Peace_Maker

Propaganda at its very best!

I"m sure he would!

Ha! Ha! Sounds remarkably like the one proposed earlier this year by many Democrats, who were accused at that time of "cutting and running" for proposing a withdrawal timetable. It also sounds like a scam that is being pulled out at election time to trick gullible voters into thinking the president is actually going to do something. The "new" plan also would require cooperation on the part of the Iraqi resistance to ease up on its attacks on U.S. forces and on Iraq's puppet regime. Why do that when they

I don

I agree with Rev HAGLER Beware of Pharisees! By Rev. GRAYLAN SCOTT HAGLER Pat Robertson suggested this past Monday that the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, be assassinated by operatives of the United States government. Though his comments are newsworthy because of his following in the 700 Club and his political stature and role in the political religious right, his comments however are out of synch with everything that has been handed down to us from the teachings of Jesus Christ. What I am suggesting here is that Pat Robertson and individuals of his ilk are not practicing or preaching Christ but have become adherents of a political movement in this nation that attempts to use Christianity towards their own narrow political ends. I believe that there is a role for Christianity in the events of the world, but the teachings of Christ leads us to love one another, strain and stretch to understand each other, and dare to know each other enough that we come to an understanding of one another and from that create a world that is not built on might and winning but on understanding and unity. Clearly the comments of Robertson defy the framework we find in the gospels of Jesus Christ. Some may argue that Christ existed in another time and did not have an understanding of the kind of world we exist in today. But any follower of Jesus knows that as he was human and he was also fully God, and therefore his understanding of the world, humankind and our needs were not captive to a time but applies to all time! Knowing this I do not see anywhere in the gospels of Christ that he condones, suggests or advocates murder or political assassination! Instead Jesus reminds us to beware of Pharisees, and Robertson, Dobson and others have become the Pharisees of our contemporary world! What do we find in the Good News of Christ? We find love is expressed continually and unceasingly. The gospels admonish us to do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. We finds words in the gospels that define the mission of Christians as the elevation of the poor, freedom for those who are oppressed, salvation for the lost, and hope for the hopeless. Jesus says come unto me all of you who are weak and heavy laden and I will give you rest. He does not say come to me those who are looking for political expediency and I will show you who to and how to assassinate! Sure there has been trouble in Venezuela, and some will suggest that it is communism struggling to raise it head. Others will suggest that the poor of Venezuela have been poor too long in a nation that is the 5th largest oil producer in the world. Some will suggest that too much of the resources have been in the hands of too few, and that the poor of the land have found hope in a political leader, Hugo Chavez. I would not suggest that Chavez is a saint, for no person is perfect, but I do know that Chavez was elected even while the greatest power in the world, the United States government, did everything possible to thwart his election. This is hardly the neighborliness that Jesus Christ calls us to emulate. I am continually amazed at how so many preachers have ceased to preach Christ, or to proclaim him out of the rich simplicity of his teachings and have resorted to a kind of theology that is not gospel based but is based on a narrow point of view that keeps the powerful powerful and the poor poor! Therefore, it is impossible to justify the comments of Pat Robertson. His comments are not of the gospel he claims to preach, nor of the teachings of Christ that any Christian claims to love. Instead what Robertson has to say is based on a paradigm from the most conservative voices in this country, and those voices have no God except themselves and no soul except their selfish point of view! Beware of Pharisees! Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler

It is not just Arab governments. A January 2005 Pew study on global opinion, based on that groups polling in recent years in 44 countries, reported that the rest of the world has become deeply suspicious of U.S. motives and openly skeptical about its word. It observed that Anti-Americanism is deeper and broader now than at any time in modern history. It is most acute in the Muslim world but it spans the globe--from Europe to Asia, from South America to Africa. This includes most countries that have been close U.S. allies for over 50 years. The Pew survey found that this new hardening of attitudes amounts to something much larger than a thumbs down on the current occupant of the White House. Pew reported that at the heart of the decline in world opinion about America is the perception that the United States acts without taking into account the interests of other nations. A December 2004 public opinion poll in 23 countries found that in 20 of these countries a majority of citizens believed it would be better for Europe to become more influential than the U.S. in world affairs. Even the much vaunted coalition of the willing that the Bush administration claimed to have built in 2003 for the invasion of Iraq has all but collapsed. Thirteen countries have already withdrawn their forces. Italy, Poland, and Ukraine have all recently announced they will pull their troops out; these are the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-largest contingents of foreign troops there. The countries that will soon be left, apart from U.S. and UK, are Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea, Japan, Denmark, and Australia.

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This seems to hit the nail on the head as to why people of the world might not like America that much anymore. By Sam Vaknin The biggest problem is America's manifest hypocrisy, its moral talk and often immoral walk, its persistent application of double standards. The self-proclaimed champion of human rights has aided and abetted countless murderous dictatorships. This alleged sponsor of free trade - is the most protectionists of rich nations. This beacon of charity - contributes less than 0.1% of its GDP to foreign aid (compared to Scandinavia's 0.6%, for instance). This upright proponent of international law (under whose aegis it bombed and invaded half a dozen countries this past decade alone) - is in avowed opposition to crucial pillars of the international order. To the peoples of the poor world, America is both a colonial power and a mercantilist exploiter. To further its geopolitical and economic goals from Central Asia to the Middle East, it persists in buttressing regimes with scant regard for human rights, in cahoots with homicidal indigenous politicians. And it drains the developing world of its labour, and its raw materials, giving little in return. All powers are self-interested - but America is narcissistic. It is bent on exploiting and, having exploited, on discarding. It is a global Dr. Frankenstein, spawning mutated monsters in its wake. Its "drain and dump" policies consistently boomerang to haunt it. Both Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega - two acknowledged monsters - were aided and abetted by the CIA and the US military. America had to invade Panama to depose the latter and Iraq for the second time to force the removal of the former. The Kosovo Liberation Army, an American anti-Milosevic pet, provoked a civil war in Macedonia. Osama bin-Laden, another CIA golem, restored to the USA, on September 11, 2001 some of the materiel it so generously bestowed on him in his anti-Russian days. Americans believes that the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is an economically self-sufficient and self-contained continent. Yet, it is not what Americans trust or wish that matters to others. It is what they do. And what they do is meddle, often unilaterally, always ignorantly, and oftentimes murderously. America has made it unambiguously clear that - with the exception of America - its sole interests rest in commerce. It has also made it clear that it will aggressively secure natural resources in whatever country by military means. It is totally corrupted by vacuous materialism. America is seen by many to be a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah, a cesspool of immorality and spiritual decay. Sam Vaknin

