Cosmos Left

"And when they have created a wilderness, they call it peace."

--Roman historian Tacitus

Iraqi boy liberated by Bush

This is another Iraqi boy liberated by Bush's cluster bombs. Thousands of civilians have been killed or maimed by US bombs and bullets. Thousands more Iraqi workers and peasants are dead for the crime of defending their country from foreign invaders. Nearly 100 US soldiers are dead for Bush's war for oil and power. Bush, Cheney, Perle, Rumsfeld will be lining their pockets. Oil executives are salivating over the prospects of privatizing Iraq's oil.

George Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and the rest should be indicted for war crimes. But that won't solve the problem. The Democrats supported this war as well. They are Bush's accomplices. US workers need to politically sever all ties to these capitalist parties and form a mass socialist party that fights for OUR interests--not the profits of the superrich.--April 2003

Oakland antiwar protester liberated by cops' rubber bullets

April 7, 2003--Today Oakland cops fired rubber bullets at demonstrators protesting the unfolding US aggression against the Iraqi people. Note the eerie similarity between the horrifying wounds suffered by the Iraqi boy above and the severe facial and neck injuries inflicted on a young female antiwar protester. Nothing could more accurately capture the growing connection between US militarism abroad and domestic repression at home. It is two sides of the same coin. Americans should think twice before cheering the US "victory" against a defenseless foe. What the US imperialists are doing to the Iraqi people is a forewarning of what they have in store for the American working class. But the revolting events in Oakland today show the future is already here.

The two photos chillingly capture the true face of US capitalism. We've seen it coming. US rulers bombed an entire city block in Philadelphia in 1985. And in 1993, Washington gassed and burned its own people at Waco, Texas. Clinton paved the way for using the US military against the American population by initiating the Northeast Military Command, the precursor of Homeland Security. Bush is now deepening the capitalists class war against US workers. It's no accident that the cop violence against antiwar protesters today on Oakland's loading docks was also directed at longshoremen. Last year Bush sided with antiunion shipping companies in their attempt to bust the dockworkers' union. One of those companies--Stevedore--just landed a juicy reconstruction contract in Iraq.

Washington Square Park, 3/22/03

March 25, 2003--Deprived of our right to march on February 15th, and angry over the unfolding barbarism caused by the US aggression in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched from Times Square to Washington Square Park on Saturday. Families, students, veterans, workers, immigrants, relatives of 911 victims and many more showed Bush, the cops and the entire world that Americans are NOT united behind Bush's war, despite what one bourgeois poll after another trumpets.

Thousands held homemade signs reading "No war for empire", "Bush is a war criminal", "We the People want our Bill of Rights back", "Regime change begins at home" and similar demands clearly indicating a rejection of Washington's militarism and repression.

A chant that struck a chord in the middle of the march declared "Peace now! Bush out!" As the demonstrators triumphantly marched down Broadway chanting "This is what democracy looks like!", the sheer numbers of the mobilization--and the positive response from onlookers along the way, many of whom joined in--inspired and emboldened march participants. By the time we reached the endpoint of the march, Greenwich Village's historic Washington Square Park, the three hundred thousand protesters were in no mood to go home, which was what the action's sponsor--United for Peace and Justice--urged them to do.

After a relatively restrained presence by the NYPD during the march, thousands of cops, including mounted police, anti-terrorist units and helmeted cops, greeted the huge throng of protesters at Washington Square Park with the announcement that the march was over. But the demonstrators, no doubt inspired by the militant protests in San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere in the US earlier in the week, defied the cops and proceeded to occupy the streets around Washington Square as well as the park's interior.

What followed can only be described as the Battle for Washington Square Park--a tense standoff between thousands of antiwar demonstrators and cops over the right to peaceably assemble in the people's park. The police tried to move the crowd from the streets, but we held our ground. Cops surged--the people pushed back. Plainclothes cops did their best to fight terrorism by arresting several youthful protesters in the park. COSMOS LEFT saw two undercover cops slam a boy into the ground, and when a girl came to his aid, they knocked her over as well.

But this day belonged to the people. Our numbers were too overwhelming for the police. In one of the most beautiful sights in recent history, police commanders were forced to order a tactical retreat, withdrawing a division of helmeted riot cops and the police wagon brought in for the arrests they were not able to make.

Emboldened by this victory, the crowd tried to march back uptown. But by now there were fewer demonstrators, and the cops regrouped and charged into the demonstrators with nightsticks and pepper spray. Over 100 were arrested as the Battle for Washington Square wound down.

Throughout this latest battle for a people's park, several police helicopters buzzed ominously overhead like Empire dragonflies. The conclusion was inescapable that they are part of the same war machine committing aggression against the people of Iraq, that the war being brutally waged against our brothers and sisters in that far away desert land is of the same piece as the war unfolding against working people in the US.

Antiwar demonstrators who were part of the Battle for Washington Square Park knew that demonstrations once again were taking place all over the world. But we had no idea that the Iraqi workers and peasants were about to put their stamp on the growing international fightback against imperialist war.

There is merit to the criticisms of United Peace for Justice that the lack of speakers and a rally shows the group has no answers and no perspective on how to stop the warmongers in Washington. This discussion will be taken up shortly on the "What Is to Be Done" page of this Web site. However, this line of criticism is misplaced as it relates to the Battle for Washington Square, and reveals more about the sectarian mistakes of both the Militant and International Answer these days than anything else.

On this particular day, the demonstrators did not seem to care that there were no speakers and rally at the conclusion of the march. Given the hollowness of the rhetoric that has been prevalent in most of the speakers' remarks at prior actions, and the growing realization that a fundamentally different strategy is needed to stop imperialist war than what has been offered so far by rally sponsors, what was important to antiwar marchers last Saturday was to mobilize militantly in the streets and defy the authority of the State.

When the antiwar demonstrators arrived in Washington Square Park, they wanted to show the world they are sick of the lies, sick of Bush, sick of the police state and its thuggish cops, sick of the bourgeois media, sick of US aggression, and sick of Israel's atrocities against Palestinians. They recognized quickly that a battle for turf, for dignity, for the right to assemble without police intimidation and thuggery, was before them. And we were not going to back down. Not that day, not after San Francisco, not after Chicago, not after Palestine, not after Iraq.

The standoff between cops and demonstrators in the streets surrounding Washington Square Park was unlike anything this observer has witnessed since June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square, when the deadly game of chicken between Chinese students and workers and the People's Liberation Army neared its bloody denouement. While the level of social and political antagonisms and contradictions in the US is a long way from what existed in Beijing 1989, the Battle for Washington Square Park showed that the anger and militancy among broad layers of the population are growing in reaction to the escalating barbarism of the American ruling class.

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The US capitalist media continue to bombard the airwaves with polls showing over 70% of the population supporting Bush's war on Iraq. But as the New York City and other demonstrations showed, the truth is far more complex than that sweeping assertion. These polls have become tools of war propaganda that are subject to political manipulation. The questions are crafted to generate the desired result--support for the war. The polls are used to shape bourgeois public opinion, not to accurately gauge public sentiment. The pro-war opinion that does exist is largely the result of the massive bombardment of propaganda, misinformation, and psychological warfare the American people have been subjected to on a daily basis. What's key is the level of opposition to this war that already exists in the US, and the understanding that this will grow as the horrors of Bush's war are exposed before the world.

In the meantime, the polarization intensifies here in the belly of the beast. The fog of war and patriotism, the lingering fear and disorientation from 911, the pernicious effectiveness of the media's Big Lie techniques, all contribute to the pro-war sentiment that fuels one side of the deepening polarization.

Skirmishes over the war are breaking out all across the nation. A tractor trailer driver deliberately ran over a civilly disobedient protester in Minnesota, no doubt inspired by that cowardly Israeli soldier who crushed Rachel Corrie to death with his bulldozer in Gaza. A Catholic schoolteacher resigned after the principal told the teacher to remove an antiwar button. Citizens inconvenienced by the civil disobedience taking place scream obscenities at the protesters.

Many Americans are engaging in civil disobedience out of frustration with what is perceived as too many citizens blindly waving their flags and backing Bush's war. These Americans feel their message is not being heard by an unresponsive government and brain-dead fellow Americans. They are attracted to the direct action approach of civil disobedience, believing that marching and listening to speeches have reached a dead-end.

Civil disobedience can be a useful tactic when it is part of a mass movement. But, in and of itself, it won't stop this war. This war results from the deepening crisis of world capitalism. An effective antiwar movement can only be built on an anticapitalist program that draws millions of toilers to its banner. Proletarian internationalism must be the cornerstone of this movement. Millions of workers in Europe and throughout the world are engaging in proletarian methods of struggle against this war. These workers are a good deal ahead of American workers, because their labor movements are stronger and they are members of Socialist and Communist parties. American workers don't even have a labor party; we're still shackled to the Democrats.

But European workers have their leadership problems too. Their Socialist and Communist parties belong to the discredited and bankrupt Second and Third Internationals, representing Social Democracy and Stalinism. American workers need to start sitting down with our European brothers and sisters and figure out how to build a new revolutionary workers movement, a new Fourth International, which already includes the Cuban Communist Party.

The world is getting smaller. The pressures are growing in the US for workers to break from the Democratic Party and form a labor party. There should be a discussion within the labor movement to link up with European workers and call an emergency international congress of labor unions to coordinate the growing working class resistance to imperialist war.

At the center of this working class resistance in the US is the fight by meatpackers in Local 538 United Food and Commercial Workers against Tyson in Jefferson, Wisconsin. Tyson, a $23 billion food conglomerate and the world's largest maker and seller of chicken, beef and pork, is demanding large pay cuts, pension elimination for new workers, increased health insurance premiums, reduced sick leave and vacations, and severance elimination.

All workers can relate to these issues and should support Local 538 meatpackers' fight against Tyson. COSMOS LEFT urges readers to read more about this key struggle in the Militant.

This fight by UFCW meatpackers against Tyson, which has plants in 22 countries, can win broad working class solidarity not only in the US but around the world. Local 538's struggle can be a way to unite the antiwar movement in the US with the largely proletarian antiwar movement in Europe.

The seeds of a new communist international movement are being planted with each passing day. Sooner or later workers in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas must unite to figure out how to defend ourselves from the rapacious profit and war drives that threaten our existence. The question that Russian revolutionary leader Lenin posed 100 years ago still burns with relevance: What Is to Be Done?

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There is a historic battle taking place for the mind and soul of the American working class, which, due to ongoing immigration, is not our parents' working class. The rulers, as they always do in time of war, are frantically using patriotism to keep US workers politically tethered to the capitalist class to support THEIR war. Meanwhile, American workers are slowly clawing our way out of the patriotic fog and trying to find our OWN values, proleterian values by shedding the alien class values that imbue us.

The truck driver who purposely ran over an antiwar protester engaging in civil disobedience said he did so to support "our troops" in Iraq. Today one of those troops told a reporter, "We had a great day. We killed a lot of people."

The truck driver and the soldier have internalized the values of the ruling capitalist class. Those are not our values. The great challenge facing American workers is to shed those alien class values and embrace proletarian internationalism and solidarity.

