The Bush administration laid out its legal reasoning for denying terror war suspects the protections of international humanitarian law but immediately repudiated a key memo arguing that torture might be justified in the fight against al-Qaida.
The release Tuesday of hundreds of pages of internal memos by the White House was meant to blunt criticism that President Bush had laid the groundwork for the abuses of Iraqi prisoners by condoning torture. The president insisted Tuesday: "I have never ordered torture."

...........In either case, both Bush and Cheney by their behavior have no claim to credibility on this purported connection between Saddam and 9/11 period, and it calls into question their credibility on 9/11 to begin with.

George Bush's war imperils a cherished political tradition
There is a growing sense that Americans have become victims of September 11 in a way that has blinkered their democratic instincts.
So now the hard questions are being put in a pre-September 11 context. Would Americans ordinarily tolerate a president who lies and exaggerates? A leader who uses fear to manipulate his people to his own ends? A president whose staff blow the deep cover of a CIA agent as political payback? A president whose Administration channels billions of dollars to crony corporations on false pretexts? A president who deems torture acceptable?
Would they accept a president who seems to agree with his advisers that he is above the law?

George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard for War Crimes against humanity and the planet.
The indictment is to be held in Christchurch Cathedral Square on AUGUST 7, 2004 and around the world

Robert Fisk portrays an uncannily similar picture of the US today with the Britain
invasion and occupation of Iraq back in the 1920's
-- They came as liberators but were met by fierce resistance outside Baghdad. Humiliating treatment of prisoners and heavy-handed action in Najaf and Fallujah further alienated the local population. A planned handover of power proved unworkable. Britain's 1917 occupation of Iraq holds uncanny parallels with today - and if we want to know what will happen there next, we need only turn to our history books...

America than if Saddam had stayed in power
'"Your government failed you," Mr Clarke told the hearing, turning to the relatives of those who died and who had come to Washington to hear his testimony. "Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter, because we failed."

"We just felt things were so serious, that America's leadership role in the world has been attenuated to such a terrible degree
by both the style and the substance of the administration's approach" William C Harrop, former US ambassador to Israel
WANTED FOR WAR CRIMES POSTER  Then click on the bottom right corner of picture to print your own large poster

"The Super-Watergate noose is tightening around the neck of the Cheney-Bush Administration, showing that Cheney & Co. are
guilty of crimes far worse than Richard Nixon ever dreamed of."
Look at some of the developments of the past 48 hours:

"Torture is only the tip of the iceberg," said Roger Normand, an international lawyer who directs the Center. "From unlawful killings, mass arrests, and collective punishment to outright theft and pillage, the U.S. is violating almost every law intended to protect civilians living under foreign military occupation."

The US selected Iyad Allawi, who served the interests of the USA for many years as a clandestine CIA agent staging explosions in Iraq, as their interim Prime Minister of Iraq.
The US empowered Allawi, who assassinated suspected "terrorists" in police custody, to rule Iraq and "authorise" the US destruction of Fallujah. Thus he is directly involved in the killing of thousands of his fellow countrymen, both ordinary men, women and children, and anyone thought to be resisting the US invader. Basically Allawi is the US mouthpiece, trying to give legitimacy to war crimes and the criminal US invasion, occupation and continuing murder of opponents. This man can in no way represent the Iraqi people.

Iyad Allawi, now the designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization intent on deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990's to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the C.I.A., several former intelligence officials say.
Dr. Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, used car bombs and other explosive devices... Ex-CIA officer Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed."

Everyone likes to say, "Hitler did this," and "Hitler did that." But the truth is Hitler did very little. He was a world class tyrant, but the evil actually done by the Third Reich, from the death camps to WWII, was all done by German citizens who were afraid to question if what they were told by their government was the truth or not, and who, because they did not want to admit to themselves that they were afraid to question the government, refused to see the truth behind the Reichstag Fire, refused to see the invasion by Poland was a staged fake, and followed Hitler into national disaster.

President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader's state of mind.
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state."
Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.
"It reminds me of the Nixon days," says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. "Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That's the mood over there."

We have paid a heavy price for the Bush Administration's unnecessary and illegal invasion of Iraq: more than 800 American soldiers dead; more than 4,500 wounded or maimed; and $120 billion wasted on a war and occupation that has sullied our country's image in the world, undercut our moral authority and poisoned Arab and Muslim minds against us for decades to come. We will pay an even heavier price if we "stay the course," as the Administration and many Democrats urge. If, as war supporters claim, our goals in Iraq (now that we've lost the rationale of hunting down weapons of mass destruction) are stability and democracy, we are proceeding in exactly the wrong way. In the eyes of most Iraqis, American forces have long since ceased to be nation-builders and instead are occupying forces that knock down their homes, bomb their mosques and abuse and humiliate their fellow citizens. The occupation, like other occupations throughout history, has generated a growing popular resistance that cannot be defeated militarily. It is time to change course.

