Freedom and Democracy is Dying

There is no death. Only a change of worlds.

Chief Seattle

by Steve O

http://www.teambio.org/2006/06/rtw-a-vet-speaks-out/

The following comment was left in response to some of the comments on this post and I thought it deserved some front page action.

Normally I do not post, but this is for folks like Emmet.

I served two years in Iraq and it’s in total disarray contrary to what the Bush propaganda machine want you to believe. To you armchair civilian chickenhawks who sit in your warm, secure, comfortable homes watching FOX News; if your so damn gung-ho get off your flag waving lame ass’s and prove how patriotic you really are by enlisting, let’s see the true color of your blood. In Iraq you’ll come to your senses real quick when you smell the air permeated with the foul odor of death. The innocent Iraqi people are more than willing to share their daily suffering of losing a family member or friend. Having their homes reduced to rubble, living in constant fear day and night. And who do they blame ? They blame the people of America for allowing George Bush to destroy their country.

The men and women arriving home in caskets are no longer able to speak the truth. Now their loved one’s must endure and struggle with the pain of losing a son, daughter, husband, wife, father, mother a friend. And what exactly were the reasons for dying ? For George Bush’s noble cause of spreading democracy, finding WMD’s, freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny. I don’t think so. Yes, many of us truly did think going into Iraq was all about protecting America from terrorists. It’s taken me a while, after many sleepless nights, to figure out what our governments real intentions and purposes were for engaging in this illegal war of aggression. The Iraqi people are not terrorists nor was their government hiding weapons of mass destruction. Have I earned my right to speak out against this war … your damn right I have and I live with the constant nightmare every day. And I personally don’t give a rats ass if you think I’m unpatriotic for standing up for what believe to be a evil political cover up.

Bush supporters better start paying attention to who the real enemies are in this country. This so-called ” war on terror ” is a fictional creation, designed to distract the American people from the real problems in this country while the war mongers in the White House steal more power and destroy the real America. This current FUBAR of a government is systematically disassembling every system of citizen protection, due process and anything resembling the rule of law, it is simultaneously creating a monster, a system of tyranny that has no safety checks or counterbalances.

The War on Terror is, in fact, the War on Freedom. They just didn’t name it correctly. And people who support this war and this administration share philosophies with the Nazi party members who bolstered Hitler to power. Rah rah! Shoot more people! Bomb more nations! Wave more flags! We’re #1! Go USA! Grab that oil! Imprison all the traitors! Censor the media to protect national security! Thin the herd out by getting rid of the liberals ! The list goes on …

And the cross-eyed Bush supporting morons, who have literally no understanding of history or the extreme dangers of unchecked war powers, are marching us right down the same corridor that led Nazi Germany to ruin. Every transgression by the U.S. government against some particular group, the Bushies say, is justified as long as it doesn’t target flag waving, Bible thumping, war hollering white people. In time, it will be turned against every citizen, including the Bush supporters, who will one day wake up to find their freedoms lost and say to themselves, ” But I thought they were only going after the terrorists ! I’m not a terrorist………..”

To damn bad you stupid jack-ass’s ! You made the fool’s bargain by trading liberty for security.

Author Ron Suskind's account of Dick Cheney's "one percent doctrine" - the idea that if a terrorist threat is deemed even one percent likely the United States must act as if it's a certainty - supplies a missing link in understanding the evolving madness of the Bush administration's national security strategy.

A one-percent risk threshold is so low that it negates any serious analysis that seeks to calibrate dangers within the complex array of possibilities that exist in the real world.  In effect, it means that any potential threat that crosses the administration's line of sight will exceed one percent and thus must be treated as a clear and present danger.

The fallacy of the doctrine is that pursuing one-percent threats like certainties is not just a case of choosing to be safe rather than sorry. Instead, it can suck the pursuer into a swollen river of other dangers, leading to a cascading torrent of adverse consequences far more dangerous than the original worry.

For instance, George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq may have eliminated the remote possibility that Saddam Hussein would someday develop a nuclear bomb and share it with al-Qaeda. (Some intelligence analysts put that scenario at less than one percent, although Bush called it a "gathering danger.")

But the U.S. military invasion of Iraq had the unintended consequence of bolstering the conviction in North Korea and Iran that having the bomb may be the only way to fend off the United States.

The unending scenes of bloodshed in Iraq also have inflamed anti-American passions in other Middle East countries, including Pakistan which already possesses nuclear weapons and is governed by fragile pro-U.S. dictator Pervez Musharraf.

So, while eradicating one unlikely nightmare scenario - Hussein's mushroom cloud in the hands of Osama bin-Laden - the Bush administration has increased the chances that the other two points on Bush's "axis of evil," North Korea and Iran, will push for nuclear weapons and that Pakistan's Islamic fundamentalists, already closely allied with Osama bin-Laden, will oust Musharraf and gain control of existing nuclear weapons.

In other words, eliminating one "one-percent risk" may have created several other dangers which carry odds of catastrophe far higher than one percent. Bush now must decide whether to swat at these new one-plus-percent risks, which, in turn, could lead to even greater dangers.

Say, for example, that Bush orders air strikes against Iran's suspected nuclear sites and kills large numbers of civilians in the process. That could trigger riots in Pakistan and lead to Musharraf's downfall, putting Islamic extremists in control of nuclear weapons immediately, instead of possibly years into the future.

An attack on Iran also could backfire on the United States in Iraq, where Iranian-allied Shiite militias could retaliate against vulnerable U.S. and British troops, raising the death toll and endangering the entire U.S. mission in Iraq.

Swallowing Flies

In effect, Bush has found himself in a geopolitical version of "the little old lady who swallowed a fly." As the children's ditty goes, the little old lady next swallows a spider to catch the fly but soon finds that the spider "tickles inside her." So, she engorges other animals, in escalating size, to eliminate each previous animal. Eventually, she swallows a horse and "is dead of course."