What is the U.S. Military Doing in Paraguay? by Ben Dangl August 03, 2005 The U.S. military is conducting operations in Paraguay and reportedly building a new base there. Human rights groups and military analysts in the region believe trouble is brewing. However, the U.S. embassy in Paraguay denies the base exists and describes the military activity as routine. According to an article in the Bolivian newspaper, El Deber, a U.S. base is being developed in Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay, 200 kilometers from the border with Bolivia. The base will permit the landing of large aircraft and is capable of housing up to 16,000 troops. A contingent of 500 U.S. troops arrived in Paraguay on July 1st with planes, weapons, equipment and ammunition. With Bolivia

How the United States Marked the 3rd Anniversary of the Downing Street Memo By David Swanson AfterDowningStreet.org Saturday 23 July 2005 Hundreds of people were turned away today as capacity crowds packed public forums in U.S. cities to discuss the Downing Street Memo and related evidence that President Bush lied about the reasons for war. Halls were filled to capacity and beyond in LA, Oakland, Seattle, Detroit, Northampton, New York, and elsewhere, for events led by Congress Members, including Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, John Conyers, and Maurice Hinchey. For the second time in the two months since we launched the www.AfterDowningStreet.org campaign, I've been overwhelmed by what we've tapped into. The first time was when we put up a website about the Downing Street minutes and a demand for an investigation into grounds for impeachment. I'd never seen a coalition grow so quickly or a website receive so much traffic. Today we saw crowds of people in red and blue states chant "Impeach Bush!" at events with leaders not yet ready to use the I word. The much maligned American Public is way out ahead of us - I'm telling you. I need to get outside the Beltway more! Today I did so, briefly. I drove over and spoke at an event in Montgomery County, Maryland. The questions I got from the crowd were along the lines of "Why is it so hard to get a Democrat from a solidly Democratic district to introduce articles of impeachment? What are they waiting for?" It's a hell of a question. They know that a Zogby poll in the end of June - the ONLY poll done on impeachment of Bush - found that 42 percent of Americans (meaning a strong majority of Democrats) favor impeachment if the President lied about the reasons for war. They know that 52 percent believe he did in fact so lie, according to ABC/Washington Post. What are they waiting for? If they're waiting for a show of public pressure, they got a good glimpse of it today. The blog entries and photos and audio clips that flowed into the www.AfterDowningStreet.org site all day were full of energy, excitement, enthusiasm, and righteous anger. At an event in Detroit with Congressman Conyers, constitutional law professor Bob Sedler asked the crowd if Bush had committed impeachable offenses, and the whole room shouted "YES!" The scene in New York was similar. Quoting our blogger: "I hope many of you are watching this amazing event online. This is a [sic] both a rowdy and a mature crowd! Liz Holtzman was awarded - and she deserved - a standing ovation for her tales of the Nixon Impeachment and her sane cautions about the difficulty of getting Congress to act. "It will only happen, she reminded us, via the WILL OF THE PEOPLE. "And now Rep. Hinchey is on fire - clear and direct and comprehensive in his exposition of the various crimes that the Bush Administration has, provably, committed. "It is incredible to be in this hot hall and to feel the energy of the overflow crowd. The will of the people is remarkably clear here..." Other reports that came in from around the country described events as small as this one in Ohio: "Twelve peacemakers from NE Ohio gathered at the Community Center of Newton Falls (zipcode 44444) to hear a dramatic reading of the Downing Street memo and engage in a lively discussion of local peace events and social justice issues. The entrance to the Community Center is prominently marked by a memorial to four young men from this small town who lost their lives in the War in Vietnam. We felt their spirit among us crying out to a new generation: the politicians lied and we died! Honor the dead - reveal the truth and stop the war!" Or this one in Louisville, Kentucky: "On this blistering hot day, the Louisville Peace Action Community (LPAC) held its DSM event at a busy intersection in a working class neighborhood in Louisville's southend. "We had about 40 people with signs & petitions and we had great visibility - thousands of cars saw us and many, many pedestrians talked to us. In our group we had an 82-year-old nun & several babies. "We also had a visit from 'George Bush' on a megaphone telling people NOT to read the Memo, because he didn't want them to know the truth. He sounded as stupid as ever. "We had an overwhelmingly positive response and were glad to find a good new intersection for future actions. After two hours in the blazing heat, we hit a local watering hole for a round of congratulations and good laughs. The truth will prevail." Many events were house parties, like this one: "A motivated and committed group has gathered at a house party in Raleigh, NC to watch the DVD of the Conyers' hearing and to continue the lively discussion we've already started. We have twice the expected turnout, with participants from all over the Triangle area. We're excited about building on this momentum and adding even more voices to this movement." Will the media cover these events and the facts that motivated them? I know of some newspapers, including major ones, doing stories for tomorrow. But the focus appears likely to be on the activism, more than the substance of the discussions. And there was substance! Former CIA analysts testified on the state of intelligence under Bush-Cheney. Families of soldiers who have died in Iraq, and veterans of the fighting in Iraq told their stories. Legal analysts and other experts provided historical perspective and understanding of the strength of the evidence. Every event discussed the evidence of the Downing Street Documents. Most events made plans to generate co-sponsors for H.Res. 375, a Resolution of Inquiry introduced by Congresswoman Lee on Thursday that would require the White House and the State Department to turn over all documentation of communications with officials of the UK between January and October 2002. In New York, Congressman Hinchey engaged in an analysis of strategies related to expanding the special prosecutor's reach or creating a new one. In Oakland, Daniel Ellsberg, known for having released the Pentagon Papers, said that the intelligence committees in Congress have the right to hold minority hearings with subpoena power and argued for pressuring the Democrats to do that rather than pressuring the Republicans to act like they care about their country. A "mainstream" radio station in one city called me to get in touch with someone at a local event. "It would be impolitic," the producer said, with no sign of intending irony, to simply cover what's in the Downing Street Memo. But, he said, he COULD cover a rally. At least we can be satisfied that on this day we became the media and did our own reporting. The results are at www.AfterDowningStreet.org. My favorite of the various short entries I posted today is this one: "I just got off the phone with Bill Moyer of the Backbone Campaign in Seattle. They, like the organizers today in New York, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Northampton, had to turn people away because the space was filled beyond capacity. "Congressman Jim McDermott, I'm told, gave a tremendous speech, as did spokespeople from Military Families Speak Out, and as I'm sure Bill did himself. "They also performed a humorous reenactment of the Downing Street Meeting. "Then they organized groups to write letters to the media, to Congress, and to the Governor of Washington State. "When I told Bill about the events elsewhere today, he said 'It's the beginning of the end for the Bush Administration.'" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Swanson is a co-founder of After Downing Street, serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild,

