Fixing The Evidence To Support The Propaganda

• Scare stories about terrorist threat blown away
• http://www.ireland.com/
• Mirror URL: http://tinyurl.com/8pz76
  
• Evidence prosecution lawyers tried to link to Afghanistan and al-Qaeda in trials of terrorist suspects has been shown to be false.
  by Duncan Campbell
  
• 04/15/05 "The Irish Times" - - Colin Powell does not need more humiliation over the manifold errors in his February 2003 presentation to the United Nations. But on Wednesday a London jury brought down another section of the case he made for war - that Iraq and Osama bin Laden were supporting and directing terrorist poison cells throughout Europe, including a London ricin ring.
  Wednesday's verdicts on five defendants, and the dropping of charges against four others, made it clear there was no ricin ring. Nor did the "ring" make or have ricin. Not that the government shared that news with the British public. Until today, the public record for the past three fear-inducing years has been that ricin was found in the Wood Green flat occupied by some of Wednesday's acquitted defendants. It was not.
  The third plank of the al-Qaeda/Iraq poison theory was the link between what Powell labelled the "UK poison cell" and training camps in Afghanistan. The evidence the British government wanted to use to connect the defendants to Afghanistan and al-Qaeda was never put to the jury. That was because last autumn a trial within a trial was secretly taking place. This was a private contest between a group of scientists from the Porton Down military research centre and myself. The issue was: where had the information on poisons and chemicals come from?
  The information - five pages in Arabic, containing amateur instructions for making ricin, cyanide and botulinum, and a list of chemicals used in explosives - was at the heart of the case. The notes had been made by Kamel Bourgass, the sole convicted defendant. His co-defendants believed that he had copied the information from the internet. The prosecution claimed that it had come from Afghanistan.
  I was asked to look for the original source on the internet. This meant exploring Islamist websites which publish Bin Laden and his sympathisers, and plumbing the most prolific source of information on how to do harm: the writings of the American survivalist right and the gun lobby. The experience of being an expert witness on these issues has made me feel a great deal safer on the streets of London. These were the internal documents of the supposed al-Qaeda cell planning the "big one" in Britain. But the recipes were untested and unoriginal, borrowed from US sources. Moreover, ricin is not a weapon of mass destruction. It is a poison which has only ever been used for one-on-one killings and attempted killings.
  It was the discovery of a copy of Bourgass's notes in Thetford in 2002 which inspired the wave of horror stories, and government announcements and preparations for poison-gas attacks. It is true that when the team from Porton Down entered the Wood Green flat in January 2003, their field equipment registered the presence of ricin. But these were high-sensitivity field detectors, for use where a false negative result could be fatal.
  A few days later, Dr Martin Pearce, head of the Biological Weapons Identification Group, found that there was no ricin. However, when this result was passed to London, the message reportedly said the opposite.
  The planned government case on links to Afghanistan was based solely on papers which a freelance journalist working for the Times had scooped up after the US invasion of Kabul. Some were in Arabic, some in Russian. They were far more detailed than Bourgass's notes. Nevertheless, claimed Porton Down chemistry chief Dr Chris Timperley, they showed a "common origin and progression" in the methods, thus linking the London group of North Africans to Afghanistan and Bin Laden. The weakness of Dr Timperley's case was that neither he nor the intelligence services had examined any other documents which could have been the source. We were told that Porton Down and its intelligence advisers had never previously heard of the "Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, containing recipes for ricin and much more". This document, written by veterans of the 1980s Afghan war, has been on the internet since 1998.
  All the information roads led west - not to Kabul, but to California and the US midwest. The ricin recipes now seen on the internet were invented 20 years ago by survivalist Kurt Saxon, who advertises books and videos on the internet.Before the ricin ring trial began, I called him in Arizona. For $110, he sent me CDs and videos on bombs, missiles, booby-traps - and ricin. We gave a copy of the ricin video to the police. When, in October, I showed that the chemical lists found in London were an exact copy of pages on an internet site in Palo Alto, California, the prosecution gave up on the Kabul and al-Qaeda claims.
  The most ironic twist was an attempt to introduce an "al-Qaeda manual" into the case. The manual - called the Manual of the Afghan Jihad - had been found on a raid in Manchester in 2000. It was given to the FBI to produce in the 2001 New York trial relating to the first attack on the World Trade Centre.
  But it was not an al-Qaeda manual. The name was invented by the US department of justice in 2001 and the contents were rushed on to the internet to aid a presentation to the Senate by the then attorney general, John Ashcroft, supporting the US Patriot Act. To show that the manual was written in the 1980s during the US-supported war against the Soviet occupation was easy. The ricin recipe it contained was a direct translation from a 1988 US book - The Poisoner's Handbook by Maxwell Hutchkinson.
  We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an al-Qaeda-trained super-terrorist. - (Guardian Service)
  
• Duncan Campbell is an investigative writer and a scientific expert witness on computers / telecommunications. He is author of "War Plan UK."
  © The Irish Times
  
• (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
  
  

GodAssault: Morality as the Ultimate Game

• [When I meet Just 'One' Christian Fundamentalist that Actually Lives their lives according to what they Preach to Everyone than I Just Might Give A Listen!!!! The more Intense the More Away from a so called Christian Life they Actually Live in their Public Persona! Just become a People watcher and Observe, it won't surprise anyone at all, for Hypocrisy is Actually what they follow with No Guilty Conscience, and No Conscience at all. Just observe the Leadership of Governments, Businesses, and yes Religions that Espouse this 'Righteous Morality', along with All their 'Sheeple'! One of the Biggest Threats to any moves towards a PeaceFul World is this, Once More, Growth of the False Religious Fundamentalists movement! This has accurred a number of times, over history, and instead of causing some sort of 'Garden of Eden', here on Earth, it Causes Death and Destruction on a Huge Scale!! One of the TruthFul Teachings of any Established Religious Ideology is that it's the Individuals Responsibility to live according to what is Right and not Wrong, it's the Individuals Life that Silently sets the Example for others to observe and possibly learn from, it's the Individuals way of Treating Others that rewards them in how the others Treat Them! ]

• Published on Friday, April 15, 2005 by TomDispatch.com < http://tinyurl.com/c6374 >
  Mirror URL: http://tinyurl.com/drqka
  GodAssault: Morality as the Ultimate Game
  by Lisa Lambert
  