Similarly, if Bush seeks to eradicate a succession of one-percent threats, he could well find himself trapped within a growing web of interrelated consequences, each pulling in their own entangling complexities. The end result could leave the United States in a much worse predicament than when the process began.

Charging headstrong after one-percent risks also makes you vulnerable to getting lured into traps. Al-Qaeda strategists, for instance, understood that the 9/11 attacks would lead to a furious reaction from the United States and welcomed the prospect that the American military would strike back at targets in the Islamic world.

Al-Qaeda hoped that the United States would overreact and thus sharpen what al-Qaeda saw as the contradictions within the Islamic world, forcing Muslims to take sides either with the "crusaders" and their regional allies or with the revolt against those forces.

Al-Qaeda's gamble was that the United States might strike a well-aimed, powerful blow that would eliminate al-Qaeda's leadership and its key supporters without alienating the larger Muslim populations.

But in late November and early December 2001, the failure to cut off escape routes at Tora Bora, near the Afghan-Pakistani border allowed Osama bin-Laden to evade capture along with Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command.

Then, Bush - prematurely celebrating victory in Afghanistan - shifted the U.S. military's focus to Iraq, which had long been an obsession with Bush and his neoconservative advisers. Bush and Cheney judged that Saddam Hussein represented another one-percent-plus danger that required eliminating.

Perception Management

But there remained a political problem in the United States. The American people, while strongly favoring retaliation against al-Qaeda, were less convinced about the need to launch a series of "preemptive wars" against nations that were not implicated in 9/11.

Though the "one-percent doctrine" may transcend the need for any hard evidence among policymakers, it did not eliminate the political need to generate public support behind a war effort, especially when even casual observers could note that the new target country - Iraq - posed no immediate threat to the United States.

So, the Bush administration saw little choice but to engage in exaggerations and outright falsehoods, what the CIA calls "perception management." Bush, Cheney and their subordinates spoke in absolute terms about evidence of the Iraqi threat, including vast stockpiles of terrifying unconventional weapons and secret work on a nuclear bomb.

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney told a VFW convention on Aug. 26, 2002. "There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors - confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth."

It's now clear that Cheney was wildly overstating the level of confidence within the U.S. intelligence community about Hussein's WMD programs. There was little hard evidence at all, more a case of conventional wisdom about unconventional weapons than actual intelligence reporting.

CIA analysts also didn't believe that Hussein had any intent of using whatever WMD he did have unless his nation was attacked or he was cornered.

But intelligence took on a different dimension inside the "one-percent doctrine," a strategy that cherished action over information. In the new book, The One Percent Doctrine, Suskind describes Cheney first enunciating his new approach when he heard about Pakistani physicists discussing nuclear weapons with al-Qaeda.

"If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response," Cheney said. "It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. It's about our response."

Suskind reports that Cheney's new "standard of action... would frame events and responses from the administration for years to come. The Cheney Doctrine. Even if there's just a one percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty.

"This doctrine - the one percent solution - divided what had largely been indivisible in the conduct of American foreign policy: analysis and action. Justified or not, fact-based or not, our response is what matters. As to evidence, the bar was set so low that the word itself almost didn't apply."

Manipulation

By making careful evaluation of the evidence irrelevant, however, the U.S. government made itself vulnerable to willful deceptions by interested parties, such as Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, which easily could funnel enough disinformation into the decision-making process to push decisions over the one-percent brim.

American enemies also could manipulate the process by exaggerating their goals. For instance, Bush and Cheney have repeatedly defended the continuation of the U.S. military operation in Iraq by citing the supposed goal of Islamic extremists to build an empire from Spain to Indonesia.

But the real prospect for such an empire is miniscule, arguably close to zero. After all, prior to 9/11, nearly all key al-Qaeda leaders had been driven from their home countries and chased to Afghanistan, one of the most remote corners of the earth.

These al-Qaeda leaders had lost battles with fellow Muslims in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Though heroes to some Islamists, al-Qaeda leaders were dangerous but fringe operatives on the run.

Without the clumsy intervention of the United States and Great Britain in Iraq, al-Qaeda had few prospects for any significant expansion of its power base.

In an intercepted letter, purportedly written in 2005 by Zawahiri to Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, al-Qaeda's second in command fretted about the problems that would occur if the United States military withdrew from Iraq.

The "Zawahiri letter" cautioned that an American withdrawal might prompt the "mujahedeen" in Iraq to "lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal." To avert this military collapse if the United States did leave, the letter called for selling the foreign fighters on a broader vision of an Islamic "caliphate" in the Middle East, although only along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, nothing as expansive as a global empire.

But the "Zawahiri letter" indicated that even this more modest "caliphate" was just an "idea" that he mentioned "only to stress that the mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq." [See Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's Latest Iraq War Lies."]

Brer Rabbit

In other words, assuming the "Zawahiri letter" is accurate, al- Qaeda's leaders wanted to keep the United States bogged down in Iraq because that allowed the terrorists to swell their ranks with new fighters and to use the Iraq War as a training ground to harden them into dangerous militants.

The one-percent doctrine, therefore, empowers America's enemies to influence U.S. policy in ways favorable to them. It lets al-Qaeda play the role of Brer Rabbit from the Uncle Remus tales, where the wily rabbit begs not to be thrown into the briar patch when that is exactly where he wants to go.

Bush has said the United States must take the word of the enemy seriously and act accordingly. But what if the enemy is exaggerating his capabilities or his goals? Do the enemy's words alone push matters beyond the one percent threshold and force the United States into responses even if they are not in America's best interests?

The one-percent doctrine is also developing a domestic corollary. Any home-grown threat - no matter how unlikely - must bring down the full force of U.S. law enforcement, as happened in last week's arrest of seven young black men in Miami for a terrorist plot that one FBI official called more "aspirational than operational."

On June 23, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales conceded that the men had no weapons, no equipment and no real plans. Mostly, the seven seem to have been encouraged by an FBI informant posing as an al-Qaeda operative to talk loosely about waging a "full ground war" against the United States.