From Time magazine: "For more than a half-century, American foreign policy dealing with oil has typically been manipulative and misguided, often both at the same time. The pattern of intrigue has ranged from U.S. officials' secretly writing tax laws in the 1950s (so the Saudi royal family could collect more money from the sale of its oil and American companies could write off the added payments on their tax returns) to overthrowing a government that showed too much independence in handling its oil sales. To illustrate the dark side of American oil policy, we offer two tales, stitched together from declassified government documents and oil-industry memos, involving a pair of Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Afghanistan. The first one begins with the rise of a member of Iran's parliament, Mohammed Mossadegh, an impassioned speaker and popular politician who had long chafed at British domination over his country's oil.... In 1951 Mossadegh successfully pushed to nationalize Anglo-Iranian, became Iran's Premier and established the National Iranian Oil Co.....On Aug. 19, 1953, after the deaths of about 300 people in street riots, the 71-year-old Premier was overthrown.....The American-friendly Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had earlier fled the country, returned triumphantly, resumed the throne and reasserted his control....The CIA's fingerprints were everywhere." MSNBC observes, "In the words of Grant Goodman, the 2001 EPA Local Entrepreneur Award Winner: "Let's start with national security--the billions and billions we waste dancing around the issue, protecting those pipelines, invading Iraq, doing whatever else we're doing in the Middle East. It all gets down to continuing the flow of oil to this country." From The Observer (UK): "Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Defence Secretary, and Richard Perle, a key Pentagon adviser, see military action as part of a grand plan to reshape the Middle East. To this end, control of Iraqi oil needs to bypass the twin tyrannies of UN control and regional fragmentation into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish supplies. The neo-conservatives plan a market structure based on bypassing the state-owned Iraqi National Oil Company and backing new free-market Iraqi companies. But, in the run-up to war, the US oil majors will this week report a big leap in profits. ChevronTexaco is to report a 300 per cent rise. Chevron used to employ the hawkish Condoleezza Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser, as a member of its board. Five years ago the then Chevron chief executive Kenneth Derr, a colleague of Rice, said: 'Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas - reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to.' " From The Age (Australia): "Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the exiled opposition Iraqi National Congress, which is financed in part by US oil companies, has said he would not feel bound by contracts signed by Saddam and that "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil" under a new regime. The stakes are beyond imagination. According to a report for the Global Policy Forum, a think tank with consultative status at the UN, based on conservative assumptions of oil prices of $US25 a barrel and reserves of 250 billion barrels and a 50-50 profit split, yearly profits for the oil companies would run to $US29 billion a year - which is two-thirds of the $44 billion profits earned by the world's five major oil companies combined in 2001. The costs are also beyond comprehension, but trivial compared to the prize, which is control of prospective oil fields capable of producing more than $3 trillion of oil. From The Independent (U.K.) : "Once an American regime is installed in Baghdad, our oil companies will have access to 112 billion barrels of oil. With unproven reserves, we might actually end up controlling almost a quarter of the world's total reserves....The US Department of Energy announced at the beginning of this month that by 2025, US oil imports will account for perhaps 70 per cent of total US domestic demand. (It was 55 per cent two years ago.) As Michael Renner of the Worldwatch Institute put it bleakly this week, "US oil deposits are increasingly depleted, and many other non-OPEC fields are beginning to run dry. The bulk of future supplies will have to come from the Gulf region." No wonder the whole Bush energy policy is based on the increasing consumption of oil. Some 70 per cent of the world's proven oil reserves are in the Middle East." From the Indo-Asian News Service: "Sources said control over Iraq and its oil wealth would allow American firms to manipulate global market prices by deciding on production levels. Analysts said Iraq -- with proven reserves of 112 billion barrels of crude oil, next only to Saudi Arabia -- could throw the global oil market into a tailspin by resuming full-fledged production if U.N. sanctions against it were lifted. ....Iraq is permitted to produce 3 to 3.5 million barrels of oil a day under a U.N. oil-for-food programme, but actual production is about 1.5 to 2 million barrels. This ensures that crude oil prices are kept high, as a steep drop is not in the interest of U.S. companies, a source said. "If prices fall, it could jeopardise their deep water exploration, as it would not be viable due to the high costs involved. "By keeping Iraqi supplies disrupted, the U.S. is able to ensure that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are benefited, as they are able to raise their production to meet the shortfall and earn more revenue." The source noted that U.S. President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have strong links with the oil industry and alleged that the threat to attack Iraq was aimed at helping American oil companies. In 1973, Iraq nationalised all oil companies. By displacing Saddam Hussein and installing a friendly regime, U.S. and British companies would be able to re-enter the country and get a major share of its oil industry." From Mother Jones magazine: "To the hawks who now set the tone at the White House and the Pentagon, the region is crucial not simply for its share of the U.S. oil supply (other sources have become more important over the years), but because it would allow the United States to maintain a lock on the world's energy lifeline and potentially deny access to its global competitors. The administration "believes you have to control resources in order to have access to them," says Chas Freeman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. .... Iraq, in this view, is a strategic prize of unparalleled importance. Unlike the oil beneath Alaska's frozen tundra, locked away in the steppes of central Asia, or buried under stormy seas, Iraq's crude is readily accessible and, at less than $1.50 a barrel, some of the cheapest in the world to produce. Already, over the past several months, Western companies have been meeting with Iraqi exiles to try to stake a claim to that bonanza.... "Controlling Iraq is about oil as power, rather than oil as fuel," says Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of Resource Wars. "Control over the Persian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan, and China. It's having our hand on the spigot."....It is "highly possible" that the United States will maintain military bases in Iraq, Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative strategist, recently told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time," he said. "When we have economic problems, it's been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies." Form Counterpunch: "The Washington, D.C. Council on Foreign Relations, whose members include Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy prepared the report, Strategic Energy Policy, Challenges for the 21st Century. Key executives in the energy industry helped prepare the report, including former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay......Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield has been asked numerous times whether the U.S. is after Iraq's oil supplies and if that's what is driving this war. Rumsfield's most recent response to the question was "absolutely not." Yet the Baker report suggests that the U.S. should explore the possibility of a regime change in Iraq, line up "key allies" in Europe and Asia and "target (Iraq's) ability to maintain and acquire weapons of mass destruction" as the reasons behind attacking the country all in an effort to import oil into the U.S."