Many of us are doing just that, particularly many young people. At many of the student-led antiwar rallies in Union Square here in New York City, high school students from lower Manhattan to Brooklyn to the Bronx have been going in the opposite direction from that truck driver and that soldier, expressing heartfelt solidarity with Baghdad's people, especially their young people. These kids are internationalists to the bone already. They don't have to be taught proletarian internationalism--they exude it. They are leading the only way forward. They are the future.

These kids also see that this war is not about liberating the Iraqi people or eliminating weapons of mass destruction. They've watched the lies supporting the attack be exposed one by one. They know it's a war for oil, for big business, for US corporations dominating the Middle East and the entire world. They know that the government is cynically manipulating the emotions of Americans regarding 911 and using it to carry out wars planned long before.

See "Fighting US Imperialism" for an ongoing, detailed discussion of the war, which is going badly for US/UK imperialism after 10 days. Bush is plunging Iraq, the Middle East, and the US into a bloody catastrophe.

The best way to support the troops is to get them the hell out of Iraq. It's those who are blindly supporting the war criminal in the White House who are endangering not only the troops but every single one of us.

Communists explain that while the brothers and sisters in the armed forces are workers in uniform and not our enemy, when US soldiers carry out orders from the capitalist military command structure, they are not "our troops," they are "their troops." "Their" meaning the capitalist class, the banks and corporations who profit from this and all imperialist wars, the same forces that are gutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, jobs, the environment, workers rights, and our entire quality of life.

Communists never look at rank and file soldiers as the enemy. During the Vietnam war, communists argued endlessly to others in the antiwar movement not to view soldiers as the enemy but as fellow and sister workers and allies. We conducted antiwar agitation among soldiers, supporting their right to read and discuss the big issues of the war, which the brass and government deny them.

This strategy eventually paid off. American soldiers became an integral part of the antiwar movement, in many cases refusing to fight and committing insubordination.

US soldiers have historically been screwed by the government and the capitalist class it represents. Soldiers themselves had to demonstrate in Washington to receive basic benefits like the GI bill. Many Vietnam vets were homeless and in poverty. When gulf war vets started complaining about Gulf War Syndrome, the government said they were crazy and denied its existence. Soldiers have always been used as cannon fodder for the bosses' profits and then tossed away when their services were no longer needed. Even today, Bush and his accomplices are slashing $25 billion in veterans healthcare and benefits programs even while slashing tax rates for the superrich.

The best way to support the troops is to bring them home, but while they are functioning under the capitalists' war command and criminally invading a sovereign country to kill its working people, communists support the right of the country being invaded to defend itself against imperialist aggression and call for the political and military defeat of its own government. Lenin called this revolutionary defeatism. It is a class principle that is obligatory of every communist.

It's a practical and sensible position. A political and/or military defeat for one's capitalist government weakens the capitalists and strengthens the working class, making it easier for the workers to achieve a socialist revolution that will disarm the warmakers for good.

That's what this is all about. Class war. Up to now it's been a one-sided class war waged by the capitalists against workers. That is beginning to change.

Bush and the capitalism class is dragging the US into a catastrophe. Everything he has touched since seizing power has turned to shit. Americans with their heads in the sand who continue to blindly support this government are holding back the rest of us. Bush and his cohorts continue to hold the American people hostage, continue to turn this nation into a bloody death trap, continue to rule by fear and cynical manipulation of emotions, continue to plunder American working people and the public treasury. Now they have lied to US soldiers and thrown them into harm's way unprepared for the resistance awaiting them, to kill and die not for noble abstractions of freedom and liberation, but for domination by oil companies, banks, defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies and the rest of the exploiting rich.

We need to break from this madness of capitalism. We need a political party that represents working people that would articulate a far different foreign policy--one in solidarity with workers from Iraq to France to Spain to Indonesia.

The stakes are growing higher. Washington's propaganda machine, desperate and frightened by the fierce Iraqi resistance, is cranking up a blood-lust hysteria against Iraqi civilians. They're thugs, they're terrorists, they're in the way, they're responsible for dead American soldiers, they've got to go.

This campaign will intensify after today's act of martyrdom by an Iraqi army officer who blew up a taxi, killing 4 US soldiers. Now watch the War Machine link the Iraqi people to the Palestinian "suicide bombers". They're all Arab terrorists, they're subhuman, so don't weep when they're slaughtered in Baghdad.

We have a duty to counter this propaganda. Communists defend the right of Palestinians and Iraqis to defend their land and honor by any means necessary. We explain how "Give me liberty or give me death" was not invented by the Palestinians or Iraqis--it's as American as apple pie.

We explain how the oppressed and exploited everywhere are inspired by this heroic resistance. A defeat for the capitalist government that oppresses American workers strengthens us. The best way to support workers and farmers in uniform is to bring them home now!

Thus far, the Vietnam syndrome has been discussed in terms of Americans not tolerating serious American casualties. But that's part of the problem, part of what we mean when we say that American workers have internalized the values of the capitalist class. We only care about Americans dying. Most Americans don't give a rat's ass about how many Vietnamese, Koreans, Afghans, Iraqis, Japanese, or anyone else outside US boundaries die.

As long as only Iraqis die in large numbers, Americans would largely back Bush. It's only when US soldiers come home in bodybags do Americans hold their government accountable.

This is a capitalist war. The world capitalist economy is entering a depression. As occurred in both world wars last century, the major capitalist powers are driven to fight each other militarily for control of the world's natural resources, booty, markets, and working class. The US ruling class is moving to assert its hegemony and domination in the Middle East and Central Asia, both regions that are rich in oil and natural gas. The US capitalist government aims to best its European and Asian capitalist rivals by putting a puppet regime in Iraq. It seeks to position itself to ward off any challenges from Russia, Iran, and China.

But in doing so, US imperialism must take on the workers of the world, who are showing signs that they will not bend over so easily. When American workers join them, that will be a great day for humanity.

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March 30, 2003--The worse things go for the Pentagon in Iraq, the greater the war propaganda coming from its press. The NY Times is rivaling its tabloid rivals in practicing the Big Lie technique to brainwash Americans. The front page of today's Times shows a forlorn Marine cradling an Iraqi girl next to a caption saying her mother was killed by cross fire.

Bullshit. The photo's publication splashed on the front page is designed to bolster the lying propaganda that US forces are there to help Iraqi children. "Cross fire" implies her mother may have been felled by the Iraqis. Her mother was killed by the invasion of "coalition" forces--no matter which side fired the lethal shot. The Times, along with Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC and the rest of their ilk are all as guilty of war crimes as their masters in the Pentagon and White House.

Watching US forces in action on the battlefield these first 11 days of the war is like watching a science fiction/horror movie. Listening to the accounts of the fierce resistance and "hornet's nest" that have greeted American soldiers is like the scene in "Aliens" when the marines first get their asses kicked by the creatures.

"Get them out of there!" screams Sigourney Weaver's character to the marine lieutenant who sent the grunts in.

The other relevant sci-fi movie is Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks!" in the scene where the invading Martians burn and slaughter earthlings while loudspeakers blare, "We come in peace. We are your friends."

That's how the invading US/UK forces appear to the Iraqis.

"There were lots of women and children running around. It was kind of distracting when you're trying to kill people."--Lieutenant Bennett Williams, Abilene, Kansas.

Who are the terrorists? Bush is dragging the American people to an abyss where we must view workers around the world as enemies. Bullshit. Bush and his class of exploiting rich are the enemies. We must break with them and link up with our true allies--the international working class.

It's becoming obvious that a big gulf exists between the American working class and workers worldwide regarding the war in Iraq. That's because the American media, in bed with the Pentagon, are not showing Americans what the rest of the world is seeing from their press--horrifying images of children burned from charred flesh or with their limbs blown off. The US capitalist press is censoring these truths from the public out of fear that they will erode the paper-thin support for this war. Americans are hearing that Iraqis are all terrorists just like the Palestinian suicide bombers, and seeing grainy images of Baghdad burning from afar, instead of the close-up terror being inflicted on Iraqis by US bombs every day.

In this context, the symbolism represented by the New York Stock Exchange's refusal to allow al-Jazeera inside is illuminating.

Any American worker who doesn't care a whit about Iraqi civilians dying, only about American soldiers dying, has lost his proletarian soul and humanity. American workers need a good dose of working class solidarity and internationalism. That's why the US labor movement should form a labor party and in the process, organize meetings with workers from Italy, England, Spain, France, Germany, and beyond.

The brainwashed lemmings in our midst are holding all of us back. Good Germans they are, saluting their fuhrer and his blitzkreig. Fuck them. They've got to be challenged everywhere, stood up and dressed down and read the riot act.

Have you heard this war is not about oil? If we had a nickel for every time we've heard that, we'd all be millionaires, right?

That's why the first targets coalition forces went after in southern Iraq were the oil fields. And the first targets they're after in the northern Kurdish areas? Why, the oil fields at Mosul and Kirkuk.

If it's not about oil, how about this gem, from a presidential directive written on October 2, 1989:

"Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security."

Really. And to any remaining skeptics, there's this little item haunting US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz these days: a 1991 memo that described the gulf war's end as "premature" and called for a regime change in Iraq to guarantee "access" to its oil.

Wolfowitz uttered another beaut the other day when asked about the intensity of Iraqi resistance. "I think we probably did underestimate the willingness of this regime to commit war crimes."

Excuse me, scumbag? Aside from the fact that the Iraqi resistance which has Washington reeling is substantially more than alleged "war crimes" committed by Hussein, aside from the fact his answer slanders the entire Iraqi people he's supposedly "liberating" by distorting the character and breadth of the resistance, let's examine Wolfowitz's words on the surface.

You underestimated the willingness of the Iraqi regime to commit war crimes? Wait a minute, the reason you gave to go to war against Hussein was because he was an evil dictator, another Hitler, an evil tyrant who gassed his own people, etc.

How can anyone let this liar turn around and give that as a reason for the Iraqi resistance? Wolfowitz proved once again he's a liar and a war criminal. Just like his friend Richard Perle, whose unrestrained greed is getting him into a little trouble these days. It seems the Prince of Darkness can't keep his snout out of the trough, as one conflict of interest after another--Trireme Partners (homeland security/defense), Global Crossing (helping its sale to an Asian investor overcome Pentagon resistance), and now Loral (links to Beijing)--is enveloping Perle in a cloud of scandal.

American working people should take heed of the likes of Wolfowitz, Perle, and Cheney (whose Halliburton company is profiting nicely from this war). As they get rich off this aggression, soldiers fight and die in the desert. That's what this war is about.

American workers! You're being deceived! Not only are the Iraqis not revolting against Hussein, but IRAQIS WHO LEFT IRAQ BECAUSE THEY HATE Hussein ARE RETURNING TO FIGHT THE AMERICAN AND BRITISH INVASION.

They're doing this not for Hussein but for their country.

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

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Once again showing up the capitalist media for the liars and propagandists they are, Americans took to the streets from San Francisco to Boston in militant protests against Washington's criminal aggression against Iraq.

San Francisco saw the biggest and most successful act of civil disobedience. Tens of thousands of demonstrators shut the city down; over 1,000 were arrested and there were reports of fighting and cop brutality.

In Chicago, 2,000 protesters shut down Lake Shore Drive in an impressive action that continues well into the night. Hundreds were arrested in Philadelphia; thousands marched in Boston. And high school and college students walked out of classes from New York City to Minneapolis-St. Paul to Berkeley.