As absurd as this notion of a "full ground war" was - given the hapless nature of the alleged warriors - Gonzales said, "left unchecked, these homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like al-Qaeda."

Gonzales's domestic declaration rang with an echo of Dick Cheney's one-percent doctrine. If there is the slightest risk of terrorist activities, "it's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence," Cheney reportedly said. "It's about our response."

Obvious Flaws

But another curious aspect of this one-percent doctrine is how obvious its flaws are. Wouldn't even the most dimwitted foreign policy novice recognize the absurdity of striking out at one-percent risks around the world?

John Dunne wrote that "no man is an island, entire of itself," meaning that every person is connected to other people. But surely, not even George W. Bush thought that Iraq was an island, somehow disconnected from a host of intersecting regional and global relationships.

The answer to that conundrum might simply be that the one-percent doctrine is less a doctrine than another excuse used by the Bush administration to justify actions, such as invading Iraq, that it always to do.

If the slimmest possibility of grievous harm - such as Saddam Hussein developing nuclear weapons and then slipping one to Osama bin-Laden - can be cited to trump more circumspect policymakers, then it could be powerful way to defeat bureaucratic rivals who show up at meetings with binders of intelligence analyses under their arms.

Then, when Bush and Cheney want to ignore other threats, they can simply revert to the posture of careful leaders not ready to jump hastily into an unfamiliar thicket. In other words, whether or not to invoke the one-percent doctrine gives them the ultimate debate-stopping argument.

Nevertheless, if Suskind is right and Bush is following the one-percent doctrine as his guiding light in the post-9/11 world, the American people can expect to find themselves led into an endless series of wars that only worsen the dangers.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

In ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock.

Some of the kirig's wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it. Many loudly blamed the king for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the stone out of the way.

Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been.

The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the king indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway.

The peasant learned what many of us never understand. Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.

Author unknown

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials announced that the terrorists were motivated by anger and hatred for American “freedoms and values.”

In other words, the terrorists hated the First Amendment and rock and roll and, therefore, decided to attack our country.

When asked whether U.S. foreign policy might have anything to do with the terrorists attacks, the federal attitude was, “Oh, no. The terrorists are either indifferent to U.S. foreign policy or they feel very positive about it.”

For example, when asked whether the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children who died from the more than 10 years of brutal sanctions that the U.S. government and the UN imposed on the Iraqi people might have engendered some negative feelings among people of the Middle East, the federal attitude was, “Oh, no. There is no way that those deaths could have been a factor in the anger and hatred that led to the 9/11 attacks because Saddam, not the sanctions, was responsible for the deaths of those children. The 9/11 attacks were carried out because the terrorists hate us for our freedom and values.”

And when U.S. official Madeleine Albright expressed the feelings of U.S. officials when she announced that the deaths of so many Iraqi children were “worth it,” the federal attitude was that such callousness, again, had absolutely nothing to do with producing anger and hatred against the United States. It all revolved around hatred for our freedom and values.

Today, defenders of the president’s war and occupation of Iraq are suggesting that the killing of 24 defenseless civilians in Haditha, including defenseless women and children and even an old man in a wheelchair, were committed by only a few U.S. soldiers and that the rest of America’s occupying force are performing “heroically.”

But when al-Qaeda recruiters show the Haditha photographs to men and women in the Middle East, will the reaction among prospective new recruits be, “Let’s not focus on or exaggerate the massacre in Haditha because the other American troops in Iraq are performing heroically”?

After all, don’t forget that in performing heroically U.S. forces have killed and maimed tens of thousands of other Iraqis as part of their invasion and subsequent occupation — many more people, in fact, than were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

Who honestly believes that the friends and family members and even countrymen of those who were killed and maimed in Haditha — or elsewhere in Iraq — are likely to say, “We hate America not because of what they did at Haditha and the rest of Iraq but because of America’s First Amendment and rock and roll”?

If there’s another major terrorist attack on American soil, here’s my prediction: Congress will again wake up from its slumber and respond positively to the president’s call for PATRIOT Acts 2, 3, and 4, followed by new rounds of indefinite military detentions, illegal wiretapping, kidnappings and renditions, censorship, and more.

And U.S. officials will again tell us that the suspension of our rights and freedom is only temporary and that it will protect us from the terrorists who hate America because of our freedom and values, not because of the homicides at Haditha, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the torture and sex abuse at Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi deaths from the sanctions, the destruction of Iraq, and the other aspects of U.S. foreign policy.

After all, they’ll remind us, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have brought love, peace, freedom, and democracy to the Iraqi people — well, at least to those who are not dead.

The only question will be: How many gullible Americans will buy it the next time?

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

My Dear Children (and believe me, that's all of you),

I consider myself a pretty patient guy. I mean, look at the Grand Canyon. It took millions of years to get it right. And about evolution? Boy, nothing is slower than designing that whole Darwinian thing to take place, cell by cell, and gene by gene.

I've been patient through your fashions, civilizations, wars and schemes, and the countless ways you take Me for granted until you get yourselves into big trouble again and again.

I want to let you know about some of the things that are starting to tick me off.

First of all, your religious rivalries are driving Me up a wall. Enough already! Let's get one thing straight.

These are YOUR religions, not Mine.

I'm the whole enchilada; I'm beyond them all. Every one of your religions claims there is only one of Me (which by the way, is absolutely true). But in the very next breath, each religion claims it's My favorite one. And each claims its bible was written personally by Me, and that all the other bible's are man-made. Oh, Me. How do I even begin to put a stop to such complicated nonsense?

Okay, listen up now. I'm your Father AND Mother, and I don't play favorites among My children. Also, I hate to break it to you, but I don't write. My longhand is awful, and I've always been more of a "doer" anyway.

So ALL of your books, including those bible's, were written by men and women. They were inspired, remarkable people, but they also made mistakes here and there. I made sure of that, so that you would never trust a written word more than your own living heart.

You see, one human being to me -- even a bum on the street -- is worth more than all the Holy Books in the world. That's just the kind of guy I am.