  
• Because certain trees are sprouting in the Middle East, the world will soon end. Because the European Union has grown to its current size, fiery death and plagues of locusts are about to descend on the planet. Because Israel established a homeland, non-believers will, in a short while, suffer agonizing horrors before being damned to an eternity of pain.
  And now a word from our sponsor -- a real estate agent helping Christians find their dream homes.
  This summer, I joined the rush hour in San Bernardino. Every day, descending the final hill from Los Angeles into the fastest growing region in California, I tuned into Christian radio station K-Wave. The station broadcast lessons on Christ-sanctioned financial planning as well as sermons on faith-rooted marriages. But its mission of missions was to map out, just the way the Weather Channel describes approaching storm fronts, the end of the world now bearing down upon us.
  The deep voice of Pastor Chuck Smith filled my car each morning. Founder of Calvary Chapel, a "mega-church" with a publishing company, Bible colleges, and franchises in every state, Pastor Chuck inspired two followers to write the best-selling Left Behind novels about the Apocalypse. Soon obsessed with the station, I started wishing my Democratic friends in L.A. would join me in K-Wave's freeway congregation.
  Each evening I returned home to find them wringing their hands over the possibility that a born-again Christian president, who laced his speeches with secret signals to fellow worshippers and considered praying his most important action before starting an unjust war, might be re-elected -- and re-elected by religious nuts so stupid they believed Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie were lovers.
  As it happened, those "nuts" won the election for the president. Ill-prepared newscasters promptly relabeled them "moral voters," showing how little they understood about the new religion practiced in Calvary Chapel.
  Democrats could, of course, have turned on K-Wave (or its equivalent), but even then they might not have grasped the most basic element of Calvary Chapel: It isn't guided by the outside world's concept of the Christian right's stern and unforgiving morals code.
  While Calvary Chapel encourages Christians to enjoy "fellowship" with God, the doctrine it preaches is guided not by any ordinary sense of morality but by a gruesome vision of the end of the world and a set of instructions for how to deal with it.
  Listening to that doctrine each morning and evening, I felt the sensations American audiences first discovering Hong Kong action flicks must have known: a fascination with the exotic combined with awe at the extreme violence it displayed. Granted, my perspective is unusual. Unlike most of my Democratic friends, I was raised in a church that practiced New Thought Christianity just up the freeway from Pastor Chuck's compound. It offered a new agey cocktail of faith, drawing heavily from Buddhism, Hinduism, and transcendentalism. Just the type of stuff Calvary Chapel abhors.
  My childhood of crystals and sunshine made Calvary Chapel-style evangelism, with its emphasis on conversion and its belief in testifying to God's power, something strange and deeply mysterious. I felt like an anthropologist investigating a new culture as I listened to its broadcasts, and what I found makes me refuse to picture the organization as an army of moral voters.
  Faith, California-Casual Style
  If my liberal friends had accompanied me to the Calvary Chapel branch in Livermore to meet other listeners they might have wondered if we were in a real church. The squat, one-room chapel, with its rows of chairs, resembled a conference room. I, though, recognized it immediately as California-casual-style worship. New Thought had had the same laid-back vibe at its gatherings.
  Under a 1960's suburban sun, spiritual wanderers established my childhood church. Around the same time Pastor Chuck began ministering to Jesus freaks and Republicans in Orange County. My church stagnated in the 1980's. Its meditation garden now sits empty. Pastor Chuck's congregation, on the other hand, grew until Calvary Chapel took up a campus as large as a mall and spread beyond the country's borders.
  My friends might have been surprised that as I sat in this chapel, where the outline of a dove on the back wall replaced a traditional altar, I wasn't thinking about morality or stupidity. I was simply staring at the people around me who wore jeans, shushed babies, and tried not to kick over their purses on the floor. When the pastor asked everyone to greet each other, a woman buzzed up to urgently give me important bullet points from her life. One: She met her husband at church. Two: Her new baby was named Grace. I could escape the future of lonely desperation that she'd narrowly avoided, she implied, by finding a man here.
  The Left Behind books serve as Calvary Chapel's literary touchstone, even though they're closer in quality to Star Wars paperbacks than anything penned by St. Augustine or St. Thomas More. In the series, certain people are physically sucked up to heaven, leaving those who don't make the celestial cut to suffer through the last, grim days of life on Earth. The people in the chapel had the feel of those left behind not by God, but by our world. They weren't losers, but they'd lost out.
  Religious scholar Donald E. Miller, who studied Calvary Chapel for his book Reinventing American Protestantism, found its congregations to be dominated by blue-collar Americans. Only 20% of church members had a college degree. Over half of the pastors Miller surveyed had grown up, or spent parts of their lives, in single-parent homes; 70% had parents who abused drugs or alcohol. The numbers were similar for the congregants, almost a third of whom claimed to have been physically and/or sexually abused.
  In my friends' world, such numbers would be as alien as the Rapture itself, but I suspect Pastor Chuck knows them intimately. His mission is to embrace those the world leaves behind and promise them a new chance in the after-life.
  The dove on the chapel wall, I decided, wasn't the typical symbol of peace found in many Christian art works. In the Old Testament, a dove lands on Noah's Ark after the entire earth has been flooded, proving there's land nearby and providing hope for a new life to all the creatures crammed onto the wooden boat. In the same way Calvary Chapel's dove offered hope not of peace but of a change in fortune, at least for those who belong to the church.
  Playing by God's Rules
  What liberals might have learned from visiting Livermore, listening to K-Wave, or reading Calvary Chapel-inspired web sites is that "morality," at least as they imagine it, is beside the point. In fact, Calvary Chapel-style Christianity is a complex system with intricate rules. Think of it as God's game. Instead of X-Box's MechAssault, this is GodAssault.
  If you play the game correctly, you'll receive that change in fortune. If not here, then in the after-life.
  The guidebook to the game's moves is the Bible; the key steps to winning are in the Book of Revelations. Conventional notions of "morality," in which people adapt standards of right and wrong to an ever-changing world, don't hold here. Neither do the teachings from my childhood, which emphasized enlightenment and a sense of knowing God through your mind and heart.
  In GodAssault, your conscience is not your guide.
  The Bible is.
  Like many evangelical forms of Protestantism, Calvary Chapel preaches that everything a Christian needs is written, word by holy word, in the Bible. In Miller's surveys, everyone from Calvary Chapel's pastors to its recent converts said they took the Bible literally. If you read the Book of Revelations as the physical, material truth, then you come to see God's game as one played in a swirling, planet-devouring vortex of blood and violence.
  Pastor Chuck's main radio work involved describing this unstoppable Apocalypse, doling out a new chapter each morning. It begins as the Antichrist arrives on Earth -- some time after the Jews establish a Holy Land -- to annihilate a large percentage of the planet's population. Then, Christ comes to judge the living and the dead, sending the bad guys to a just and unspeakably gory end.
  Calvary Chapel's Apocalypse, however, bears a resemblance to the fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons. Just as "D and D" players excel by learning complicated strategies and knowing arcane sub-rules of sub-rules, Calvary Chapel Christians win by following a set of instructions taken straight from the Bible. They must know the secret passwords, identify their enemies correctly, and understand what lies beneath the various layers of evil. False prophets will become popular in the end times, for example, and those who don't want to be damned will recognize these poseurs and refuse to worship with them.
  Whether heaven's riches are 17 virgins or a beautiful set of angel wings, Calvary Chapel won't say. Prizes aren't important to the game, because winning is defined as not losing; not having to endure unthinkable tortures. And not losing rests on adhering to all of the rules.
  My friends in L.A. wanted to know what this new "morality" meant in terms of American politics. Was there some way to maneuver on this new political landscape, dominated by religion, and reclaim "the moral voter"?
  Leading Democrats were also looking to put new moral moves in their political playbook. At a Roe v. Wade commemoration Hillary Clinton announced that her once-firm stance on legal abortion had turned Jell-o soft, showing exactly what churches like Calvary Chapel mean to politicians. Clinton and other party leaders are now determined to win over Calvary Chapel-style evangelicals by taking stands they imagine those Christians will consider "moral." In the meantime, they hope to preserve their wider political philosophies in the shadows.
  But take heed, oh keepers of the Democratic word, I say unto you: Lo, do not give into the temptation of moral appearances that will not bear fruit in the next elections. Change your view on abortion and they still won't vote for you, Hillary, not if you don't play the total version of GodAssault.
  My aunt often complained that Eve, her cleaning lady, rambled on about God and the end of the world while dusting. Eve had dropped out of community college to marry a drug addict, divorced, and then married an alcoholic. She couldn't stop having children or getting fired from part-time jobs.
  I liked Eve. As she told me about how she struggled to afford milk for her kids and gas for her car, I realized that, in this world with its rules, Eve was on the losing team. But there was hope in Pastor Chuck's board game of a religion.
  I didn't ask Eve if she attended a Calvary Chapel, but I did hear her repeat the game's rules. And why shouldn't she? If Eve followed the game's demands, she would stop suffering one day. She would win. For all sorts of struggling souls the promise of eternal salvation, and victory over those left behind, is stronger than any weak pledge a politician could make.
  Lisa Lambert, a student at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, rebelled against her upbringing in adolescence with the radical act of joining an Episcopalian church.
  © 2005 Lisa Lambert
  ###
  

