“It is a very frightening precedent that the United States can invade a country on false pretenses, depose its leader and summarily execute him without an international trial or appeals process. “ -------- – invade the country..YES.. false pretnses? – maybe, according to his book..( lets all buy it and see what he has to say…) but is the real objective a valid one? YES.. just ask those cheering Saddams execution or those thousands still trying to find out what happened to their sons and husbands in Saddams jails!

“Vengence not justice??”------- You mean about Saddam trying to assassinate Bush Sr..???? maybe.. if he did succeed would we want him taken out.. YEP! Justice..well..again, ask the Kurds or all those thousands still looking for members of their families taken into Saddams jails.

“Should the trial have been overlooked by the World Court?” –----- why wouldn’t the Iraqi’s be able to try their own dictator. Is the author suggesting they weren’t capable – what message would that have sent to the Iraqi’s??? Additionally, if the UN wasn’t ready to step in to stop Saddam, why would they be any more objective – seems they would be less objective.

“Those crimes were well known to have occurred 15 months before Rumsfeld visited Iraq to usher in an alliance between the United States and Saddam to defeat Iran” --------– do remember that France, Germany and Russia all wanted to avoid having Islamic fanatics take control over the gulf… a problem that still exsists today and they all supported Saddam.

Robert Scheer - he should hawk his book out in the street...

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The real menace
Robert Scheer, Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

The public, seeing through the tissue of Bush administration lies told to justify an invasion that never had anything to do with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 or weapons of mass destruction, now has begun a national questioning: Why are we still in Iraq? The answers posted most widely on the Internet by critics of the war suggest its continuation as a naked imperial grab for the world's second largest petroleum source, but that is wrong...

It's not primarily about the oil; it's much more about the military-industrial complex, the label employed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower 45 years ago when he warned of the dangers of "a permanent arms industry of vast proportions."

Yes, some, like Paul Wolfowitz, the genius who was the No. 2 in the U.S. Defense Department and has been rewarded for his leadership with appointment as head of the World Bank, did argue that Iraq's oil revenue would pay for our imperial adventure. A recent study by Nobel Prize wining economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard University's Linda Bilmes marked that absurdity by estimating the true cost of the Iraq adventure to U.S taxpayers at a whopping $2.267 trillion, in excess of any cost borne by the Iraqis themselves.

The big prize here for Bush's foreign policy is not the acquisition of natural resources or the enhancement of U.S. security, but rather the lining of the pockets of the defense contractors, the merchants of death who mine our treasury. But because the arms industry is coddled by political parties and the mass media, their antics go largely unnoticed. Our politicians and pundits argue endlessly about a couple of billion dollars that may be spent on improving education or ending poverty, but they casually waste that amount in a few days in Iraq.

As Eisenhower warned: "We should take nothing for granted, only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together ... We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."

Too bad we no longer have leading Republicans, or Democrats, warning of that danger.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2006/12/27/EDGOULJ6PK1.DTL

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I was an instructor in the military and can tell you that deploying chemical gas weapons is a very tricky operation requiring the following:

1. Excellent advance weather prognostication
2. Crack, well-trained, technically competent troops
3. First class, state-of-the-art protection equipment for your own personnel
4. First class, state-of-the-art deployment equipment
5. Air superiority of the target area
6. Excellent first class knowledge of the topography of the target area

Even WITH all of the above, up to 3%+ casualties amongst your own personnel is likely and those percentages rise dramatically with the loss of any of the above 6 requirements.

Iraq's army was composed largely of illiterate and semi-illiterate poorly motivated conscripts; Had almost NO weather prognostication ability; Had little personnel protection equipment and what it did have was shop-worn, dated, circa Korean-war vintage; Had NO aerosol deployment capability and certainly NO low-level suitably protected aerial deployment equipment (shielded helicopters); and there was NO impact evidence in the photos of the dead kurds -- elminating artillery and bomb delivery. More importantly, UN photos of the dead Kurds taken almost immediately after the atrocity showed NO Iraqi troops among the casualties.

