s continue this excerpt from Colin Powell’s presentation before the United Nations on February 6, 2003:

” …less than a teaspoon full of dry anthrax in an envelope shutdown the United States Senate in the fall of 2001. This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just from an amount just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope.

“Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax, but UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons. And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoon-full of this deadly material.

“And that is my third point. And it is key. The Iraqis have never accounted for all of the biological weapons they admitted they had and we know they had. They have never accounted for all the organic material used to make them. And they have not accounted for many of the weapons filled with these agents such as there are 400 bombs. This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. This is all well-documented.”

Transcript to Feb. 6, 2003 U. N. presentation by Colin Powell

Part 1: Introduction

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, distinguished colleagues, I would like to begin by expressing my thanks for the special effort that each of you made to be here today.

This is important day for us all as we review the situation with respect to Iraq and its disarmament obligations under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441.

Last November 8, this council passed Resolution 1441 by a unanimous vote. The purpose of that resolution was to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had already been found guilty of material breach of its obligations, stretching back over 16 previous resolutions and 12 years.

Resolution 1441 was not dealing with an innocent party, but a regime this council has repeatedly convicted over the years. Resolution 1441 gave Iraq one last chance, one last chance to come into compliance or to face serious consequences. No council member present in voting on that day had any illusions about the nature and intent of the resolution or what serious consequences meant if Iraq did not comply.

And to assist in its disarmament, we called on Iraq to cooperate with returning inspectors from UNMOVIC and IAEA.

We laid down tough standards for Iraq to meet to allow the inspectors to do their job.

This council placed the burden on Iraq to comply and disarm and not on the inspectors to find that which Iraq has gone out of its way to conceal for so long. Inspectors are inspectors; they are not detectives.

I asked for this session today for two purposes: First, to support the core assessments made by Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. As Dr. Blix reported to this council on January 27th, “Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it.”

And as Dr. ElBaradei reported, Iraq’s declaration of December 7, “did not provide any new information relevant to certain questions that have been outstanding since 1998.”

My second purpose today is to provide you with additional information, to share with you what the United States knows about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as well as Iraq’s involvement in terrorism, which is also the subject of Resolution 1441 and other earlier resolutions.

I might add at this point that we are providing all relevant information we can to the inspection teams for them to do their work.

The material I will present to you comes from a variety of sources. Some are U.S. sources. And some are those of other countries. Some of the sources are technical, such as intercepted telephone conversations and photos taken by satellites. Other sources are people who have risked their lives to let the world know what Saddam Hussein is really up to.

I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling.

What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior. The facts on Iraq’s behavior demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort — no effort — to disarm as required by the international community.

Indeed, the facts and Iraq’s behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.

Part 2: Hiding prohibited equipment

Let me begin by playing a tape for you. What you’re about to hear is a conversation that my government monitored. It takes place on November 26 of last year, on the day before United Nations teams resumed inspections in Iraq.

The conversation involves two senior officers, a colonel and a brigadier general, from Iraq’s elite military unit, the Republican Guard.

[Following is a U.S. translation of that taped conversation.]

GEN: Yeah.

COL: About this committee that is coming…

GEN: Yeah, yeah.

COL: …with Mohamed ElBaradei [Director, International Atomic Energy Agency]

GEN: Yeah, yeah.

COL: Yeah.

GEN: Yeah?

COL: We have this modified vehicle.

GEN: Yeah.

COL: What do we say if one of them sees it?

GEN: You didn’t get a modified… You don’t have a modified…

COL: By God, I have one.

GEN: Which? From the workshop…?

COL: From the al-Kindi Company

GEN: What?

COL: From al-Kindi.

GEN: Yeah, yeah. I’ll come to you in the morning. I have some comments. I’m worried you all have something left.

COL: We evacuated everything. We don’t have anything left.

GEN: I will come to you tomorrow.

COL: Okay.

GEN: I have a conference at Headquarters, before I attend the conference I will come to you.

Let me pause and review some of the key elements of this conversation that you just heard between these two officers.

First, they acknowledge that our colleague, Mohamed ElBaradei, is coming, and they know what he’s coming for, and they know he’s coming the next day. He’s coming to look for things that are prohibited. He is expecting these gentlemen to cooperate with him and not hide things.

But they’re worried. “We have this modified vehicle. What do we say if one of them sees it?”

What is their concern? Their concern is that it’s something they should not have, something that should not be seen.

The general is incredulous: “You didn’t get a modified. You don’t have one of those, do you?”

“I have one.”

“Which, from where?”

“From the workshop, from the al-Kindi Company?”

“What?”

“From al-Kindi.”

“I’ll come to see you in the morning. I’m worried. You all have something left.”

“We evacuated everything. We don’t have anything left.”

Note what he says: “We evacuated everything.”

We didn’t destroy it. We didn’t line it up for inspection. We didn’t turn it into the inspectors. We evacuated it to make sure it was not around when the inspectors showed up.

“I will come to you tomorrow.”

The al-Kindi Company: This is a company that is well known to have been involved in prohibited weapons systems activity.

Let me play another tape for you. As you will recall, the inspectors found 12 empty chemical warheads on January 16. On January 20, four days later, Iraq promised the inspectors it would search for more. You will now hear an officer from Republican Guard headquarters issuing an instruction to an officer in the field. Their conversation took place just last week on January 30.

Let me pause again and review the elements of this message.

“They’re inspecting the ammunition you have, yes.”

“Yes.”

“For the possibility there are forbidden ammo.”

“For the possibility there is by chance forbidden ammo?”

“Yes.”

“And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there.”

Remember the first message, evacuated.

This is all part of a system of hiding things and moving things out of the way and making sure they have left nothing behind.

If you go a little further into this message, and you see the specific instructions from headquarters: “After you have carried out what is contained in this message, destroy the message because I don’t want anyone to see this message.”

“OK, OK.”

Why? Why?

This message would have verified to the inspectors that they have been trying to turn over things. They were looking for things. But they don’t want that message seen, because they were trying to clean up the area to leave no evidence behind of the presence of weapons of mass destruction. And they can claim that nothing was there. And the inspectors can look all they want, and they will find nothing.

This effort to hide things from the inspectors is not one or two isolated events, quite the contrary. This is part and parcel of a policy of evasion and deception that goes back 12 years, a policy set at the highest levels of the Iraqi regime.

Part 3: Attempt to thwart inspection

We know that Saddam Hussein has what is called “a higher committee for monitoring the inspections teams.” Think about that. Iraq has a high-level committee to monitor the inspectors who were sent in to monitor Iraq’s disarmament.

Not to cooperate with them, not to assist them, but to spy on them and keep them from doing their jobs.

The committee reports directly to Saddam Hussein. It is headed by Iraq’s vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan. Its members include Saddam Hussein’s son Qusay.

This committee also includes Lt. Gen. Amir al-Saadi, an adviser to Saddam. In case that name isn’t immediately familiar to you, Gen. Saadi has been the Iraqi regime’s primary point of contact for Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. It was Gen. Saadi who last fall publicly pledged that Iraq was prepared to cooperate unconditionally with inspectors. Quite the contrary, Saadi’s job is not to cooperate, it is to deceive; not to disarm, but to undermine the inspectors; not to support them, but to frustrate them and to make sure they learn nothing.

We have learned a lot about the work of this special committee. We learned that just prior to the return of inspectors last November the regime had decided to resume what we heard called, “the old game of cat and mouse.”

For example, let me focus on the now famous declaration that Iraq submitted to this council on December 7. Iraq never had any intention of complying with this council’s mandate.

Instead, Iraq planned to use the declaration, overwhelm us and to overwhelm the inspectors with useless information about Iraq’s permitted weapons so that we would not have time to pursue Iraq’s prohibited weapons. Iraq’s goal was to give us, in this room, to give those of us on this council the false impression that the inspection process was working.

You saw the result. Dr. Blix pronounced the 12,200-page declaration, rich in volume, but poor in information and practically devoid of new evidence.

Could any member of this council honestly rise in defense of this false declaration?

Everything we have seen and heard indicates that, instead of cooperating actively with the inspectors to ensure the success of their mission, Saddam Hussein and his regime are busy doing all they possibly can to ensure that inspectors succeed in finding absolutely nothing.

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.

Orders were issued to Iraq’s security organizations, as well as to Saddam Hussein’s own office, to hide all correspondence with the Organization of Military Industrialization.

This is the organization that oversees Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction activities. Make sure there are no documents left which could connect you to the OMI.

We know that Saddam’s son, Qusay, ordered the removal of all prohibited weapons from Saddam’s numerous palace complexes. We know that Iraqi government officials, members of the ruling Baath Party and scientists have hidden prohibited items in their homes. Other key files from military and scientific establishments have been placed in cars that are being driven around the countryside by Iraqi intelligence agents to avoid detection.

Thanks to intelligence they were provided, the inspectors recently found dramatic confirmation of these reports. When they searched the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist, they uncovered roughly 2,000 pages of documents. You see them here being brought out of the home and placed in U.N. hands. Some of the material is

classified and related to Iraq’s nuclear program.