Blair must answer fully to all the evidence of abuse by British troops

John Howard's Melbourne speech (May 26) ommitted key facts in order to justify Australia's continued participation in one of history's most fraudulent wars.

The times of ignorance are long past. The Nuremberg Trials were held 60 years ago, and mass murderers were declared war criminals and hanged.
An international citizens' tribunal comprised of distinguished law professors from around the world has recently declared Bush guilty of war crimes in Afghanistan, especially for the dispersion of depleted uranium.

What is it going to take to get the people to rise up and demand Congress remove George W. Bush and his whole administration from power on charges of and conviction for treason and other high crimes and misdemeanors?

The problem is that labeling and demonizing a people as evil is easy.
However, eliminating them after malicious classification is impossible.

The father of orphans and the defender of widows
is God in his holy dwelling.
God gives a home to the forsaken;
he leads forth prisoners to prosperity.
Psalm 67: 6-7
http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/052404.htm    Contrast this verse with the actions of Bush and Sharon.

Thousands at the White House will say: "Bush and Rumsfeld - Guilty of War Crimes"
"I plan to be in Washington DC on June 5 at the peace rally. We will be marching from Bush's White House to Rumsfeld's house and I am hoping that everyone who cares about peace in this country will join us."
- Michael Berg

The diplomat who quit over Nixon's invasion of Cambodia asks Americans on the front lines of foreign service to resign from the "worst regime by far in the history of the republic."       . . . . .
Dear Trustees:
I am respectfully addressing you by your proper if little-used title. The women and men of our diplomatic corps and intelligence community are genuine trustees. With intellect and sensibility, character and courage, you represent America to the world. Equally important, you show the world to America. You hold in trust our role and reputation among nations, and ultimately our fate. Yours is the gravest, noblest responsibility. Never has the conscience you personify been more important.

The Bush Administration has not made it easy on its supporters. David Brooks now admits that he was gripped with a "childish fantasy" about Iraq. Tucker Carlson is "ashamed" and "enraged" at himself. Tom Friedman, admitting to being "a little slow," is finally off the reservation. Die-hard Republican publicist William Kristol admits of Bush, "He did drive us into a ditch." The neocon fantasist and sometime Republican speechwriter Mark Helprin complains on the Wall Street Journal editorial page--the movement's Pravda--of "the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought, and with too little regard for the American soldier, whose mounting casualties seem to have no effect on the boastfulness of the civilian leadership."        This site is a must see

It's time to stop beating around this Bush and start beating up on him -- but good. There is no set of humanitarian or democratic principles by which this administration would not have been removed in any sane society. The last election was questionable at best, and his reckless, dangerous and criminal actions in the ensuing years have shown the whole world he is unfit to govern. The only democratic remedy, impeachment, was set aside early and forcibly by an opposition still afraid of its own shadow. It did make some sense, early on, to argue that, since the Greasy Oil Plutocrats (GOP) controlled both houses, it was a waste of time and energy.

On August 6, 2001, while vacationing in Crawford, Texas, George Bush received an intelligence briefing called "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." It included revelations that al Qaeda members were conducting "surveillance of federal buildings in New York"; the World Trade Center was mentioned in the first paragraph, the prospect of terrorist "retaliat[ion] in Washington" in the second. According to the briefing, Osama bin Laden's organization was acting in ways "consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."

>>> The text below comes from MSNBC's posting here. The Memory Hole has made a FOIA request for this report. For some of the photos that triggered this investigation, see "Photos of Iraqis Being Abused by US Personnel."

The official word from the Bush administration is that the torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison is not “systematic,” according to General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This type of torture of indigenous and Third World people, however, is well-documented as a pattern and practice of the U.S. military and the CIA.

...The graphic images, passed around among military police who served at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, are a new batch of photographs similar to those broadcast a week ago on CBS's "60 Minutes II" and published by the New Yorker magazine. They appear to provide further visual evidence of the chaos and unprofessionalism at the prison detailed in a report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. His report, which relied in part on the photographs, found "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" that were inflicted on detainees.

Is the Commander In Chief capable of the Job or does he just not give a damm.
If he is such a great leader, how do the troups dare to act in this way.
How could he not know. He is Bush, he has access to all information.
He should not be in power, running the biggest bullying army in the world.