Taking all the above into account, unless Sadaam Hussein had the technology to beam the gas to the Kurds via a Star Trek transporter; the probability his troops deployed the poison gas we supplied is roughly equal to that be being hit by a meteor. However, there are Other suspects...

Let's apply the MOM (Motivation, Opportunity, Means) parameter to our intellectual investigation:

The ONLY potential players are:
1. Saddaam's troops -- but circumstantial evidence virtually eliminates them so they lack the Means.
2. Iranian troops -- but they lack the Motivation; the Kurd's represented a 5th column behind Sadaam's lines and were their allies.
3. Turkish troops -- but the Kurd's have tribal links on both sides of that border and any such activity by the Turks would be politcally dangerous; undoubtedly would have caused extensive domestic strife; Been notoriously public; and required a large scale cross-border military incursion that did NOT occur. So they lack the Opportunity.
4. USA Black Ops -- Consider that at the time Sadaam was our surrogate and had initiated a war with Iran with the full support, blessings; material and technical aid of the US Military. To quote Dick Cheney, "Sadaam may be a son of a bitch; but he is OUR son of a bitch."

In that war, the Kurd's were a threat in Sadaam's rear and a potential source of sabotage, interdiction, and perhaps even allies of Iran and thus ultimately were a threat to what was considered USA interests.

So the USA had:
1. the Motivation to gas the Kurds
2. the Opportunity -- as Sadaam's ally we had unlimited access and our intelligence services and special forces ("advisors") had the run of the country.
3. the Means -- ONLY the USA had the technical ability, equipment, trained personnel, etc. to deploy the poison gas successfully.

Murderers have been sent to the electric chair on less evidence than that...

Chew on that one and unless you are compeletely intellectually dishonest you will arrive at the ONLY logical conclusion.

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AT THIS POINT IN OUR CURRENT TIMES, IT IS OF NO SURPRISE THAT EXPEDITING THE EXECUTION OF ONE OF THE EVIL ONES MAY HAVE SOME QUESTIONABLE REASONS THAT THE U.S DO NOT STOP THE EXECUTION...

IN MY OPINION, SADAMM WAS JUST AS EGOTISTICAL AND POWER DRIVEN AS BUSH AND COMPANY...HE WAS VERY CRUDE AND DIRECT AS TO WHAT HE WANTED AND HIS BRUTAL ACTIONS WERE OUT IN THE OPEN ...BUSH AND COMPANY WERE MORE TO LEGAL AND FINESED THEIR ACTIONS , MORE COVERT THAN OVERT...THE RESULTS WERE THE SAME...

INCO FAR AS TO WHO KILL THE ROBIN THE REASONS WERE FEW BUT POWERFUL- OIL/GAS COMPANIES, MILITARY/INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX., AND OF COURSE THE POWER HUNGRY NEOCOMS OF THE U.S WHO THOUGHT THEY COULD AND WOULD CONTROL THE WORLD...

MY ADVICE TO THEM : " ...GO OUT AND GET AN HONEST JOB AND GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY WITH SOIL, DIRT, GREASE, ETC...NOT THE ONES THAT ARE COVERED WITH BLOOD AND TEARS OF VICTIMS OF THE WAR FOLLIES ADVOCATED BY THEIR FANTASS..."...AND, OUR PRESENT ADMINISTRATION HAS DEMONSTRATED THEIR INCOMPETENCE AND LACK OF KNOWLEDGE, SOURCE, AND DISTRIBUTION OF "P-O-W-E-R..."

S=JIM=RODRIGUEZ+++ECLECTICIST SPIRIT SEEKER+++

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Saddam was charged, tried, convicted and finally executed by his own people. Deservedly so since there is little doubt that he was responsible for the deaths of 10's of thousands of his own people. Of course being a despot brings a certain respect and admiration from folks from the left since the ideologies of both are fairly close. Thats why you guys have such hign esteem fro the likes of Castro, Chavez, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot et.al. They are your ideological brethren and you deep down just really can't help yourselves but admire them. You folks simply can't help but embrace that which is wicked and evil. Its like the old story about the Scorpion and the frog..... You just can't help yourselves because its in your nature.