A Call For Action By 'Rachels' Parents

Graig and Cindy Corrie At VFP Convention
I Met the Corries as the Build Up to the War Started, both working for Peace, Graig is a Fellow Vietnam Veteran Brother. They were within the Coalitions For Peace in Charlotte NC. We were told about what Rachel was doing in Palestine/Israel, than the Tragedy Occurred, Shocking Tens of Thousands, or more, Around The World! Rachel Shall Never Be Forgotten, nor The Way She Was Taken From Us!!

• Published on Thursday, April 14, 2005 by the Independent/UK
• http://tinyurl.com/4mbm4
• Parents of Peace Activist Killed by Israeli Bulldozer Target Caterpillar
  by Maxine Frith
• From boots to baseball caps, the Caterpillar fashion range is marketed as upmarket outdoor wear for label-conscious youth.
  But customers are now being urged to boycott the construction and clothing company because it supplies bulldozers to the Israeli government, which uses the vehicles to destroy Palestinian homes, roads and olive groves. They have also been used to build the controversial "security wall" which has attracted international opprobrium.
  Campaigners held an international day of action yesterday against Caterpillar, with demonstrations outside British plants and "flashmobbing" of the company's shops where protesters asked to try on shoes then sat reading a report that detailed the firm's alleged complicity in Israeli human rights abuses.
  Craig and Cindy Corrie, the parents of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist who was crushed and killed by an army-driven Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, are backing the boycott. Yesterday they handed in a copy of the report by the lobby group War on Want to the John Lewis department store in Oxford Street.
  John Lewis and the high street chain River Island are among the stockists of the clothing range.
  Mr and Mrs Corrie announced last month that they are suing Caterpillar for violating the Geneva Convention and American torture laws in allowing its equipment to be used against the Palestinian people and their homes.
  Mrs Corrie said: "Stores should not be selling Caterpillar clothing and people should not be buying it because of what is happening in Israel.
  "Our daughter was killed by a Caterpillar bulldozer and in the last four years, a tenth of the population of the West Bank have lost their homes as a result of Cat bulldozers being used by the military."
  She added: "The company knows what is going on, but they have refused to meet with us or to do anything about our concerns.
  "Rachel was always in favor of direct action, and people should realize that this is something they can do to register their protest against Caterpillar."
  The Corries were in London for last night's opening of a play based on their daughter's life and writing.
  The Caterpillar boycott is backed by more than 20 campaign groups and charities. They claim that more than 50,000 Palestinians have been made homeless by the Israeli army's use of Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozers in the last four years.
  Water wells, schools and hundreds of thousands of trees have been razed by the Israeli army.
  The equipment has also been used to destroy ancient olive groves and roads in the West Bank and to construct the security wall cut into Palestinian territories which has been condemned by the International Court of Justice.
  Louise Richards, chief executive of War on Want, said: "Caterpillar provides the Israeli military with bulldozers, knowing full well that they will be used for house demolitions in Palestine.
  "We are asking people to boycott their range of clothing and other products until they stop the supply of equipment to Israel's military."
  Caterpillar Incorporated made more than £1bn in profit last year.
  The Israeli army has more than 100 D9 bulldozers in use and recently placed an order for a further 25 vehicles.
  A spokesman for the firm said: "Caterpillar shares the world's concern over unrest in the Middle East and we certainly have compassion for all those affected by the political strife.
  "However, more than two million Caterpillar machines and engines are at work in virtually every country and region of the world each day.
  "We have neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use of that equipment.
  The Caterpillar campaign comes at a time when consumers are increasingly being urged to shun stores and companies that are said to have a bad ethical record.
  Lobby groups such as No Sweat have been effective in highlighting the exploitation of low-paid workers in developing countries where highly profitable brands such as Nike and Gap have factories.
  Boycotts and campaigns against Gap led last year to the company revoking contracts with more than 100 factories in Mexico, China, Russia and India because of their exploitation of staff and poor working conditions.
  War on Want plans to publish reports similar to the Caterpillar dossier on the supermarket giant Wal-Mart, notorious for its anti-union practices and Nestlé, which has been accused of breaking rules against the marketing of baby milk in developing countries.
  The unethical wardrobe: What not to wear
• CATERPILLAR BASEBALL CAP
  Sold in major outlets such as John Lewis and River Island, the clothing range has youth appeal, but has helped bolster the profits of a company that sells bulldozers to the Israeli government which uses them to destroy Palestinian homes and roads.
• FRENCH CONNECTION TOP
  It prides itself on its boho fashions and cheeky T-shirt slogans, but the Rough Guide to Ethical Shopping has slated French Connection for its "feeble" code relating to factory standards and suppliers, while the lobby group Labor Behind the Label says the firm has refused to reply to concerns about sweatshops.
• TESCO JEANS
  The supermarket posted record profits this week and caused a price war when it began selling jeans for £3, but critics say that its aggressive cost-cutting and expansion has been at the expense of low-paid workers abroad, while the firm has also been slated for the way it treats British farmers and suppliers.
• NIKE TRAINERS
  The sportswear giant has long been one of the biggest targets for ethical campaigners, who claim the company uses children and low-paid workers to make its products, while spending millions on advertising. The campaign group Sweatshop Watch says an average Nike worker would have to put in 72,000 years of labor to receive what the golfer Tiger Woods was paid for a five-year sponsorship contract.
  © 2005 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
  