Tell me, answer me, are the inspectors to search the house of every government official, every Baath Party member and every scientist in the country to find the truth, to get the information they need, to satisfy the demands of our council?

Our sources tell us that, in some cases, the hard drives of computers at Iraqi weapons facilities were replaced. Who took the hard drives. Where did they go? What’s being hidden? Why? There’s only one answer to the why: to deceive, to hide, to keep from the inspectors.

Numerous human sources tell us that the Iraqis are moving, not just documents and hard drives, but weapons of mass destruction to keep them from being found by inspectors.

While we were here in this council chamber debating Resolution 1441 last fall, we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq. Most of the launchers and warheads have been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection.

We also have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities.

Let me say a word about satellite images before I show a couple. The photos that I am about to show you are sometimes hard for the average person to interpret, hard for me. The painstaking work of photo analysis takes experts with years and years of experience, pouring for hours and hours over light tables. But as I show you these images, I will try to capture and explain what they mean, what they indicate to our imagery specialists.

Let’s look at one. This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji (ph). This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently came up with the additional four chemical weapon shells.

Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers.

How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions. The arrow at the top that says security points to a facility that is the signature item for this kind of bunker. Inside that facility are special guards and special equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the bunker.

The truck you also see is a signature item. It’s a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.

This is characteristic of those four bunkers. The special security facility and the decontamination vehicle will be in the area, if not at any one of them or one of the other, it is moving around those four, and it moves as it needed to move, as people are working in the different bunkers.

Now look at the picture on the right. You are now looking at two of those sanitized bunkers. The signature vehicles are gone, the tents are gone, it’s been cleaned up, and it was done on the 22nd of December, as the U.N. inspection team is arriving, and you can see the inspection vehicles arriving in the lower portion of the picture on the right.

The bunkers are clean when the inspectors get there. They found nothing.

This sequence of events raises the worrisome suspicion that Iraq had been tipped off to the forthcoming inspections at Taji (ph). As it did throughout the 1990s, we know that Iraq today is actively using its considerable intelligence capabilities to hide its illicit activities. From our sources, we know that inspectors are under constant surveillance by an army of Iraqi intelligence operatives.

Iraq is relentlessly attempting to tap all of their communications, both voice and electronics.

I would call my colleagues attention to the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities.

In this next example, you will see the type of concealment activity Iraq has undertaken in response to the resumption of inspections. Indeed, in November 2002, just when the inspections were about to resume this type of activity spiked. Here are three examples.

At this ballistic missile site, on November 10, we saw a cargo truck preparing to move ballistic missile components. At this biological weapons related facility, on November 25, just two days before inspections resumed, this truck caravan appeared, something we almost never see at this facility, and we monitor it carefully and regularly.

At this ballistic missile facility, again, two days before inspections began, five large cargo trucks appeared along with the truck-mounted crane to move missiles. We saw this kind of house cleaning at close to 30 sites.

Days after this activity, the vehicles and the equipment that I’ve just highlighted disappear and the site returns to patterns of normalcy. We don’t know precisely what Iraq was moving, but the inspectors already knew about these sites, so Iraq knew that they would be coming.

We must ask ourselves: Why would Iraq suddenly move equipment of this nature before inspections if they were anxious to demonstrate what they had or did not have?

Remember the first intercept in which two Iraqis talked about the need to hide a modified vehicle from the inspectors. Where did Iraq take all of this equipment? Why wasn’t it presented to the inspectors?

Iraq also has refused to permit any U-2 reconnaissance flights that would give the inspectors a better sense of what’s being moved before, during and after inspectors.

This refusal to allow this kind of reconnaissance is in direct, specific violation of operative paragraph seven of our Resolution 1441.

Saddam Hussein and his regime are not just trying to conceal weapons, they’re also trying to hide people. You know the basic facts. Iraq has not complied with its obligation to allow immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted and private access to all officials and other persons as required by Resolution 1441.

Part 4: Access to scientists

The regime only allows interviews with inspectors in the presence of an Iraqi official, a minder. The official Iraqi organization charged with facilitating inspections announced, announced publicly and announced ominously that, quote, “Nobody is ready to leave Iraq to be interviewed.”

Iraqi Vice President Ramadan accused the inspectors of conducting espionage, a veiled threat that anyone cooperating with U.N. inspectors was committing treason.

Iraq did not meet its obligations under 1441 to provide a comprehensive list of scientists associated with its weapons of mass destruction programs. Iraq’s list was out of date and contained only about 500 names, despite the fact that UNSCOM had earlier put together a list of about 3,500 names.

Let me just tell you what a number of human sources have told us.

Saddam Hussein has directly participated in the effort to prevent interviews. In early December, Saddam Hussein had all Iraqi scientists warned of the serious consequences that they and their families would face if they revealed any sensitive information to the inspectors. They were forced to sign documents acknowledging that divulging information is punishable by death.

Saddam Hussein also said that scientists should be told not to agree to leave Iraq; anyone who agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq would be treated as a spy. This violates 1441.

In mid-November, just before the inspectors returned, Iraqi experts were ordered to report to the headquarters of the special security organization to receive counterintelligence training. The training focused on evasion methods, interrogation resistance techniques, and how to mislead inspectors.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries.

For example, in mid-December weapons experts at one facility were replaced by Iraqi intelligence agents who were to deceive inspectors about the work that was being done there.

On orders from Saddam Hussein, Iraqi officials issued a false death certificate for one scientist, and he was sent into hiding.

In the middle of January, experts at one facility that was related to weapons of mass destruction, those experts had been ordered to stay home from work to avoid the inspectors. Workers from other Iraqi military facilities not engaged in illicit weapons projects were to replace the workers who’d been sent home. A dozen experts have been placed under house arrest, not in their own houses, but as a group at one of Saddam Hussein’s guest houses. It goes on and on and on.

As the examples I have just presented show, the information and intelligence we have gathered point to an active and systematic effort on the part of the Iraqi regime to keep key materials and people from the inspectors in direct violation of Resolution 1441. The pattern is not just one of reluctant cooperation, nor is it merely a lack of cooperation. What we see is a deliberate campaign to prevent any meaningful inspection work.

My colleagues, operative paragraph four of U.N. Resolution 1441, which we lingered over so long last fall, clearly states that false statements and omissions in the declaration and a failure by Iraq at any time to comply with and cooperate fully in the implementation of this resolution shall constitute — the facts speak for themselves –shall constitute a further material breach of its obligation.

We wrote it this way to give Iraq an early test — to give Iraq an early test. Would they give an honest declaration and would they early on indicate a willingness to cooperate with the inspectors? It was designed to be an early test.

They failed that test. By this standard, the standard of this operative paragraph, I believe that Iraq is now in further material breach of its obligations. I believe this conclusion is irrefutable and undeniable.

Iraq has now placed itself in danger of the serious consequences called for in U.N. Resolution 1441. And this body places itself in danger of irrelevance if it allows Iraq to continue to defy its will without responding effectively and immediately.

The issue before us is not how much time we are willing to give the inspectors to be frustrated by Iraqi obstruction. But how much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq’s noncompliance before we, as a council, we, as the United Nations, say: “Enough. Enough.”

The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction pose to the world. Let me now turn to those deadly weapons programs and describe why they are real and present dangers to the region and to the world.

Part 5: Biological weapons program

First, biological weapons. We have talked frequently here about biological weapons. By way of introduction and history, I think there are just three quick points I need to make.

First, you will recall that it took UNSCOM four long and frustrating years to pry — to pry — an admission out of Iraq that it had biological weapons.

Second, when Iraq finally admitted having these weapons in 1995, the quantities were vast. Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax, a little bit about this amount — this is just about the amount of a teaspoon — less than a teaspoon full of dry anthrax in an envelope shutdown the United States Senate in the fall of 2001. This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just from an amount just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope.

Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax, but UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons. And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoon-full of this deadly material.

And that is my third point. And it is key. The Iraqis have never accounted for all of the biological weapons they admitted they had and we know they had. They have never accounted for all the organic material used to make them. And they have not accounted for many of the weapons filled with these agents such as there are 400 bombs. This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. This is all well-documented.

Dr. Blix told this council that Iraq has provided little evidence to verify anthrax production and no convincing evidence of its destruction. It should come as no shock then, that since Saddam Hussein forced out the last inspectors in 1998, we have amassed much intelligence indicating that Iraq is continuing to make these weapons.

One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq’s biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.

Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what we know from eye witness accounts. We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.

The trucks and train cars are easily moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War.

Although Iraq’s mobile production program began in the mid-1990s, U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague hints of such programs. Confirmation came later, in the year 2000.

The source was an eye witness, an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents.

He reported that when UNSCOM was in country and inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim Holy Day, Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was important because the units could not be broken down in the middle of a production run, which had to be completed by Friday evening before the inspectors might arrive again.

This defector is currently hiding in another country with the certain knowledge that Saddam Hussein will kill him if he finds him. His eye-witness account of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources.

A second source, an Iraqi civil engineer in a position to know the details of the program, confirmed the existence of transportable facilities moving on trailers.

A third source, also in a position to know, reported in summer 2002 that Iraq had manufactured mobile production systems mounted on road trailer units and on rail cars.