Oil-Control Formula By Robert Dreyfuss Monday 18 July 2005 George W. Bush's war in Iraq may not be going as planned. But for those who've stopped believing the myth that prewar Iraq represented any sort of threat to the United States, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence mounting that the real reason for the American invasion of Iraq was the most obvious one: Oil. In this case, "oil" doesn't mean that we went to war for the commercial benefit of U.S. oil companies-and in fact, as I reported in Mother Jones magazine in early 2003, before the war, most U.S. oil firms and their executives were against the war. But in Iraq, "oil" means the strategic commodity that is the single most important world resource. Even a novice geostrategist knows that who controls oil controls the world. And in this case, America's rival for control of oil is, first and foremost, China. Last week, China, Russia and four Central Asian "Stans," including Uzbekistan, rather impolitely asked the United States to withdraw from Central Asia. That part of the world is a significant oil and gas region, and neither Moscow nor Beijing want the United States to put down roots there. But Central Asia's oil and gas resources pale next to the Middle East, and that is where America's imperial presence has set off alarms in Beijing. Consider oil the Occam's Razor explanation of the war in Iraq. A June 24 New York Times article subtly attacked China and its CNOOC oil firm over its bid to buy Unocal, a U.S. oil company with long experience in Asia, calling the intended purchase (in its page-one headline) a "costly quest for energy control." But if any nation "controls" energy, it is the United States. Buried in the article was this fairly explosive paragraph: Privately, Chinese officials and analysts say oil is treated as a strategic crisis. They have sounded the alarm about Western and particularly American domination of oil supplies and influence over major oil-exporting nations, including Saudi Arabia and now Iraq, which has made China dependent on what many here refer to as American economic and military hegemony. Together, Saudi Arabia and Iraq control roughly half of the world's oil deposits, a share that is likely to rise as oil countries deplete their reserves. Saudi Arabia has long been in America's back pocket, and now Iraq- though not going well for the United States-is occupied by the American army and its quisling government is comprised of American puppets. It isn't shocking for the Chinese to have a legitimate beef here. Consider the following from the July 13 Washington Post . The headline read: "Big Shift in China's Oil Policy" and the subhead, more revealing, was "With Iraq Deal Dissolved by War, Beijiing Looks Elsewhere." It began: Until recently, China's view of the global energy map focused narrowly on the Middle East, which holds roughly two-thirds of the world's oil. Special attention was directed toward one well-supplied country: Iraq. Through cultivation of Saddam Hussein's government, China sought to develop some of Iraq's more promising reserves. Beijing advocated lifting the United Nations sanctions that prevented investment in Iraq's oil patch and limited sales of its production. Then the United States went to war in Iraq in 2003, wiping out China's stakes. The war and its aftermath have reshaped China's basic conception of the geopolitics of oil and added urgency to its mission to lessen dependence on Middle East supplies. It has reinforced China's fears that it is locked in a zero-sum contest for energy with the world's lone superpower, prompting Beijing to intensify its search for new sources, international relations and energy experts say. So. We went to war in Iraq, "wiping out China's stakes" in Iraq. And so, Chinese "officials and analysts" call the current situation an oil crisis, says the Times. Meanwhile, neoconservatives, Bush administration officials, some members of Congress and (unfortunately) a few labor-connected liberals are making a big deal of CNOOC's Unocal bid. For perspective, let's recall that Unocal is the company that did more to support the Taliban than any other U.S. entity, courting those Islamic radicals in search of a pipeline, oil and gas deal in central Asia-and hiring various malleable U.S. strategists to support the Taliban on its behalf, including incoming U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad. It's hard to imagine anything that China could do with Unocal that would do more damage to U.S. interests than Unocal has already done. Still, the outcry goes on, most recently during a congressional hearing at which Jim Woolsey, the former CIA director, and Frank Gaffney, the neocon-linked military strategist, railed against China. (CNOOC, by the way, is partly owned by Shell Oil, which bought a big chunk of the mostly state-owned firm when it conducted a public stock offering in 2002.) According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, road transportation in China will be the driving force for that country's enormous oil appetite in the next two decades, noting that "the Chinese passenger car market grew tenfold between 1990 and 2000." By 2025, says EIA, China's oil demand will reach nearly 13 million barrels of oil per day. (Saudi Arabia's entire output is only about 8 million barrels a day.) To meet such demand, China is searching everywhere, from Sudan to Venezuela to Central Asia. Iran and China are making oil deals, too. But by invading and occupying Iraq, the United States has pretty much locked up the most easily expanded source of oil in the world; Iraq, which manages to eke out about 2 million barrels a day, can produce six to eight times that much oil if it made sufficient investments in production facilities. Quite a prize, Iraq-if Washington can hold onto it. No wonder various neoconservative world hegemonists consider talk of an Iraq exit strategy to be treasonous. ------- Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect,