National Security Legislative Calendar

• Council for a Livable World is disseminating a new weekly feature called a National Security Legislative Calendar. It will be sent via e-mail to all those who subscribe, and will also be available on our web site at: http://www.clw.org/nscalendar/
• The calendar will focus on the status of bills before Congress that encompass national security issues. It will provide updates of Congressional committee consideration of key bills and House and Senate floor schedules for these same bills. For example, this week, the schedule focuses on the $82 billion Supplemental Appropriations bill, the John Bolton nomination, the State Department bill and the Budget Resolution.
• The Calendar will focus more on the status of key legislation as oppose to hearings -- hearings are well-covered in the Friends Committee on National Legislation Nuclear Calendar.
• Other legislation covered include the Pentagon and Department of Energy authorization and appropriations bills and the State Department and foreign assistance bills.
• If you are interesting in trying this new service, please sign up at URL posted above, Of course you will be able to opt out at any time.
  Sincerely,John Isaacs and Guy Stevens

Rushdie [ and Millions More] Says Bush Policies Help Islamic Terrorism

• Published on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 Reuters
• http://tinyurl.com/5htgs
• Rushdie Says Bush Policies Help Islamic Terrorism
  by Mark Egan
  
• NEW YORK -- The Bush administration helps the cause of Islamic terrorism by failing to engage in serious dialogue with the international community, author Salman Rushdie said on Tuesday.
  Rushdie -- who lived for years under threat of death after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1989 pronouncement that his novel "The Satanic Verses" was blasphemous -- said he believes U.S. isolationism has turned not just its enemies against America, but its allies too.
  "What I think plays into Islamic terrorism is ... the curious ability of the current administration to unite people against it," Rushdie told Reuters in an interview.
  Rushdie said he found it striking how the "colossal sympathy" the world felt for the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been squandered so quickly.
  "It seems really remarkable that the moment you leave America ... you find not just America's natural enemies, but America's natural allies talking in language more critical than I, in my life, have ever heard about the United States," he said.
  The novelist, born in India and raised in Britain, attributed the shift in sentiment toward the United States to the Bush administration's "unilateralist policies" and its "unwillingness to engage with the rest of the world in a serious way."
  "This go-it-alone attitude gets people's backs up," he said of President Bush's foreign policy.
  LACK OF LISTENING
  As president of the PEN American Center, a writers group, Rushdie helped organize an international literary festival this week in New York -- an event he hopes will help restore global dialogue.
  "There seems to have been a breach in our ability to listen to each other," he said.
  "It's really important at this particular moment in the history of the world that ordinary American people should get as broad a sense of how the world is thinking."
  Such dialogue, he said, is "crucial, especially if at the political level there is a relative uninterest in maintaining that global dialogue."
  The PEN World Voices festival, from April 16-22, is set to bring more than 100 international authors to New York to participate in more than 40 events, including readings and discussions on topics from politics and literature to erotica.
  The event is the first international gathering organized by PEN since 1986, when Norman Mailer headed the group.
  Rushdie, who wrote an op-ed in March syndicated by The New York Times calling for less religion in politics, took Bush to task on that issue too.
  "It worries me more when religious discourse becomes the language of politics," he said. "I think it is happening a lot more here than it used to."
  Rushdie said his latest novel, "Shalimar the Clown," will be published in September.
  "I decided to murder an American ambassador," he said of its plot, in which a U.S. envoy to India is killed after he retires to America. "It seems to be a political murder, but actually it turns out to be completely personal."
  Copyright © 2005 Reuters
  ###

Toxics [and Greed] More Valuable Than Democracy?

