How we respond to terrorism will say a great deal about us...

That's why I've been forced to become an outspoken critic of our President.  Below you'll find a brief analysis and links to articles I've written and sources for the information I mention.
Dave Wells, Ph.D. (Political Economy & Public Policy)

Selections from the Transcript!!

PHILIP COYLE (Assistant Secretary of Defense 1994-2001): "A lot of people who supported the war in Iraq actually believed that Iraq had the capability to fire missiles that could reach the United States carrying payloads of nuclear or chemical or biological weapons. Iraq has never had the capability to do that. They didn’t have it in the first gulf war, they didn’t have it in this war in Iraq and they don’t have any way of getting it in the future."

MEL GOODMAN (worked for CIA from 1966-1986): "[On nuclear weapons] the intelligence community did a pretty good job. I think for the most part they made it clear that the evidence was not there to show that Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear capability let alone whether or not it had a nuclear capability which it didn’t.

JOE WILSON (served 23 years as a foreign service dipolomat. Was asked by the Pentagon in 2002 to investigate the alleged Niger-Iraq nuclear material agreement and found it untenable.  When he went public after Bush stated the Niger-Iraq nuclear transaction was documented fact, a smear campaign was launched against him that including the criminal act of outing his wife as a CIA agent by Bob Novack from still unknown administration sources)
It is just inconceivable to anybody who understands Saddam Hussein and understands the nature of highly centralized dictatorships, generally that dictators would want to give up control of their most potent weaponry because once you’ve given up control, you have no control. So you can’t say to Al Qaeda- you will use this or you won’t use it. The decision on whether or not they’re going to use it depends on what Osama Bin Laden does. Do you want to entrust your fate to Osama Bin Laden and his nihilistic ways. I don’t think so. Saddam Hussein is a psychopath and a sociopath, he was not an irrational being in the sense that he was going to insure his own demise by doing something like that.

GEORGE W. BUSH: "We cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun. It could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

CONDOLEEZA RICE: "We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

GEORGE W. BUSH: "Secretly and without fingerprints he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists or help them develop their own."
 

• Walt Disney presents George Bush as "The Lying King"
• Another War "Victory"...A New Opportunity(posted April 19, 2003)
• The Road to War
• Free Press or Propaganda?
• The Emperor's New Clothes (the history Bush doesn't want you to know- draft posted April 4, 2003)
• Help the Kids in Iraq (Oxfam Campaign)
• Web Sites to Learn More
• Think Globally Act Locally

"I saw their faces, and I felt so bad for them." Army Sgt. Tony Menendez pities Iraqi soldiers who often have no uniforms and  drive up in pick up trucks to confront the invasion of their country."Their technology is sad...

Wars are planned and championed by the folks who stroll the corridors of power. But they are fought by ordinary men and women and their families, who have to watch their budgets closely, and tend to all their daily duties, while hoping against hope that no one really close to them gets lost in the madness.
(Bob Herbert, New York Times 3-24-03)

But why doesn't our press ever give you the name of an Iraqi citizen and his or her family, the one that just lost a dad, the one whose mother has shrapnel wounds in her chest, the one whose 6 year old daughter was just blown up?

Here's your chance...BAGHDAD - The moaning of Aisha Ahmed, eight, fills the hospital's emergency ward.

One of hundreds of child victims in the 15-day-old U.S.-led war in Iraq, she lost one eye and her face and body are peppered with wounds from what must have been a storm of shrapnel.

"Mummy! I want my mummy. Where is my mummy?" Aisha kept muttering. Yet neither the nurse nor the neighbor trying to comfort her dared to answer.  Her four-year-old brother Mohammad died and her mother...

On May 1st, I was invited by ABC Channel 15 to watch the photo-op speech which President Bush gave aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.  In that speech Bush formally declared an end to hostilities.  With me were a retired general, a mother of a soldier who was in Iraq, and a representative of the Assyrian community who had been supporting a US invasion to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and had promised in earlier interviews that the Iraqis would "lay down their arms and greet U.S. soldiers with flowers."  We were each interviewed after the speach, but only my comments were never aired.  Only my comments were critical of Bush and his  misleading claims in the speach regarding Iraq and any connection to September 11th and pointing out his hypocracy in pushing tax cuts while also supporting cuts in veteran benefits.
 
 

 

George Bush: THE LYING KING
The Record Speaks for Itself

Exploting the Politics of Fear:
9/11 was a transformative experience for us.  We were shocked by the utter disregard for human life, including their own, shown to us by the terrorists.  Subsequently we have come to believe that the terrorist organization Al Qaeda was responsible for this action.  They've never denied it, and all documentation suggests their involvement.

Al Qaeda is a fundamentalist Islamic military group coming from Wahabism in Saudi Arabia.  They certainly see everything about the West as contrary to Islam, and although Islam means "peace" in Arabic--they, like many religious zealots, use violence to pursue their aims.

What has it done to us as a country?  The most pervasive response to 9/11 was "fear."  This politics of fear not only gripped the country, but the Bush Administration keeps pouring gasoline on those fears to inflame them.  So much so that we are about to enter war against Iraq and then appoint rulers and occupy it for many years.