More actions are planned for the next few days, including a huge march in New York City on Saturday, March 22.

While there has been the usual upsurge in patriotism that historically accompanies the beginning of a war, and the polarization is intensifying around the US, the antiwar movement in this country has not been intimidated into a retreat by the media's propaganda that most Americans back Bush.

Opposition to this war will only grow in the US as evidence of the carnage and destruction caused by Bush's aggression becomes known, let alone if there are more casualties like the 16 soldiers killed on the first day of the aggression when their chopper "crashed."

More and more Americans are realizing what the international working class sees clearly--Bush is a war criminal and predatory gangster who is also a deranged sociopath. Governor Death is now President Death. The serial killer who executed more of his citizens than any other governor has become a mass murderer as the "commander in chief."

This evil doer actually enjoys killing. Bush's sadism was obvious during that 2000 campaign debate when he mocked a female Death Row inmate ("Please don't kill me"). He has repeatedly joked about 911. And now it's reported that shortly after he gave the orders to attack Iraq, Bush pumped his arms and gushed, "It feels GOOD!"

Think of that when you see the first photos of dead and injured children "liberated" by President Death.

The workers of the world are taking names. Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, Kristol, Gaffney, and their stooges and pimps in the media like O'Reilly, Blitzer, Matthews, Hannity, Coulter, Snow, Hume, Charen, among others, will be brought before international war crimes tribunals on a day when the oppressed and exploited will sing with great joy.

March 15, 2003, Washington DC

March 25, 2003--Deprived of our right to march on February 15th, and angry over the unfolding barbarism caused by the US aggression in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched from Times Square to Washington Square Park on Saturday. Families, students, veterans, workers, immigrants, relatives of 911 victims and many more showed Bush, the cops and the entire world that Americans are NOT united behind Bush's war, despite what one bourgeois poll after another trumpets.

Thousands held homemade signs reading "No war for empire", "Bush is a war criminal", "We the People want our Bill of Rights back", "Regime change begins at home" and similar demands clearly indicating a rejection of Washington's militarism and repression.

A chant that struck a chord in the middle of the march declared "Peace now! Bush out!" As the demonstrators triumphantly marched down Broadway chanting "This is what democracy looks like!", the sheer numbers of the mobilization--and the positive response from onlookers along the way, many of whom joined in--inspired and emboldened march participants. By the time we reached the endpoint of the march, Greenwich Village's historic Washington Square Park, the three hundred thousand protesters were in no mood to go home, which was what the action's sponsor--United for Peace and Justice--urged them to do.

After a relatively restrained presence by the NYPD during the march, thousands of cops, including mounted police, anti-terrorist units and helmeted cops, greeted the huge throng of protesters at Washington Square Park with the announcement that the march was over. But the demonstrators, no doubt inspired by the militant protests in San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere in the US earlier in the week, defied the cops and proceeded to occupy the streets around Washington Square as well as the park's interior.

What followed can only be described as the Battle for Washington Square Park--a tense standoff between thousands of antiwar demonstrators and cops over the right to peaceably assemble in the people's park. The police tried to move the crowd from the streets, but we held our ground. Cops surged--the people pushed back. Plainclothes cops did their best to fight terrorism by arresting several youthful protesters in the park. COSMOS LEFT saw two undercover cops slam a boy into the ground, and when a girl came to his aid, they knocked her over as well.

But this day belonged to the people. Our numbers were too overwhelming for the police. In one of the most beautiful sights in recent history, police commanders were forced to order a tactical retreat, withdrawing a division of helmeted riot cops and the police wagon brought in for the arrests they were not able to make.

Emboldened by this victory, the crowd tried to march back uptown. But by now there were fewer demonstrators, and the cops regrouped and charged into the demonstrators with nightsticks and pepper spray. Over 100 were arrested as the Battle for Washington Square wound down.

Throughout this latest battle for a people's park, several police helicopters buzzed ominously overhead like Empire dragonflies. The conclusion was inescapable that they are part of the same war machine committing aggression against the people of Iraq, that the war being brutally waged against our brothers and sisters in that far away desert land is of the same piece as the war unfolding against working people in the US.

Antiwar demonstrators who were part of the Battle for Washington Square Park knew that demonstrations once again were taking place all over the world. But we had no idea that the Iraqi workers and peasants were about to put their stamp on the growing international fightback against imperialist war.

There is merit to the criticisms of United Peace for Justice that the lack of speakers and a rally shows the group has no answers and no perspective on how to stop the warmongers in Washington. This discussion will be taken up shortly on the "What Is to Be Done" page of this Web site. However, this line of criticism is misplaced as it relates to the Battle for Washington Square, and reveals more about the sectarian mistakes of both the Militant and International Answer these days than anything else.

On this particular day, the demonstrators did not seem to care that there were no speakers and rally at the conclusion of the march. Given the hollowness of the rhetoric that has been prevalent in most of the speakers' remarks at prior actions, and the growing realization that a fundamentally different strategy is needed to stop imperialist war than what has been offered so far by rally sponsors, what was important to antiwar marchers last Saturday was to mobilize militantly in the streets and defy the authority of the State.

When the antiwar demonstrators arrived in Washington Square Park, they wanted to show the world they are sick of the lies, sick of Bush, sick of the police state and its thuggish cops, sick of the bourgeois media, sick of US aggression, and sick of Israel's atrocities against Palestinians. They recognized quickly that a battle for turf, for dignity, for the right to assemble without police intimidation and thuggery, was before them. And we were not going to back down. Not that day, not after San Francisco, not after Chicago, not after Palestine, not after Iraq.

The standoff between cops and demonstrators in the streets surrounding Washington Square Park was unlike anything this observer has witnessed since June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square, when the deadly game of chicken between Chinese students and workers and the People's Liberation Army neared its bloody denouement. While the level of social and political antagonisms and contradictions in the US is a long way from what existed in Beijing 1989, the Battle for Washington Square Park showed that the anger and militancy among broad layers of the population are growing in reaction to the escalating barbarism of the American ruling class.

***********************

The US capitalist media continue to bombard the airwaves with polls showing over 70% of the population supporting Bush's war on Iraq. But as the New York City and other demonstrations showed, the truth is far more complex than that sweeping assertion. These polls have become tools of war propaganda that are subject to political manipulation. The questions are crafted to generate the desired result--support for the war. The polls are used to shape bourgeois public opinion, not to accurately gauge public sentiment. The pro-war opinion that does exist is largely the result of the massive bombardment of propaganda, misinformation, and psychological warfare the American people have been subjected to on a daily basis. What's key is the level of opposition to this war that already exists in the US, and the understanding that this will grow as the horrors of Bush's war are exposed before the world.

In the meantime, the polarization intensifies here in the belly of the beast. The fog of war and patriotism, the lingering fear and disorientation from 911, the pernicious effectiveness of the media's Big Lie techniques, all contribute to the pro-war sentiment that fuels one side of the deepening polarization.

Skirmishes over the war are breaking out all across the nation. A tractor trailer driver deliberately ran over a civilly disobedient protester in Minnesota, no doubt inspired by that cowardly Israeli soldier who crushed Rachel Corrie to death with his bulldozer in Gaza. A Catholic schoolteacher resigned after the principal told the teacher to remove an antiwar button. Citizens inconvenienced by the civil disobedience taking place scream obscenities at the protesters.

Many Americans are engaging in civil disobedience out of frustration with what is perceived as too many citizens blindly waving their flags and backing Bush's war. These Americans feel their message is not being heard by an unresponsive government and brain-dead fellow Americans. They are attracted to the direct action approach of civil disobedience, believing that marching and listening to speeches have reached a dead-end.

Civil disobedience can be a useful tactic when it is part of a mass movement. But, in and of itself, it won't stop this war. This war results from the deepening crisis of world capitalism. An effective antiwar movement can only be built on an anticapitalist program that draws millions of toilers to its banner. Proletarian internationalism must be the cornerstone of this movement. Millions of workers in Europe and throughout the world are engaging in proletarian methods of struggle against this war. These workers are a good deal ahead of American workers, because their labor movements are stronger and they are members of Socialist and Communist parties. American workers don't even have a labor party; we're still shackled to the Democrats.

But European workers have their leadership problems too. Their Socialist and Communist parties belong to the discredited and bankrupt Second and Third Internationals, representing Social Democracy and Stalinism. American workers need to start sitting down with our European brothers and sisters and figure out how to build a new revolutionary workers movement, a new Fourth International, which already includes the Cuban Communist Party.

The world is getting smaller. The pressures are growing in the US for workers to break from the Democratic Party and form a labor party. There should be a discussion within the labor movement to link up with European workers and call an emergency international congress of labor unions to coordinate the growing working class resistance to imperialist war.

At the center of this working class resistance in the US is the fight by meatpackers in Local 538 United Food and Commercial Workers against Tyson in Jefferson, Wisconsin. Tyson, a $23 billion food conglomerate and the world's largest maker and seller of chicken, beef and pork, is demanding large pay cuts, pension elimination for new workers, increased health insurance premiums, reduced sick leave and vacations, and severance elimination.

All workers can relate to these issues and should support Local 538 meatpackers' fight against Tyson. COSMOS LEFT urges readers to read more about this key struggle in the Militant.

This fight by UFCW meatpackers against Tyson, which has plants in 22 countries, can win broad working class solidarity not only in the US but around the world. Local 538's struggle can be a way to unite the antiwar movement in the US with the largely proletarian antiwar movement in Europe.

The seeds of a new communist international movement are being planted with each passing day. Sooner or later workers in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas must unite to figure out how to defend ourselves from the rapacious profit and war drives that threaten our existence. The question that Russian revolutionary leader Lenin posed 100 years ago still burns with relevance: What Is to Be Done?

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There is a historic battle taking place for the mind and soul of the American working class, which, due to ongoing immigration, is not our parents' working class. The rulers, as they always do in time of war, are frantically using patriotism to keep US workers politically tethered to the capitalist class to support THEIR war. Meanwhile, American workers are slowly clawing our way out of the patriotic fog and trying to find our OWN values, proleterian values by shedding the alien class values that imbue us.

The truck driver who purposely ran over an antiwar protester engaging in civil disobedience said he did so to support "our troops" in Iraq. Today one of those troops told a reporter, "We had a great day. We killed a lot of people."

The truck driver and the soldier have internalized the values of the ruling capitalist class. Those are not our values. The great challenge facing American workers is to shed those alien class values and embrace proletarian internationalism and solidarity.

Many of us are doing just that, particularly many young people. At many of the student-led antiwar rallies in Union Square here in New York City, high school students from lower Manhattan to Brooklyn to the Bronx have been going in the opposite direction from that truck driver and that soldier, expressing heartfelt solidarity with Baghdad's people, especially their young people. These kids are internationalists to the bone already. They don't have to be taught proletarian internationalism--they exude it. They are leading the only way forward. They are the future.

These kids also see that this war is not about liberating the Iraqi people or eliminating weapons of mass destruction. They've watched the lies supporting the attack be exposed one by one. They know it's a war for oil, for big business, for US corporations dominating the Middle East and the entire world. They know that the government is cynically manipulating the emotions of Americans regarding 911 and using it to carry out wars planned long before.