• "I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
• Benjamin Franklin
• Published on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 by Orlando Sentinel
• Mirror URL: http://tinyurl.com/4ktdt
• Toxics More Valuable Than Democracy?
  by Alan Farago
• "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
• Really? It is worth revisiting these cornerstones of our democracy.
  Recently, three farm-worker families in a neighborhood of Immokalee gave birth to severely deformed children -- one without arms or legs, one without the capacity to keep his tongue from sliding back into his throat, and one without a nose, an ear and with no visible sexual organs. The story was reported in the Palm Beach Post, "Why was Carlitos born this way?"
  These three families share the same neighborhood, work with the same agricultural chemicals, and they are from the same deeply religious community devoted to the living lessons of Christ.
  More infants than we care to acknowledge are being denied the fundamental liberties asserted by our democracy because of the exposure of the fetus to toxic chemicals.
  Why isn't it the first priority of government to ensure that Creation is cared for and that toxics don't strip fetuses of their fundamental liberties? Every moment of life is equally valuable, but if the cell division in the fetus a mother carries is deformed by toxics, equality is impossible. For these stricken families, happiness, liberty and choice are illusions.
  A few years ago, Lori Glenn's extent of involvement in the environment was helping to protect a local park. One of her employees -- she runs a small business in Lee County supplying roses to restaurants -- was stricken by incurable cancer. A 5-year-old niece was dying of leukemia.
  Out of the blue, she was approached by someone who suspected that, because she cared for a park, maybe she would be the right person to ask if she knew about the people dying of cancer in Cape Coral.
  Glenn hadn't, but she was worried. She had the health of two small children to think about, too. Her first thought was for the Caloosahatchee River, which drains hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.
  Glenn started making phone calls to government agencies to see what testing is done for pesticides in drinking water. In 1998, the U.S. Geological Survey had studied heavy metal concentration and pesticides in the river and found chlordane, among other pesticides, at several times higher than the probable biological effect.
  She began asking questions that made Florida environmental agencies uncomfortable. The state Department of Health told her that the cancer cluster in Cape Coral was inconclusive: "People move around a lot." It is very complicated, the state's environmental agency told her -- and it is.
  Glenn believes that government regulation of toxics is a web of interlocking systems designed to fail. Precaution is never a bright line because the legislative and executive branches of government lean in favor of polluting industries that can afford to lobby and contribute heavily to political campaigns.
  The federal Environmental Protection Agency has broad authority to regulate chemicals that present an "unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment." But the EPA can request data from industry only when it can provide evidence that the substance may present an unreasonable risk of injury, or can lead to significant or substantial human exposure. Without additional data from industry, the federal agency can generally not produce this evidence.
  The EPA recently abandoned its plan to take funds from the American Chemistry Council to collaborate with industry to produce data by giving families that regularly used pesticides indoors in a low-income neighborhood of Duval County $970 plus a camcorder and children's clothing.
  Benjamin Franklin was 81 at the time delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia sought his blessing. Only a few years earlier -- roughly the span of time between the first Clinton administration and today -- he had helped Thomas Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence.
  Although he agreed to support the Constitution, his view was dim: "I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
  Maybe on that day, Benjamin Franklin was cranky. Maybe the man who invented bifocals had binoculars into the 21st century.
  But more likely, with a lifetime of experience behind him, Franklin had seen enough revolutions born of moral enthusiasm to know which was the greater threat to democracy.
  Alan Farago, a writer on the environment and politics, can be reached at alanfarago@yahoo.com. He wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel.
  © 2005 Orlando Sentinel
  ###

Let Them Eat Bombs

• Published on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 by the Guardian (UK)
• http://tinyurl.com/45bfs
• Let Them Eat Bombs The doubling of child malnutrition in Iraq is baffling
  by Terry Jones
  
• A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.
  This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.
  It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.
  These results are even more disheartening for those of us in the Department of Making Things Better for Children in the Middle East By Military Force, since the previous attempts by Britain and America to improve the lot of Iraqi children also proved disappointing. For example, the policy of applying the most draconian sanctions in living memory totally failed to improve conditions. After they were imposed in 1990, the number of children under five who died increased by a factor of six. By 1995 something like half a million Iraqi children were dead as a result of our efforts to help them.
  A year later, Madeleine Albright, then the US ambassador to the United Nations, tried to put a brave face on it. When a TV interviewer remarked that more children had died in Iraq through sanctions than were killed in Hiroshima, Mrs Albright famously replied: "We think the price is worth it."
  But clearly George Bush didn't. So he hit on the idea of bombing them instead. And not just bombing, but capturing and torturing their fathers, humiliating their mothers, shooting at them from road blocks - but none of it seems to do any good. Iraqi children simply refuse to be better nourished, healthier and less inclined to die. It is truly baffling.
  And this is why we at the department are appealing to you - the general public - for ideas. If you can think of any other military techniques that we have so far failed to apply to the children of Iraq, please let us know as a matter of urgency. We assure you that, under our present leadership, there is no limit to the amount of money we are prepared to invest in a military solution to the problems of Iraqi children.
  In the UK there may now be 3.6 million children living below the poverty line, and 12.9 million in the US, with no prospect of either government finding any cash to change that. But surely this is a price worth paying, if it means that George Bush and Tony Blair can make any amount of money available for bombs, shells and bullets to improve the lives of Iraqi kids. You know it makes sense.
  
• Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python. He is the author of Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror. Check out http://www.terry-jones.net/
  © 2005 Guardian Newspapers, Ltd.
  ###

What Democracy? A Brief Look at U.S. Foreign Policy

• Published on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
• http://tinyurl.com/4dmyn
• What Democracy? A Brief Look at U.S. Foreign Policy
  by Marc Pilisuk and Neil Wollman
  