No matter how many schools America builds in Iraq it can never atone for the ocean of blood it has spilt there or the blatant misuse of military force to subjugate an entire nation and steal its resources. America has never been involved in a war more clearly immoral than Iraq. From the phony pretext of weapons of mass destruction to the sadistic treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the conflict has been a sickening chronicle of butchery and deception. Those who've watched the developments in Iraq know that the situation has steadily deteriorated. The military-juggernaut is lurching from Sunni city to city, destroying everything in its path. Falluja, Sammarra, Ramadi, Karbala, Heet, Qaim; everywhere the story is the same; the cities are pounded mercilessly, beyond the view of America's embedded media, while the people are denied water, food, electricity and vital medical supplies. The crusade to crush the resistance is reducing more and more Sunni cities to rubble and their people to destitution. Moral pretensions can never cleans America

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By ERIC MARGOLIS, TORONTO SUN MIAMI -- Last week Duncan Hunter, chairman of the powerful U.S. House armed services committee, went on TV to rebut charges by Amnesty International that the Bush administration is running "the gulag of our time" at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His ludicrous performance reminded me that my father, who dealt with many politicians when he was chairman of Elgin Watch Co., called congressmen "used car salesmen from Biloxi." Hunter is from California, but the shoe fits. The San Diego Cicero waved some fruit and a chicken leg at viewers to illustrate Guantanamo's haute cuisine, declaring its inmates have "never eaten better ... they've never been treated better -- courtesy of the American taxpayer!" Those lucky, lucky 540 Muslims at Gitmo. One wonders if Hunter plans to spend his next vacation there. Apparently it's a great, all-inclusive resort, with programs like sleep deprivation, intense noise assault, cigarette burning, water torture, beatings, humiliation. Deluxe wire cages are even included in the package. And what food! Not to be underthought, VP Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Don Rumsfeld also rushed to Gitmo's defence. Cheney advanced the masterful thesis that the camp had to be kept open because it held "bad guys." Rumsfeld claimed it must stay open because taxpayers had invested $100 million US to build it and spend $90 million annually to run it. The Senate majority leader, Republican Bill Frist, added, "to cut and run because of image problems is the wrong thing to do." Brilliant, Bill. In an earlier time, you might have advised: "Mein Fuhrer, ignore all that stupid criticism of our concentration camps. Stand firm!" Fortunately, decent Americans find the Guantanamo gulag an outrageous violation of everything the nation stands for. Former president Jimmy Carter, who has become the country's conscience in a time of growing totalitarian impulses, demanded it be closed, as have a growing number of legislators, including the Republican party's most courageous senator, Chuck Hegel. Americans are being told that all Guantanamo inmates are mad-dog terrorists. Not true. Many were rounded up in Afghanistan by local warlords offered $10,000 or more per head by the U.S. for "terrorist" captives. Some are Pakistanis who were visiting Afghanistan for religious or family matters. Some had joined Taliban forces to fight the Russian-backed Afghan Communist Party known as the Northern Alliance -- not against the U.S. Others were jihadis preparing to fight Uzbekistan's brutal communist regime or to oppose Indian occupation of Kashmir. Only a handful of real anti-U.S. al-Qaida members are there. Sen. John McCain, himself a former POW, is right to call for speedy trials of Guantanamo's inmates and an end to their indefinite jailing. But the past three years have shown that people charged with terrorism are unlikely to get fair trials in post-9/11 America. A military defence lawyer told Congress this week his superiors warned that if he represented a prisoner at Gitmo, "only a guilty plea would be accepted" -- shades of the U.S.S.R. ABC News revealed the U.S. Navy's general counsel, Alberto Mora, warned in 2003 that interrogation methods used against Muslim prisoners might expose senior officials to "liability and criminal prosecution." Guantanamo violates the Geneva Conventions, international and U.S. law. There are reports that in the rest of the secret U.S. gulags in Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Diego Garcia, even worse crimes are being committed against those suspected of anti-U.S. activities. If true, this is a criminal enterprise, and those involved should be prosecuted -- starting at the top. The White House says Taliban and jihadi fighters were "illegal combatants" deserving no mercy or legal protection. Then what of the 20,000 plus non-uniformed U.S. and British mercenaries operating in Iraq and Afghanistan as "civilian contractors," and non-uniformed U.S. Special Forces? Guantanamo, just 150 km from Miami, is not a problem of image. It is an arrant violation of every American value. It's worthy of KGB. Close this disgrace now.