See "Fighting US Imperialism" for an ongoing, detailed discussion of the war, which is going badly for US/UK imperialism after 10 days. Bush is plunging Iraq, the Middle East, and the US into a bloody catastrophe.

The best way to support the troops is to get them the hell out of Iraq. It's those who are blindly supporting the war criminal in the White House who are endangering not only the troops but every single one of us.

Communists explain that while the brothers and sisters in the armed forces are workers in uniform and not our enemy, when US soldiers carry out orders from the capitalist military command structure, they are not "our troops," they are "their troops." "Their" meaning the capitalist class, the banks and corporations who profit from this and all imperialist wars, the same forces that are gutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, jobs, the environment, workers rights, and our entire quality of life.

Communists never look at rank and file soldiers as the enemy. During the Vietnam war, communists argued endlessly to others in the antiwar movement not to view soldiers as the enemy but as fellow and sister workers and allies. We conducted antiwar agitation among soldiers, supporting their right to read and discuss the big issues of the war, which the brass and government deny them.

This strategy eventually paid off. American soldiers became an integral part of the antiwar movement, in many cases refusing to fight and committing insubordination.

US soldiers have historically been screwed by the government and the capitalist class it represents. Soldiers themselves had to demonstrate in Washington to receive basic benefits like the GI bill. Many Vietnam vets were homeless and in poverty. When gulf war vets started complaining about Gulf War Syndrome, the government said they were crazy and denied its existence. Soldiers have always been used as cannon fodder for the bosses' profits and then tossed away when their services were no longer needed. Even today, Bush and his accomplices are slashing $25 billion in veterans healthcare and benefits programs even while slashing tax rates for the superrich.

The best way to support the troops is to bring them home, but while they are functioning under the capitalists' war command and criminally invading a sovereign country to kill its working people, communists support the right of the country being invaded to defend itself against imperialist aggression and call for the political and military defeat of its own government. Lenin called this revolutionary defeatism. It is a class principle that is obligatory of every communist.

It's a practical and sensible position. A political and/or military defeat for one's capitalist government weakens the capitalists and strengthens the working class, making it easier for the workers to achieve a socialist revolution that will disarm the warmakers for good.

That's what this is all about. Class war. Up to now it's been a one-sided class war waged by the capitalists against workers. That is beginning to change.

Bush and the capitalism class is dragging the US into a catastrophe. Everything he has touched since seizing power has turned to shit. Americans with their heads in the sand who continue to blindly support this government are holding back the rest of us. Bush and his cohorts continue to hold the American people hostage, continue to turn this nation into a bloody death trap, continue to rule by fear and cynical manipulation of emotions, continue to plunder American working people and the public treasury. Now they have lied to US soldiers and thrown them into harm's way unprepared for the resistance awaiting them, to kill and die not for noble abstractions of freedom and liberation, but for domination by oil companies, banks, defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies and the rest of the exploiting rich.

We need to break from this madness of capitalism. We need a political party that represents working people that would articulate a far different foreign policy--one in solidarity with workers from Iraq to France to Spain to Indonesia.

The stakes are growing higher. Washington's propaganda machine, desperate and frightened by the fierce Iraqi resistance, is cranking up a blood-lust hysteria against Iraqi civilians. They're thugs, they're terrorists, they're in the way, they're responsible for dead American soldiers, they've got to go.

This campaign will intensify after today's act of martyrdom by an Iraqi army officer who blew up a taxi, killing 4 US soldiers. Now watch the War Machine link the Iraqi people to the Palestinian "suicide bombers". They're all Arab terrorists, they're subhuman, so don't weep when they're slaughtered in Baghdad.

We have a duty to counter this propaganda. Communists defend the right of Palestinians and Iraqis to defend their land and honor by any means necessary. We explain how "Give me liberty or give me death" was not invented by the Palestinians or Iraqis--it's as American as apple pie.

We explain how the oppressed and exploited everywhere are inspired by this heroic resistance. A defeat for the capitalist government that oppresses American workers strengthens us. The best way to support workers and farmers in uniform is to bring them home now!

Thus far, the Vietnam syndrome has been discussed in terms of Americans not tolerating serious American casualties. But that's part of the problem, part of what we mean when we say that American workers have internalized the values of the capitalist class. We only care about Americans dying. Most Americans don't give a rat's ass about how many Vietnamese, Koreans, Afghans, Iraqis, Japanese, or anyone else outside US boundaries die.

As long as only Iraqis die in large numbers, Americans would largely back Bush. It's only when US soldiers come home in bodybags do Americans hold their government accountable.

This is a capitalist war. The world capitalist economy is entering a depression. As occurred in both world wars last century, the major capitalist powers are driven to fight each other militarily for control of the world's natural resources, booty, markets, and working class. The US ruling class is moving to assert its hegemony and domination in the Middle East and Central Asia, both regions that are rich in oil and natural gas. The US capitalist government aims to best its European and Asian capitalist rivals by putting a puppet regime in Iraq. It seeks to position itself to ward off any challenges from Russia, Iran, and China.

But in doing so, US imperialism must take on the workers of the world, who are showing signs that they will not bend over so easily. When American workers join them, that will be a great day for humanity.

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March 30, 2003--The worse things go for the Pentagon in Iraq, the greater the war propaganda coming from its press. The NY Times is rivaling its tabloid rivals in practicing the Big Lie technique to brainwash Americans. The front page of today's Times shows a forlorn Marine cradling an Iraqi girl next to a caption saying her mother was killed by cross fire.

Bullshit. The photo's publication splashed on the front page is designed to bolster the lying propaganda that US forces are there to help Iraqi children. "Cross fire" implies her mother may have been felled by the Iraqis. Her mother was killed by the invasion of "coalition" forces--no matter which side fired the lethal shot. The Times, along with Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC and the rest of their ilk are all as guilty of war crimes as their masters in the Pentagon and White House.

Watching US forces in action on the battlefield these first 11 days of the war is like watching a science fiction/horror movie. Listening to the accounts of the fierce resistance and "hornet's nest" that have greeted American soldiers is like the scene in "Aliens" when the marines first get their asses kicked by the creatures.

"Get them out of there!" screams Sigourney Weaver's character to the marine lieutenant who sent the grunts in.

The other relevant sci-fi movie is Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks!" in the scene where the invading Martians burn and slaughter earthlings while loudspeakers blare, "We come in peace. We are your friends."

That's how the invading US/UK forces appear to the Iraqis.

"There were lots of women and children running around. It was kind of distracting when you're trying to kill people."--Lieutenant Bennett Williams, Abilene, Kansas.

Who are the terrorists? Bush is dragging the American people to an abyss where we must view workers around the world as enemies. Bullshit. Bush and his class of exploiting rich are the enemies. We must break with them and link up with our true allies--the international working class.

It's becoming obvious that a big gulf exists between the American working class and workers worldwide regarding the war in Iraq. That's because the American media, in bed with the Pentagon, are not showing Americans what the rest of the world is seeing from their press--horrifying images of children burned from charred flesh or with their limbs blown off. The US capitalist press is censoring these truths from the public out of fear that they will erode the paper-thin support for this war. Americans are hearing that Iraqis are all terrorists just like the Palestinian suicide bombers, and seeing grainy images of Baghdad burning from afar, instead of the close-up terror being inflicted on Iraqis by US bombs every day.

In this context, the symbolism represented by the New York Stock Exchange's refusal to allow al-Jazeera inside is illuminating.

Any American worker who doesn't care a whit about Iraqi civilians dying, only about American soldiers dying, has lost his proletarian soul and humanity. American workers need a good dose of working class solidarity and internationalism. That's why the US labor movement should form a labor party and in the process, organize meetings with workers from Italy, England, Spain, France, Germany, and beyond.

The brainwashed lemmings in our midst are holding all of us back. Good Germans they are, saluting their fuhrer and his blitzkreig. Fuck them. They've got to be challenged everywhere, stood up and dressed down and read the riot act.

Have you heard this war is not about oil? If we had a nickel for every time we've heard that, we'd all be millionaires, right?

That's why the first targets coalition forces went after in southern Iraq were the oil fields. And the first targets they're after in the northern Kurdish areas? Why, the oil fields at Mosul and Kirkuk.

If it's not about oil, how about this gem, from a presidential directive written on October 2, 1989:

"Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security."

Really. And to any remaining skeptics, there's this little item haunting US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz these days: a 1991 memo that described the gulf war's end as "premature" and called for a regime change in Iraq to guarantee "access" to its oil.

Wolfowitz uttered another beaut the other day when asked about the intensity of Iraqi resistance. "I think we probably did underestimate the willingness of this regime to commit war crimes."

Excuse me, scumbag? Aside from the fact that the Iraqi resistance which has Washington reeling is substantially more than alleged "war crimes" committed by Hussein, aside from the fact his answer slanders the entire Iraqi people he's supposedly "liberating" by distorting the character and breadth of the resistance, let's examine Wolfowitz's words on the surface.

You underestimated the willingness of the Iraqi regime to commit war crimes? Wait a minute, the reason you gave to go to war against Hussein was because he was an evil dictator, another Hitler, an evil tyrant who gassed his own people, etc.

How can anyone let this liar turn around and give that as a reason for the Iraqi resistance? Wolfowitz proved once again he's a liar and a war criminal. Just like his friend Richard Perle, whose unrestrained greed is getting him into a little trouble these days. It seems the Prince of Darkness can't keep his snout out of the trough, as one conflict of interest after another--Trireme Partners (homeland security/defense), Global Crossing (helping its sale to an Asian investor overcome Pentagon resistance), and now Loral (links to Beijing)--is enveloping Perle in a cloud of scandal.

American working people should take heed of the likes of Wolfowitz, Perle, and Cheney (whose Halliburton company is profiting nicely from this war). As they get rich off this aggression, soldiers fight and die in the desert. That's what this war is about.

American workers! You're being deceived! Not only are the Iraqis not revolting against Hussein, but IRAQIS WHO LEFT IRAQ BECAUSE THEY HATE Hussein ARE RETURNING TO FIGHT THE AMERICAN AND BRITISH INVASION.

They're doing this not for Hussein but for their country.

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

International Day of Emergency Protests:

Saturday, June 5

Rachel Corrie about to die

March 14, 2003--As we approach tomorrow's international day of antiwar demonstrations, we should be emboldened by the continuing protests occurring all over the world. Especially heartening was the reports today that millions of workers in Spain, Italy, Germany and throughout Europe downed tools today for 15 minutes to protest the imminent US/UK invasion of Iraq. This on the heels of actions by Irish and Scottish workers who refused to load arms shipments headed for Iraq. These proletarian methods of struggle will have a cumulative effect on the consciousness of American workers, who have already been influenced by the global antiwar mobilizations.

Ongoing antiwar demonstrations in nations like Chile, Pakistan and Mexico have prevented these Security Council members from lining up behind Washington's coalition of the bribed. And in the US, skirmishes are breaking out from one end of the country to the other inbetween the mass actions. Today, two teachers in Albuquerque were suspended for displaying antiwar signs in their classrooms. Their students promptly walked out of class in solidarity with their teachers.

Building on the militancy and combativity of young people in New Mexico and around the world, ALL OUT MARCH 15TH!!