  
• We are told that no matter one’s stand on the legitimacy of attacking Iraq or Afghanistan, such U.S. interventions have brought significant steps toward democracy there and elsewhere. But is the Bush administration correct to assert that spreading democracy is, and has been, the role of the U.S. in the world? A brief review of outcomes in both Iraq and Afghanistan--as well as the history of U.S. interventions over decades—suggests a different role, one involving U.S. based global corporate interests.
  It is useful to first define what we mean by democracy. I (the first author) spoke to an imprisoned labor leader in El Salvador during their civil war in which the U.S. assisted a government ruled by military death squads. He urged me to remind the U.S. that democracy is not only about elections (which can be unfairly influenced). Democracy, he said, is more about whether it is safe for ordinary people to gather to talk about what they need and what they can do to get them met.
  Though we praise the courage of Iraqi citizens and the first step of holding an election there, to this point what is transpiring in Iraq is not so much democracy as a triumph for leaders of particular factions permitted by the occupying military rulers. Too many citizens do not feel safe, to gather to talk about what are their needs and how to attain them. Iraq does not have a democracy with power to wrest control from U.S. corporations now finding Iraq a profitable market. Neither can its new government stop permanent foreign bases in its country, or insist that Iraq’s rich resources adequately provide for its citizens traumatized by war. A real democracy in Iraq would reflect majority opinion to end military occupation and stop preferences given to US contractors.
  In Afghanistan, democracy and specific gains for women were trumpeted by Laura Bush in her recent visit there. But outside of fortified Kabul, little democracy exists for women in a countryside dominated by warlords. Illiteracy and malnutrition are rampant, and narcotics are the only viable economy. At the same time, the military assures protection for building a pipeline to the Caspian Sea that will benefit an American oil company.
  Motives other than love for democracy are suggested by the U.S. role in a recent unsuccessful coup attempt against the democratically elected President Chavez of Venezuela. The U.S. government-funded International Republican Institute provided funds for opposition parties; and its Venezuelan office praised the attempted take-over. Chavez’ wealthy opponent was helped by the US Ambassador. Chavez’s greatest crime was providing social programs by doubling royalties paid by U.S. petroleum companies.
  The whisking away of elected President Aristide of Haiti by U.S. soldiers is not an argument for U.S. interest in democracy. The pattern is not new. Popularly chosen leaders such as Mosadegh in Iran, Allende in Chile, Arbenz in Guatemala, and Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic were all removed by U.S. military and intelligence operations. In Panama, the U.S. invaded, in part, because President Noriega planned to give a major construction contract on the canal to a non-U.S. company. Officials associated with the U.S. company that stood to lose, were concurrently occupying powerful positions in the US government. These interventions occurred in the wake of threats by those governments to make foreign corporations restore some of their profits to citizens living there. U.S. military support goes to governments cited by Amnesty International for crimes against humanity (Guatemala and Indonesia are noteworthy examples). Meanwhile, non-democratic governments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and elsewhere continue to receive U.S. military assistance. Indeed, despite claims by the Bush administration and others, informed observers question how much democracy is actually budding in Egypt and Saudi Arabia—or Lebanon- and whether those openings really resulted from U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. This sampling of U.S foreign policy reveals motivations other than spreading democracy. Indeed, a more consistent theme has been to protect the interests of U.S.-based, global corporations. Friendly democracies will do fine, but compliant tyrants are just as welcome and the cost in lives to support corporation-friendly governments is easily justified as “spreading democracy.”
  
• Marc Pilisuk, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus at the University of California Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. He can be reached at mpilisuk@saybrook.edu
  
• Neil Wollman, Ph.D., is Senior Fellow at the Peace Studies Institute and Professor of Psychology at Manchester College, IN and can be reached at mail:Njwollman@manchester.edu
  

Dear George and Dick

Cindy Sheehan 'Gold Star Mom'

• Dear George and Dick
  by Cindy Sheehan
• http://tinyurl.com/4kx25

• Dear George and Dick,
  I apologize (not really, you don't deserve my apologies) for the familiarity, but I don't call the people responsible for my son's death: Mr, or Sir, nor do I have any respect for the offices that you have defiled. The only thing you both mean to me is pain and devastation. George and Dick, you are both shameful cowards who are sending our brave young people to die to make yourselves and your buddies unbelievably and fabulously wealthy. Neither of you have any idea of the true human, sorrowful cost of war nor do you care that you are ruining lives by the thousands and thousands. You both disgust me beyond belief. You are not, never have been, and never will be my President or Vice President.
  This is what your irresponsible and reckless policies took from me: One year and four days ago my son, Casey Sheehan, was one of the consequences of your lies and betrayals. One of the tens of thousands that your arrogant, pre-emptive, imperialistic policies have killed. I don't know how any of you can sleep at night...I know I can't.
  I have wanted to write this letter for over a year.
  We know the intelligence leading to the war was "dead" wrong and gleaned from a known liar (your administration likes liars...familiarity, and all), so I have a question for you...
  Why are Americans and Iraqis still dying every day?
  Then, George and Dick...you both go around spewing the lying filth that "freedom is on the march in Iraq." Well, I have a challenge for both of you: if you believe in freedom so much in Iraq...then send your own children over there to fight and perhaps die in the occupation without the proper training, equipment, food, water, supplies, armor, or protection. If you aren't willing to send your own children to die for this most grievous bull-crap, THEN BRING THE REST OF OUR CHILDREN HOME...NOW!!! The definition of a just war is one that you are willing to have your own children die for. Apply the definition. Then send your own children if you believe this aggression is just...if not THEN BRING THE REST OF OUR CHILDREN HOME...NOW!!!
  Do the right thing and BRING OUR TROOPS HOME, NOW!! Not one more drop of blood, not one more penny for this travesty. Do not let our other children be killed for the ephemeral and ever changing "Mission." My son's death will have meaning and not be in vain if it is for peace: if our troops are withdrawn immediately from this abomination that is Iraq.
  I dare both of you to do the honorable thing and read about my son...my first-born...my pride and joy...my love...I wish you would read it and weep, but I know neither of you give one flying flip about me, my family, or Casey.
  I pray that either one of you, or both of you, grow a vestigial conscience and pray for forgiveness for the killing that your ignorance and arrogance have caused. One time I ran over a kitten and killed it and I was devastated for days...how do either one of you look at yourselves in the mirror? How do you live with the fact that so many innocent people are dead because of your beliefs and actions? I know I couldn't. I know I would have a hard time living with myself if I was responsible for one death, let alone legions of deaths. I really hope someone grows some courage in the House of Representatives and you both are impeached soon.
  Again, I reiterate. Celebrate the new found "Culture of Life" in your hypocritical administration. BRING OUR TROOPS HOME. NOW!!!
  Do I sound angry? You better believe I am. My son's future was stolen from him. My future with my son is now gone. I never even got to say good-bye to him.
  If you have any questions, or would like to hear anymore of my ideas, please feel free to contact me.
  Peace,Cindy Sheehan
  April 11, 2005
• Cindy Sheehan [send her mail] is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, KIA 04/04/04 She is co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace.
  Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com
• Cindy Sheehanmailto:SCINDY121@aol.com
• read about my sonhttp://tinyurl.com/4fzce
• send her mailmailto:SCINDY121@aol.com
• Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, KIA 04/04/04http://tinyurl.com/5xq5r
• Gold Star Families for Peacehttp://tinyurl.com/5mmb3