Finally, a fourth source, an Iraqi major, who defected, confirmed that Iraq has mobile biological research laboratories, in addition to the production facilities I mentioned earlier.

We have diagrammed what our sources reported about these mobile facilities. Here you see both truck and rail car-mounted mobile factories. The description our sources gave us of the technical features required by such facilities are highly detailed and extremely accurate. As these drawings based on their description show, we know what the fermenters look like, we know what the tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts look like. We know how they fit together. We know how they work. And we know a great deal about the platforms on which they are mounted.

As shown in this diagram, these factories can be concealed easily, either by moving ordinary-looking trucks and rail cars along Iraq’s thousands of miles of highway or track, or by parking them in a garage or warehouse or somewhere in Iraq’s extensive system of underground tunnels and bunkers.

We know that Iraq has at lest seven of these mobile biological agent factories. The truck-mounted ones have at least two or three trucks each. That means that the mobile production facilities are very few, perhaps 18 trucks that we know of — there may be more — but perhaps 18 that we know of. Just imagine trying to find 18 trucks among the thousands and thousands of trucks that travel the roads of Iraq every single day.

It took the inspectors four years to find out that Iraq was making biological agents. How long do you think it will take the inspectors to find even one of these 18 trucks without Iraq coming forward, as they are supposed to, with the information about these kinds of capabilities?

Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulism toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. And dry agent of this type is the most lethal form for human beings.

By 1998, U.N. experts agreed that the Iraqis had perfected drying techniques for their biological weapons programs. Now, Iraq has incorporated this drying expertise into these mobile production facilities.

We know from Iraq’s past admissions that it has successfully weaponized not only anthrax, but also other biological agents, including botulism toxin, aflatoxin and ricin.

But Iraq’s research efforts did not stop there. Saddam Hussein has investigated dozens of biological agents causing diseases such as gas gangrene, plague, typhus, tetanus, cholera, camelpox and hemorrhagic fever, and he also has the wherewithal to develop smallpox.

The Iraqi regime has also developed ways to disburse lethal biological agents, widely and discriminately into the water supply, into the air. For example, Iraq had a program to modify aerial fuel tanks for Mirage jets. This video of an Iraqi test flight obtained by UNSCOM some years ago shows an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet aircraft. Note the spray coming from beneath the Mirage; that is 2,000 liters of simulated anthrax that a jet is spraying.

In 1995, an Iraqi military officer, Mujahid Sali Abdul Latif (ph), told inspectors that Iraq intended the spray tanks to be mounted onto a MiG-21 that had been converted into an unmanned aerial vehicle, or a UAV. UAVs outfitted with spray tanks constitute an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons.

Iraq admitted to producing four spray tanks. But to this day, it has provided no credible evidence that they were destroyed, evidence that was required by the international community.

There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction. If biological weapons seem too terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling.

UNMOVIC already laid out much of this, and it is documented for all of us to read in UNSCOM’s 1999 report on the subject.

Let me set the stage with three key points that all of us need to keep in mind: First, Saddam Hussein has used these horrific weapons on another country and on his own people. In fact, in the history of chemical warfare, no country has had more battlefield experience with chemical weapons since World War I than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Part 6: Chemical weapons

Second, as with biological weapons, Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents. If we consider just one category of missing weaponry — 6,500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq war — UNMOVIC says the amount of chemical agent in them would be in the order of 1,000 tons. These quantities of chemical weapons are now unaccounted for.

Dr. Blix has quipped that, quote, “Mustard gas is not (inaudible) You are supposed to know what you did with it.”

We believe Saddam Hussein knows what he did with it, and he has not come clean with the international community. We have evidence these weapons existed. What we don’t have is evidence from Iraq that they have been destroyed or where they are. That is what we are still waiting for.

Third point, Iraq’s record on chemical weapons is replete with lies. It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons.

The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamal, Saddam Hussein’s late son-in-law. UNSCOM also gained forensic evidence that Iraq had produced VX and put it into weapons for delivery. Yet, to this day, Iraq denies it had ever weaponized VX.

And on January 27, UNMOVIC told this council that it has information that conflicts with the Iraqi account of its VX program.

We know that Iraq has embedded key portions of its illicit chemical weapons infrastructure within its legitimate civilian industry. To all outward appearances, even to experts, the infrastructure looks like an ordinary civilian operation. Illicit and legitimate production can go on simultaneously; or, on a dime, this dual-use infrastructure can turn from clandestine to commercial and then back again.

These inspections would be unlikely, any inspections of such facilities would be unlikely to turn up anything prohibited, especially if there is any warning that the inspections are coming. Call it ingenuous or evil genius, but the Iraqis deliberately designed their chemical weapons programs to be inspected. It is infrastructure with a built-in ally.

Under the guise of dual-use infrastructure, Iraq has undertaken an effort to reconstitute facilities that were closely associated with its past program to develop and produce chemical weapons.

For example, Iraq has rebuilt key portions of the Tariq state establishment. Tariq includes facilities designed specifically for Iraq’s chemical weapons program and employs key figures from past programs.

That’s the production end of Saddam’s chemical weapons business.

What about the delivery end?

I’m going to show you a small part of a chemical complex called al-Moussaid (ph), a site that Iraq has used for at least three years to transship chemical weapons from production facilities out to the field.

In May 2002, our satellites photographed the unusual activity in this picture. Here we see cargo vehicles are again at this transshipment point, and we can see that they are accompanied by a decontamination vehicle associated with biological or chemical weapons activity.

What makes this picture significant is that we have a human source who has corroborated that movement of chemical weapons occurred at this site at that time. So it’s not just the photo, and it’s not an individual seeing the photo. It’s the photo and then the knowledge of an individual being brought together to make the case.

This photograph of the site taken two months later in July shows not only the previous site, which is the figure in the middle at the top with the bulldozer sign near it, it shows that this previous site, as well as all of the other sites around the site, have been fully bulldozed and graded. The topsoil has been removed. The Iraqis literally removed the crust of the earth from large portions of this site in order to conceal chemical weapons evidence that would be there from years of chemical weapons activity.

To support its deadly biological and chemical weapons programs, Iraq procures needed items from around the world using an extensive clandestine network. What we know comes largely from intercepted communications and human sources who are in a position to know the facts.

Iraq’s procurement efforts include equipment that can filter and separate micro-organisms and toxins involved in biological weapons, equipment that can be used to concentrate the agent, growth media that can be used to continue producing anthrax and botulism toxin, sterilization equipment for laboratories, glass-lined reactors and specialty pumps that can handle corrosive chemical weapons agents and recursors, large amounts of vinyl chloride, a precursor for nerve and blister agents, and other chemicals such as sodium sulfide, an important mustard agent precursor.

Now, of course, Iraq will argue that these items can also be used for legitimate purposes. But if that is true, why do we have to learn about them by intercepting communications and risking the lives of human agents? With Iraq’s well documented history on biological and chemical weapons, why should any of us give Iraq the benefit of the doubt? I don’t, and I don’t think you will either after you hear this next intercept.

Just a few weeks ago, we intercepted communications between two commanders in Iraq’s Second Republican Guard Corps. One commander is going to be giving an instruction to the other. You will hear as this unfolds that what he wants to communicate to the other guy, he wants to make sure the other guy hears clearly, to the point of repeating it so that it gets written down and completely understood. Listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE)

(Speaking in Foreign Language.)

(END AUDIO TAPE)

Let’s review a few selected items of this conversation.

Two officers talking to each other on the radio want to make sure that nothing is misunderstood:

“Remove. Remove.”

The expression, the expression, “I got it.”

“Nerve agents. Nerve agents. Wherever it comes up.”

“Got it.”

“Wherever it comes up.”

“In the wireless instructions, in the instructions.”

“Correction. No. In the wireless instructions.”

“Wireless. I got it.”

Why does he repeat it that way? Why is he so forceful in making sure this is understood? And why did he focus on wireless instructions? Because the senior officer is concerned that somebody might be listening.

Well, somebody was.

“Nerve agents. Stop talking about it. They are listening to us. Don’t give any evidence that we have these horrible agents.”

Well, we know that they do. And this kind of conversation confirms it.

Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.

Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly five times the size of Manhattan.

Let me remind you that, of the 122 millimeter chemical warheads, that the U.N. inspectors found recently, this discovery could very well be, as has been noted, the tip of the submerged iceberg. The question before us, all my friends, is when will we see the rest of the submerged iceberg?

Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein has used such weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no compunction about using them again, against his neighbors and against his own people.

And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them. He wouldn’t be passing out the orders if he didn’t have the weapons or the intent to use them.

We also have sources who tell us that, since the 1980s, Saddam’s regime has been experimenting on human beings to perfect its biological or chemical weapons.

A source said that 1,600 death row prisoners were transferred in 1995 to a special unit for such experiments. An eye witness saw prisoners tied down to beds, experiments conducted on them, blood oozing around the victim’s mouths and autopsies performed to confirm the effects on the prisoners. Saddam Hussein’s humanity — inhumanity has no limits.

Part 7: Nuclear weapons

Let me turn now to nuclear weapons. We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program.