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NYC STUDENTS JOIN MILLIONS WORLDWIDE ON MARCH 5 DEMANDING "NO WAR"!
Tens of thousands of New York high school and college students walked out of classes today to join millions of their brothers and sisters around the world in a moratorium demanding, "Books, Not Bombs! No War on Iraq!" They rallied in Washington Square Park near NYU and in Union Square Park, before boarding the #6 subway line, the Peace Train, and heading uptown to Hunter College. Another large and militant rally went on for hours at Hunter, half the crowd chanting anti-war, anti-imperialist slogans, the other half listening to students, antiwar activists like International Answer's Larry Holmes, poets, rappers and other voices of dissent.

At Union Square and Hunter College, a succession of students took an open mike to express their opposition to Bush's war. Most were Black, Latino or Asian. They don't want to die or kill for oil; they don't want others to die for corporate profits; and most striking of all, these kids exuded a heartfelt solidarity for their brothers and sisters in Iraq. These working class students don't have to be taught proletarian internationalism. They feel it already.

COSMOS LEFT SAW THE FUTURE TODAY--and there is hope. These kids are exceptionally aware of what's going on in the world. These sense the media and government are lying through their teeth on Iraq, Philippines, Colombia, 911. They sense that Bush is an meglomaniac tyrant who is a dangerous man threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Students know the government's priorities do not coincide with their aspirations for decent books, supplies, and free tuition. They sense Bush and his oil posse is after control of Iraq's black gold to maintain supremacy over their European and Asian rivals.

There were thousands of revolutionary-minded youth who walked out of classes on March 5th to protest the coming imperialist war on Iraq. Many were hearing the communist perspective for the first time from the dozens of Marxist organizations mining the fertile ground of politically aware youth. They know war is coming, and they are ready to continue fighting against imperialist war. When Bush attacks Iraq, there is no doubt these students will walk out of classes and be back in the streets.

One punkish-looking high school student, Cheryl, was wearing the "Bush is an international terrorist shirt" that got Dearborn student Bretton Barber in trouble with school authorities. Cheryl heard of Bretton's case, and how the ACLU was defending his constitutional rights, but it was sign she was holding that attracted all the attention: "The only bush I trust is my own" read the words above a frontal view of a stick figure female.

They know Bush is lying, as do hundreds of millions around the world. Similar student protests took place in Philadelphia, Chicago, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Wisconsin, Minnesota and all over the country.

The latest Bush/Blair lie was exposed when it was revealed that their claim Iraq tried to smuggle uranium out of Niger was based on--surprise--a fabrication. "He's a liar. He's stupid. He's an asshole." These were the unanimous reviews from high school students in Union Square and Hunter College at the March 5th Moratorium Against the War. There is hope yet for humanity.

Meanwhile, as the rulers' war on democratic rights in America escalates, so does the resistance. Skirmishes are breaking out every day. An Albany mall arrests a man for wearing Give Peace a Chance on his shirt, and hundreds of protesters show up the next day to demand they drop the charges, which the mall immediately does. Even Bill O'Reilly thought the mall went too far, although he qualified his sympathy for Mr. Downs by stating the mall would be justified in suppressing any organized antiwar protest. But these are the kind of probes and trial balloons the rulers are employing as they press ahead with their offensive against democratic rights.

It's false to assert, as many do, that Bush has already imposed a police state, fascist totalitarianism, etc. It is more accurate to say that Bush is laying the scaffolding for a police state and fascist tyranny, in preparation for the widespread working class resistance the rulers know is coming. The Al-Arian indictments, the recent barring of Irish Republican activist Bernadette Devlin McAliskey from the US, the Patriot Act, the illegal roundups and detentions, the secret evidence, the Lindh, Padilla, and Lackawanna prosecutions, reports of "no-fly" lists of targeted activists prohibited from boarding planes and internment camps for dissidents, these are all signs of a regime preparing for martial law. Indeed, you can almost hear some voices in the administration, Ashcroft comes to mind, arguing for its imposition now, before they lose control of the situation altogether. But in order for the capitalist rulers to impose fascism in the United States, they will first have to deliver a smashing blow to the working class, which means they'll have to take US workers head on. That hasn't happened yet. The government is probing, making headway, but it hasn't shattered the working class and its organizations. To the contrary, they're encountering resistance. Dozens of cities and municipalities are refusing to cooperate with the Patriot Act's expansive surveillance powers; thousands of Iranian-Americans marched in the streets of LA in opposition to the INS detention of a thousand of their compatriots.

Another crucial fightback against the reactionary, antilabor INS involves Roger Calero, a staff writer for the Militant and Socialist Workers Party member. Calero was jailed by the INS in Houston in December after returning from a student conference in Mexico and a youth conference in Cuba, both of which he covered for the Militant. The INS has been trying to deport Calero to his native Nicaragua based on a plea-bargain conviction in 1988 for selling marijuana to a undercover cop while in high school. However, the INS was aware of this minor offense when they granted Calero permanent residence in 1990.

An international defense campaign immediately flooded Houston INS authorities with petitions, letters, phone calls and faxes. This pressure forced the government to release Calero from jail after 10 days, though deportation proceedings continue. Ongoing lobbying by the workers of the world has also won a change in venue from Texas to Newark, NJ, where Calero lives and works.

The international labor movement and all working people should demand that the deportation proceedings against Roger Calero be immediately dropped.

The success of the Calero defense campaign, and the modest legal victories achieved thus far, demonstrate that the rulers are a long way from imposing fascism on the American working class. The book is still being written. The relationship of forces is still being forged. The working class has not been smashed. The capitalist class and its government have yet to take on American workers in an all-out, frontal assault. They are accelerating their offensive, they are making gains, but they have not yet delivered mortal blows to the population.

Strikes by meatpackers, transit workers, garment workers, Yale clerical and graduate workers, are also part of the resistance, and this will grow as the economic crisis of capitalism accelerates in the US. But right now the mammoth, ongoing protests that are accompanying a skyrocketing grass roots organizing campaign are key fronts in the resistance to the Bush gang's war on democratic rights.

The March 5th student-led antiwar protests were followed up with still another impressive display of international opposition to US wars on March 8th, International Womens Day (see coverage of March 8th demonstrations at World Socialist Web Site and What Really Happened). As one world superpower moves closer to a Nazi-style preemptive war of aggression, the world's other superpower is not backing down. March 15th will see another global display of opposition to imperialist war, highlighted by an Emergency Convergence on the White House in DC, and parallel national actions in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

First Avenue, NYC, Feb. 15, 2003

Feb. 16-17, 2003--Unconstitutionally denied their right to march by capitalist judges and their government--a totalitarian outrage thuggishly enforced by New York cops--close to one million antiwar demonstrators overflowed on the streets of Manhattan's East Side on Saturday, February 15th. The turnout in New York--and the hundreds of thousands protesters in dozens of other US cities--showed loud and clear that, in the face of a daily bombardment of propaganda and misinformation, Americans are rejecting Bush's war for oil, despite what the fake bourgeois opinion polls say. Today we were in step with the rest of the international community. That's a promising sign--one that is frightening Bush and the war criminals around him.

The crowd at the permitted stationary rally on 1st Avenue was young, old, all colors and nationalities, students, working people, trade unionists, environmentalists, community activists, professionals, and families, working and middle class. It was also well to the left of many of the pacifists, liberals, and Democratic politicians on the speakers list. Most seemed deeply distrustful of Bush, the Pentagon, Wall Street, and the big business media. They've heard the lies and propaganda from Bush and they're figured out that this war is more about owning the oil in Iraq's ground and corporate profits than weapons of mass destruction.

This mass of humanity was united by a sense of urgency propelling them to try to do something to prevent Bush from plunging the entire world into madness and catastrophe.

These demonstrators are getting their information from the Internet, which explains why Americans today marched in step with the rest of the world in support of the banner above the speakers' stage: "The world says no to war!"

There were banners and street theater and balloons and puppets of Bush; and a sea of placards and signs ("No blood for oil!") denouncing Bush and militarism. A mixture of festiveness, confidence from the spectacular numbers here and abroad, and anger over the cops' strong-armed, thuggish tactics and the inability to march.

The media can not get away with describing this crowd as aging '60s radicals, pot-smoking hippies, and anti-globalization anarchists. This was AMERICA, 2003. Multilingual, multicultural, mainstream, working class, young, old, everyone. Bush and the rulers are in trouble.

Rally speakers included families of 911 victims who oppose US wars being waged in their names, and a young Staten Island reservist who refuses to be used as fodder for Wall Street's profits.

Yes, many demonstrators share the same illusions, pacifist, patriotic and otherwise, as the rally organizers in United for Peace. And, while there were more anti-imperialist signs and slogans in the gathering, there was no shortage of American flags, either. However, this diverse cross section of America is open to socialist ideas and revolutionary politics. They are deeply skeptical about the existing power structure, capitalism and the media.
Various communist organizations were distributing their literature throughout the day. Increasingly, communist explanations that the source of this war without end, the economic crisis, and the assault on democratic rights, is capitalism in crisis, will resonate with the people.

The huge turnout showed that the people were not intimidated by the phony terrorist hysteria and the courts' ruling prohibiting a march. Though today was a stunning political victory for antiwar forces, the government's blows to democratic rights did not go unregistered on the streets of New York City.

As expected, the city unleashed its thuggish cops to enforce the government's attack on the First Amendment. They intensified the crowd control strategy they've used in every post-911 demonstration--herding demonstrators into pens, preventing movement, denying access, harassing protesters with cops on horses, beatings, batons and other tried and true methods of law "enforcement."

"MAKE YOUR WAY THROUGH THE PENS."--NYC cop, Feb. 15th.

The logistical nightmare that unfolded was guaranteed by the city's march ban. From the outset demonstrators from many of the 71 feeder marches from various locations were prevented from reaching 1st Avenue. Those who managed to reach 1st Avenue were herded into block long pens, which cops made extremely difficult to enter and exit.

While walking down Second Avenue to the rally site, one of New York's worst blocked my access to 1st Avenue at 53rd, ordering me to go up to 56th, walk up to 1st and "make my way through the pens."

That's what the First Amendment has been reduced to in New York City: "making your way through the pens." A few notches closer to the West Bank, Gaza, and apartheid South Africa.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters were forced to occupy Second, Third and Lexington Avenues from the '50s to the '80s. Cops on foot and horseback brutally attacked many demonstrators from the feeder marchers and those on these other avenues.

There was a palpable sentiment throughout the militant crowd to defy the authorities and march. Rally organizers played it by the book and did not step up to lead any such defiance, although hospital workers union 1199 leader Dennis Rivera talked about marching in his speech.

1st Avenue demonstrators grew angry as reports of cop brutality along Second and Third Avenues filtered in via cell phones. Then came a rumor that the police had given up on Second Avenue and people were marching. Some left to join them. All the while, cops were harassing the legal rally on 1st Avenue, particularly later in the afternoon when they stopped demonstrators packed in one block's pen from entering the next block, which had plenty of room. There were several tense skirmishes that resulted in arrests and injuries. "Our streets!" chanted the angry crowd. "The streets belong to the people!"

