DWINDLING COALITION

"The Bulgarian parliament has endorsed the decision to pull the country's 450 troops out of Iraq by the end of the year. Japan is reported to be planning to do the same thing. The Ukrainians, among others, have been withdrawing. Poland is cutting its commitment. After some very acrimonious departures in the past - like that of the Philippines - it is difficult to escape the impression that Washington's band of coalition partners in Iraq is dwindling..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4523857.stm

SOVEREIGNTY: SUNNI POLITICIAN ARRESTED

"... a top Sunni politician was arrested and then released by US forces, who said they had made a mistake. Mohsen Abdul Hamid, leader of the Iraqi Islamic party - one of Iraq's main Sunni parties, which boycotted elections in January - was taken from his home in the early morning, angering his supporters. The arrest was immediately condemned by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who expressed his "surprise and unhappiness", saying: "Treating a political personality of this level in such an arbitrary way is unacceptable." The US military said in a statement: "Following [an] interview it was determined that he was detained by mistake and should be released... Coalition forces regret any inconvenience..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4592763.stm

"... Basically they kicked down his door, rifled through his things, hooded him, and dragged him away. There was no arrest warrant, no consultation with the supposedly sovereign Iraqi government, and apparently no knowledge of who Abd al-Hamid really is..."
-- Juan Cole, Informed Comment, Monday, May 30, 2005
http://www.juancole.com/

"... Islamic Party Secretary-General Ayad al-Samarei accused American soldiers of raiding Abdul-Hamid's home and confiscating items, including a computer. "This is a provocative and foolish act and this is part of the pressure exerted on the party. At the time when the Americans say they are keen on real Sunni participation, they are now arresting the head of the only Sunni party that calls for a peaceful solution and have participated in the political process."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158061,00.html

FRENCH FRIES POLITICIAN NOW SEES NO JUSTIFICATION FOR WAR

"... the US politician who led the campaign to change the name of french fries to "freedom fries" has turned against the war. Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war "with no justification".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1491463,00.html

IRAQI OIL PRODUCTION LOWER NOW THAN BEFORE INVASION

"... The head of Iraq's southern oil company, Jabbar al-Ueibi, has acknowledged that oil production is lower now than it was before the US-led invasion. He told the BBC that output had been hit by a lack of funds for essential maintenance and equipment. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4575861.stm

U.S. TO WITHDRAW INTO 4 GIANT PERMANENT BASES

"US military to build four giant new bases in Iraq... commanders are planning to pull back their troops from Iraq's towns and cities and redeploy them in four giant bases... the four probable locations (are): Tallil in the south; Al Asad in the west; Balad in the centre and either Irbil or Qayyarah in the north... The new buildings would be constructed to withstand direct mortar fire... the decision... is seen by some as a sign that the US expects to keep a permanent presence in Iraq..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1489979,00.html

VIOLENCE LEADS TO THREAT OF CIVIL WAR

"... four months after Iraq's election, when millions of Iraqis defied insurgent threats by voting for a new parliament, sectarian violence now threatens to drag the country into civil war...
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wosect224272672may23,0,5314425,print.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines

LIVING STANDARDS IN IRAQ PLUMMETING

"... A United Nations survey released earlier this month found that Iraqi living standards had been plummeting with only just over half of the population having access to safe drinking water... More than two years since the war, Iraqis still suffer from daily power cuts, and - in some areas - from contamination of drinking water by sewage... The survey found that only just over a third of households were connected to a sewage network - and that almost a quarter of young children were chronically malnourished."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4569833.stm

LARGEST COALITION EVER ASSEMBLED

"Click here for more information on the largest coalition ever assembled."
http://www.blackanthem.com/Home/index.html

COALITION ALL BUT COLLAPSED

"... The much vaunted "coalition of the willing"... has all but collapsed. Thirteen countries have already withdrawn their forces. Italy, Poland and Ukraine have all announced they will pull their troops out; these are the fourth, fifth and sixth-largest contingents of foreign troops there. The countries that will soon be left, apart from US and UK, are Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea, Japan, Denmark, and Australia..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GE14Aa02.html

HARDER TO GET IN THAN TO GET OUT

"... Does the Bush administration want to get out? Yes and no. It wants an exit, but won't accept defeat. It wants permanent bases in Iraq, and enough control over the country's oil industry to influence the international oil price. No fully independent Iraq government is likely to agree to either.