My Spirit is not a historical thing, it's alive right here, right now, as fresh as your next breath. Holy books and religious rites are sacred and powerful, but not more so than the least of you.

They were only meant to steer you in the right direction, not to keep you arguing with each other, and certainly not to keep you from trusting your own personal connection with Me. Which brings Me to My next point about your nonsense.

You act like I need you and your religions to stick up for Me or "win souls" for My sake. Please, don't do Me any favors. I can stand quite well on my own, thank you. I don't need you to defend Me, and I don't need constant credit.

I just want you to be good to each other.

And another thing: I don't get all worked up over money or politics, so stop dragging My name into your dramas.

For example, I swear to Me that I never threatened Oral Roberts. I never rode in any of Rajneesh's Rolls Royces. I never told Pat Robertson to run for president, and I've never EVER had a conversation with Jim Baker, Jerry Falwell, or Jimmy Swaggart! Of course, come Judgement Day, I certainly intend to...

The thing is, I want you to stop thinking of religion as some sort of loyalty pledge to Me. The true purpose of your religions is so that YOU can become more aware of ME, not the other way around.

Believe Me, I know you already. I know what's in each of your hearts, and I love you with no strings attached.

Lighten up and enjoy Me. That's what religion is best for. What you seem to forget is how mysterious I am.

You look at the petty differences in your Scriptures and say, "Well, if THIS is the truth, then THAT can't be!" But instead of trying to figure out My Paradoxes and Unfathomable Nature--which by the way, you NEVER will--why not open your hearts to the simple common threads in all religions.

You know what I'm talking about: Love and respect everyone. Be kind, even when life is scary or confusing, take courage and be of good cheer, for I am always with you. Learn how to be quiet, so you can hear My still, small voice (I don't like to shout).

Leave the world a better place by living your life with dignity and gracefulness, for you are My Own Child.

Hold back nothing from life, for the parts of you that can die surely will, and the parts that can't, won't. So don't worry, be happy (I stole that last line from Bobby McFerrin, but who do you think gave it to him in the first place?)

Simple stuff. Why do you keep making it so complicated?

It's like you're always looking for an excuse to be upset. And I'm very tired of being your main excuse. Do you think I care whether you call me Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, Wakantonka, Brahma, Father, Mother or even the Void of Nirvana?

Do you think I care which of My special children you feel closest to -- Jesus, Mary, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed or any of the others?

You can call Me and My Special Ones any name you choose, if only yo u would go about My business of loving one another as I love you. How can you keep neglecting something so simple? I'm not telling you to abandon your religions. Enjoy your religions, honor them, learn from them, just as you should enjoy, honor, and learn from your parents. But do you walk around telling everyone that your parents are better than theirs?

Your religion, like your parents, may always have the most special place in your heart; I don't mind that at all. And I don't want you to combine all the Great Traditions in One Big Mess.

Each religion is unique for a reason. Each has a unique style so that people can find the best path for themselves. But My Special Children -- the ones that your religions revolve around -- all live in the same place (My heart) and they get along perfectly, I assure you.

The clergy must stop creating a myth of sibling rivalry where there is none. My blessed children of Earth, the world has grown too small for y our pervasive religious bigotries and confusion. The whole planet is connected by air travel, satellite dishes, telephones, fax machines, rock concerts, diseases, and mutual needs and concerns.

Get with the program!

If you really want to help then commit yourselves to figuring out how to feed your hungry, clothe your naked, protect your abused, and shelter your poor. And just as importantly, make your own everyday life a shining example of kindness and good humor.

I've given you all the resources you need, if only you abandon your fear of each other and begin living, loving, and laughing together. Finally, My Children everywhere, when you think of the life of Jesus and the fearlessness with which He chose to live and die. As I love Him, so do I love each one of you.

I'm not really ticked off, I just wanted to grab your attention because I hate to see you suffer.

But I gave you free will.

I just want you to be happy. Always. Trust in Me.

Your One and Only,

God.

Author unknown

After last week's killing of terrorist chieftain Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (or someone just like him) in Iraq, remembrances of his most celebrated alleged victim surfaced briefly in the press: Nicholas Berg, the American businessman whose horrific beheading was publicized in a video fortuitously released less than two weeks after the first revelations of U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib.

It was this video – which featured five surprisingly chubby terrorists, masked, one wearing a gold ring forbidden by extremist Islam, another reading in halting Arabic – that made Zarqawi the Pentagon poster boy for the insurgency. Pentagon documents unearthed by the Washington Post this April revealed that the elevation of Zarqawi's profile was a deliberate, multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign aimed at the American people to foment the lie that the insurgency was largely an al Qaeda terrorist operation, not a native rebellion against the occupation. As one Pentagon general told a group of deception commandos: "The Zarqawi Psy-Op program is the most successful information campaign to date."

Zarqawi – a Jordanian thug who, like so many others, had been radicalized by the American-backed anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan – was a White House tool from the beginning. Before the war, his two-bit terrorist wannabe organization in the Kurdish-held Iraqi north had been targeted for destruction by U.S. Special Forces. But as the Atlantic Monthly reports, George W. Bush prevented at least three separate operations that would have eliminated the Zarqawi group – because such a strike would have interfered with that earlier psy-ops attack on the American people: the selling of the Iraq invasion on false pretenses. Although Zarqawi's gang was in U.S.-controlled territory where Saddam had no power, the Regime's war-peddlers used it to "prove" the non-existent link between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Spared by Bush, Zarqawi proved a serviceable villain after the invasion, always there to be blamed for a new terrorist spectacular whenever a spate of bad war news hit the Homeland press – despite, once again, being in the crosshairs of American forces on several occasions. On at least three occasions in the past year, Jordanian intelligence had pinpointed Zarqawi's location in Iraq and passed the intelligence to their close compadres in the American security organs; but every time, the Americans somehow "arrived too late," as the Atlantic reports.