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This site is crawling with right wing ghouls that can't be bothered to wipe the drool off their grins.
It bothers them little that the unhung butchers like Bush, Sharon, Olmert and Cheney ("Saddam may be a son of a bitch but he is our son of a bitch") get the carpets unrolled before them, because "they are our sons of bitches".
At least ponder on how our steadfast heroes like Bush and Cheney would face their own end of a well deserved and greased rope ... hold your noses folks and watch your step, it's kinda slippery here.
If history is any indication ... but Pajama Partyers don't bother with history, they just rewrite it as required.

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How did Saddam gas the Iranians? As the Washington Post and others reported back in the 80s, Saddam gassed the Iranians with targeting intel from the U.S. Rummy knows all about it, which I suspect is one reason why Bush turned Saddam over to a lynch mob, throwing away an opportunity to show the world that justice need not be revenge but redemptive. If you had bothered to do your homework about the history of U.S.-Saddam relations you would be embarrased to have raised such an ignorant question. See, if Saddam had gone to trial over the big crimes he committed, people like conservarus, who are extremely poor students of U.S. military history, would get an education in how U.S. foriegn policy has been conducted over the years. You've seen the photo of Rummy shaking hands with Saddam back when Reagan decided Iraq should no longer be considered a terrorist state, right? Conservarus, when Saddam was committing crimes against humanity, U.S. leaders, including Rummy, were doing everything in their power to prevent intl sanction etc before the U.N. Since you care so much for the Iraqis and justice, I'm just wondering what you were doing when Saddam was actually committing atrocities. Judging by the way you parrot Bush-speak, I'm wondering if you weren't calling Saddam one of "our guys."

When you add to the truth, you subtract from it. Saddam did not "kill his own people." He killed people involved in armed resistance, who were seeking not just to kill him but to establish sovereign states within Iraq's national borders. Not that doesn't justify state-sanctioned violence but ask yourself: If a group of black panthers or Native Americans took up arms and demanded "sovereign" U.S. territory, what would happen? They would be slaughtered with impunity to the delight of millions of Americans. If instances of state leaders putting down rebellions is a war crime, then name me one gov't who hasn't committed that crime?

As for Saddam being tried by his own people? C'mon. That's like handing a U.S. president over to Indian militants still seeking revenge for ARMED GUERRILLAS still mad about Wounded Knee and saying, he was killed by his own people. The level of self-deception is incredible. I suspect conservarus exaggerates, embellishes and distorst to suppress his or her's basic humanity.

Finally, and most importantly, conservarus pretends not to know that handing over a POW to a lynch mob is against intl law. Occupiers are supposed to turn over alleged war criminals to an international body, not to a bunch of revenge crazy, bloodlusting lynchmen. What the hanging means, in geopolitically terms, is that national soveriengty means nothing anymore. Accuse a leader of war crimes, invade, kill mostly civvies in the process and then kill the leader. What happens when America is no longer on top? It may not tomorrow or the next day, but ALL imperial empires come to end eventually.

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The sg screed above was directed at Conservarus, not the author, just for the record.

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sg above is correct in that Saddam's trial by an American designed kangaroo court and his subsequent killing is travesty of justice and a war crime.
Warning - this is an unedited video of Saddam's lynching, in every way a true picture of what George W. Bush and his "America bringing democracy to Iraq" is all about: sleazy, corrupt and savage orgy of bloodletting.
And you wonder why the world hates us?
Decent Americans should hang their heads in shame.

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New York Times

Friday 31 January 2003

It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion: "The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured."

The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing its own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein.

But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story.

I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent -- that is, a cyanide-based gas -- which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker last March did not make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency report or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof, that it was skewed out of American political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against Iran.

I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein. He has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war. There may be justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them.

In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on America's impetus to invade Iraq.

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We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, there are the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab rivers in the north of the country. Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the sixth century A.D., and was a granary for the region.

Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.

Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades -- not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water. Even if America didn't occupy the country, once Mr. Hussein's Baath Party is driven from power, many lucrative opportunities would open up for American companies.

All that is needed to get us into war is one clear reason for acting, one that would be generally persuasive. But efforts to link the Iraqis directly to Osama bin Laden have proved inconclusive. Assertions that Iraq threatens its neighbors have also failed to create much resolve; in its present debilitated condition -- thanks to United Nations sanctions -- Iraq's conventional forces threaten no one.

Perhaps the strongest argument left for taking us to war quickly is that Saddam Hussein has committed human rights atrocities against his people. And the most dramatic case are the accusations about Halabja.

Before we go to war over Halabja, the administration owes the American people the full facts. And if it has other examples of Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, it must show that they were not pro-Iranian Kurdish guerrillas who died fighting alongside Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Until Washington gives us proof of Saddam Hussein's supposed atrocities, why are we picking on Iraq on human rights grounds, particularly when there are so many other repressive regimes Washington supports?

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How ironic that on the other side of the coin so to speak from Saddam being executed in approximately 1/100th the time it takes in America, our government and the media are now canonizing upon his death President Gerald Ford, who thwarted the rule of law, the Constitution and simple justice, by preemptively pardoning President Nixon.

(Don't get me wrong; Saddam was a madman and should have been tried for crimes against humanity, but as Robert Sheer points out, through the proper channels in the World Court – not through a fancy lynching. And – we have our own murderous madmen, don't we?)

Once again, even across national bounderies and the political spectrum, we find that there are two systems of justice: a harsh one for the masses, political foes and those who know too much, and an oh, so benign and forgiving one for the aristocracy in power.

What has changed since the Third Reich, or even the Middle Ages? Politically, not a hell of a lot. The freedoms that were once guaranteed by the Constitution and respected by those in power now seem to remain only at their whim, to be removed whenever those freedoms get in the way of unchecked power's expansion (case in point: habeas corpus).


We must ask ourselves: Is George Bush right? IS the Constitution now "only a goddamned piece of paper," as he so ineloquently put it?

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"Did Saddam die because he knew too much about the United States' real role in Iraq?"

Simply put, "That is exactly right."

Never get off course from the beginning of the public lies and deception that brought the Iraq invasion to the public eye. It was suppose to be 911. Yet with each and every intentional event that takes the public eye off the deception of 911 the public eye is lead astray from bringing to justice those that are tuely guilty.

Just as Saddam knew too much, and who's testimony would have been the mother of all testimonies that would point directly to the U.S., the evidences has been eliminated.

Just as Bush had removed all the critical evidence from the crime scene of the twin towers and sent it to China too, the evidence has been eliminated.

Just as the Military commisions act was rammed through congress in the 11th hour, before the November election.
the real criminals have covered their asses from being made responsible and accountable for their crimes against humanity.

As American citizens, we are obliged to straighten the lies out for future generation and hold accountable the crimes against humanity that have been allowed to happen by this Pirate Administration that has Raped, Pillaged and plundered the Iraqi people of life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness that will never be theirs as long as the Bush regime is not brought to justice. They, the Bushies, have shanghaied the nations young men and women under false pretenses disguised and buried the truth of 911 in order to change the very fabric of America into a Fascist dictatorship under rule of a phantom corporate model of economics that is enslaving the country and burying the nation in an unfathomable debt that we will either default on loans from China and plummet us into economic nightmare the likes of which this country has never seen before.

As much as Saddam is guilty of the atrocities he is. He is no less than that of Cheney and Bush at this point.
The Bush neocons must all be held accountable,
STOP BUSH NOW!

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I second most everything in the article, especially the very articulate reference to "the feel of a gangster silencing the key witness to a crime."

But a comment I read once comes back to mind: shadow governments or secret services (Geheimdienste) like to make moves that accomplish several objectives at once. In this case, one of their main objectives is throwing a bone to the rabid dog lurking inside the average American voter. The commentary I heard at work the day after the hanging showed that they have an appetite for such "bread & circuses" equal to that for the crap they watch in the breakroom (Judge Judy, &c.). '

Remember "the wimp factor"? I was sitting in a Midas Muffler shop in 1988 looking at a very wimpy (I think it was Hirschfeld) cartoon of Poppy Bush on the cover of Newsweek. Well, he showed us, eh? He went straight down to Panama and rounded up our old friend and collaborator Noriega. The hanging seems more Rovian than anything else.