"What should Washington do? Last year it could have announced a timetable for complete withdrawal. Now it could still promise to leave by the new year, when a new parliament is supposed to be elected - but the insurrection might wreck that timetable. American public opinion already disapproves of the war. One way or another, the United States has to leave. But leaving is much more complicated, and perhaps more dangerous, than it was getting in."

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0520-21.htm

MP GALLOWAY TO SEN. COLEMAN

"... I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction...
I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda...
I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001...
I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning...
Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies..."
--From transcript of US Senate testimony:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1616578,00.html

"If in fact he lied to this committee, there will have to be consequences," said Mr Coleman after the encounter..."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=639588

AL QA'IM (QUAIM) LIKE FALLUJAH

" As with the siege of Fallujah six months back, U.S. claims over the siege of the Iraqi town Al Qa'im are being challenged now by independent sources.... accounts of the operation from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Iraqi doctors and civilians differ greatly from those put forward by the military.... the fighters were all local Iraqis. ”We have not seen any outsiders. The fighters are from the area. They are resisting the occupation.... Nobody wants the Americans here.”

"...The city center”has been almost completely destroyed,” the director of Al-Qa'im hospital Dr. Hamdi Al-Alusi told Al-Jazeera television. He said the casualties included many women, children and elderly people, and appealed to humanitarian organizations to intervene quickly. ”Ambulances were prevented from moving and the medical teams have left the city center because it has been destroyed,” Al-Alusi said during the siege. Water and electricity networks have been destroyed and ”there are scores of wounded people and scores of victims who cannot reach the hospital or anywhere else. We pray to god and implore the whole world to look into what happened to Al-Qa'im and adjacent cities.”

"... U.S. jets and helicopters also attacked surrounding Al-Karabilah, Al-Jazirah and Al-Quaydat towns. ”Medical staff confirmed the killing of civilians by helicopter gunfire,” Dr. Muhammad Abud reported on Al-Sharqiyah television. He said ambulance crews had difficulty retrieving some bodies that had been ripped apart. Adil al-Rawi, an eyewitness in Al-Qa'im said on Al-Arabiya television during the siege that U.S. forces had shelled the hospital. ”They are using warplanes, mortar shells and tanks to shell the city indiscriminately, hurt citizens and bomb the houses with warplanes.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0519-07.htm

THE GENERALS' VIEWS

NOW

"... In interviews and briefings... One officer suggested Wednesday that American military involvement could last "many years"... In Baghdad, a senior officer said... the success of American goals in Iraq was not assured. "I think that this could still fail," the officer said at the briefing. It's much more likely to succeed, but it could still fail."
"Generals Offer a Sober Outlook on Iraqi War", late May 2005
http://nytimes.com/2005/05/19/international/middleeast/19cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1116561600&en=03fb911eac4e06e0&ei=5094&partner=homepage

PREVIOUSLY

"By almost any indicator you look at, the trends are up, so we're definitely winning..."
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, April 26, 2005
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=ah37484IdIOc&refer=top_world_news

"We feel right now that we have, as I mentioned, broken the back of the insurgency."
Marine Lt. Gen. John Sattler, Nov. 18, 2004, after the U.S.-led offensive against Fallujah
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0523-22.htm

"... I don't think we're on the brink of failure; I think we're on the brink of success here. I think that as the new transitional government stands up, that there will be traction there with the Iraqi people that will be very important to them..."
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, late May 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-iraqassess23may23,1,3465741.story?coll=la-home-headlines

"... the deadly insurgency that flared this month is a symptom of the success that we're having here in Iraq... "
Air Force General Richard Myers, April 15 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15911-2004Apr15.html

"...there is light at the end of the tunnel... our soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors are winning over the Iraqi people..."
Air Force Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, January 2004
http://www.centcom.mil/CENTCOMNews/Stories/01_04/8.htm

U.S. ALLOWED ILLEGAL IRAQI OIL PAYMENTS AND SHIPMENTS

"... A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them. The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate committee against UN..."

"... Firstly, it found the US treasury failed to take action against a Texas oil company, Bayoil, which facilitated payment of "at least $37m in illegal surcharges to the Hussein regime".