However by this spring, with no amount of psy-ops able to halt Bush's plunge in the polls – and with the horrific sectarian civil war unleashed by Bush's aggression eclipsing all other violence – the "Zarqawi program" was obviously faltering: not enough PR bang for the buck. And so they did his quietus make – not with a bare bodkin but a thousand pounds of bombs: a little bit of "shock and awe" to goose the news cycle. Bush could have stopped him long ago; he could have spared the Iraqi people the ravages of his favored freebooter; but he chose not to.

Who can say if the beheading of Nicholas Berg – which made Zarqawi a "star" and adroitly demonized the whole Iraqi resistance at such a critical moment – was part of that "most successful information campaign to date"? One can only hope not; one can only hope that in this, as in so many other instances, the Bush Regime was just lucky. After all, who can forget that incredible stroke of good fortune on September 11, 2001 – just one year after a group led by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Jeb Bush declared that only a "new Pearl Harbor" could "catalyze" the American people into accepting their radical militarist program of conquering Iraq, establishing bases in Central Asia, waging "pre-emptive" wars, weaponizing space, gutting nuclear treaties, and larding the war-related industries with pork beyond the dreams of avarice. As Bush himself said while the Twin Towers were still smoldering: "Through my tears, I see opportunity."

Nicholas Berg, on the other hand, was remarkably unlucky. More of an idealist than a chest-thumping corporate predator like ex-CEOs Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Berg, 26, had developed a method for helping underdeveloped areas build safe, affordable structures where steel is hard to come by, as Wikipedia reports. Progress, not profit, was his motivating force. He was also an idealist in another way: he believed in his government. The president said Iraq had been liberated – "mission accomplished" – and that American companies needed to help the Iraqi people rebuild their land. Berg didn't realize that the president was a liar. Iraq had not been liberated but delivered into a new hell. Mass deaths, house raids, airstrikes, societal collapse and torture had spawned a fierce armed resistance. Bush's invasion had also loosed the most brutal, ignorant religious extremists – like Zarqawi – to prey upon the land. Meanwhile, "reconstruction" was a sick joke: it was just a pipeline for Bush cronies to drain Iraq, and the U.S. Treasury, bone-dry.

Berg came alone: no bodyguard of bristling mercenaries, no Halliburton subcontracts, no Beltway cronies. Work was promised, but without that insider grease, fell through. He decided to go home. Six days before his scheduled departure, he was suddenly seized by Iraqi police and turned over to U.S. forces. For reasons still unclear, he was held for 13 days – during which time the Abu Ghraib revelations ignited the land, and the tinderbox of Fallujah exploded when four mercenaries were killed in retaliation for the American shooting of Iraqi protestors a few days before.

Berg was released into this heightened turmoil one day after his family filed a lawsuit against his illegal detention; he disappeared four days later. His remains were found one month later near a Baghdad highway; the gruesome video appeared three days after that. Abu Ghraib disappeared from the front pages; it was not an issue in the presidential election that year.

Zarqawi – or "Zarqawi" – was the fake emblem of a fake war, the "war on terror" that the Bush Regime is pretending to fight while it goes about its long-planned business of exploiting "opportunities" like 9/11. Nicholas Berg was no emblem; he was just another human being literally ripped to shreds in that dark maw where high politics and low murder feast on the same lies, the same flesh.

Part II: A Dangerous Man

But despite the central role that Berg unwillingly played in the concoction of the Zarqawi legend, he was largely airbrushed from the lurid coverage of its grand finale. That's because any new story on Berg would naturally center around his most outspoken survivor, his father Michael. And Michael Berg is a man with a dangerous message, a radical subversion of every value that the Bush Administration is fighting to preserve.

In many ways, of course, it's an ancient danger, a destabilizing notion that has threatened the guardians of civilization for thousands of years. Its advocates have always been relegated to the lunatic fringe, ignored and forgotten, except in rare cases when their subversion has taken hold, usually among the lower orders. In each such case, however, down through the ages, the civilized world has, like a healthy body, acted swiftly to remove the carriers of disorder. Still, in every generation the bacillus emerges once again, and Michael Berg, no doubt weakened by his grief, has become seriously infected.

It's no wonder, then, that his media appearances last week were so brief and circumscribed. For there he was, father of a victim murdered in the most gruesome fashion imaginable by the terrorist Zarqawi (or someone just like him), a survivor fully entitled to exult in the revenging fury and violent self-righteousness that are among the chief values of the Bush Imperium – and all Berg could talk about was mercy and forgiveness, peace and restoration. He would not even take pleasure in the death of Zarqawi, whom he called a "fellow human being." Instead, he grieved for Zarqawi's family and wished that the brutal killer could have been subjected to "restorative justice" – made to work in a hospital with children maimed by war, for example – setting him on a path where his human decency might have been restored.

Nor would Berg praise the guardian of civilization, George W. Bush, for finally ending the career of the terrorist he had used so cynically to justify aggressive war. Instead, Berg blamed Bush for unleashing mass death on the people of Iraq, and instigating the cycle of violence that had consumed his son. But even for the authors of war, for the state terrorists who kill on an industrial scale, by remote control, ensconced in safety, comfort, privilege and wealth, Berg called for restoration, not revenge: they should be removed from power and compelled to some compassionate labor that might redeem their corrupted humanity.

It goes without saying that Berg's comments were instantly condemned throughout the vast engine of bile-driven groupthink known as the rightwing media. He was reviled as a traitor, a fool, a terrorist-lover, "less than human," a monster whose son will slap his face in the afterlife. He was derided for his quixotic Congressional campaign as the Green Party candidate for Delaware: what place do such weapons of the weak – mercy, forgiveness, non-violence – have in the halls of power? For the mainstream, he was just a blip, a quirky diversion in the flood of triumphant stories on Zarqawi's demise.

And to be sure, it is foolish to oppose the cherished values of our 21st century civilization: violence, bluster, ignorance and fear. It's foolish to take upon oneself the responsibility to break the cycle of violence at last, to say: "Let it end with me, if nowhere else; let it end now, no matter what the provocation; let something new, something more human, some restoration take root in this bloodstained ground."