Greg Palast's investigation was conducted for Harper's Magazine, BBC Television Newsnight The memo, which contains the ill-making admission that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed" to match the Iraq-crazed fantasies of our President, is sufficient basis for a hearing toward impeachment of the Chief Executive. But to that we must add the other evidence and secret memos and documents still hidden from the American public. Other foreign-based journalists could doubtless add more, including the disclosure that the key inspector of Iraq's biological weapons, the late Dr. David Kelly, found the Bush-Blair analysis of his intelligence was indeed "fixed," as the Downing Street memo puts it, around the war-hawk policy. Here is a small timeline of confidential skullduggery dug up and broadcast by my own team for BBC Television and Harper's on the secret plans to seize Iraq's assets and oil. February 2001 - Only one month after the first Bush-Cheney inauguration, the State Department's Pam Quanrud organizes a secret confab in California to make plans for the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam. US oil industry advisor Falah Aljibury and others are asked to interview would-be replacements for a new US-installed dictator. On BBC Television's Newsnight, Aljibury himself explained, "It is an invasion, but it will act like a coup. The original plan was to liberate Iraq from the Saddamists and from the regime." March 2001 - Vice-President Dick Cheney meets with oil company executives and reviews oil field maps of Iraq. Cheney refuses to release the names of those attending or their purpose. Harper's has since learned their plan and purpose -- see below. October/November 2001 - An easy military victory in Afghanistan emboldens then-Dep. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to convince the Administration to junk the State Department "coup" plan in favor of an invasion and occupation that could remake the economy of Iraq. And elaborate plan, ultimately summarized in a 101-page document, scopes out the "sale of all state enterprises" -- that is, most of the nation's assets, "... especially in the oil and supporting industries." 2002 - Grover Norquist and other corporate lobbyists meet secretly with Defense, State and Treasury officials to ensure the invasion plans for Iraq include plans for protecting "property rights." The result was a pre-invasion scheme to sell off Iraq's oil fields, banks, electric systems, and even change the country's copyright laws to the benefit of the lobbyists' clients. Occupation chief Paul Bremer would later order these giveaways into Iraq law. Fall 2002 - Philip Carroll, former CEO of Shell Oil USA, is brought in by the Pentagon to plan the management of Iraq's oil fields. He works directly with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. "There were plans," says Carroll, "maybe even too many plans" -- but none disclosed to the public nor even the US Congress. January 2003 - Robert Ebel, former CIA oil analyst, is sent, BBC learns, to London to meet with Fadhil Chalabi to plan terms for taking over Iraq's oil. March 2003 - What White House spokesman Ari Fleisher calls "Operations Iraqi Liberation" (OIL) begins. (Invasion is re-christened "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom.) March 2003 - Defense Department is told in confidence by US Energy Information Administrator Guy Caruso that Iraq's fields are incapable of a massive increase in output. Despite this intelligence, Dep. Secretary Wolfowitz testifies to Congress that invasion will be a free ride. He swears, "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. ...We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," a deliberate fabrication promoted by the Administration, an insider told BBC, as "part of the sales pitch" for war. May 2003 - General Jay Garner, appointed by Bush as viceroy over Iraq, is fired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The general revealed in an interview for BBC that he resisted White House plans to sell off Iraq's oil and national assets. "That's just one fight you don't want to take on," Garner told me. But apparently, the White House wanted that fight. The general also disclosed that these invade-and-grab plans were developed long before the US asserted that Saddam still held WDM: "All I can tell you is the plans were pretty elaborate; they didn't start them in 2002, they were started in 2001." November/December 2003 - Secrecy and misinformation continues even after the invasion. The oil industry objects to the State Department plans for Iraq's oil fields and drafts for the Administration a 323-page plan, "Options for [the] Iraqi Oil Industry." Per the industry plan, the US forces Iraq to create an OPEC-friendly state oil company that supports the OPEC cartel's extortionate price for petroleum. The Stone Wall Harper's and BBC obtained the plans despite official denial of their existence, then footdragging when confronted with the evidence of the reports' existence. Still today, the State and Defense Departments and White House continue to stonewall our demands for the notes of the meetings between lobbyists, oil industry consultants and key Administration officials that would reveal the hidden economic motives for the war. What are the secret interests behind this occupation? Who benefits? Who met with whom? Why won't this Administration release these documents of the economic blueprint for the war? To date, the State and Defense Department responses to our reports are risible, and their answers to our requests for documents run from evasive to downright misleading. Maybe Congress, with it's power of subpoena, can do better. Blogs, the Media and Democracy Let me conclude with a comment about those pesky "blogs" that so bother the New York Times. We should stand and offer a moment of quiet gratitude to the electronic swarm of gadfly commentators who make it so much harder for the US media to ignore news not officially blessed. Yes, Judith Miller's breathless reports for The Times that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction may have maintained "access" for the mainstream press to its diet of White House propaganda, but the blogs insure that, whatever nonsense the US press is biting on, the public need not swallow. This week Greg Palast's investigative team was named winner of a 2004-5 Project Censored award from the California State University at Sonoma Journalism School for their expos