"... In its second main finding, the report said the US military and the state department gave a tacit green light for shipments of nearly 8m barrels of oil bought by Jordan, a vital American ally, entirely outside the UN-monitored Oil For Food system."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1485546,00.html

IRAQI NATIONALISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM UNITE AGAINST THE OCCUPATION

"... elements from two formerly implacably opposed forces -- secular pan-Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism — have come to be unified, at least temporarily, in their hatred of the U.S. occupation... We can describe the situation in Iraq today as "mission accomplished" only if our goal was to unite fanatical Islamic jihadis with their longtime enemies, the secular nationalist Baathists.... the disparate elements of the Iraqi insurgency do agree on one thing: their desire to drive the U.S. military out. Thus, the U.S. presence is the fuel for the conflagration it claims to be stamping out..."
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-scheer17may17,1,3547329.column

RESULTS OF OPERATION MATADOR IN QUAIM

"The U.S. military wrapped up a major offensive in a remote desert region near the Syrian border yesterday, saying it had cleaned out the insurgent haven... But in Qaim, the town where the campaign began, masked fighters armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades remained in plain sight Friday, setting up checkpoints and vowing to defend the town if U.S. forces return..."
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050515-011240-5108r.htm
and
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-852488.php

"When foreign fighters poured into villages with jihad on their minds and weapons in their hands... tribal leaders said, they took a most unusual step: They asked the Americans for help. The U.S. military hails last week's Operation Matador as a success that killed more than 125 insurgents. But local tribesmen said it was a disaster for their communities and has made them leery of ever again assisting American or Iraqi forces..."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11662321.htm

DETERIORATING ARMY NEEDS A WAY OUT OR A DRAFT

"... the American military isn't just bogged down in Iraq; it's deteriorating under the strain... And every year that the war goes on, our military gets weaker... something has to give. We either need a much bigger army - which means a draft - or we need to find a way out of Iraq..."
http://nytimes.com/2005/05/16/opinion/16krugman.html

EARLY DECISION TO INVADE IRAQ

The Rycroft Downing Street Memo:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html

President's Decision Long Since Made:
"... the minutes (taken by Matthew Rycroft) of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair's senior foreign policy and security officials, shows that even as President Bush told Americans in October 2002 that he "hope[d] the use of force will not become necessary" ... the president had in fact already definitively decided, at least three months before, to choose this "last resort" of going "into battle" with Iraq. Whatever the Iraqis chose to do or not do, the president's decision to go to war had long since been made..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GE17Ak02.html

Bush Decided to Topple Saddam 7 Months Before Invasion:
"Seven months before the invasion of Iraq, the head of British foreign intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that President Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein by military action and warned that in Washington intelligence was "being fixed around the policy,"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201857.html

Bush Made Intelligence Fit Iraq Policy:
"A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain's just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy... while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war...."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11574296.htm

2002 British Intelligence Chief Report on U.S. Intention to Remove Saddam:
"... C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action..."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html
and
http://www.j-n-v.org/Official%20Documents/Secret%20Memo%2023%20July%202002%20text.htm

Indentity of "C" - Head of Intelligence:
"A Cambridge-educated career spy has been named as the new chief - also known as "C" - of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. Richard Billing Dearlove, 54, currently the service's assistant chief, succeeds the present "C", Sir David Spedding..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/286128.stm

The website for the Downing Street Memo issue:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/

CONDITION OF CHILDREN IN IRAQ

"... a groundbreaking new joint Iraqi-United Nations report... "The Iraq Living Conditions Survey (ILCS)"... estimates the number of Iraqis who have died since the US-led invasion of 2003 somewhere between 18,000 and 29,000. Of those deaths, 12% were children under 18 years of age, meaning that between 2,100 and 3,500 children have been killed in the war thus far... Nearly one-fourth of Iraqi children aged between six months and five years are chronically malnourished, meaning they have stunted growth, the report says. Among all Iraqi children, more than one in 10 suffer from general malnutrition, meaning they have a low weight for their age. Another 8% have acute malnourishment, or low weight for their height... n some areas of the country, acute malnourishment reaches 17% and stunting reaches 26%..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GE17Ak01.html

U.S. FAILING TO WIN THE WAR

"... Much of Iraq is a bloody no man's land... The fighting is now sustained and ferocious...There is no doubt that the US has failed to win the war... The army has not been able to secure the short highway to the airport, though it is the most important road in the country... From the start, there was something dysfunctional about the American armed forces. They could not adapt themselves to Iraq. Their massive firepower meant they won any set-piece battle, but it also meant that they accidentally killed so many Iraqi civilians that they were the recruiting sergeants of the resistance. The army denied counting Iraqi civilian dead, which might be helpful in dealing with American public opinion. But Iraqis knew how many of their people were dying.... The US is turning out to be much less of a military and political superpower than the rest of the world had supposed."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=638525