On the contrary, we have more than a decade of proof that he remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons.

To fully appreciate the challenge that we face today, remember that, in 1991, the inspectors searched Iraq’s primary nuclear weapons facilities for the first time. And they found nothing to conclude that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.

But based on defector information in May of 1991, Saddam Hussein’s lie was exposed. In truth, Saddam Hussein had a massive clandestine nuclear weapons program that covered several different techniques to enrich uranium, including electromagnetic isotope separation, gas centrifuge, and gas diffusion. We estimate that this illicit program cost the Iraqis several billion dollars.

Nonetheless, Iraq continued to tell the IAEA that it had no nuclear weapons program. If Saddam had not been stopped, Iraq could have produced a nuclear bomb by 1993, years earlier than most worse-case assessments that had been made before the war.

In 1995, as a result of another defector, we find out that, after his invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein had initiated a crash program to build a crude nuclear weapon in violation of Iraq’s U.N. obligations.

Saddam Hussein already possesses two out of the three key components needed to build a nuclear bomb. He has a cadre of nuclear scientists with the expertise, and he has a bomb design.

Since 1998, his efforts to reconstitute his nuclear program have been focused on acquiring the third and last component, sufficient fissile material to produce a nuclear explosion. To make the fissile material, he needs to develop an ability to enrich uranium.

Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb.

He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries, even after inspections resumed.

These tubes are controlled by the Nuclear Suppliers Group precisely because they can be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium. By now, just about everyone has heard of these tubes, and we all know that there are differences of opinion. There is controversy about what these tubes are for.

Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Other experts, and the Iraqis themselves, argue that they are really to produce the rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher.

Let me tell you what is not controversial about these tubes.

First, all the experts who have analyzed the tubes in our possession agree that they can be adapted for centrifuge use. Second, Iraq had no business buying them for any purpose. They are banned for Iraq.

I am no expert on centrifuge tubes, but just as an old Army trooper, I can tell you a couple of things: First, it strikes me as quite odd that these tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets.

Maybe Iraqis just manufacture their conventional weapons to a higher standard than we do, but I don’t think so.

Second, we actually have examined tubes from several different batches that were seized clandestinely before they reached Baghdad. What we notice in these different batches is a progression to higher and higher levels of specification, including, in the latest batch, an anodized coating on extremely smooth inner and outer surfaces. Why would they continue refining the specifications, go to all that trouble for something that, if it was a rocket, would soon be blown into shrapnel when it went off?

The high tolerance aluminum tubes are only part of the story. We also have intelligence from multiple sources that Iraq is attempting to acquire magnets and high-speed balancing machines; both items can be used in a gas centrifuge program to enrich uranium.

In 1999 and 2000, Iraqi officials negotiated with firms in Romania, India, Russia and Slovenia for the purchase of a magnet production plant. Iraq wanted the plant to produce magnets weighing 20 to 30 grams. That’s the same weight as the magnets used in Iraq’s gas centrifuge program before the Gulf War. This incident linked with the tubes is another indicator of Iraq’s attempt to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.

Intercepted communications from mid-2000 through last summer show that Iraq front companies sought to buy machines that can be used to balance gas centrifuge rotors. One of these companies also had been involved in a failed effort in 2001 to smuggle aluminum tubes into Iraq.

People will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in my mind, these illicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons program, the ability to produce fissile material.

He also has been busy trying to maintain the other key parts of his nuclear program, particularly his cadre of key nuclear scientists.

It is noteworthy that, over the last 18 months, Saddam Hussein has paid increasing personal attention to Iraqi’s top nuclear scientists, a group that the governmental-controlled press calls openly, his nuclear mujahedeen. He regularly exhorts them and praises their progress. Progress toward what end?

Long ago, the Security Council, this council, required Iraq to halt all nuclear activities of any kind.

Part 8: Prohibited arms systems

Let me talk now about the systems Iraq is developing to deliver weapons of mass destruction, in particular Iraq’s ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs.

First, missiles. We all remember that before the Gulf War Saddam Hussein’s goal was missiles that flew not just hundreds, but thousands of kilometers. He wanted to strike not only his neighbors, but also nations far beyond his borders.

While inspectors destroyed most of the prohibited ballistic missiles, numerous intelligence reports over the past decade, from sources inside Iraq, indicate that Saddam Hussein retains a covert force of up to a few dozen Scud variant ballistic missiles. These are missiles with a range of 650 to 900 kilometers.

We know from intelligence and Iraq’s own admissions that Iraq’s alleged permitted ballistic missiles, the al-Samud II and the al-Fatah , violate the 150-kilometer limit established by this council in Resolution 687. These are prohibited systems.

UNMOVIC has also reported that Iraq has illegally important 380 SA-2 rocket engines. These are likely for use in the al-Samud II. Their import was illegal on three counts. Resolution 687 prohibited all military shipments into Iraq. UNSCOM specifically prohibited use of these engines in surface-to-surface missiles. And finally, as we have just noted, they are for a system that exceeds the150-kilometer range limit.

Worst of all, some of these engines were acquired as late as December — after this council passed Resolution 1441.

What I want you to know today is that Iraq has programs that are intended to produce ballistic missiles that fly over 1,000 kilometers.

One program is pursuing a liquid fuel missile that would be able to fly more than 1,200 kilometers. And you can see from this map, as well as I can, who will be in danger of these missiles.

As part of this effort, another little piece of evidence, Iraq has built an engine test stand that is larger than anything it has ever had. Notice the dramatic difference in size between the test stand on the left, the old one, and the new one on the right. Note the large exhaust vent. This is where the flame from the engine comes out. The exhaust on the right test stand is five times longer than the one on the left. The one on the left was used for short-range missile. The one on the right is clearly intended for long-range missiles that can fly 1,200 kilometers.

This photograph was taken in April of 2002. Since then, the test stand has been finished and a roof has been put over it so it will be harder for satellites to see what’s going on underneath the test stand.

Saddam Hussein’s intentions have never changed. He is not developing the missiles for self-defense. These are missiles that Iraq wants in order to project power, to threaten, and to deliver chemical, biological and, if we let him, nuclear warheads.

Now, unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs.

Iraq has been working on a variety of UAVs for more than a decade. This is just illustrative of what a UAV would look like.

This effort has included attempts to modify for unmanned flight the MiG-21 and with greater success an aircraft called the L-29.

However, Iraq is now concentrating not on these airplanes, but on developing and testing smaller UAVs, such as this.

UAVs are well suited for dispensing chemical and biological weapons.

There is ample evidence that Iraq has dedicated much effort to developing and testing spray devices that could be adapted for UAVs. And of the little that Saddam Hussein told us about UAVs, he has not told the truth. One of these lies is graphically and indisputably demonstrated by intelligence we collected on June 27, last year.

According to Iraq’s December 7 declaration, its UAVs have a range of only 80 kilometers. But we detected one of Iraq’s newest UAVs in a test flight that went 500 kilometers nonstop on autopilot in the race track pattern depicted here.

Not only is this test well in excess of the 150 kilometers that the United Nations permits, the test was left out of Iraq’s December 7th declaration. The UAV was flown around and around and around in a circle. And so, that its 80 kilometer limit really was 500 kilometers unrefueled and on autopilot, violative of all of its obligations under 1441.

The linkages over the past 10 years between Iraq’s UAV program and biological and chemical warfare agents are of deep concern to us.

Iraq could use these small UAVs which have a wingspan of only a few meters to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or if transported, to other countries, including the United States.

My friends, the information I have presented to you about these terrible weapons and about Iraq’s continued flaunting of its obligations under Security Council Resolution 1441 links to a subject I now want to spend a little bit of time on. And that has to do with terrorism.

Part 9: Ties to al Qaeda

Our concern is not just about these illicit weapons. It’s the way that these illicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist organizations that have no compunction about using such devices against innocent people around the world.

Iraq and terrorism go back decades. Baghdad trains Palestine Liberation Front members in small arms and explosives. Saddam uses the Arab Liberation Front to funnel money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers in order to prolong the intifada. And it’s no secret that Saddam’s own intelligence service was involved in dozens of attacks or attempted assassinations in the 1990s.

But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants.

Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.

You see a picture of this camp.

The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch — image a pinch of salt — less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote, there is no cure. It is fatal.

Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein’s controlled Iraq.

But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000 this agent offered al Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we swept al Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain their today.

Zarqawi’s activities are not confined to this small corner of northeast Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.

During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These al Qaeda affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they’ve now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.

Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al Qaeda. These denials are simply not credible. Last year an al Qaeda associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was, quote, “good,” that Baghdad could be transited quickly.

We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain even today in regular contact with his direct subordinates, including the poison cell plotters, and they are involved in moving more than money and materiel.

Last year, two suspected al Qaeda operatives were arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia. They were linked to associates of the Baghdad cell, and one of them received training in Afghanistan on how to use cyanide. From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond.

We, in the United States, all of us at the State Department, and the Agency for International Development — we all lost a dear friend with the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan, last October — a despicable act was committed that day. The assassination of an individual whose sole mission was to assist the people of Jordan. The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from Zarqawi for that murder.