But what if such folly is the only way for humankind to begin climbing out of the festering pit we have made of the world?

June 16, 2006

Chris Floyd, Global Eye columnist for the Moscow Times, is the author of Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime.

Copyright © 2006 Chris Floyd

By Charles Sullivan - 06/14/06

Information Clearing House

This, I know, is bound to be an unpopular essay that is likely to incite intense emotions and harsh accusations against me. Yet I feel compelled to express my thoughts on the matter in part because the commercial media does not allow dissenting views to be heard. Also, the majority of my fellow citizens have been drinking the mind altering kool-aide that distorts reality into fabulous forms that bears little resemblance to reality. Added to the formula is the fact that so many of us choose to live in denial rather than face the haunting specter of American history that might prove too disturbing for us to acknowledge.

Far too many Americans are so thoroughly indoctrinated in popular myths and propaganda that they are unable to recognize reality when they see it. They desperately need to cling to the absurd myths conjured by our rulers and deny the most criminal and unethical behavior upon which this nation was founded. Aided by a bogus educational system, we then contort them into virtue. Thus, murderers and robber barons are celebrated as self made industrialists who built America into a world class power. But as Thoreau stated, “Any truth is better than make believe.”

Unlike the majority of my fellow citizens, I do not take pride in the American flag. I do not get choked up when I see ‘old glory’ flapping in the breeze. My understanding of American history does not permit such unfounded patriotic stirrings. Too many atrocities have been committed under the flag for me to see any beauty in it, especially under the Bush regime. Indeed, seeing the flag often flushes me with shame and regret. I refuse to pledge allegiance to any flag. However, I pledge to live by a credo of social justice that does not recognize national borders. We are all one big family.

Historian Howard Zinn wrote, “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” I am inclined to agree.

For most Americans the flag stirs elements of sentimentality and reverence. It is celebrated as a symbol of freedom and democracy, the triumph of justice over injustice; good over evil. But symbols of noble ideals vanish into the mist when one critically examines the historical evidence. Millions of innocent people have died under the flag, including those who have carried it into battle in the belief that they were fighting for something nobler than corporate profits (see USMC General Smedley Butler’s 1933 essay “War is a Racket).”

To me the flag symbolizes much that is wrong with America. The flag is used as another clever marketing ploy against the people to manipulate and to control them, selling them a fictionalized version of history. The flag has been used, like the idea of patriotism, to motivate men to commit horrible crimes against earth and humankind. Rather than conjuring images of freedom and peace in my mind, it portrays the darkest side of human nature such as conquest, invasion and occupation. It reveals a litany of crimes against nature and humanity that I cannot dismiss from memory. Critical thinking demands that one weigh the evidence and draw one’s own conclusions based upon the facts, whether they contradict our preconceived notions or not.

I keep another flag, one that more accurately portrays the truth about America, in the trunk of my car, which I carry at anti-war rallies and demonstrations. Like the American flag, this pennant is red, white and blue. In place of the fifty stars there are corporate symbols that depict the corporate states of America. My flag portrays the reality of what the American flag really stands for. It is all about corporate power, global conquest, death, destruction and oppression. What do these have to do with democracy and freedom? What do they have to do with social justice?

Once again the people were sold a vision that is at odds with reality. The truth is that America is the polar opposite of everything we have been told she is. That is why so much of the world is aligned against us. They see us as we are, not merely as what we pretend to be. Most of the world’s 192 nations have been the recipients of our benevolence in the form of CIA interventions, land mines and carpet bombs.

When I see old glory fluttering in a brisk breeze I hear the lies of an imperialist dictator named George Bush and all the horrors they have wrought for so many echoing across the tides of time. I recall the brazen lies of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, and the entire neocon cabal that has resulted in the criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq, Abu Griab, and the inhumane horrors enacted daily at Guantonimo Bay, the massacre of innocent civilians by U.S. marines and the attendant cover up. I see the theft of Iraqi oil by U.S. forces handed over to oil companies and defense contractors on a silver platter. I see the entire civilized world held at gun point, stripped of its dignity and its freedom by the largest crime syndicate the world has ever known. It is hard to get all puffed up and to take pride in that.

I recall the overthrow of democratically elected governments around the world by an imperialist nation, particularly in Latin America; the assassination of populist leaders who refused to be puppets for U.S. corporations. Chile’s Salvador Allende’ provides an example. Visions of Columbian death squads trained at the School of the Americas move like ghosts in my mind. They are not to be ignored. I perceive the threatening overtures directed at true democratic socialist governments in Venezuela and Bolivia that I know will probably result in the eventual assassinations of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. These threats and violent overtures are part of a familiar historical pattern. It is not difficult to imagine what will follow. Democracy is a threat to corrupt power and it must be assassinated. Power in the hands of the people will not be tolerated by the Plutocracy. Under the red, white and blue profits matter more than people. They always have.

The historical evidence demonstrates that populist movements and true democracy are the avowed enemies of the corporate states of America and the ruling Plutocracy. We have a long history of destroying democratic, left wing governments. When has America ever over-thrown an oppressive right wing government? Death squads do not exist to celebrate democracy or to liberate the oppressed.

We have troops stationed at permanent bases all over the world and they are not fostering democracy, they are suppressing it. These acts are committed under the banner of the stars and stripes and given noble explanations in the commercial media. Every day the madmen who are running the government are planning new horrors, an endless litany of death and mayhem to be committed in our name for corporate profits. So forgive me if I do not pledge allegiance to the flag of the corporate states of America. Pardon me if I do not get choked up with pride when I see a bumper sticker that reads, “These colors don’t run.” Most people, it seems to me, have no clue about the atrocities that are being committed by their government. They do not want to know.

Charles Sullivan is a photographer, free lance writer and social activist residing in the hinterland of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at earthdog@highstream.net.