U.S. RULES OF ENGAGEMENT COULD LENGTHEN INSURGENCY A DECADE

"... US military operations are typified by "force protection" - the protection of troops at all costs - that allows American troops to open fire, using whatever means available, if they believe that their lives are under threat... "US troops have the attitude of shoot first and ask questions later. They simply won't take any risk"... A British officer said "their tactics were alienating the civil population and could lengthen the insurgency by a decade. Unfortunately, when we ex-plained our rules of engagement which are based around the principle of minimum force, the US troops just laughed."
http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/15/wirq15.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/15/ixworld.html

COST OF WAR

"... Three days ago, Congress gave final approval for an $82 billion emergency war-spending bill, of which about $76 billion would go to fighting the war... Even with such a large emergency funding measure, Pentagon officials have said more money would be needed as early as October.... The Senate Armed Services Committee has recommended an additional $50 billion be set aside to fund U.S. military operations in Iraq... The proposed new war spending for fiscal 2006, which starts Oct. 1, would push the cost of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath toward $250 billion... "
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050514/pl_nm/iraq_congress_funding_dc_7

ELECTIONS MAY HAVE WORSENED DIVISIONS

"Elections may have made things worse, not better... Two weeks of intense insurgent violence have made it crystal clear that Iraq's parliamentary elections, hailed in late January as a triumph for democracy, haven't helped to heal the country's deep divisions. They may have made them worse.... Iraqis immediately began playing the roles the election results delivered to them: victorious Shiite Muslim, assertive Kurd, disaffected Sunni Arab..."
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/news/world/11645384.htm

IRAQ A KEY ROUTE FOR DRUGS

"Lawless Iraq is 'key drug route'... Drug smugglers exploiting internal chaos in Iraq have turned the country into a transit route for Afghan heroin... Drugs are transported through Iraq and into Jordan... onto traditional trafficking routes into Europe."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4541387.stm

CIVIL WAR

"... experts here said the country is either on the verge of civil war or already in the middle of it... With security experts reporting that no major road in the country was safe to travel, some Iraq specialists speculated that the Sunni insurgency was effectively encircling the capital and trying to cut it off from the north, south and west, where there are entrenched Sunni communities.... "The longer they keep going on the better they will get. The best school of war is war. There is no evidence whatsoever that they cannot win."
--Phebe Marr, a leading U.S. Iraq expert reached in the protected Green Zone in Baghdad
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-woiraq0512,0,1809010,print.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

POLICE ANGRY AT U.S.

"Iraqi police vent anger at US after car bombings... It's all because you're here. Get out of our country and there will be no more explosions" a policeman shouted in Arabic at a group of US soldiers... "Since Americans invaded our country they have brought nothing but evil."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1364588.htm

U.S. POWER IN ANBAR PROVINCE

"... The Marines' fight in western Iraq... is supported by helicopter gunships, fighter jets, tanks, and light armored vehicles. F-15E Strike Eagle fighters from the Air Force dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs and fired 510 20-millimeter cannon rounds on Sunday... Marine F/A-18 fighters also fired 319 20-millimeter cannon rounds..."
http://nytimes.com/2005/05/10/international/middleeast/10cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1115784000&en=9b70ca4559608500&ei=5094&partner=homepage

CIA DOES NOT ENTRUST CONTROL OF INTELLIGENCE TO IRAQIS

"The CIA has so far refused to hand over control of Iraq's intelligence service to the newly elected Iraqi government in a turf war that exposes serious doubts the Bush administration has over the ability of Iraqi leaders to fight the insurgency and worries about the new government's close ties to Iran... Iraqi leaders complain that the arrangement violates their sovereignty, freezes them out of the war on insurgents and could lead to the formation of a rival, Iraqi-led spy agency..."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11597494.htm

OIL OUTPUT DOWN

"... Before the US-led invasion which ousted Saddam Hussein, daily production was some 3 million barrels... Iraq currently pumps 1.7 million barrels a day..."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq8may08,1,3887671.story?coll=la-headlines-world

ANTI-OCCUPATION CONFERENCE SEEKS TIMETABLE FOR WITHDRAWAL

"The second anti-occupation conference in Iraq rejected... any talks with the new government unless it clearly seeks a timetable for the withdrawal of the US-led occupation forces... “We want an official and clear timetable for the withdrawal guaranteed by the United Nations and neutral international bodies,” said Harith Al-Dari, the Secretary General of the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS)... "otherwise we will carry on with our peaceful opposition until we achieve our goal. The Iraqi people are rejecting the US-led occupation"...
http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2005-05/07/article05.shtml