After the attack, an associate of the assassin left Jordan to go to Iraq to obtain weapons and explosives for further operations. Iraqi officials protest that they are not aware of the whereabouts of Zarqawi or of any of his associates. Again, these protests are not credible. We know of Zarqawi’s activities in Baghdad. I described them earlier.

And now let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice, and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large to come and go.

As my colleagues around this table and as the citizens they represent in Europe know, Zarqawi’s terrorism is not confined to the Middle East. Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia.

According to detainees, Abu Atia, who graduated from Zakawi’s terrorist camp in Afghanistan, tasked at least nine North African extremists in 2001 to travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive attacks.

Since last year, members of this network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested.

The chart you are seeing shows the network in Europe. We know about this European network, and we know about its links to Zarqawi, because the detainee who provided the information about the targets also provided the names of members of the network.

Three of those he identified by name were arrested in France last December. In the apartments of the terrorists, authorities found circuits for explosive devices and a list of ingredients to make toxins.

The detainee who helped piece this together says the plot also targeted Britain. Later evidence, again, proved him right. When the British unearthed a cell there just last month, one British police officer was murdered during the disruption of the cell.

We also know that Zarqawi’s colleagues have been active in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia and in Chechnya, Russia. The plotting to which they are linked is not mere chatter. Members of Zarqawi’s network say their goal was to kill Russians with toxins.

We are not surprised that Iraq is harboring Zarqawi and his subordinates. This understanding builds on decades long experience with respect to ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Going back to the early and mid-1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan, an al Qaeda source tells us that Saddam and bin Laden reached an understanding that al Qaeda would no longer support activities against Baghdad. Early al Qaeda ties were forged by secret, high-level intelligence service contacts with al Qaeda, secret Iraqi intelligence high-level contacts with al Qaeda.

We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s. In1996, a foreign security service tells us, that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum, and later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service.

Saddam became more interested as he saw al Qaeda’s appalling attacks. A detained al Qaeda member tells us that Saddam was more willing to assist al Qaeda after the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Saddam was also impressed by al Qaeda’s attacks on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.

Iraqis continued to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan. A senior defector, one of Saddam’s former intelligence chiefs in Europe, says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to al Qaeda members on document forgery.

From the late 1990s until 2001, the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan played the role of liaison to the al Qaeda organization.

Some believe, some claim these contacts do not amount to much.

They say Saddam Hussein’s secular tyranny and al Qaeda’s religious tyranny do not mix. I am not comforted by this thought. Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al Qaeda together, enough so al Qaeda could learn how to build more sophisticated bombs and learn how to forge documents, and enough so that al Qaeda could turn to Iraq for help in acquiring expertise on weapons of mass destruction.

And the record of Saddam Hussein’s cooperation with other Islamist terrorist organizations is clear. Hamas, for example, opened an office in Baghdad in 1999, and Iraq has hosted conferences attended by Palestine Islamic Jihad. These groups are at the forefront of sponsoring suicide attacks against Israel.

Al Qaeda continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al Qaeda.

Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it.

This senior al Qaeda terrorist was responsible for one of al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan.

His information comes firsthand from his personal involvement at senior levels of al Qaeda. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased al Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef, did not believe that al Qaeda labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq.

The support that (inaudible) describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al Qaeda associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abu Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.

Part 10: Conclusion

As I said at the outset, none of this should come as a surprise to any of us. Terrorism has been a tool used by Saddam for decades. Saddam was a supporter of terrorism long before these terrorist networks had a name. And this support continues. The nexus of poisons and terror is new. The nexus of Iraq and terror is old. The combination is lethal.

With this track record, Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take the place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies.

When we confront a regime that harbors ambitions for regional domination, hides weapons of mass destruction and provides haven and active support for terrorists, we are not confronting the past, we are confronting the present. And unless we act, we are confronting an even more frightening future.

My friends, this has been a long and a detailed presentation.

And I thank you for your patience. But there is one more subject that I would like to touch on briefly. And it should be a subject of deep and continuing concern to this council, Saddam Hussein’s violations of human rights.

Underlying all that I have said, underlying all the facts and the patterns of behavior that I have identified as Saddam Hussein’s contempt for the will of this council, his contempt for the truth and most damning of all, his utter contempt for human life. Saddam Hussein’s use of mustard and nerve gas against the Kurds in 1988 was one of the 20th century’s most horrible atrocities; 5,000 men, women and children died.

His campaign against the Kurds from 1987 to ’89 included mass summary executions, disappearances, arbitrary jailing, ethnic cleansing and the destruction of some 2,000 villages. He has also conducted ethnic cleansing against the Shiite Iraqis and the Marsh Arabs whose culture has flourished for more than a millennium. Saddam Hussein’s police state ruthlessly eliminates anyone who dares to dissent. Iraq has more forced disappearance cases than any other country, tens of thousands of people reported missing in the past decade.

Nothing points more clearly to Saddam Hussein’s dangerous intentions and the threat he poses to all of us than his calculated cruelty to his own citizens and to his neighbors. Clearly, Saddam Hussein and his regime will stop at nothing until something stops him.

For more than 20 years, by word and by deed Saddam Hussein has pursued his ambition to dominate Iraq and the broader Middle East using the only means he knows, intimidation, coercion and annihilation of all those who might stand in his way. For Saddam Hussein, possession of the world’s most deadly weapons is the ultimate trump card, the one he most hold to fulfill his ambition.

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he’s determined to make more. Given Saddam Hussein’s history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he will not some day use these weapons at a time and the place and in the manner of his choosing at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond?

The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.

My colleagues, over three months ago this council recognized that Iraq continued to pose a threat to international peace and security, and that Iraq had been and remained in material breach of its disarmament obligations. Today Iraq still poses a threat and Iraq still remains in material breach.

Indeed, by its failure to seize on its one last opportunity to come clean and disarm, Iraq has put itself in deeper material breach and closer to the day when it will face serious consequences for its continued defiance of this council.

My colleagues, we have an obligation to our citizens, we have an obligation to this body to see that our resolutions are complied with. We wrote 1441 not in order to go to war, we wrote 1441 to try to preserve the peace. We wrote 1441 to give Iraq one last chance. Iraq is not so far taking that one last chance.

We must not shrink from whatever is ahead of us. We must not fail in our duty and our responsibility to the citizens of the countries that are represented by this body.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Shlomo Sand and shattering a national mythology

Posted on October 9, 2008 by Tony Logan

Shattering a ‘national mythology’ Shlomo Sand’s book is titled “When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?” and you probably will not find it stacked up on tables for sale in Barnes and Noble or Borders. I don’t expect it to be readily available for Colorado Springs librarian patrons either. Ask for it though.

The Haaretz interview:

Actually, most of your book does not deal with the invention of the Jewish people by modern Jewish nationalism, but rather with the question of where the Jews come from.

Sand: “My initial intention was to take certain kinds of modern historiographic materials and examine how they invented the ‘figment’ of the Jewish people. But when I began to confront the historiographic sources, I suddenly found contradictions. And then that urged me on: I started to work, without knowing where I would end up. I took primary sources and I tried to examine authors’ references in the ancient period – what they wrote about conversion.”

Experts on the history of the Jewish people say you are dealing with subjects about which you have no understanding and are basing yourself on works that you can’t read in the original.

“It is true that I am an historian of France and Europe, and not of the ancient period. I knew that the moment I would start dealing with early periods like these, I would be exposed to scathing criticism by historians who specialize in those areas. But I said to myself that I can’t stay just with modern historiographic material without examining the facts it describes. Had I not done this myself, it would have been necessary to have waited for an entire generation. Had I continued to deal with France, perhaps I would have been given chairs at the university and provincial glory. But I decided to relinquish the glory.”

Inventing the Diaspora

“After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom” – thus states the preamble to the Israeli Declaration of Independence. This is also the quotation that opens the third chapter of Sand’s book, entitled “The Invention of the Diaspora.” Sand argues that the Jewish people’s exile from its land never happened.

“The supreme paradigm of exile was needed in order to construct a long-range memory in which an imagined and exiled nation-race was posited as the direct continuation of ‘the people of the Bible’ that preceded it,” Sand explains. Under the influence of other historians who have dealt with the same issue in recent years, he argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.

“I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land – a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled.”

If the people was not exiled, are you saying that in fact the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians?

“No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don’t leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, ‘the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.'”

And how did millions of Jews appear around the Mediterranean Sea?

“The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others. The Hasmoneans were the first to begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. The conversions between the Hasmonean Revolt and Bar Kochba’s rebellion are what prepared the ground for the subsequent, wide-spread dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the fourth century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But then Judaism started to permeate other regions – pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at that stage and had it not continued to convert people in the pagan world, we would have remained a completely marginal religion, if we survived at all.”

How did you come to the conclusion that the Jews of North Africa were originally Berbers who converted?

“I asked myself how such large Jewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina’s Jewish Berber kingdom had been defeated only 15 years earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers who converted to Judaism.”