The killing of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq and the arrest of 17 suspects in an alleged terror plot in Canada have buoyed George W. Bushs political prospects by refocusing Americas attention again on the terror threat, much as the orange color-coded warnings did from 2002 until Election 2004.

But the recent developments in Iraq and Canada have obscured other new evidence that points toward a very different reality: that the Islamic terror threat was never as severe as Bush made it out to be after the 9/11 attacks and that it has been fading ever since.

While Bush has sought to frighten the American people with apocalyptic visions of Islamic terrorists establishing an empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia, the new intelligence data actually reveals al-Qaeda as a largely dissipated force that now exists more as an inspiration to violence than as an organized movement.

Indeed, since 9/11, with Osama bin-Laden on the run and many other al-Qaeda leaders captured or killed, leading theoreticians of Islamic terror have jettisoned the idea of a tightly organized movement that could take territory or even mount coordinated attacks.

Instead, these strategists have been reduced to encouraging scattered acts of crude violence by home-grown terror cells that can manage to scrape together their own resources, make their own plans and launch attacks far less sophisticated than those on 9/11.

While still capable of some horrific acts of violence, like the Madrid train bombings in 2004 or the London subway bombings in 2005, these self-motivated cells would seem to represent more of a police challenge than a justification for putting the U.S. government onto a perpetual war footing with a President exercising total or plenary authority.

In fact, it could be argued that the excesses of Bushs war on terror the invasion of Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison abuses, alleged torture at Guantanamo Bay and secret CIA prisons have become the central organizing tool and the chief motivating force for the emerging shape of Islamic terrorism.

Captured Theorist

U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have been aware of this altered structure of the Islamic terror threat for the past couple of years and have developed detailed knowledge since the capture of terror theorist Mustafa Setmariam Nasar in October 2005.

Nasar has turned out to be a prize catch, a man who is not a bomb-maker or operational planner but one of the jihad movements prime theorists for the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world, the Washington Post reported in a little-noted article in May 2006.

Nasars masterwork was a 1,600-page treatise entitled The Call for Global Islamic Resistance, which has been circulating on the Internet for about 18 months, the Post reported. Nasars manifesto urged self-sustaining cells to engage in resistance against the West with organizational links kept to an absolute minimum.

The enemy is strong and powerful, we are weak and poor, the war duration is going to be long and the best way to fight it is in a revolutionary jihad way for the sake of Allah, wrote Nasar, a 47-year-old Spanish-Syrian citizen who was captured in the city of Quetta, Pakistan and has since been questioned by various Western intelligence agencies. [Washington Post, May, 23, 2006]

While Nasars theories and other intelligence discoveries suggest that Islamic terror will remain a sporadic problem into the future, the information also puts that danger into perspective and suggests that some calibration of the Western counterterrorism strategies could be helpful in reducing the risk even more.

In contrast to the alarmist warnings from Bush about the construction of a global terrorist empire, the current strategy of the Islamic terrorists appears to be mostly defensive in nature. The attacks in Spain and London, for instance, targeted nations that were participating in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Spain has since withdrawn its troops, but Great Britain remains engaged in the conflict and there have been no follow-up attacks since the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings that were carried out by four Muslim youths, mostly long-time residents from the industrial region around Leeds.

The 17 Canadian Muslims, including five juveniles, were arrested in early June 2006 on charges of plotting a series of bombings in Ontario that also allegedly were motivated by anger over Western military action in an Islamic nation. Canada has deployed 2,300 soldiers to the conflict in Afghanistan.

Zawahiris Letter

Other documents purportedly captured from terrorists in Iraq further reinforce this image of a struggling movement that is fueled by the fury felt by individual Muslims over the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

For instance, a captured 6,000-word letter purportedly sent by al-Qaedas second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri to Zarqawi on July 9, 2005, revealed a weakened organization worried that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq might cause many of its foreign jihadists to lay down their arms and go home.

According to the letter, as released by U.S. intelligence, Zawahiri hoped that after U.S. forces left Iraq, al-Qaeda's contingent could hold out in some Sunni enclaves and keep the jihadists in line by promising the eventual creation of a caliphate in an area along the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt, known as the Lavant.

But the Zawahiri letter recognized the weakness of al-Qaedas position, especially if the U.S. military suddenly withdrew. Not only might al-Qaeda find itself surrounded by hostile forces, but many of the jihadists might be inclined to call it quits.

The Zawahiri letter floated the idea of an Islamic caliphate only to stress that the mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal.

In other words, assuming U.S. intelligence is correct that the letter was written by Zawahiri, al-Qaeda saw promoting the dream of an unlikely caliphate as a needed sales pitch to keep the jihadists from returning to their everyday lives once the Americans departed Iraq.

The letter also pictured al-Qaeda as a struggling organization under financial and political duress, not a movement plotting global domination. Al-Qaedas leaders were so short of funds that they asked their embattled operatives in Iraq to send $100,000 to relieve a cash squeeze, according to the letter.

Zarqawis Army

Despite the Bush administrations longstanding efforts to make Zarqawi the terrifying poster boy of the Iraqi insurgency, U.S. intelligence knew that Zarqawis al-Qaeda contingent of foreign fighters represented only a small percentage of the armed resistance to U.S. and allied forces in Iraq.

Most intelligence assessments put the size of this foreign jihadist force at only a few thousand fighters, or around 5 percent of the overall Iraqi insurgency.

In 2005, a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a conservative Washington-based think tank, said the number of foreign fighters was well below 10 percent, and may well be closer to 4 percent to 6 percent. [See CSISs Saudi Militants in Iraq, Sept. 19, 2005]

A former U.S. official with access to intelligence on the Iraqi insurgency cited similar numbers in an interview with the New York Times, estimating that 95 percent of the insurgents are Iraqis. [NYT, Oct. 15, 2005]

Also, suggesting that the international threat from Islamic terrorists was less severe than Bush let on was the historical fact that Muslim nations succeeded, again and again, in suppressing radical movements as long as Western powers stayed out of the way.