SITUATION IS BAD AND GETTING WORSE, BUT U.S. WON'T LET GO

"The news from Iraq is bad and getting worse with each passing day. Iraqi insurgents are stepping up the pace of their attacks, unleashing eleven deadly bombings on April 29th alone. Many of the 150,000 Iraqi police and soldiers hastily trained by U.S. troops have deserted or joined the insurgents. The cost of the war now tops $192 billion, rising by $1 billion a week, and the corpses are piling up: Nearly 1,600 American soldiers and up to 100,000 Iraqi civilians are dead, as well as 177 allied troops and 229 private contractors. Other nations are abandoning the international coalition assembled to support the U.S., and the new Iraqi government, which announced its new cabinet to great fanfare on April 27th, remains sharply split along ethnic and religious lines..."

"Two years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is perched on the brink of civil war. Months after the election, the new Iraqi government remains hunkered down inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, surviving only because it is defended by thousands of U.S. troops. Iraqi officials hold meetings and press conferences in Alamo-like settings, often punctuated by the sounds of nearby explosions. Outside the Green Zone, party offices and government buildings are surrounded by tank traps, blast walls made from concrete slabs eighteen feet high, and private militias wielding machine guns and AK-47s. Even minor government officials travel from fort to fort in heavily armed convoys of Humvees..."

"In the face of a full-scale civil war in Iraq, says a source close to the U.S. military, Bush intends to go it alone. "Our policy is to make Iraq a colony," he says. "We won't let go."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7287564?pageid=rs.Home&rnd=1115476758707&has-player=unknown

COALITION WITHDRAWALS

"... The Bulgarian parliament has endorsed the decision to pull the country's 450 troops out of Iraq by the end of the year. Japan is reported to be planning to do the same thing. The Ukrainians, among others, have been withdrawing. Poland is cutting its commitment..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4523857.stm

IRAQ COULD BE LIKE GERMANY

"... The Allied occupation of Germany is approaching its sixth decade, and in the eyes of many Germans it has not yet ended. Foreign armies are still based on German soil and Europe's largest and most prosperous "democracy" still does not have a constitution and a peace treaty putting a formal end to World War II. Its temporary constitutional instrument is the Grundgesetz (Basic Law) adopted on May 23, 1949, last amended August 31, 1990, by the Unification Treaty of August 13, 1990, and Federal Statute of September 23, 1990.

"If the German model is applied to Iraq, there may never be a formal end to the war in Iraq. Because there is no formal peace treaty between Germany and the Allies headed by the US, German sovereignty is compromised. On October 20, 1985, John Kornblum of the US State Department told Germany's provisional Reichskanzler Wolfgang Gerhard Geunter Ebel: "Until we have a peace treaty, Germany is a colony of the United States." Ebel headed the provisional government that claims to be the legal successor to the Second German Reich, which was replaced by Hitler's illegal Third Reich (1933-45). The Second German Reich was never restored by the Allies after World War II. The legitimacy of the current German government is an open question and can be exploited in a future national crisis..."

http://atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GE07Aa01.html

INVASION A RESOURCE WAR

"... The (US Dept of Energy) had commissioned a report on the probable impacts of "peak oil"... They found that peak oil would provide the US and the world with an 'unprecedented risk and management problem'... The US response is not to cut oil consumption... but to use the military to maintain control over oil in the Middle East... The US invasion of Iraq is clearly a resource war..."
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=2813&click_id=2813&art_id=vn20050503072119511C128182&set_id=6

RECONSTRUCTION - FOLLOW THE BULLDOZERS

"... What were the real reasons for the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq?... follow the bulldozers and construction machinery. I was in Iraq to research the so-called reconstruction. And what struck me most was the absence of reconstruction machinery, of cranes and bulldozers, in downtown Baghdad. I expected to see reconstruction all over the place."

"I saw bulldozers in military bases. I saw bulldozers in the Green Zone, where a huge amount of construction was going on, building up Bechtel’s headquarters and getting the new U.S. embassy ready. There was also a ton of construction going on at all of the U.S. military bases. But, on the streets of Baghdad, the former ministry buildings are absolutely untouched. They hadn’t even cleared away the rubble, let alone started the reconstruction process..."