Sand argues that the most crucial demographic addition to the Jewish population of the world came in the wake of the conversion of the kingdom of Khazaria – a huge empire that arose in the Middle Ages on the steppes along the Volga River, which at its height ruled over an area that stretched from the Georgia of today to Kiev. In the eighth century, the kings of the Khazars adopted the Jewish religion and made Hebrew the written language of the kingdom. From the 10th century the kingdom weakened; in the 13th century is was utterly defeated by Mongol invaders, and the fate of its Jewish inhabitants remains unclear.

Sand revives the hypothesis, which was already suggested by historians in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to which the Judaized Khazars constituted the main origins of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.

“At the beginning of the 20th century there is a tremendous concentration of Jews in Eastern Europe – three million Jews in Poland alone,” he says. “The Zionist historiography claims that their origins are in the earlier Jewish community in Germany, but they do not succeed in explaining how a small number of Jews who came from Mainz and Worms could have founded the Yiddish people of Eastern Europe. The Jews of Eastern Europe are a mixture of Khazars and Slavs who were pushed eastward.”

If the Jews of Eastern Europe did not come from Germany, why did they speak Yiddish, which is a Germanic language?

“The Jews were a class of people dependent on the German bourgeoisie in the East, and thus they adopted German words. Here I base myself on the research of linguist Paul Wechsler of Tel Aviv University, who has demonstrated that there is no etymological connection between the German Jewish language of the Middle Ages and Yiddish. As far back as 1828, the Ribal (Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinson) said that the ancient language of the Jews was not Yiddish. Even Ben Zion Dinur, the father of Israeli historiography, was not hesitant about describing the Khazars as the origin of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and describes Khazaria as ‘the mother of the diasporas’ in Eastern Europe. But more or less since 1967, anyone who talks about the Khazars as the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe is considered naive and moonstruck.”

Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening?

“It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to the land. The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly knock the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. Since the beginning of the period of decolonization, settlers have no longer been able to say simply: ‘We came, we won and now we are here’ the way the Americans, the whites in South Africa and the Australians said. There is a very deep fear that doubt will be cast on our right to exist.”

Is there no justification for this fear?

“No. I don’t think that the historical myth of the exile and the wanderings is the source of the legitimization for me being here, and therefore I don’t mind believing that I am Khazar in my origins. I am not afraid of the undermining of our existence, because I think that the character of the State of Israel undermines it in a much more serious way. What would constitute the basis for our existence here is not mythological historical right, but rather would be for us to start to establish an open society here of all Israeli citizens.”

In effect you are saying that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.

“I don’t recognize an international people. I recognize ‘the Yiddish people’ that existed in Eastern Europe, which though it is not a nation can be seen as a Yiddishist civilization with a modern popular culture. I think that Jewish nationalism grew up in the context of this ‘Yiddish people.’ I also recognize the existence of an Israeli people, and do not deny its right to sovereignty. But Zionism and also Arab nationalism over the years are not prepared to recognize it.

“From the perspective of Zionism, this country does not belong to its citizens, but rather to the Jewish people. I recognize one definition of a nation: a group of people that wants to live in sovereignty over itself. But most of the Jews in the world have no desire to live in the State of Israel, even though nothing is preventing them from doing so. Therefore, they cannot be seen as a nation.”

What is so dangerous about Jews imagining that they belong to one people? Why is this bad?

“In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But Israel has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become an open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. The consciousness concerning the right to this place must be more flexible and varied, and if I have contributed with my book to the likelihood that I and my children will be able to live with the others here in this country in a more egalitarian situation – I will have done my bit.

“We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law. Anyone who is acquainted with the young elites of the Israeli Arab community can see that they will not agree to live in a country that declares it is not theirs. If I were a Palestinian I would rebel against a state like that, but even as an Israeli I am rebelling against it.”

The question is whether for those conclusions you had to go as far as the Kingdom of the Khazars.

“I am not hiding the fact that it is very distressing for me to live in a society in which the nationalist principles that guide it are dangerous, and that this distress has served as a motive in my work. I am a citizen of this country, but I am also a historian and as a historian it is my duty to write history and examine texts. This is what I have done.”

If the myth of Zionism is one of the Jewish people that returned to its land from exile, what will be the myth of the country you envision?

“To my mind, a myth about the future is better than introverted mythologies of the past. For the Americans, and today for the Europeans as well, what justifies the existence of the nation is a future promise of an open, progressive and prosperous society. The Israeli materials do exist, but it is necessary to add, for example, pan-Israeli holidays. To decrease the number of memorial days a bit and to add days that are dedicated to the future. But also, for example, to add an hour in memory of the Nakba [literally, the “catastrophe” – the Palestinian term for what happened when Israel was established], between Memorial Day and Independence Day.”

Obama said The Ukraine not Ukraine tsk

Posted on October 2, 2008 by Eric Verlo

On the subject of spinning the debates…

Did you hear about Barack Obama’s horrible gaffe in the first debate?! According to public radio, Obama referred to “The Ukraine” instead of the less diminutive “Ukraine” sans-the. PRI’s The World trotted out tsk-tsks from a Ukrainian-accented expert who derided Obama for his un-PC insensitivity to her country’s post-Soviet independence.

Self-respecting nations don’t require “the” to distinguish them apparently. “The” is only for provinces or regions, the expert explained. The Balkins, the Riviera –I can’t remember her examples. Certainly you wouldn’t say The France, unless you were referring to the ocean liner. How undiplomatic for Obama to malign poor proud “Ukrayina.” The would-be statesman [in evident need of more experience] should come visit, suggested the expert. But the report revealed [Instead] Obama was campaigning in Ohio.

Shall we look into what the Ukrainian expert didn’t explain: why English speakers unconsciously need to add “the” before Ukraine? Is it simply because we used to, when Ukraine was a part of Russia, and then a member of the USSR. But we didn’t say the Georgia, or the Belorusse…

Unless we meant THE Republic of Belarus. But that rule applies to every formal title. Then also we say the United States, we say the UK, and we say the People’s Republic of China. We say the Netherlands, but not the Finland, nor the Afghanistan. We do not add THE to any of the -stan states, which was a Russian suffix meaning “land.” Perhaps as we don’t use THE for nations ending in -land either.

We say the Philippines. We say the the Maldives. There seems to be a pattern related to territories in the plural. So it’s nothing to do with client states but rather collected lands.

As usual, I’ve entertained myself before doing the research.

1. The Ukraine
Is the Ukraine (I can’t help but say it that way) a reference to plural regions? Or is there some other idiomatic pattern which governs usage for English-speakers? The answer turned out to be the former.

Apparentely, Ukrayina is named after the Old East Slavic for “border region.” The Territories of Ukraine were the old Russian empire’s western edge. Perhaps this suggests why Ukrainians want to be considered their own land, and not part of someone else’s.

There, the expert is right. A historically geographical name does not suggest a sovereign nation. The Transvaal, the Yukon, the Sahara, the Midlands on England’s border to Scotland. I think it’s interesting that no US state needs a “the,” compared to their previous incarnations as the Dakota Territories, the Louisiana Purchase, etc.

But to complicate the matter, in the Ukrainian language the word means “country.” Doesn’t it go against their own tongue to eliminate the definite article? To refer to either concept, country or border, requires “the.” At least I know it is so in English. Which is my point here.

Since their independence from the USSR the Ukraine has asserted an identity minus “the.” The distinction is for diplomatic papers. So I’m not sure that international conventions govern how foreign languages bend to suit another’s domestic decree. Germany for example is known by as many names as it has neighbors, and none of them is Deutschland.

How appropriate is it to try to mock Obama for speaking the King’s English, aka English?

Isn’t your interest piqued about other places to which a “the” wants to cling to an earlier vestige? The Ivory Coast would seem to have become an effortless Ivory Coast, maybe because the plurality of “coast” is ambiguous.

2. The Sudan
What about the Sudan versus Sudan? We know it through the English colonials as “the Sudan,” but now the post-colonial English-speaking diplomatic class asserts it’s just Sudan. I can’t help but wonder if there’s some Globalization edict for nation-state nomenclature compliance. Is it for the sake of easier alphabetization?

That reminds me of how China lined up the Olympic participants in the 2008 Opening Ceremonies. Nations were ranked based on how many strokes were required in their Chinese character. American commentators thought viewers would probably consider the order nonsensical. How much sense does it make to require state names to conform to an anglo-file system?

As an aside, is the French “Sud” for South, related to the Arabic “Sudan” for “Blacks?” Both that direction from the then-known world. Not so further aside, the French say “Le Sud” in the same way we use “the” to differentiate the destination from the direction.

In any event, in Arabic, the language of the population of Sudan, the country calls itself “al-Sudan.” Post-9/11 westerners know “al” translates to “the.” That would be Sudan with the “the.”

Palin kisses McCain’s toads

Posted on September 24, 2008 by Tony Logan

Frog kissing princess What can one say about the Conservative American’s ideas about what actually constitutes foreign policy expertise? These Republican Conservatives generally can’t locate (unless they have been in the military) any country other than their own on a foreign map and think that McCain is the Big Guy to go to for ‘leadership’! In short, they think that the former US bomber pilot knows more than poor AlaObama does about what to do in the world at large! Kind of pathetic really, to put it lightly.