You notice they hanged him for the execution of some 150 of his would-be assassins. What would Bush do if he caught 150 men inches from assassinating him? [heh]

You notice they didn't bring up the Kurds at Halabja, whose death has always been Saddam's albatross in the western press. Probably we didn't want to broach the subject, because it led right back to our own door: we provided the precursors, the maps, the satellite photos to gas the Iranians (our arch enemies since uppity Mossadegh in '53). The wind changed and the Kurds took the hit. Oh, well!

"do remember that France, Germany and Russia all wanted to avoid having Islamic fanatics take control over the gulf" — yeah, we are all about democracy (as long as they put in who we like) — shades of Algeria.

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From George W. Bush's 2007 State of The Union Address:

With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Ahmedinejad could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region.

And this Congress and the American people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Ahmedinejad aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.

Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Ahmedinejad could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained.

Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Ahmedinejad. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.

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Even the men who are anti-war---are obcessed with it.
Look at the posts above.

What we need is what Alice Walker says in her new book.
We need a balance of male-female power. Men have all the power now. We need women...real women...not Connie Rice-Hillary-male robot types....to come in and say No More War. Be good boys and stop fighting and work together.

We need to place the envoronment FIRST and we need some kind of world government. Give the United Nations the power it was meant to have and fill it with women.

I think that when President Kennedy was killed-and Robert and Martin...the fate of our country was changed.
I think the Mafia has taken over...and they rule by murder.

Cars and super highways and pollution and oil and bombs and more and more energy and eating cows and pigs and smoking tobacco and alcohol and synthetic fibers and dirty air and no one at home with the kids and political murders and starving children and no health care and wiping out our wild horses and wolves and huge coporations running everything for profits ...it is all the same thing.
I refuse to think like a 'logical male' anymore.
Look where it has got us.
Men are what is wrong with this world.
(I know -I know-not all of them)
But most of them.

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Remember when Bush Sr. invaded a country, arrested the leader, and tried him quietly in a kangaroo court? What gives the U.S. authority to judge and punish world leaders? Hell, I would bet my last dollar that you could pick any leader of a major country on this whole planet that is in someway responsible for some henious crime. Some of our own presidents are responsible for unnecessary, brutal deaths of their own people and foriegners and are still glorified in text books. Even in recent history I have seen our leaders embrace brutal dictators and even have them do our dirty work. It bothers me to see the President, with the support of Congress, give the order to invade a country and "arrest" its leader because he is guilty of a crime. Next thing you know, some country will invade us on the pretext that our President has committed crimes against humanity. And , more than likely, they are probably correct.

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What happened to Saddam was a quirky case of assassination clumsily arranged. The Bushies are guilty of war crimes, assassinations, environmental crimes, electoral crimes and numerous other crimes. Those members of Congress who do not favor impeachment for all of these crimes are guilty of accessary to all of these crimes and should themselves be impeached or dumped from office by the electoral process. We need to stop having criminal presidents and have decent presidents instead. Asses as democracy does not compute.

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i dont know about the rest of you, but personally i have never met or seen Saddam Hussein in person or witnessed anything bad or good that he may have caused during his existence. All i know of him is what a 80 cm black box portrays to me when im stupid enough to turn it on. (i must admit though during his trial he seemed to have admirable presidential qualities). I do know from my studies though that people with power are ruthless and the media is the most powerful form of mind control imaginable. Put these two together and there is nothing in this world that cannot be legitimised through mass propaganda. I was sickened to hear of Saddams execution and and i still cannot come to grips with people accepting that it is not only acceptable, but applauded. I watch the new generation and there behaviours, beliefs and mannerisms and i can see the way they have become mass moulded into everything they have laid their eyes and ears upon. (media). There is no critical thinking outside the box for these poor people and the possibilities this gives to those humungously rich private equity consortiums is truly scary.