Murderous Thugs - from Cindy Sheehan 'Gold Star Mom'

• Murderous Thugs

• Transcript of remarks made by Cindy Sheehan, a member of Gold Star Families For Peace. - April 4, 2005
• Cindy Sheehan04/10/05 "ICH" http://snipurl.com/dxgz
• I've been asked to speak to you for 5 minutes or so. Please forgive me, but I'm going to take a little more than 8 minutes. The additional time that I'm going to steal from you is dedicated to my son, Casey, whose entire future was stolen from him.My son was killed in Iraq on this day one year ago, the same day of April on which Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. From a jail in Birmingham, on April 16 1963 Dr. King wrote these words: "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence.......of the good people." ...end of quote.And the Apostle Paul said this:"...those who desire to be rich fall into temptation...into a snare that plunges men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evil."Thirty years ago, 1975, Gerald Ford was President of the United Sates. His Chief of Staff was Dick Cheney. His Secretary of Defense was Donald Rumsfeld. Paul Wolfowitz was heading-up the international arms-control end of things. All of these positions related directly to national security. While these men were looking after the nation's safety, they and President Ford concluded that Iran needed to supplement its energy system by adding nuclear power. The nuclear energy project that these men approved would have netted certain US corporations billions of dollars. Had the Shah of Iran...a blood-bought servant of US corporate interests...not soon been overthrown by his own countrymen, the big-wigs at Westinghouse or General Electric...or perhaps both...would have amassed personal fortunes from this one project, alone. Some of the stockholders would have also made bundles on the deal.In 1975 my son had not yet been born. Today he is in his grave. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, is now Vice President of the United States, and he is materially wealthy beyond what any of us would ever pray to be. This is the same Dick Cheney who during the months leading-up to the invasion of Iraq said that Saddam Hussein not only has stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction...more than a hundred metric tons of the deadly stuff...but he also said that Saddam Hussein was well-advanced in developing nuclear weapons and that therefore the US must invade Iraq and dethrone Saddam Hussein. Clean, quick, and simple according to Dick Cheney. Yet for some time now he has changed his tune. He now says...as if he had said it all along...that the US occupation of Iraq will require years of difficult and sometimes bloody conflict before it will be stable enough to bring our loved ones home. And too, rather than speak of Weapons of Mass Destruction, he now uses the word "democracy" a lot.Is there yet an American who can not clearly see that Dick Cheney...whether it be 1975 or 2005...will say whatever he thinks is required to ultimately cause wealth and power to move to himself and to his friends? ...need I defile this holy place with words like "Haliburton" and "Kellog, Brown & Root" and "torture" and "US weapons industry"? Indeed, the Apostle Paul is correct in saying that, ultimately, the love of money leads to ruin and destruction.Donald Rumsfeld is again Secretary of Defense. Only yesterday, it seems, he told the whole world that Saddam Hussein has stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction. He even announced to world that he and his generals know where Saddam's feared weapons are hidden. He announced this only days before our loved ones risked their lives searching those very areas where he so confidently said the weapons were hidden. Tell me, isn't it entirely reasonable for us to assume that those very places were being surveiled every second of every day and night until the very moment when our loved ones reached those areas and began their search? Donald Rumsfeld told us that the search would net more than a hundred metric tons. Are we to believe that Saddam quickly assembled a caravan of 18 wheelers and loaded all this stuff up and hauled it away to some new hiding place...and that US surveillance...the best in the world....didn't notice any of this happening? Are we to believe that this administration was, once again, asleep at the wheel...just as they would also have us to believe that they were innocently caught off-guard on the morning of September 11, 2001? I implore you to read some of Scott Ritter...write the name down if you need to: Scott Ritter. R..I..T..T..E..R. I'm certain that many of you have already read his work. His work can be found in book stores, or go to Amazon.com. Read him and you will finally begin to understand that the horrid price we and the people of Iraq have paid to discover that Saddam's Weapons Of Mass Destruction had already been destroyed is not due to any failure at the U.S. intelligence agencies, it is in fact a validation of U.S. intelligence agencies. Ritter will explain to you exactly how is was that Rumsfeld was well-informed, by knowledgeable people within the Intelligence community, that Saddam had been striped clean of such weapons, that Saddam's ability to reconstitute such weapons' programs had also been destroyed, and that any moves Saddam might have made in that direction would have been observed and stopped, forthwith. Is there anyone in America who cannot yet see that Donald Rumsfeld is a liar...that he, as with Hitler and Stalin....will say anything so long as he thinks it will help shape the world to his own liking? Is there even one, sane adult among us who cannot see that Donald Rumsfeld is a threat to our nation's security and to peace on our beloved earth? Paul Wolfowitz, after months of not finding any Weapons of Mass Destruction....and after hundreds of US soldiers were killed....my son amongst them....and after tens of thousands of innocent Iraq citizens were killed....this same Paul Wolfowitz casually explained....with his kindly charade and his ever so soft voice...that a decision was made to put forth "Weapons of Mass Destruction" as the need for the invasion. Essentially, Paul Wolfowitz admitted that he and his fellow conspirators had decided amongst themselves "...let's just go with the bit about Weapons of Mass Destruction. It's the one thing that will scare the American people enough so as to cause them to get behind this invasion." As soft-spoken and sincere-sounding as Paul Wolfowitz is, is there yet any sane adult in this country who's skin does not crawl when this murderous liar opens his mouth and speaks? Am I the only person in this room who clearly sees that Paul Wolfowitz is a threat to our nation's security...and to peace on our beloved earth?"30 years ago these 3 men gave the green light to Iran so that Iran could hire US companies to go there and build a 6.4 billion dollar nuclear power facility. ...no doubt the final bill would have been at least three times that much. Yet Dick Cheney recently said this of Iran's current intentions to add nuclear power to their energy system: Quote...."They are already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear to generate energy"....end of quote. Did these men not notice, 30 years ago, while they and their cohorts were being wined and dined by the Shah, that his opulent surroundings were bought and paid for with oil and gas that was being taken from the ground beneath their feet? Yet these men agreed, clear back then, that Iran needed to add nuclear power to their energy system. It is now 30 years and God only knows how many tens of millions of barrels of oil, later. Why should we believe these men....who we know are liars....when they now say that Iran's primary motive for wanting nuclear power is so that they can make nuclear weapons with which to destroy us and our allies? Even now, the International Atomic Energy Agency reports that there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. The Bush administrations response? They are trying to oust the agency's lead inspector, Mohammed al-Baradei. But who can forget that it was Mr. al-Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency who, during the months prior to the invasion of Iraq, reported that Saddam no longer had a nuclear weapons programs. Our country has been overtaken by murderous thugs....gangsters who lust after fortunes and power; never caring that their addictions are at the expense of our loved ones, and the blood of innocent people near and far. We've watched these thugs parade themselves before the whole world as if they are courageous advocates for Christian moral values....and for the spread of democracy. Yet we all know that they are now putting in place, all across this country, a system of voting that provides no way to validate the accuracy of the counting of the votes. Our loved ones have been buried in early graves even as these arrogant thugs parade themselves before the entire world, insisting that democracy is worth dying for, killing for, and destroying entire cities for, all the while they are busy here at home overseeing the emplacement of an electronic voting system that invites fraud at every turn, an electronic vote-counting system that provides no way to validate the votes cast, and that, by it's very design, prohibits recounting the votes. For these men to not see to it that our own system of voting and vote-counting is accurate, understandable and verifiable...all the while sending our loved ones to kill and to die so as to establish a democracy in some far away place......this is just one more staggering piece of evidence that the US government is now ruled by murderous hypocrites...criminals who should be arrested, charged appropriately, confined behind bars, and then tried in a court of law...not only here in our own country, but also in all the other countries which have suffered their incomprehensible greed. In their secret hiding places, while celebrating newly won fortunes with their fellow brass, these men must surely congratulate themselves with orgies of carnal pleasure as they mock the dwindling multitudes who are yet so blind as to mistake them for God's devoted servants.
• Cindy Sheehan, is a founding member of Gold Star Families For Peace [email - Scindy121@aol.com]
• Copyright: Cindy Sheehan. All rights reserved. You may republish under the following conditions: An active link to the original publication must be provided. You must not alter, edit or remove any text within the article, including this copyright notice.