So this week, McCain had his pig princess kiss his favorite two world toads to get her sweet lipstick on them. I’m talking about Sarah does Uribe and Saakashvili now, leaders of the Enslaved World. A Tutorial from Uribe- Palin at the UN by NIKOLAS KOZLOFF talks about it some.

John is more a pimp for the pig princess slut than anything other! I guess he wanted his gun toting bitch to know how to do death squads the Colombian Way?

What a sweet Republicain pair the two do make. They would be the perfect pair to head up the American State, don’t you think?!!! I’m leaning toward voting John McCain.

US imperialism in check with Detente

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Eric Verlo

First there’s Georgia, where Russia pushes back US efforts to muscle further NATO expansion. Then in our own hemisphere, Bolivia and Venezuela expel their US ambassadors, as Russian long range bombers land in South America in advance of joint naval maneuvers in the Caribbean. It’s not a resumption of the Cold War with the USSR, Russia is advancing no Communist Iron Curtain. But could a rival super power, in league with the unaligned nations, be a challenge to US hegemony? We could hope so.

Marine recruiters pursue high schoolers

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- I saw a local military-education atrocity the other day when I passed a school as kids recessed for lunch. Next time I’ll have a camera and I won’t be alone making sure it doesn’t happen again.

You’ve seen it at outdoor fairs, the Marine recruiter canopy. Bolt upright Marines stand in uniform around a chin-up bar beckoning teenage boys to come show off their upper body strength. Usually there’s a tank-topped ringer crediting his biceps to a military regimen.

In past this was as innocuous as any misappropriated emphasis on physical fitness. The services were voluntary after all, and short of the special forces, most military duty was served at sleepy bases in Germany, Korea or Okinawa. Of course, since Granada we’ve come to see how much more combat our soldier boys have been seeing.

These days with high casualties in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and growing conflicts in Somalia and Sudan, covert exposure in Georgia, Colombia and elsewhere, the prospect of the military getting their claws on your child takes on a sinister consequence.

Probably today’s chin-up bar would be akin to the archery tournaments of medieval days. Fun, irresistible, a sure ticket off the farm but to a destiny of a vagabond with a lost limb if you were lucky. Mothers no doubt cautioned their boys against showing off their bow and arrow skills, just as today they might panic about military recruiters seeing their kids’ Xbox scores.

Today I passed by Palmer High School at about lunch time. Kids were pouring out the front doors to spend their lunch hour in Acacia Park across the street. What did I spy, not in the city park, but right in front of the school building, but a handful of smartly dressed Marines with their chin-up bar. Right at the front door. You’d have to walk around around them to get in or out.

All around the red-painted chin-up bar were high school peers watching as others stood in line waiting for their chance to show their strength. There you have it. If I’d had my camera, I could have gotten the red bar, the formal marine uniforms, their cohorts in black wife-beaters, and all the eager kids, right beneath the WILLIAM J. PALMER HIGH SCHOOL lettering above the school entrance. I wonder how many mothers that image would have pleased.

A call to the counselor’s office revealed that the recruiters cannot be denied from visiting a school at a moment’s notice. A further conversation with the principal revealed that the recruiter’s presence is supposed to be no more than a table with literature. The circus attraction was news to him. But a quick survey of a couple high schoolers revealed that the chin-up bar attraction has made the rounds before.

I imagined circulating among them with antiwar fliers, and earning the teenager scorn as if I was crashing a scene to which they were already wise. Kids know everything these days, except of course they do not. Nothing’s changed over the centuries, neither war predatory appetite, nor a child’s vulnerability, nor their stubbornness to defy wisdom.

I think it’s the same foot you have to put down on drugs. You, Mister Know-it-all, may think you’ve got your eye on the ball beneath that shell game, but the scheme’s much larger than your peripheral vision. You’re in school to learn about widening your view, and before you graduate there are predators whose only crack at you will be during adolescence.

Young would-be drinkers often raise the argument that if you’re old enough to serve your country in the army, you should be old enough to drink alcohol. Now it’s true that the soldier-makers want you in your prime. Except for that perversion of a life’s purpose, we need to turn that comparison on its head. If you’re not ready for alcohol, perhaps you shouldn’t be let near the soul-changing fork in the road presented by a military recruiter.

The NATO tug of war

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Tony Logan

The US and Britain are pulling NATO in one direction and France and Germany seem increasingly rather reluctant to follow along. The US wants a NATO ready to start nuclear war with Russia and ready to dismember Pakistan’s national integrity, but the French and German governments don’t seem fully on board this imperialistic US game plan. They sit by silently in apparent disbelief, as the US also foments civil war in Ukraine.

As a result of this French and German discord with the US war drive, NATO has issued a comment or two that it will not participate in US destruction inside Pakistan. NATO says won’t take part in Pakistan raids And France and Germany have tried to bargain with Russia separate from the US about the Georgia/ US-Russian conflict, but without any real success.

Inside the US, we have seen no split in the unity of the ruling 2 parties in their apparently united desire to push conflict with Russia to the wire. We have seen not the faintest sign that there is any disagreement at all between the DP and RP over dragging Pakistan further into civil war pushed by outside forces, i.e. the US government. There has been no apparent Democratic Party response to Palin’s comments that she was ready to war with Russia. And the DP-voting bloggers have even gone along totally, too.

There is a clear US government drive to increase world conflict in order to establish yet more US hegemony across the planet. Americans as a whole seem utterly content with this at the moment, since they still see no price to pay that will involve themselves. Such a level of ignorance and stupidity is truly disheartening, and Americans will ultimately discover what a catastrophe they went along with as their leaders plotted and planned.

What does 9/11 have to do with this?

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Tony Logan

soldier praying 9/11 has become the essential cornerstone of the new fusion of US imperialism, US Christian neo-theocracy, and US racism. God supposedly has chosen a victimized nation to become his Chosen People, etc. and so on. Evil Muslim Arab Devils lurk in the shadows and want the blood of good Christians and their Jewish servants. God Bless America!

Eric and I got a first hand glimpse of this current political theocracy in action at the Colorado Springs municipal government meeting this Tuesday, where 9/11 served to serve up an even bigger than normal dose of Pledge of Allegiance loyalism, pre-meeting prayer, and verbal hypocrisy. They even had a giant harp there on hand to make it all even more heavenly, I guess for the theocrats that run the city government here in the city? It was surreal and I stayed outside in the halls to keep from churning my lunch back up.

Eric proposed that the city look into why it’s police removed him and Peter illegally away from a political activity they and others were protesting, and then later harassed him and Peter legally for several months all in order to finally drop the framed up charges altogether? He linked it to the same sort of abuse of police power used against Democracy Now and Amy Goodman at the Republican Convention.

I used my time to ask that the city council members take their responsibility seriously as government leaders to pass a municipal resolution condemning the federal torture of US government held POWs, their illegal detention for years without charges, and their transport to foreign countries for torture there, too. All I got for my efforts was total silence as Republican Mayor Lionel Rivera chimed in about how he supported these abuses by the US military, while the other city council people sat by stupidly.

These Right Wing Americans, both Democratic and Republican Party leaders, use 9/11 to justify everything these days, no matter how backward and unconnected from 9/11. For example, what does 9/11 have to do with re-arming Georgia or putting missile systems into Poland and The Czech Republic? What does 9/11 have to do with the US government supporting and fomenting civil war in countries as diverse as Pakistan, Bolivia, the Caucasus region, Iran, China, and Ukraine? But 9/11 is the catch word for all of this, as the vacuous Global War on Terrorism forgets to target terrorists at all, but instead moves against everybody, everywhere, and at everytime!

Yes, 9/11 is also the excuse to move against the US population itself, as the stop terrorism line got reduced down to accusing protesters of planning to use urine and shit to terrorize just who at the ruling parties conventions? It doesn’t matter any more just how stupid and illogical and unbelievable all this really is anymore. We’re on Green light, Yellow light, Red light bullshit all the time.

So on this 9/11 worship day, ask yourselves….

Are you still proud to be an American?

If you are, then you are a real nitwit. This country is on the wrong track and you know it!

USA! USA! Today on Jerry Springer- Alaska vs. Delaware!

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Tony Logan

Snooty, arrogant, Dupont chemical state Biden, versus Soccer Mom eating moose burgers with Alaskan Separatist hubby! Let’s hope they take their tops off and go at it! Joe, you can tag team with Hillary to make it more even if you want?

Lets’ face it, Biden= Palin! They’re both camp as can be! But America just can’t get that image of Frontier out of mind (NO, not the half bankrupt Frontier Airlines), and Alaska is just that! It’s the great military frontier, too! God Bless Us so.

Biden wants to send US troops to Africa, and Palin wants to send them to Ukraine and Georgia (NO, not the Peach Tree State). Let Israel decide where ‘our’ troops be sent then!

Oops, Biden has just left the floor and is bumping his naked chest up against that of an audience member’s tie! Wait! That’s John McCain! What’s he doing in the ring?!!!

And there goes Todd! He’s taken down audience member Barack (the only Black person in this trailer trash crowd!) with a bear-like tackle! Talk about Global Warming! (let’s not)! Todd is biting and a growling!