One time a protester surge almost broke through the cop-manned barricades. Reinforcements on horses raced over and roughed up several marchers.

The real story is what happened on Second, Third, and Lexington Avenues, where spirited demonstrators recogized their sheer numbers and took over the streets, marching without permits and defying the blue-helmeted Cossacks on horses.

Reports came in as the evening wore on of over 300 arrests, of many injuries suffered by demonstrators in street clashes all over Manhattan, including Times Square, of harsh treatment inflicted on those arrested at Police Center. The National Lawyers Guild was on the scene offering legal assistance.

The Gestapo-like tactics of the New York cops should be condemned and investigated. The people should demand that the district court ruling banning the march be overturned, as should a separate ruling last week unleashing the NYPD's "Red Squad" to spy on political opponents of the government.

The cops looked visibly frustrated and angry over the overwhelming size and diverse composition of the crowd. The cops' top bosses Bush and Powell were also frustrated and angry after the debacles at the UN and NATO this week. And best of all, the corporate TV news anchors were almost foaming at the mouths over the massive mobilizations all over the planet. Fox News trotted out the results of the obligatory "Fox News/Dynamic Alert poll," which claims that 69% of Americans support a military action to disarm Hussein, against 27% who oppose an invasion. This poll sounds phony. First, check out the actual wording of the question. It's a good bet it's shaped toward that result. Second, Fox automatically trots it out after every huge antiwar mobilization. You can almost hear producers reminding the correspondents to throw that in after every segment covering the protests. And just before the intro for latest special on Al Qaeda's return. This Fox poll contradicts nearly every other recent poll showing decling support for Bush overall, and mixed feelings over an Iraq war, with most favoring delays and UN approval.

These overpaid, parasitic media cheerleaders for the Pentagon are accurately reflecting the despair of the corporate masters they so slavishly serve. It was almost amusing watching these well couiffed, Barbie and Ken talking heads throw hissy fits over the massive protests overwhelming them from all over the globe. They couldn't get away with their venomous anti-French tirades; now the American people were ganging up on them as well.

"What's the matter with all these people? Aren't they listening to us? How can they oppose the US? After all we've done for them? What do these millions of people worldwide have in common?"

It's the Internet, stupid.

These media parasites are so insulated from the working people that they are clueless to what's going on. So they do what their network bosses tell them to do. After initially being caught off guard by the sheer size of the turnouts and the photographs that didn't lie, the press is resorting to their usual dishonest reporting by underestimating the numbers of demonstrators. Already the "tens of thousands" mantra is slipping into the vernacular of newspapers, Yahoo news headlines, and TV talking heads. One network had two bulleted news items; one saying "Worldwide protests against war"; the next one read "Supporters of war also rally."

Yeah, all 15 of them.

A handful versus millions. No, no way the prowar rally merits a bullet the size of the antiwar protests. Similarly, the NY Times' Feb. 16 article on the global protests had one callout, reading "Amid the many rallies against an attack, no sympathy for Saddam Hussein."

Sorry, no way that merits a callout. Nothing from the article or the rally supports that characterization of the demonstrators' sentiment. The overwhelming mood was anti-Bush, and pro solidarity with the Iraqi people. You have to go out of your way to distort the rally to conclude that a principal sentiment was "no sympathy for Saddam Hussein." Another example of the capitalist press distorting the meaning of the event to suit the government's war propaganda.

The tremendous success of the DC and SF January 18 rallies forced the media to acknowledge the masses' opinions for a day or two. Then the press tried to pretend it hadn't happened. The dialogue returned to exclusively listening to the usual chatter of politicians, diplomats, generals, and pundits.

February 15 forces them to acknowledge the intervention of the masses. No amount of the bourgeois media's lies and distortions about the protests will change the fact that the demonstrations have changed the political landscape everywhere. The day's events will go down as a turning point in history. A worldwide radicalization is occurring before our eyes--sparked by the latest eruption of US imperialist aggression. Prospects have never been brighter for the building of an international socialist movement. Bush is literally uniting the workers of the world against him, and eventually, against capitalism.

The depths of the crisis of imperialist rule are becoming clearer every day. The exploiters' entire edifice of lies is crumbling. Last week the government's terrorist alert hysteria was exposed as the fraud that it is, based, as usual, on uncorroborated testimony from a prisoner at Guantanamo. Terrorist alerts, Ridge, Homeland Security, all have nothing to do with making us safe. It's psychological warfare, designed to terrorize us into paralysis. Bush wants to SLASH $2 billion in funding for firefighters and emergency personnel. There is still no national public health infrastructure or plan to deal with a chemical, biological or nuclear attack. Ridge's duct tape and plastic sheeting scare instantly became an object of national ridicule. People are seeing through Washington's frauds worldwide. That, in part, is what fueled February 15 as well.

Lies, fear, psychological warfare, and repression. That's all the rulers and their media stooges have as they accelerate their war against working people here and abroad. As I write, a TV pundit is authoritatively claiming that the American people are firmly behind Bush in his war against Iraq. That myth was exploded in New York City, San Francisco, and nationwide this historic weekend.

Further proof that the American people are "firmly behind the president" on invading Iraq, according to the television experts, is the overwhelming bipartisan support for Bush in the Congress, whose members are elected by the people.

The problem is that Democrats and Republicans support big business and the primacy of private profit--capitalism. Working people have no representation in Congress, and no organized voice in the national debate. This has been reconfirmed with a vengeance as the US heads to another war. In the days before the Congress voted to authorize Bush to attack Iraq, emails, phone calls, letters and faxes were something like 100 to 1 against war. Aping Bush in their contempt for the people, the Congress overwhelmingly voted for Bush's war resolution.

This capsulizes the gulf between the capitalist government and its press and working people. This is why socialists are getting a receptive response from antiwar demonstrators, and why the socialist movement will take big steps in the next period.

The rulers are licking their wounds this weekend. Their sense of isolation is growing. This desperation makes them even more dangerous, however. Contemptuous of world opinion, Bush will lead US imperialism into war against the people of Iraq, "one way or another," to use Bush's own words. Bush is desperate, he is demented, he is hell bent on conquering Iraq. Look for a staged provocation in Iraq, along the lines of a Gulf of Tonkin frameup. And don't be shocked if another terrorist attack does occur in the US. The same crowd that allowed 911 to occur is still in charge.

The jackboot of the emerging police state so clear in New York City on February 15 was also evident in Colorado Springs, where police attacked demonstrators with pepper spray and rubber bullets. Part 2 of the Patriot Act is on the way, containing provisions that strip Americans of their citizenship if they're deemed supportive of a terrorist organization.

But February 15th showed that any escalation of the frontal assault by the rulers against civil liberties will trigger fierce resistance from the working people.

One of the most satisfying byproducts of February 15 will be watching the foam flowing from Bill O'Reilly's mouth this week. Stay tuned for "Oh Really O'Reilly"!

COLUMBIA DISASTER; BUSH'S STATE OF THE UNION

February 2, 2003--Like 911, George W. Bush was warned about a pending disaster involving the Columbia space shuttle--and did nothing. As with Sept. 11, Bush is guilty of criminal negligence and should be removed from office immediately.

Last summer former NASA engineer Don Nelson wrote to Bush and warned that Bush's "intervention" was necessary to "prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident."

Nelson stated that NASA had not responded to a number of potentially disastrous problems associated with the shuttle, including: in 1999, the Columbia was delayed by a hydrogen leak, and damaged wiring, a contaminated engine, and a dented fuel line grounded Discovery; in 2000, Endeavor was delayed due to wiring problems, and an inspection of Columbia showed 3500
defects in wiring; in October 2000 the 100th flight of Columbia was delayed because of a misplaced safety pin and worries about the external tank; in April 2002 a hydrogen leak cancelled an Atlantis launch; in July 2002 the shuttle safety program was not properly managed, according to an inspector general report; and in August 2002, fuel line cracks grounded another shuttle launch.

The White House rejected Nelson's warnings. Bush wrote back: "There is no information to indicate a safety problem."

Nelson was then reprimanded by his "superiors" at NASA for "not going through the proper channels."

There were other warnings. Richard Bloomberg, former chairman of the Aerospace Safety Advisory panel, testified last April that: "In all of the years of my involvement, I have never been as concerned for space shuttle safety as now."

Bloomberg warned of the elimination of safety upgrades, hiring freezes that caused a reduced staff, and an aging infrastructure.

And in a September 2001 Senate hearing on shuttle safety, experts warned that budget and management problems were putting astronauts' lives at risk. Further, in 2000 the General Accounting Office warned that the loss of experienced engineers and technicians threatened the safety of future shuttle missions. The GAO cited internal NASA reports that predicted" workforce reductions are jeopardizing NASA's ability to safely support the shuttle's planned flight rate."

Through all the emotional manipulation and handwringing we've heard since the Columbia blew up, we're not hearing much about the role Bush's budget slashing played in this accident. No accountability for Bush; just mindless, knee jerk rally around the flag and commander-in-chief as we go to war. That's what this tragedy has been transformed into by the corporate media on the eve of another US-led slaughter against a civilian population.

The Columbia space shuttle mission has been shrouded in mystery, no doubt because it's part of Washington's militarization of space. Fitting that Bush's 2003 budget cuts money for the shuttle while increasing funds for nuclear technology in space.

Today (Feb. 3, 2003) we learn that eight members and consultants of an expert NASA panel which warned of serious shuttle safety problems were dismissed by NASA. Johnson was reprimanded; these advisers were fired. Yet the FBI official who blocked agents' warnings about flight schools and Moussaoui gets promoted.

The evidence is growing that on many levels and for many reasons, including our survival, this government has got to go. Not just Bush, this whole capitalist government and its enforcement of private profit before social needs to be replaced by a government that represents the working class.

Jan. 31, 2003--
"We will not permit a brutal dictator with ties to terror and a record of reckless aggression to dominate the Middle East and to threaten the United States."--VP Richard Cheney, Jan. 30, 2003.

Except the facts show this is a more accurate description of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon than Saddam Hussein. It is Bush and Sharon who are brutal dictators with ties to terror and an ongoing record of reckless aggression to dominate the Middle East. It is Sharon and Bush who threaten Palestinians and Iraqis.

Just compare the historical record of Iraq and Israel. Who is guilty of a brutual occupation? Who is committing unspeakable atrocities and war crimes every single day? Who is shooting 95-year-old women in the back? Who is dropping bombs and missiles into civilian neighborhoods? Whose soldiers are terrorizing civilians, blowing up entire blocks, gunning down women and children in the streets? Which country is enforcing a brutal apartheid against a people? Is it Israel or Iraq slaughtering civilians with F-15s, F-16s, Apache helicopters and lethal missiles.

It's not even close. Israel is the rogue state terrorizing
the region with weapons of mass destruction. Israel is the outlaw nation that has violated the most United Nations resolutions with the support of the US.

In the first gulf war, who fired depleted uranium shells? The United States. Whose bombs unleashed chemical agents stored in depots? The US. Who gave the Iraqis those chemical weapons? The US and its allies.

Was it the Iraqis who targeted electrical grids, water and irrigation systems, hospitals and schools in the US and bombed them? Was it the Iraqis who killed hundreds of thousands of Americans? Was it the Iraqis who imposed harsh economic sanctions that have killed a million American children?