The UN vote against war with Iraq was shot down by the French and Germans and had nothing to do with Kofi Annan. France and Germany both knew from their own intelligence services that the Anglo-U.S. accusations against Iraq were nonsense and Saddam was no threat to anyone except his own people. That is why they refused to join the war in spite of U.S. threats and tempting offers of oil concessions in postwar Iraq. The U.S. ordered its intelligence services to shut their eyes, toe the White House party line and accept as genuine patently false reports about the Mideast from known self-serving sources that wanted to see Iraq destroyed. The US House Intelligence Committee

The United States is not the kingdom of God and to be worshipped by man. The Kingdoms of this world are under the control of the devil. Luke 4:5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. 7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine Jesus said

Gulags: Shooting the messenger By Ehsan Ahrari America was often described by former president Ronald Reagan as the "shining city on the hill" and a beacon of hope to the world. Others talked about American "exceptionalism" - that is, the uniqueness of the country for its unfaltering commitment to uphold human dignity worldwide. That shining city and that exceptional force, under the simplistic slogan of the "war on terrorism", have now created their own gulags: Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay prison on the island of Cuba. In Abu Ghraib there was a widespread abuse of Iraqi prisoners, while in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility some detainees - whose crimes were never proven, and who were never charged with offenses or given rights to defend themselves - were tortured and abused. There were reported incidents of the desecration of the holy book of Islam, the Koran. In a speech accompanying the release of Amnesty International's 2005 human-rights report last week, Irene Khan, the organization's secretary general, said, "Guantanamo has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law." She urged the US to close the detention facility at its Cuban base and either release or charge its prisoners. What was George W Bush's response? In a news conference on Tuesday, he dismissed as "absurd" a charge by Amnesty International that his administration has created "the gulag of our times" at Guantanamo. He went on to add that allegations of mistreatment originated from detainees who "hate America" and who were trained to lie. Bush's dismissive reaction notwithstanding, something very serious has gone wrong, and America's status as a global moral force has been seriously damaged. G K Chesterton wrote, "America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence ..." Eminent American sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, expounding on Chesterton's preceding statement, observed, "Being an American ... is an ideological commitment. It is not a matter of birth. Those who reject American values are un-American." Such a concept is so unique that all believers in these values can lay certain claim to being Americans. The US - or America, as it is affectionately or even somewhat conceitedly called - has always stood for freedom, human dignity and the rule of law. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, most of these concepts were thoughtlessly ignored, or purposely discarded. When it came to the "detainees" - persons arrested in Afghanistan, or those who were arrested by the Pakistani government and later handed over to the US government - it appeared that there were virtually no rules of law to be followed. It was argued that the detainees were so dangerous they didn't deserve any of the civilized or humane treatment accorded to the accused in the American justice system. They were not even brought onto US soil. The government was afraid that the US courts would insist on applying the standard procedures of the accused. They were not even called prisoners, fearing that the next step would be to categorize them as "prisoners of war". They could not be called this, legal pundits said, because they were not wearing any uniforms, or were not part of a conventional military, when they were captured. Little thought was given to the fact that the very nature of their arrest - especially the massive arrests that were carried out in Afghanistan during the American military operation - was such that many innocents might have been among those rounded up. The operating rationale for the perpetration of this American treatment was the slogan "global war on terrorism". When there is a war, as the adage goes, there aren't any rules and everything is fair. How far did the American prison masters go in extracting information - called "intelligence" in the parlance of the "war on terrorism" - from those detainees? Where were the boundaries of allowable or decent human behavior? There were no such boundaries, it seems. The argument was that the US was dealing with the sworn enemies of America. So, it followed that all was fair, including insulting the detainees' religion and their religious symbols, especially since they decided to commit acts of terror on America in the name of their religion. The systematic brutality, torture, even murder, of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison gave Saddam Hussein the moniker "the Butcher of Baghdad". The US's widespread dehumanized treatment and torture of Iraqi prisoners forever deprived that country of the moniker of a "liberator" of Iraq. The worst part of that tragedy was that no ranking officials were found culpable for prisoner abuse. Only one reserve brigadier general was demoted. The worst that happened to Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the ranking military officer who presided over Abu Ghraib, is that he did not get his fourth star. America's top leadership in the executive branch shared the frame of mind that was directly responsible for the prisoner abuses in Abu Ghraib and also was behind similar abuses of detainees in Guantanamo. The only difference is that the top leaders were not caught on tape issuing orders for such actions. However, those who perpetrated those acts at the lower level of America's military and intelligence bureaucracies knew full well what they had to do in order to crack the prisoners and detainees. "Enemies" are never treated with humanity and decency, even in the American conduct of war. We have known that fact only too well from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. The "war on terror" is different because, despite everyone's denial, it contains a heavy dosage of religion. That frame of reference has been constantly alive. America's top leadership denies it. However, when it is seen from the ranks of low-level interrogators from the Central Intelligence Agency or by a young soldier from the backwoods, the "war on terror" remains nothing but a religious war. In this sense, America's exceptionalism has been soiled. The shining city on the hill appears to be made of chalk, with fake lights shining on it. The question remains whether America's reputation can be retained, whether that much-touted exceptionalism may be salvaged and rejuvenated? It is possible, but not while Bush dismisses the aforementioned charges of "gulag" as "absurd". The starting point of correcting any mistakes, undoing any wrongs - no matter how severe or grave - is first to admit the mistakes. Unless that happens, the second step - the earnest implementation of systematic corrective measures - cannot be taken. The US has to acknowledge the unfortunate transformation of its detention system (Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo) into virtual gulags and apologize for the behavior of American guards, who behaved anything but as interrogators of a democracy. Finally, it will have to allow the international community to see how those detainees and prisoners are treated. If the shoe were on the other foot, the Bush administration would not have accepted anything less. Ehsan Ahrari is also a regular contributor to the Global Beat Syndicate.