Building Support for War with Misinformation (why does this happen with a "free" press?):
Did you know that 45 percent of Americans in the March 7-9, 2003 poll of the NY Times/CBS said that Saddam Hussein WAS PERSONALLY INVOLVED IN THE 9/11 TERRORIST ATTACKS?   An earlier poll of by the Pew Center for People and the Press in early October 2002 found 2/3 of Americans believed Saddam Hussein had helped the 9/11 terrorists, and four out of 5 who supported war believed this to be true.  Even though Saddam Hussein was not presently close to having a nuclear weapon, only one-tenth of Americans knew this to be true.

The 9-11 connection gives the greatest justification for war because it would suggest Saddam Hussein had already attacked the United States. Not even the Bush White House has made that statement, yet half of America believes it. They believe it because our President frequently mentions Al Qaeda and Iraq supporting international terrrorism in one breath.  For instance, take this quote from his Thursday, March 6 news conference:

"[Saddam] has trained and financed Al Qaeda type organizations. I take the threat seriously. The price of doing nothing exceeds the price of taking action."

Bush also says Iraq is a great threat to our national security.  He may believe that, but we don't have any real evidence for that (click here for why)

Finally, our President says he prays a lot and is "humbled" by the thought of others praying for him.  A strong base of support for the President and the war comes from Christians.  Yet the example of Jesus, much like the example of Gandhi and Martin Luther King is one of compassion and love, not hatred and violence.

If there's one article for you to read, read Joy Gordon's Article in the November 2002 issue of Harper's which illustrates in chilling detail how the United States has abused concerns about dual use to use the sanctions to kill the people, and especially the children of Iraq.  This is not the act of a compassionate country.  While we may all wish to see Saddam Hussein removed from power, we need to do it by building up the people of Iraq, not dropping bombs on them or by depriving them of clean water. We should have combined military controls with ample humanitarian aid 12 years ago, and if we had, we'd have built the groundwork for greater justice and greater peace.  Yes, Iraq did turn down the initial oil for food program, but that initial proposal was a pittance of what was needed--Iraq dropped its opposition once the humanitarian costs became horribly clear, but the oil for food programme is still  inadequate with malnutrition and disease rampant.  Despite this the United States continues to interfere and keep critical supplies from the people of Iraq.

For those expecting democracy to emerge in Iraq. Don't forget how much Bush budgeted in his latest budget to help rebuild war-torn Afghanistan.

Do you really think he's willing to bomb Iraq and then devote the necessary resources, especially without the support of our allies, in rebuilding that country and preventing the tensions that lie beneath the surface of that country from tearing it apart in civil warfare?  Democracy is hardly a likely outcome.

If we want to get at the root of terrorism, we have to revisit the tenets of our foreign policy that fail to embrace human rights (click here for more--update: note the death toll in Afghanistan of innocents due to U.S. bombing is believed to be between 1,500 and 4,000, while the death toll in the 9/11 terrorist attacks was nearly 3,000).  We do need to destroy terrorist networks, but we must also think about where terrorists come from and why, as well as how many innocent people we kill when we resort to full-scale war rather than a more focused use of our armed forces.

The Alternative to War on Iraq has NEVER been considered:

• Removing sanctions that impact the people and not Saddam Hussein AND addressing the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people (oil for food programme has been completely inadequate)
• Using targeted military strikes of suspected facilities ONLY if U.N. inspectors are denied access to those sites with due dilligence to avoid killing innocent people before strikes are done.
• The Reality is that Iraq is not a threat to anyone in the region, much less the United States. Why do you think Turkey, a steadfast U.S. ally and fellow member of NATO that also borders Iraq, would say NO to U.S. troops even when promised $15 billion in aid from the United States (i.e., bribe money).  Ninety percent of the Turkish people oppose war.
• The Bush Administration began war planning immediately after war with Afghanistan.  How do we know?  In April 2002, the United States took the unprecendented step of forcing out the U.N. chemical weapons convention chief.  His crime? Trying to get Iraq to join the chemical weapons convention and be subject to unannounced inspections. The big question--why wasn't this widely reported?
• The Bush Administration's position has ALWAYS been removal of Saddam Hussein by either force, coup or exile.  The United Nations approval on disarming was only pursued because that was the only legal manner to get the United Nations to sign on.  France, Russia and countries throughout the world soon realized that the call for disarmament was a ruse, as very good progress was made on disarmament on what is a fairly limited arsenal to start with.

The grand deception: blaming Saddam Hussein for killing his own people without acknowledging the much greater human cost to innocent Iraqis of sanctions enforced by the United States (U.N. sanctions could not be removed without U.S. approval).

• Water Crisis (we bombed water treatment plants and now water-borne diseases are rampant)
• Food Crisis (malnutrition is rampant)
•  So you want to donate to the Iraqi people (New Zealand example)
• Hurting the Children
• A Pediatrican's Nightmare (kids die of treatable illness--no medicine)
• Children Working, Not in School (they must to suvive and schools are closing)
• A Ruined Economy (trying to survive on $60 per person per year)
• Generation Growing Up in Poverty (half of Iraq's population under 16)
• Iraq's Once Prosperous Economy Put Back to the Stone Age
• Widespread Challenge of Survival
• Former head of UN Oil for Food Programme Resigned in Protest and Speaks Out
• Read Joy Gordon's Article in November 2002 Harper's to discover the level of U.S. culpability for the sanctions and death in Iraq.

Many have tried to make it possible for Americans to have fuller access to more accurate information about our Iraqi policy well before the current preparation for war media blitz. Voices in the Wilderness has worked tirelessly.  They just weren't deemed "newsworthy."  Read this example.

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