.......The war is a stupid, unjust and criminal war. It is a quagmire from which no immediate escape seems possible. Many more Americans are going to die so that American ''democracy and freedom'' can be imposed on the Iraqis -- whether they want them or not. Many more Iraqis will die, too. Americans who support the war share in its criminality.

The last month of US aggression in Iraq has inspired what can only be described as a mutiny: waves of soldiers, workers and politicians under the command of the US occupation authority suddenly refusing to follow orders and abandoning their posts. First Spain announced that it would withdraw its troops, then Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Kazakhstan. South Korean and Bulgarian troops were pulled back to their bases, while New Zealand is withdrawing its engineers. El Salvador, Norway, the Netherlands and Thailand will likely be next.

COMMENT FROM SISTER LAETITIA BORDES: "I'm filled with sadness. I'm filled with fear. I fear for the people of Iraq, because I feel that John Negroponte certainly is not concerned about the democracy of Iraq. I think that John Negroponte is concerned about his reputation. He is an expert in counter insurgency tactics. We see that in his background. And John Negroponte will stop at nothing. At nothing."

In possibly the most stinging rebuke ever to a British government by its foreign policy establishment, 52 former ambassadors and international officials have written to Tony Blair telling him he is damaging UK (and western) interests by backing George W. Bush's misguided policies in the Middle East. It would be comforting to imagine that their comments will be heeded.

What's wrong with the American people? It's so obvious by now that Bush is a liar and a conniver, and an idiot to boot. He got us into the Iraq mess with deceitful tactics and a plan built on fantasy. No WMD, no Al Qa'eda link, no threat to the US. The only point was to control Iraq's oil. He's bankrupting the American treasury in order to enrich his oil buddies. And the fantasy has turned into a nightmare.

Most Americans, including many liberals and critics of the Bush administration, have bought the official story that 9-11 was perpetrated by Al Qa'eda, and the only questions to be asked have to do with the failure of intelligence. Those who question this story and want to investigate other possibilities are dismissed as "conspiracy kooks".
As a practicing psychiatrist, I hear many stories from my patients about how they are being conspired against. Some of the stories are psychotic paranoia, others are all too real. A woman being abused by her spouse, for instance, is truly being persecuted, and the perpetrator may have the whole family convinced that she is "crazy". I would be remiss if I didn't take her story seriously.

“President Bush poses the greatest threat to America that we have seen in modern history,” Ritter told an audience in the University Union's Potomac Lounge.   ~ ~ ~
Ritter, a former intelligence officer for the US Marine Corps who served as the UN's Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, said the U.S. government “brought us into this war on false pretenses.”   ~ ~ ~
“Our real policy has been regime change,” Ritter said. “Our plan was to dethrone Saddam, not to find weapons of mass destruction.”

...As resistance attacks continued to increase in the city against the occupiers, so did the retaliation by the military. And so it has grown to bring us to the current siege of Fallujah where hundreds of women, children, elderly and unarmed men have been slain by soldiers, along with some mujahedeen.

Why Bush is spending so much on nuclear weapons.
The budget is busted; American soldiers need more armor; they're running out of supplies. Yet the Department of Energy is spending an astonishing $6.5 billion on nuclear weapons this year, and President Bush is requesting $6.8 billion more for next year and a total of $30 billion over the following four years. This does not include his much-cherished missile-defense program, by the way. This is simply for the maintenance, modernization, development, and production of nuclear bombs and warheads.

To commit a crime against peace, one must engage in “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties . . . or participation in a common plan or conspiracy . . . to wage an aggressive war.” Bush is guilty on all these counts. The most damning evidence coming not from the liberal left, but in a series of well-documented books providing revelations by people in his own administration or party. Now, with Woodward’s work, the President is condemned with his own words.

Once there was a time when American conservatives defended their country from government. No more. Today conservatives defend Bush’s warmongering neo-Jacobin government at all costs.

What is Islam? - a poem

A warmonger. A crackpot fundamentalist. A fanatic and a fool who has only the barest grasp of the killing power of the forces under his command.

“The world is too terrible a place to live in, not because of the bad things that happen,
but because of the good people who stand by and do nothing.” -- Albert Einstein

At least 600 Iraqis have died so far, mostly women and children. Ambulances are being shot up, people are being told to flee the city and then stopped in the desert without food or water. These heinous crimes are being committed by the American military, no doubt following orders from Rumsfeld and Bush.

Local Iraqis in Christchurch have united to call on NZ and US to withdraw troops and described how US media have grossly distorted the true picture. (See Chch Press story section B Page 2 on April 14, 2004.) Iraqis call for NZ to get out

The US is committing very evil deeds in Iraq. The current atrocities are but the latest in a long litany of assaults on this ancient, proud people, who have the misfortune of living on top of a much coveted asset.
The CIA inflicted Saddam Hussein upon the Iraqi people in the 80's, and the Nixon government, Rumsfeld in particular, supported him in full knowledge of his gassing of the Kurds. When Saddam asserted his independence, he was seduced into invading Kuwait, then brutally crushed. Iraq was dusted with uranium powder, and then treated to 10 years of cruel sanctions.