Now he’s got Obama begging for an aborted mission, and look at that Todd go ballistic! That Todd’s something else, and we can only hope that he and his purty wife can get into the White House for more tag team fun. Maybe with Vladimir and the now rather putrid and pickled Boris? Jimmy and Mikhail could referee that one! We can only hope… it could be a nucular blast!

And look what’ just come out! A live pig with lipstick on, a jackass with lipstick aglow too, and a pink elephant with the bright red stuff on (please, don’t write me about this slanderous ad hominem attack on Sarah)! Oh boy! This is going to be a big free-for-all that the whole family can enjoy! Look at them go! Yeah! This could only happen in a Christian nation where God’s people have the freedoms that only God’s people can have! It makes me proud to be an American to see a show like this! Thanks, Jerry Springer, thanks to you, KRCP Cincinnati. Thanks to Great America!

America only cares about itself

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Tony Logan

Haiti under water. Whole cities are submerged in the aftermath of hurricanes that did little damage to the US. Hundreds, if not thousands, dead. And Haiti, an occupied country, occupied thanks to the President of the United States, George W. Bush. Occupied Haiti, thanks to the Democratic Party that went along with the Republicans to occupy Haiti with foreign troops and keep it under foreign military rule.

Have you heard a word about the US rushing supplies and assistance in to Haiti? Or is it only the US rushing to re-equip the Georgian military for yet another attack against Russia and its allies? Do we have time to help Haiti when we are in a rush to go to war with Iran? Do we have any concern at all for Haitians? Haiti and the Hurricanes

Not really. America really only cares about itself.

Dick and Georgia

Posted on September 4, 2008 by Tony Logan

Dick Cheney “Here, take $1,000,000,000, Georgia Honey. Them American taxpayers don’t need it. Get yourself rebuilt the way I like it, Doll.”

Yes, Dick is on vacation once again! All the harlots are at his feet and want some finger licking good dollars! …Dick looking good dollars!

Heck, Dick don’t like Haiti, a dame that really could use some largesse about now. But Haiti is an old fuck and Dick don’t give a damn about her no mohre. He looking for the newest mohre flashy whores, like Georgia.

Dick is all upset though because that bad guy Vladamir duhn violated his honey, Georgia. Dick shore pissed off and he traveling around the Black Sea.

Dick, don’t let it tear yuh poor heart up. Vladamir back down soon and then you can go about your business again. You the Assbestos Man, Dick!

Russia is rejecting planned US war against Iran

Posted on September 3, 2008 by Tony Logan

As both US corporate political parties line up solidly to support a war with Iran, Russia’s rejection of Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia signifies that Russia is also firmly rejecting supporting the US government’s planned coming war against Iran. Most American’s do not realize that it is a Russian company that is building Iran’s nuclear plant, and in the wake of US-Georgian aggression against Russian interests in the Caucasus that the Russian government and this Russian company have reaffirmed that they will continue work on building this facility.

That, with Russia’s recent condemnation of US massacres of Afghan civilians signals a clear turn against continuing Russian backing for US occupations and wars against countries near to or on its southern borders. Russia and Iran have many years of mutual distrust, but US imperialism is now giving both countries good reason to abandon their traditional hostilities and ally together for mutual defense. Iranian Trump Card. Russia Can Take Control of Persian Gulf is an article that discusses some of the issues in this up and coming new alliance in the South of Asia.

Russia has no continued interest in openly supporting US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, which in fact they have been doing. The US government has moved to aggressively confront Russia militarily instead of mutual disarmament, and now the whole world is in danger of a world war developing because of this. The US is no longer just picking on defenseless and underarmed regimes, and we are being stupid in the US Antiwar Movement if we don’t take immediate actions to inform the general public about what its bipartisan government is doing together to destroy any future possibility of having world peace. The time to take action is now.

Human Rights Watch lied to world press about who dropped cluster bombs where?

Posted on September 1, 2008 by Tony Logan

Shame on you, Human Rights Watch! You lied didn’t you? You lied to help whip up international support for the US attack on South Ossetia that their Georgian government stooges carried out. At a key moment you spread lies that Russia had dropped cluster bombs on Georgia throughout the world press and now you’ve been caught at it! Human Rights Watch says Georgia admits to dropping cluster bombs in S. Ossetia This news comes from the Associated Press.

What will be interesting is to see if any of the Democratic Party tied liberal sites like Common Dreams and alternet actually print the real news now? My fingers are crossed. The DP leaders are almost as gung ho for whipping up a hysteria against Russia as the McCainites are. Aren’t you Biden and Barack?

Human Rights Watch will hide away the news now as best they can about how it was the Georgian government that used those cluster bombs. Shame on this group! They were doing their best to add to the Let’s Reopen the Cold War hysteria that started to grip the US media, and now… what do they have to say for themselves? Not much.

Will the bear ever break its pact with the Devil?

Posted on August 29, 2008 by Tony Logan

The Russian bear has made some pretty stupid political deals in recent modern times. Almost all of us know about the Stalin-Hitler Pact and the horrible price Russia paid for the stupidity of Joseph Stalin, but few of us have thought much about the stupid pact the Russians now have had with our own US Government Devil. Since the US dropped the former Soviet Union out of existence the new Russian capitalist regime has pretty much let the Devil have its own way all around the planet, but is that about to end? Maybe, and if so how would that be done?

Russia’s UN draft condemning the US murder of dozens of innocent civilian kids in Afghanistan is one indication of how the bear will move through the forest to confound The Devil. One is tempted to forget and have out of mind how Russia has passively allowed the US to rampage across Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan while supporting this Devil diplomatically? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Without the Russian bear on board the United Nations is left exposed as a total fraud. NATO then also becomes naked in the wind. n What has the bear been thinking by being so quiet for so long? Did it really think that once again a modern day version of the Stalin Hitler Pact was the way to go forth and prosper? Then what a dumb bear it has been!

The bear doesn’t want to break its pact with Our Devil, and without China at its side feels all alone. But it really has no choice at this point. It has to begin to oppose the US and its European cohorts as they commit genocide against Iraq and threaten to do so elsewhere, too. It’s time to pull the rug from out underneath of Our Devil before its too late.

Putin accuses Georgian government attack of being part of McCain campaign

Posted on August 28, 2008 by Tony Logan

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the US of provoking the conflict in Georgia, possibly for domestic election purposes. Putin blames US for Georgia role Good luck, Vladimir, but not even God can revitalize Obama’s campaign at this point, not with Joe Biden on board. Besides, Barack and ‘Joe’ are just as much as trying to get a nuclear war going with you as the next ‘John’ is. Most of us Americans are too stupid to care about nuclar matters anyway.

Barack Obama, “I’m supportive of what George Bush has been doing.”

Posted on August 22, 2008 by Tony Logan

Change When it comes to American imperialism, there is no difference at all between Obama and McCain. So it is no surprise at all to see Barack Obama supporting George W. Bush’s belligerent neocon aggression against Russia. The voice of the American imperialist neocons is The Wall Street Journal, and here is their report- President Bush Wins Sen Barack Obama’s Backing Over Georgia

Pedantic US Pentagon hectoring of Russia continues

Posted on August 22, 2008 by Tony Logan

Out of Iraq demonstration The US and its allies continue to try to bully and lecture Russia about Russia’s rebuttal of NATO-Pentagon’s’ push toward going to war with them. But surprise! This won’t work. Russia says withdrawal complete The DC government thugs and buffoons can hiss and howl all they want, alongside their civilian Empire propaganda media cohorts, but Russia is fed up with US imperialism and will no longer be cajoled to just retreat worldwide.

What are all the pacifist types in the US ‘Peace’ babble Movement going to do now, talk more Church? We need a real antiwar movement and one that knows what’s really going on and that has backbone enough to stand up to the Democratic Party’s efforts to control and derail all protest.

Russia is drawing a line and will not continue to let NATO just advance. They are in the right and we need to organize to stop our own country’s imperialist war making now! Iraq is just a sideshow in what the neocons and Pentagon are now engaged in doing.

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Not My Tribe

The Myth of Middle Ground

Tag Archives: Georgia

Harold Pinter on drama and US banditry

A 20% turnout in Georgia… (a victory for Coward Racists)

Get it right, Georgia!

Retaining Gates slam dunks the deluded USA liberals

Palin/Stevens ticket Loses in Alaska, America WINS- Big Time.

El Paso County votes country bumpkin

BBC reports how US forces murdered Ossetian civilians in Tskhinvali

Two-edged sword of imperative morality

Obama endorsed by infamous UN liar

Shlomo Sand and shattering a national mythology

Obama said The Ukraine not Ukraine tsk

Palin kisses McCain’s toads

US imperialism in check with Detente

Marine recruiters pursue high schoolers

The NATO tug of war

What does 9/11 have to do with this?

USA! USA! Today on Jerry Springer- Alaska vs. Delaware!

America only cares about itself

Dick and Georgia

Russia is rejecting planned US war against Iran

Human Rights Watch lied to world press about who dropped cluster bombs where?

Will the bear ever break its pact with the Devil?

Putin accuses Georgian government attack of being part of McCain campaign

Barack Obama, “I’m supportive of what George Bush has been doing.”

Pedantic US Pentagon hectoring of Russia continues