In an Oct. 6, 2005, speech, Bush inadvertently underscored this point when he noted that over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Jordan for potential takeover. Bush could have added Algeria to the list of countries that faced a radical Islamic threat.

But the bottom line to all these cases was that the radicals were defeated, explaining why so many of al-Qaedas leaders are exiles. Osama bin-Laden is a Saudi; Zawahiri is an Egyptian; Zarqawi was a Jordanian. In the late 1990s, bin-Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders were even banished from the Sudan, forcing them to flee to remote Afghanistan.

Hitler/Stalin

Bush, however, has offered his own chilling vision of al-Qaedas global power.

In that Oct. 6, 2005, speech, Bush asserted that Muslim extremists intended to use Iraq as a base to establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia and thus would isolate and strategically defeat the United States.

The disparity between the intelligence data about al-Qaedas weaknesses and Bushs claims about the groups extraordinary prowess suggests that Bush is still exaggerating the threat posed by his Islamic enemies, much as he hyped allegations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify invading Iraq in March 2003.

Just as he roused American fears with images of mushroom clouds from hypothetical Iraqi nuclear bombs, Bush now appears to be presenting an off-the-charts worst-case scenario about the threat from Islamic extremism.

In that same speech, Bush likened al-Qaeda leaders to historic tyrants, such as Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, suggesting that anyone opposed to the Iraq War was inviting slaughter on a massive scale.

But there are few indications that al-Qaedas leaders believed to be holed up in the mountains along the Pakistani-Afghan border represent that level of threat.

Instead, Bushs intent appears to be to use a never-ending hyped-up threat of Islamic terrorism as the organizing principle for a new authoritarian form of government in the United States. By keeping Americans scared, he and his advisers believe they can exert virtually unlimited power inside the United States without significant opposition.

Bushs strategy also might have a circular quality to it. As long as he cites the threat of Islamic terrorism, he can maintain enough political support to keep U.S. troops in Iraq and continue the operation of the Guantanamo Bay prison.

That, in turn, will keep young Muslims riled up and thus increase the likelihood of sporadic violence in the months ahead. That will further stoke the fears inside the United States and let Bush consolidate his authoritarian powers even more.

So, the ultimate danger from al-Qaeda and any home-grown spin-offs may not be from the violence that they can inflict but from their status as the bogeymen who can scare the American people into surrendering the democratic Republic envisioned by the Founders.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

By ROBERT FISK

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/272620_haditha04.html

Could Haditha be just the tip of the mass grave?

The corpses we have glimpsed, the grainy footage of the cadavers and the dead children; could these be just a few of many? Does the handiwork of the United States' army of the slums go further?

I remember clearly the first suspicions I had that murder most foul might be taking place in our name in Iraq. I was in the Baghdad mortuary, counting corpses, when one of the city's senior medical officials, an old friend, told me of his fears. "Everyone brings bodies here," he said. "But when the Americans bring bodies in, we are instructed that under no circumstances are we ever to do post-mortems. We were given to understand that this had already been done. Sometimes we'd get a piece of paper like this one with a body." And here the man handed me a U.S. military document showing with the hand-drawn outline of a man's body and the words "trauma wounds."

What kind of trauma is now being experienced in Iraq? Just who is doing the mass killing? Who is dumping so many bodies on garbage heaps? After Haditha, we are going to reshape our suspicions.

It's no good saying "a few bad apples." All occupation armies are corrupted. But do they all commit war crimes? The Algerians are still uncovering the mass graves left by the French paras who liquidated whole villages. We know of the rapist-killers of the Russian army in Chechnya.

We have all heard of Bloody Sunday. The Israelis sat and watched while their proxy Lebanese militia butchered and eviscerated its way through 1,700 Palestinians. And of course the words My Lai are now uttered again. Yes, the Nazis were much worse. And the Japanese. And the Croatian Ustashi. But this is us. This is our army. These young soldiers are our representatives in Iraq. And they have innocent blood on their hands.

I suspect part of the problem is that we never really cared about Iraqis, which is why we refused to count their dead. Once the Iraqis turned upon the army of occupation with their roadside bombs and suicide cars, they became Arab "gooks," the evil sub-humans whom the Americans once identified in Vietnam. Get a president to tell us that we are fighting evil and one day we will wake to find that a child has horns, a baby has cloven feet.

Remind yourself these people are Muslims and they can all become little Mohamed Attas. Killing a roomful of civilians is only a step further from all those promiscuous air strikes that we are told kill 'terrorists" but which all too often turn out to be a wedding party or -- as in Afghanistan -- a mixture of "terrorists" and children or, as we are soon to hear, no doubt, "terrorist children."

In a way, we reporters are also to blame. Unable to venture outside Baghdad -- or around Baghdad itself -- Iraq's vastness has fallen under a thick, all-consuming shadow. We might occasionally notice sparks in the night -- a Haditha or two in the desert -- but we remain meekly cataloguing the numbers of "terrorists" supposedly scored in remote corners of Mesopotamia. For fear of the insurgent's knife, we can no longer investigate. And the Americans like it that way.

I think it becomes a habit, this sort of thing. Already the horrors of Abu Ghraib are shrugged away. It was abuse, not torture. And then up pops a junior officer in the United States charged for killing an Iraqi army general by stuffing him upside down in a sleeping bag and sitting on his chest. And again, it gets few headlines. Who cares if another Iraqi bites the dust? Aren't they trying to kill our boys who are out there fighting terror.

For who can be held to account when we regard ourselves as the brightest, the most honorable of creatures, doing endless battle with the killers of Sept. 11 or July 7 because we love our country and our people -- but not other people -- so much. And so we dress ourselves up as Galahads, yes as Crusaders, and we tell those whose countries we invade that we are going to bring them democracy. I can't help wondering today how many of the innocents slaughtered in Haditha took the opportunity to vote in the Iraqi elections -- before their "liberators" murdered them.

Robert Fisk writes for the Independent, published in Great Britain.