The truth of what's happening in Falluja has to get out.
.......I'm outraged. We're trying to get to a woman who's giving birth without any medical attention, without electricity, in a city under siege, in a clearly marked ambulance, and you're shooting at us. How dare you?
How dare you?

Despite the growing number of reports that depict the fighting as a spontaneous and indigenous revolt against the U.S.-led occupation, the influential neo-cons are calling on Bush to warn Tehran to cease its alleged backing for al-Sadr and other Shia militias or face retaliation, ranging from an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities to covert action designed to overthrow the government.

I have watched with heavy heart and mounting dread as the ever-precarious battle to bring security to post-war Iraq has taken a desperate turn for the worse in recent days and hours. Along with so many Americans, I have been shaken by the hellish carnage in Fallujah and the violent uprisings in Baghdad and elsewhere. The pictures have been the stuff of nightmares, with bodies charred beyond recognition and dragged through the streets of cheering citizens. And in the face of such daunting images and ominous developments, I have wondered anew at the President's stubborn refusal to admit mistakes or express any misgivings over America's unwarranted intervention in Iraq.

A myth equal to the fable of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is gaining strength on both sides of the Atlantic. It is that John Kerry offers a world-view different from that of George W Bush. Watch this big lie grow as Kerry is crowned the Democratic candidate and the "anyone but Bush" movement becomes a liberal cause celebre.

Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism coordinator, accuses the Bush administration of failing to recognize the al-Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and then manipulating America into war with Iraq with dangerous consequences.
He accuses Bush of doing "a terrible job on the war against terrorism."

A year ago, the United States went to war in Iraq because President George W. Bush and his administration convinced Congress and the country that Saddam Hussein was an urgent threat that required immediate military action.
The nation has paid a high price for that decision ever since.

   *ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
http://www.unitedforpeace.org
 Momentum is building across the globe for the Global Day of Action against War and Occupation on March 20, the one-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq.

My most immediate priority," Spain's new leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, declared yesterday, "will be to fight terrorism." But he and the voters who gave his party a stunning upset victory last Sunday don't believe the war in Iraq is part of that fight. And the Spanish public was also outraged by what it perceived as the Aznar government's attempt to spin last week's terrorist attack for political purposes.
The Bush administration, which baffled the world when it used an attack by Islamic fundamentalists to justify the overthrow of a brutal but secular regime, and which has been utterly ruthless in its political exploitation of 9/11, must be very, very afraid.

TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) – Over the past few days, in the wake of the bombings in Karbala and the ideological disputes that delayed the signing of Iraq’s interim constitution, there have been reports that U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq.

America under George W. Bush has become a rogue nation, an outlaw that shreds treaties and invades other countries on false pretexts, with no provocation. We refuse to come under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, lest we be judged by the same standard that applies to every other nation. We continue to consume far more than our share of the planet's dwindlng resources, and add far more than our share to the planet's carbon dioxide load, which is heating things up at a rapid rate.

Busting the liars:   Karen Kwiatkowski    her Web reports
After two decades in the U.S. Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, now 43, knew her career as a regional analyst was coming to an end when — in the months leading up to the war in Iraq — she felt she was being “propagandized” by her own bosses.
With master’s degrees from Harvard in government and zoology and two books on Saharan Africa to her credit, she found herself transferred in the spring of 2002 to a post as a political/military desk officer at the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia (NESA), a policy arm of the Pentagon.

Information Clearing House

The War Party's Waterloo

The fear campaign aimed at Iraq was precisely timed for the kickoff of the midterm election campaign of 2002.
A brilliant paper by Al Gore, lengthy but very lucid

With the collapse of the edifice of lies used to justify the war in Iraq, the entire US political establishment has rallied around a new lie concocted to conceal the old ones—namely, the assertion that an “intelligence failure” is to blame for the false pre-war claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

LONDON - A strong case arguing the illegality of the invasion of Iraq will be handed soon to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
The report prepared by eight leading international lawyers and professors of law drawn from four countries makes a strong case against the illegality of the way British and U.S. troops fought the war. Inter Press Service

From Inside the Pentagon

• Iraq WMD was not an immediate threat
• Inspections were working
• Intelligence failed and was misrepresented
• Terrorist connection missing
• Post-war WMD search ignored key resources
• War was not the best – or only – option      story at Lew Rockwell