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Racism and War Crimes

• Paul Rockwell, Black Commentator Posted 2005-04-09 11:52:00.0
• http://tinyurl.com/5kk3f
  
• Mirror URL: http://tinyurl.com/42lr9
  
• Aiden Delgado, an Army Reservist in the 320th Military Police Company, served in Iraq from April 1st , 2003 through April 1st, 2004. After spending six months in Nasiriyah in Southern Iraq, he spent six months helping to run the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad.
  The handsome 23-year-old mechanic was a witness to widespread, almost daily, U.S. war crimes in Iraq. His story contains new revelations about ongoing brutality at Abu Ghraib, information yet to be reported in national media.
  I first met Delgado in a classroom at Acalanes High School in Lafayette, California, where he presented a slide show on the atrocities that he himself observed in Southern and Northern Iraq. Delgado acknowledged that the U.S. military did some good things in Iraq. “We deposed Saddam, built some schools and hospitals,” he said. But he focused his testimony on the breakdown of moral order within the U.S. military, a pattern of violence and terror that exceeds the bounds of what is legally and morally permissible in time of war.
  Delgado says he observed mutilation of the dead, trophy photos of dead Iraqis, mass roundups of innocent noncombatants, positioning of prisoners in the line of fire – all violations of the Geneva conventions. His own buddies – decent, Christian men, as he describes them – shot unarmed prisoners.
  In one government class for seniors, Delgado presented graphic images, his own photos of a soldier playing with a skull, the charred remains of children, kids riddled with bullets, a soldier from his unit scooping out the brains of a prisoner. Some students were squeamish, like myself, and turned their heads. Others rubbed tears from their eyes. But at the end of the question period, many expressed appreciation for opening a subject that is almost taboo. “If you are old enough to go to war,” Delgado said, “you are old enough to know what really goes on.”
  It is a rare moment when American students, who play video war games more than baseball, are exposed to the realities of occupation. Delgado does not name names. Nor does he want to denigrate soldiers or undermine morale. He seeks to be a conscience for the military, and he wants Americans to take ownership of the war in all its tragic totality.
  Aiden Delgado did not grow up in the United States. His father was a U.S. diplomat. Aiden lived in Thailand and Senegal, West Africa. He spent seven years in Cairo, Egypt, where he became fluent in Arabic and developed a deep appreciation of Arab culture.
  On September 11th, 2001, completely unaware of the day’s fateful events, Delgado enlisted in the Army, expecting to serve two days a month in the Reserves. When he turned on the television, he realized instantly that his whole world had changed.
  After he joined the Army, Delgado began to read the Sutras. He became a Buddhist, a vegetarian, and eventually became a Conscientious Objector. Delgado was honorably discharged when he returned home. Delgado earned four service medals which, he says, are standard awards. He faced criticism from the Army when he began to speak out about military conduct in Iraq. Don Schwartz, spokesman for the Army in Washington, D.C., said that Delgado should have reported any wrongdoing to Army personnel. “He should have reported first to his boss, his commander. That is the standard way the chain of command works.”
  When I interviewed Delgado recently, he expressed his deep love of his country, but he also insisted that racism – a major impetus to violence in American history – is driving the occupation, infecting the entire military operation in Iraq.
  Delgado’s testimony tends to confirm the message of Chris Hedges, the New York Times war correspondent who wrote prior to the invasion of Iraq: “War forms its own culture. It distorts memory, corrupts language, and infects everything around it.... War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface within all of us. Even as war gives meaning to sterile lives, it also promotes killers and racists.”Here is Aiden Delgado story.
• SNIP Rest Of Interview Can Be Found At: http://tinyurl.com/5kk3f
• Or Mirror URL: http://tinyurl.com/42lr9