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Now that Rumsfield's minnie military strategy has proven to be both mickey mouse and full of bugs we have to ask oursevles was he daffy or just plain goofy... And, will he take responsibility or will Donald duck?

BTW, BTW, BTW...that's all folks.... :)

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A couple of news cycles ago we had a trial of some feller by the name of Noriega. Seems his trial wasn't suitable for public consumption. Lots of inadmissable evidence I'll bet. Think he's due for parole this century. He's lucky he had drugs instead of oil.
-Greg Forest

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Yes, they hung him quite quickly without trying him on all the other crimes with which he was charged. What was the hurry after all? The trial itself was a farce as anyone could see. But those other crimes that were so quickly dropped--those were crimes that involved some alliance with the U.S. back when Saddam was our friend in the mideast.

By the way, does anyone know where Tariq Aziz is? I always thought that Aziz actually played a covert role in the Hussein regime for the U.S. Is he in jail? Or in a witness protection program?

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I was bitterly disappointed and felt betrayed when most Democrats, including John Kerry, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards, supported the US invasion of Iraq. Very few Democrats had the wisdom or courage to oppose George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the Halliburton/Exxon/corporate oil and military contractors who are continuing the British Empire's policy of "divide and conquer" in the Mideast oil areas.

Yes, the British policy "worked" for almost a century, after Sir T. E. Lawrence, the famous "Lawrence of Arabia," was sent as an intelligence operative to unite the Arab tribes against the Turkish rulers of the oil kingdoms. After the Turks left, Great Britain set up arbitrary national boundaries and puppet governments like the royal families of most mideast oil kingdoms. These royal families know nothing of democracy, but they are loyal allies of Britain and the USA, so we support them.

But in the long run, this is a selfish policy, designed to get cheap oil prices and give British Petroleum and the rest of the oil corporations control over the Mideast oilfields. As a former part of the British Empire, the United States of America is simply continuing the oil policy of its mother country.

This is the same reason that the former U.S.S.R. invaded Afghanistan: to secure a stable location for natural gas and oil pipelines to the sea. The U.S.S.R. failed in its attempt to control Afghanistan, partly because of the Reagan-Bush support of the Afghan muhajedeen "freedom fighters" (later known as the Taliban) who were aided by a very wealthy, eccentric Saudi Arabian outcast, son of the second wealthiest man in Saudi Arabia---His name? Osama bin Laden.

The USA will fail in its attempts to control Afghanistan and Iraq, as it failed in its attempts to control Iran 40 years ago by installing military strongman Shah Reza Pahlavi as King of Iran. The late Shah gave the USA and British oil companies favorable prices, but offended the majority of Iranians by his pro-Western social policies, corruption, brutal suppression of political rivals, and elitist government and economic policies.

The Iranian people knew well that Shah Reza Pahlavi was a puppet of the US and British oil companies and contractors like Brown and Root (now named Halliburton). When President Carter offered sanctuary to the Shah during his terminal illness with cancer, the Iranian Ayatollahs took revenge by holding Americans hostage...releasing them at the moment of Ronald Reagan's inauguration as President!
Coincidence?

I personally asked John Edwards why he failed to oppose the invasion on Iraq at a public forum in Raleigh several years ago. I would also like to ask Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Al Gore the same question.

I wish the major US media would treat all candidates for office more fairly, not just the rich ones who can afford to spend millions on TV and radio advertising.

Ralph Nader, who was not even allowed to participate in a single Presidential debate! I voted for Ralph Nader for President by absentee ballot from China, because I felt he was the only candidate who consistently and firmly opposed the ill-conceived US-British invasion of Iraq, a sovereign nation which has never attacked the USA. I hope Mr. Nader will continue his honest and intelligent contribution to the political dialogue in the United States of America.

And I hope the news media will give him and others a fair chance to explain their views to the American people.

Gary J. Minter
http://aidsvillagechina.blog.sohu.com
www.healthchina.org

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