Ties to terror? Who trained and sponsored bin Laden and the mujahadeen in the 80s to wage terrorism against the Afghans? The facts show the Bush family has far more extensive ties to the bin Ladens than Saddam Hussein does. They've been business partners for a long time, Daddy Bush included.

Further, Mr. Cheney, the US has been training and financing terrorists for decades--against Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, Zaire, Angola, and many more.

Cheney is a liar and a hypocrite. His Halliburton company made huge profits from dealing with Hussein. He's also a war criminal, already guilty of war crimes in Afghanistan and about to commit more against another defenseless population in Iraq. Justice dictates a day when Cheney and company are brought before a people's tribunal to face the revolutionary justice they richly deserve.

Michelle Pfeiffer character: "You're do different from the Mafia!"

FBI agent: "There is a difference, maam. The mob is run by a murderous psychopath. We work for the president of the United States."

A REPLY TO BUSH'S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH

"Your enemy is ruling your country."--George Bush, 1/28/03

Bush's State of the Union speech was a declaration of war against working people from the US to Iraq on behalf of the US capitalist class; a collection of recycled lies and demagoguery delivered by a deluded, demented Caesar who is about to commit unimaginable war atrocities against a civilian population.

The arrogance of this ruling class parasite, the "level of moral comfort with what he's doing," as former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan just put it on TV, is staggering. Nearly every sentence was a cynical, Alice-in-Wonderland inversion of reality dripping with a contempt for facts and the truth. Every accusation Bush levied at Hussein applies double to Bush, from using weapons of mass destruction to terrorize and intimidate civilians to showing contempt for the UN and the world.

When you wade through the lofty rhetoric and scripted cliches feigning concern about unemployment, taxes, Medicare, prescription drugs, Social Security, corporate corruption, pension fraud and the environment, a frightening image of Bush's vision was articulated--an intensified assault on working class wages, health benefits, job security, job safety; privatization of Social Security and Medicare; increased degradation of the environment; huge tax cuts for the rich, charity and soup lines for the poor.

The speech's lofty platitudes and emotional manipulation, punctuated by the constant sycophantic applause from his fellow thieves and exploiters, will do doubt temporarily reverse Bush's plummeting approval ratings.

But this won't last as the realities of Bush's policies of exploitation, plunder, repression and war deepen the crisis of capitalism and the resistance among working people.

Working class fighters, antiwar activists, all people of conscience should build on our recent and ongoing successes and redouble our efforts to mobilize against imperialist war on January 29th in New York City's Times Square and 100 other cities across the nation; February 15th in New York City, Chicago, London, and hundreds of other cities; and on February 16th in San Francisco.

Right on cue, the big business media mouthpieces
were falling all over themselves showing how fair and
balanced was their coverage of Bush's speech.

The morning Fox News anchor crowed that "our commander in chief" gave a "convincing argument" for waging war against the dictator Hussein. That's not fair and balanced, professional and objective reporting. That's jingoistic cheerleading and propagandizing.

COMCAST Cable showed what a free press is all about when it refused to broadcast six 30-second ads by Peace Action Education Fund during the State of the Union speech. COMCAST had a problem, you see, with alleged "unsubstantiated claims" made in the ads.

COSMOS LEFT hasn't seen those ads, but COMCAST should be more concerned about Washington's "unsubstantiated claims" concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda's alleged ties to Hussein.

February 2-9, 2003--
Now let's look at Bush's State of the Union speech in more detail (or Spit on the Union, as a COSMOS LEFT reader aptly put it). One of the worst and most dangerous speeches in American history, this latest travest from Bush could be required reading in a college course entitled "Orwellian Doublespeak in Contemporary Political Discourse."

"We will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, other presidents, other generations."

But that's precisely what his massive tax cuts for the rich and looting of the US Treasury have done. In two years, Bush has plundered a trillion dollar surplus into a multihundred billion dollar deficit on its way to the trillions, threatening Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in the process. When CBS Financial Watch says Bush has "lost his marbles," you know the rulers are on a rampage.

Bush's answer is to privatize these vital programs, which would further impoverish working people, whom Bush doesn't represent care one whit about, while lining the pockets of Wall Street and HMOs, which is all Bush cares about. Immediate enrichment of the exploiting rich; immediate impoverishment of the working people, paving the way for even deeper impoverishment of the toilers over the long term. To the backdrop of war without end, permanent militarization and repression. That's what capitalism has in store for us. That's why we have to mobilize independently of Republicans AND Democrats and fight for a mass socialist party based on the working class that fights to defend workers against the capitalist onslaught. THAT's the only realistic solution. Everything else is utopian.

"After recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and stock market declines, our economy is recovering. Yet it is not growing fast enough, or strongly enough."

A fleeting, superficial way of acknowledging that under his watch, two millions jobs have been lost; poverty and homelessness are increasing; social programs have been slashed as most states are going bankrupt; terrorist attacks occurred after Bush and his staff ignored specific warnings about jet suicide hijackings into the WTC and Pentagon; corporate corruption and 401 K scandals erupted, led by Bush's closest crony Kenneth Lay at Enron, who used similar frauduent accounting practices and insider trading scams that Bush and Cheney used at Harken and Halliburton--which have eroded investor confidence to the tune of one third market value lost since Bush's reign.

"The war goes on, and we are winning."

Sure, that's why after slaughtering 5,000 Afghan
civilians who had nothing to do with 911, with warlords, hunger, and instability still ravaging the land, Washington tells us that al-Quada has regrouped and is poised to unleash an even greater devastation on the United States.

"All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."

Spoken like a true Mafia boss, ordering hits on enemies, including US citizens like the man in Yemen killed by a Predator, along with 5 others who had no connection to anything. Bush failed to say that most of those arrested 3,000 "suspected terrorists" were just that--"suspected"--held incommunicado with no access to counsel and no evidence presented against them. Many are being tortured--under US supervision in Afghanistan or sent to US client states experienced in such methods--Morocco, Jordan and Egypt. Many were foot soldiers captured in Afghanistan fighting in an internal conflict with absolutely no connection to 91. And the US continues to illegally imprison thousands in cages at Guantanamo Bay, charged with no crimes, prisoners of the US war in Afghanistan yet denied prisoner of war status, in violation of the Geneva Convention. Similarly, most of the1200 Muslims rounded up in the US since 911 were immigrants arrested on minor immigration charges, held incommunicado, not charged with any crime, and denied legal counsel.

"We've broken al-Qaeda cells in Hamburg and Milan and Madrid and London and Paris--as well as Buffalo, NY. We've got terrorists on the run. One by one the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice."

Yes, give us lessons, George. Let's start with the presumption of innocence, a cardinal principle of American jurisprudence that you violated by pronouncing the six Buffalo men guilty. And from what's been reported, the government's got nothing on these individuals.

Justice: Bush Style

We are seeing the true meaning of American justice every day--prisoners hooded, shackled, living in cages, detained indefinitely with no charges or evidence presented against them; John Walker Lindh blindfolded, nude, shackled and taped to a stretcher, wounds untreated, deprived of food; thousands of Afghans suffocated to death in containers; these are just some of the images brought to the world by imperialist justice.

"We've got the terrorists on the run."

Yes, they're on the run and more decentralized and elusive than ever, now poised, according to the government, to unleash another catastrophic attack. Thus the war in Afghanistan did nothing to stop terrorism, did much to increase it, and we're more vulnerable than ever. Innocent people are being illegally jailed with no evidence presented, our rights are under attack, and there's still been no impartial investigation into what really happened on 911.

"We've intensified security at the borders and ports of entry, posted more than 50,000 newly trained federal screeners in airports, begun inoculating troops and first responders against smallpox, and are deploying the nation's first early warning network of sensors to detect biological attack."

Translation: the government is violating more rights without making anyone safer, the federal screeners are without union protection, and Bush's beloved free market is why there are still not enough x-ray detectors to screen checked bags.

Bush's smallpox vaccination scheme is a bad sign. The fact that he would unleash such a dangerous, high risk live vaccine when there's no reasonable risk of a smallpox outbreak suggests that Bush and company know something we don't.

The good news is there's been a near revolt among many hospitals and healthcare centers, which have refused to inoculate their staff as part of Bush's first stage of vaccinations which would eventually include ten million firefighters, cops and emergency medical employees.

In Connecticut, only 4 people showed up for the shot. In New York state the program is faltering, and 1199 hospital workers union is objecting strongly. Nationwide, more than 80 hospitals have just said no to Bush's plan. Many prominent physicians and healthcare professionals are opposed to the proposed smallpox vaccination. One problem is the vaccine is made from a live vaccinia, cox pox, a cousin of smallpox. Out of the 10 million slated to get the first stage of shots, 10,000 will get sick, 400 will face death, and 20 should die from the vaccine.

And these are underestimates of the high risk posed by the vaccine. The vaccinia is contagious, meaning the open wound caused by the shot could spread to others in close contact with the vaccine taker. At especially high risk are the elderly, infants, people with skin disorders and weakened immune systems--particularly cancer and AIDS patients.

Dr. William Schaffner, chief of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center at Nashville, says "It is not a safe vaccine. There's a real disease that kills people unnecessarily: the flu. Mr. President, I would love to see you endorse a national flu vaccine campaign with the same vigor."

Except that the same private profit system Bush is so wedded to is the reason why there's been critical shortages of children's and flu vaccines in recent years.

Why the rush to use a high-risk vaccine when there's no serious, substantiated risk of an outbreak? What are the chances of one? Smallpox was effectively eradicated in the US by the late 1940s, and worldwide the last case was in 1977. The only known laboratory stocks of smallpox are stored in highly quarantined labs in Atlanta and Russia. While US intelligence claims North Korea and Iraq may have smallpox, this is the same intelligence which brought us 911, Oklahoma City, Kuwaiti incubators, false satellite photos, false tapes, chemical weapons camps that were bakeries--you get the picture. The only smallpox stocks are very likely in Atlanta and Russia.

Even if they were smuggled out by "terrorists," modern conditions are less conducive to the horrendous past epidemics. The type of smallpox attack likely today would be contained by quarantine, area-specific vaccination, and ring vaccination, which works on people 4 days after they've been exposed.

Money is a key issue too. Washington is not adequately funding hospitals to deal with s hortages if doctors and staff get sick from the shots. And since Bush is shielding vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits, hospitals are concerned about litigation if patients' relatives exposed to the vaccine get sick.

As he showed with Cipro during 2001's anthrax attacks, Bush's first priority is bolstering the interests of the pharmaceutical companies. There's a safer European smallpox vaccine that will be ready in a year, but Bush is accommodating the drug companies, which want to sell their old stock before the new one arrives, and has allowed them to dilute the older, more dangerous vaccine.

Yes, we know all about Bush's propensity for deploying a first early warning network of sensors to detect a biological attack. Strange how the White House staff were given Cipro on September 11, 2001, weeks before the anthrax attacks began, but 8 postal workers died because they were denied Cipro. THAT sums up George Bush's compassionate conservatism for working people.

"In Afghanistan we helped to liberate an oppressed people. And we will continue helping them secure their country, rebuild their society, and educate all their children: boys and girls."