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2103/

IRAQ COULD BE LIKE VIETNAM

"... U.S. credit card companies American Express and MasterCard were boldly advertised in Vietnam over the weekend... If then-President Ford had not possessed the courage and wisdom to order the end of the U.S. occupation of Vietnam, we probably would still be embroiled in combating a never-ending insurgency."

"... Instead, the United States is now the biggest marketplace for exports from Vietnam... the Vietnam of today is not much different from the country U.S. policymakers wanted to create in the 1960s... a peaceful, stable presence in the Pacific Basin... Its economy,... has the highest growth rate in Southeast Asia. Private enterprise is flourishing, a middle class is growing, poverty rates are falling. The United States is a major trading partner, and Americans are welcomed..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer3may03,0,2555153.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

FALLUJAH PARALLEL TO GUERNICA 1937

"... In the annals of collective terror and reprisal, the U.S. siege of Fallujah, a city leveled by U.S. air power, ranks with the fascist bombing of Guernica in Spain in 1937."

"... Prior to the onslaught against Fallujah, U.S. commanders drove nearly 200,000 Fallujans out of their own city, bereft of housing, food and water. Those who remained in their homes were trapped in a rain of death. The siege began with an attack on the Fallujah general hospital. Injured patients were forced out of their beds. Doctors were prevented from treating, even reporting, casualties. Today Fallujah is a wasteland. Robert Worth in the New York Times reports, in the aftermath of the bombing campaign: "Cars sit on the roofs of buildings. Lamp posts lie at odd angles. Fire has blackened the face of building after building." No type of building-mosques, homes, medical facilities-was exempt from aerial destruction. Five-hundred pound bombs are utterly indiscriminate in their effects. A 1,000-pound bomb obliterated the city's rail station, a transfer point for all Iraq. Another strike turned a small hospital into rubble. Mosques were assaulted. Entire neighborhoods were flattened. Fires raged throughout residential communities. American commanders openly declared that Fallujah needed to be "taught a lesson."

"... The people of Fallujah were murdered in their own homes, their own streets, their own hospitals and mosques-in their own homeland. They were not threatening any one else's soil. Unlike their invaders, they never possessed nuclear weapons. Unlike the CIA, they never aided Osama Bin Laden. They possessed no air force, no satellite systems, no anti-aircraft weapons, not even bullet-proof vests. Fallujah had no modern means of self-defense against industrial war and foreign aerial bombardment."

"... If the ruin of Fallujah is not a war crime, power is all, there is no law, and the very concept of crime is meaningless.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0503-25.htm

Picasso's "Guernica":
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~lanes/english/hemngway/picasso/guernica.htm

FREEDOM OF PRESS

"... Iraqi police have begun cracking down on local journalists, creating a wave of fear reminiscent of Saddam's era... Unlike most Western journalists, who are bunkered in hotels because of security concerns, Iraqi reporters still cover bombing scenes and demonstrations, places swarming with authorities... A photographer for a Baghdad newspaper says Iraqi police beat and detained him for snapping pictures of long lines at gas stations.... A local TV reporter says she's lost count of how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes...
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11545887.htm

DANGEROUS CAB RIDE TO AIRPORT

"... Last November, a security consultant told David Corn that a six-mile cab ride from Central Baghdad to Baghdad International Airport cost $6,000. Now it's up to $35,000.... The conclusion is that two years after the fall of Baghdad, 140,000 coalition troops still can't defend a six-mile stretch of highway, much less crack Iraq's guerilla resistance..."
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0502-29.htm

OIL PRODUCTION LESS THAN BEFORE INVASION

"... two years after Saddam Hussein was toppled production is limping along at about two million barrels a day, less than before the war, and even at that rate it may be causing long-term damage to poorly maintained fields... Sabotage of a pipeline to Turkey has choked off exports from Iraq's northern fields, around Kirkuk, and violence has slowed efforts to renovate the larger southern fields... Since the international sanctions that followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the country has done virtually none of the customary nurturing of oil wells normally carried out every one to three years..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/international/middleeast/02ministry.html?

INVASION PLANNED FOR ..8 MONTHS BEFORE ATTACK

"... documents show Blair's secret plans for war... Blair had resolved to send British troops into action alongside US forces eight months before the Iraq War began, despite a clear warning from the Foreign Office that the conflict could be illegal... in July 2002, a few weeks after meeting George Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Mr Blair summoned his closest aides for what amounted to a council of war... the head of British intelligence reported that President Bush had firmly made up his mind to invade Iraq..."
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=634702