In the United States, you are brought up to believe that your nation is different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral; that you expand into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy. But if you know some history you know that's not true. If you know some history, you know you massacred Indians on this continent, invaded Mexico, sent armies into Cuba, Philippines and South america. You killed huge numbers of people, and you did not bring them democracy or liberty. You did not go into Vietnam to bring democracy; you did not invade Panama to stop the drug trade; you did not invade Afghanistan and Iraq to stop terrorism. Your aims were the aims of all the other empires of world history -- more profit for corporations, more power for politicians. I want to remind you also that when the war in Vietnam was going on, and young Americans were dying and coming home paralyzed, and your government was bombing the villages of Vietnam killing millions -- bombing schools and hospitals and killing ordinary people in huge numbers -- it looked hopeless to try to stop the war. But just as in the Southern movement, people began to protest and soon it caught on. It was a national movement. Soldiers were coming back and denouncing the war, and young people were refusing to join the military, and the war had to end. The lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government may try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies.

Translation, the writer here wants more apologies and appeasement by the United States, rather than stand as the one super power in the world. Rather than stand as a beacon of light in a world full of darkness. Rather than hold the line on aggregious human rights violations by tryants and tyrannical governments. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It's sad but Bush has turned America into a tyrannical government. Just look at the 56-page legal memo commissioned by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that sought to justify torture of prisoners at the Guantanamo prison camp? Memos were revealed from the White House, Pentagon, Justice Department and CIA sanctioning torture and seeking ways to evade the 1996 US War Crimes Act, which carries the death penalty, and the Geneva Conventions banning mistreatment, degradation or torture of prisoners. The administration clamed that President Bush had authority as commander -in-chief to approve torture or `severe

US Nuclear Hypocrisy By DAVID KRIEGER Every five years the parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty meet in a review conference to further the non-proliferation and disarmament goals of the treaty. This year the conference ended in a spectacular failure with no final document and no agreement on moving forward.. The failure of the treaty conference is overwhelmingly attributable to the nuclear policies of the Bush administration, which has disavowed previous US nuclear disarmament commitments under the treaty. The Bush administration is pressing other nations to forego their nuclear options, while failing to fulfill its own obligations under the disarmament provisions of the treaty. The treaty is crumbling under the double standards of American policy, and may not be able to recover from the rigid "do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do" positions of the Bush administration. These policies are viewed by most of the world as high-level nuclear hypocrisy. What the US did at the treaty conference was to point the finger at Iran and North Korea, while refusing to discuss or even acknowledge its own failure to meet its obligations under the treaty. Five years ago, at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the parties to the treaty, including the US, agreed to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. Under the Bush administration, nearly all of these obligations have been disavowed. The parties to the treaty are aware that the Bush administration is seeking funding from Congress to continue work on new earth penetrating nuclear weapons ("bunker busters"), while telling other nations not to develop nuclear arms. They are also aware that the Bush administration has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to pursue a destabilizing missile defense program, and has not supported a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, although the US had agreed to support these treaties in the 13 Practical Steps. The failure of this treaty conference makes nuclear proliferation more likely, including proliferation to terrorist organizations that cannot be deterred from using the weapons. The fault for this failure does not lie with other governments as the Bush administration would have us believe. It does not lie with Egypt for seeking consideration of previous promises to achieve a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. Nor does the fault lie with Iran for seeking to enrich uranium for its nuclear energy program, as is done by many other states, including the US, under the provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It would no doubt be preferable to have the enrichment of uranium and the separation of plutonium, both of which can be used for nuclear weapons programs, done under strict international controls, but this requires a change in the treaty that must be applicable to all parties, not just to those singled out by the US. Nor can the fault be said to lie with those states that, having given up their option to develop nuclear weapons, sought renewed commitments from the nuclear weapons states not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states. It is hard to imagine a more reasonable request. Yet the US has refused to relinquish the option of first use of nuclear weapons, even against non-nuclear weapons states. The fault for the failure of the treaty conference lies clearly with the Bush administration, which must take full responsibility for undermining the security of every American by its double standards and nuclear hypocrisy. The American people must understand the full magnitude of the Bush administration's failure at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. This may not happen because the administration has been so remarkably successful in spinning the news to suit its unilateralist, militarist and triumphalist worldviews. As Americans, we can not afford to wait until we experience an American Hiroshima before we wake up to the very real dangers posed by US nuclear policies. We must demand the reversal of these policies and the resumption of constructive engagement with the rest of the world. David Krieger

Another thing that needs to be pointed out is the self righteousness of Job. He argued with God proclaiming his own righteousness. When we get to the point that we are dependant on our own righteousness more than Gods Righteousness and start arguing with God in this way, we are in for a mighty fall. When we argue with God in this way we are saying that we believe we are more righteous than God himself. Our own righteousness can never save us! We must be dependant on Gods righteousness ONLY! and in the Christians case we must plead Gods righteousness through Jesus Christ. Our own righteousness stinks, its pride and arrogance. It wasn