Rubbish. The US is responsible for the Taliban in the first place, and has been meddling in Afghanistan's affairs since 1979 by training and financing bin Laden and other right wing Islamic terrorists to overthrow the Soviets. The US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan put the Taliban in power to stabilize the chaos caused by American policies and interference, and tried to make a deal with the Taliban for the oil and natural gas pipelines.

Bush's war slaughtered 5,000 civilians who had nothing to do with 911. His "liberation" has brought the return of warlords, poppy cultivation and heroin trafficking, renewed chaos, corruption, poverty, sickness, hunger and homelessness.

The US has spent a pittance to rebuild the country relative to the billions it spent to destroy it. International relief is woefully inadequate; Afghanistan remains a humanitarian disaster.

One thing Bush accomplished, however. The gas pipeline deal was signed. This is what all the bombs and devastation are all about--not "liberating" Afghan women.

Further, resistance to the US occupation and its military thuggery is growing, and the American-installed puppet, Karzai, is illegitimate with no social base. So much for Bush's "liberation."

"In the Middle East we will continue to seek peace between a secure Israel and a democratic Palestine."

More lies--from the moment Bush took office he has given Sharon a green light to escalate his army's terror and brutality against the Palestinians.

The world has watched Bush stand by and allow Sharon commit unimaginable war crimes and atrocities against a defenseless civilian population, with advanced weaponry sold and given to Israel by the US. The world has noted Washington's hypocrisy in allowing Israel to violate far more numerous and serious UN resolutions than Iraq ever has. The world has heard Bush call the butcher Sharon a man of peace. That's why people the world over are rising up against Bush's aggression.

"Across the earth America is feeding the hungry; more than 60 percent of international food aid comes as a gift from the people of the United States."

No one disputes the generosity of the American people, but it's the US government's policies that make a mocker of those good intentions. The truth is Washington has and continues to use food as a weapon against peoples already impoverished by the system of production for private profit that America enforces around the world.

Recently Washington has held back food shipments to impoverished North Korea, and has enforced sanctions against Iraq, Cuba, Libya, to name but a few countries.
Further, Raj Patel, policy analyst at Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, says "US food aid is nothing more than the dumping of crops that the US is itself unable to sell on world markets. . . .Food aid would not be necessary in Africa were it not for the liberalization of agricultural markets that the US has been pushing relentlessly over the past decade."

It was Bush's crocodile tears over the tens of millions of Africans afflicted with AIDS that revealed the magnitude of his cynicism and hypocrisy.

"Today, on the continent of Africa, nearly 30 million people have the AIDS virus, including 3 million children under the age of 15. There are whole countries in Africa where more than one-third of the adult population carries the infection. More than 4 million require immediate drug treatment. Yet across that continent, only 50,000 AIDS victims -- only 50,000 -- are receiving the medicine they need.
"Because the AIDS diagnosis is considered a death sentence, many do not seek treatment. Almost all who do are turned away.
"A doctor in rural South Africa describes his frustration. He says, "We have no medicines, many hospitals tell people, ‘You’ve got AIDS. We can’t help you. Go home and die’."
"In an age of miraculous medicines, no person should have to hear those words.
"AIDS can be prevented. Anti-retroviral drugs can extend life for many years. And the cost of those drugs has dropped from $12,000 a year to under $300 a year, which places a tremendous possibility within our grasp.
Ladies and gentlemen, seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many. . . .This nation can lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature."

This from a government that backed the IMF and World Bank when they forced African countries to cut back on expenditures for health infrastructure as part of "structural adjustments." This from an administration which introduced legislation at the World Trade Organization aimed at preventing Third World nations from importing generic retroviral drugs they cannot produce. This from an administration that in December was the only WTO member opposed to expanding the list of diseases which would waive reimportation rules. This from an administration that has done everything possible to reduce condom distribution both in the US and worldwide. And, this from a president who appointed a Neanderthal named Jerry Thacker to the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS. Thacker's contribution to the AIDS dialogue included calling the virus a "gay plague" you get from living a "deathstyle."

The uproar over Thacker's nomination forced Bush to withdraw his name from consideration, but the damage--and message--were clear to all. Thacker was knocked out of the ring even sooner than Henry Kissinger, another mindboggling Bush appointment, whose selection to head the 911 investigation will go down as one of the most bizarre and Orwellian in American history.

"I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean."

This is being touted as the latest showcase of Bush's oxymoronic "compassionate conservativism", and as usual, the argument is a fraud. First, it's not as much money as it sounds, relative to the $400 billion spent on war annually by the US, and including $6 billion for nuclear testing and production. Second, massive aid is needed NOW, and Bush's request does not affect the 2003 budget. $3.5 billion of that new money is needed NOW, when people are dying. Bush's new request doesn't kick in until 2004, when it increases AIDS money by $700 million. Most of Bush's new money doesn't kick in until 2007. That's too late.

Africa's debt to imperialist banks and governments costs $15 billion a year. If Bush truly gave a damn, he'd cancel that debt immediately.

Given the massive tax cuts and huge increase in war spending, one wonders where this "new money" for AIDS will come from. It remains to be seen how much of that money will actually help AIDS victims in Africa, or how much ends up as a subsidy for the pharmaceutical corporations, which have already been paid back many times over for their hefty contributions to Bush's campaign.

"Today, the gravest danger in the war on terror, the gravest danger facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. These regimes could use such weapons for blackmail, terror and mass murder."

These words accurately describe the track record of the US government. No government has killed more civilians with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as conventional, than Washington. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of mass murder designed to terrorize the entire world, not just Japan.

And today, Washington is terrorizing Iraq and the world by announcing it is considering a first strike nuclear attack on the long-suffering Iraqi people, who don't even possess nuclear weapons.

Further, the world sees Bush for what he is--head of an illegitimate, outlaw regime who suppressed a vote count and was installed by a reactionary Supreme Court. Even Hitler was elected democratically.

Then Bush, trying to provide historical justification for his war of colonial plunder, tried his hand at a history lesson, which is always an adventure when this moron is concerned. Remember his comment that Japan and the US have been solid allies for two centuries.

"America's duty is familiar. Throughout the 20th century, small groups of men seized control of great nations, built armies and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world. In each case, their ambitions of cruelty and murder had no limit."

Again they're describing themselves. A small group of right wing ideologues, a right wing cabal of aggressive, adventurist imperialist thought leaders, Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, and others, laid out their plans for achieving military supremacy and world domination by US finance capital.

And it is Bush and these warmongers around him who are waging a cruel psychological warfare campaign against the Iraqi people, already long suffering from the hundreds of thousands lost in the first gulf war, and the million more lost from the sanctions since the war, now hearing that Bush may drop nuclear bombs on their defenseless population, this after pulverizing Iraqi cities with thousands of cruise missiles in a blitzkreig not seen since the Nazis. Estimates of civilian casualties from this attack are as high as 500,000.

Whose ambitions of cruelty and murder know no limit?

"In each case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism and communism were defeated by the will of free peoples, by the strength of great alliances and by the might of the United States of America."

Ironic that Bush mentions Hitlerism, given the fact that both of Bush's grandfathers were business partners with the Nazis and helped finance their rise to power (they were not alone; Joseph Kennedy, IBM, Ford and other American capitalists and corporations were in on this).

Ironic also because US intelligence imported many Nazi spies and scientists into the CIA and other agencies, employing Nazi mind control techniques, medical experimentation and torture in the Cold War against the Soviets.

"Now, in this century, the ideology of power and domination has appeared again, and seeks to gain the ultimate weapons of terror. Once again this nation and all our friends are all that stand between a world at peace and a world of chaos and constant alarm. Once again we are called on to defend the safety of our people and the hopes of all mankind."

More Orwellian doublespeak. It is Washington that is plunging the Middle East and the entire world into chaos and devastation with this latest eruption of militarism. Despite America's pathetic attempts to cobble together a "coalition of the willing," the whole planet knows this is Washington's war, and the prize its eyes are on are the vast oil reserves under Iraq's soil.

It is the people of the world who are being called on to defend the safety of our people and the hopes of all mankind--and we are responding with massive mobilizations all across the world. We will not be strong enough to stop this war, but we will make the warmakers pay a high political price, and from this resistance will be forged a revolutionary working class leadership internationally that will take state power away from the exploiters and end their madness forever.

It is absurd and factually baseless for Bush to equate Hussein's Iraq with Hitler's Germany. Germany was an advanced industrialized nation with a powerful war machine that overran Europe. Iraq is an impoverished, semi-colonial country that has already been pulverized by the world's mightiest military machine in history and effectively disarmed by international inspectors.

Its infrastructure destroyed, its military defanged, millions of its citizens dead, millions more malnourished, Iraq threatens no one. Yes, during the 80s Iraq was a regional power and was largely armed by the US. Iraq waged war against Iran with America's urging and support. Iraq invaded Kuwait after getting the green light from Bush Sr, and offered to withdraw before Washington attacked. Iraq is not the aggressor in the Middle East. Israel and the US are. Those are the facts.

"We have called on the United Nations to fulfill its charter and stand by its demand that Iraq disarm."

The UN charter says nothing about unilaterally disarming any member nation. And US allies like Israel have violated far more UN resolutions than Iraq. Washington blocks any effort to enforce them.

"We are strongly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency in its mission to track and control nuclear materials around the world."

False. The IAEA has received little help or cooperation from Bush. And Bush has repeatedly contradicted, misinterpreted or actually fabricated IAEA statements concerning Iraq's nuclear capacity.

"We are working with other governments to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union and to strengthen global treaties banning the production and shipment of missile technologies and weapons of mass destruction."

To the contrary, Bush has actually cut funding for programs to receive nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union, removed a widely respected and highly effective head of a UN program designed to destroy chemical weapon stockpiles in the world, and has done everything possible to weaken international treaties designed to halt the spread of biological and chemical weapons.

"Twelve years ago, Saddam Hussein faced the prospect of being the last casualty in a war he had started and lost. To spare himself, he agreed to disarm of all weapons of mass destruction.
"For the next 12 years, he systematically violated that agreement. He pursued chemical, biological and nuclear weapons even while inspectors were in his country.
"Nothing to date has restrained him from his pursuit of these weapons: not economic sanctions, not isolation from the civilized world, not even cruise missile strikes on his military facilities.
"Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations and for the opinion of the world."

Iraq lost in a one-sided slaughter and had the victors' terms imposed on it. Hussein didn't systematically violate anything. For 12 years he allowed the UN inspectors to dismantle most, if not all of the chemical, biological, and rudimentary nuclear capabilities that the US and its European "allies" supplied him. To this day, Bush has failed to provide a shred of evidence that Iraq is pursuing development of these weapons. AND IF IT DID, AS A SOVEREIGN NATION IRAQ HAS A RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF, GIVEN THE RECORD OF US AGGRESSION AGAINST IRAQ THAT INCLUDES THE DEATHS OF OVER A MILLION OF ITS CITIZENS

No government has shown more contempt for the UN and the opinion of the world than Washington, which has shredded one treaty after another: Kyoto and other environmental agreements, treaties involving biological weapons, women's rights, children's rights and the ABM, among others.

And now, Washington's blood lust for oil and domination is unrestrainable--bullying the world, threatening pre-emptive invasions and first nuclear strikes against non-nuclear countries.

"The 108 U.N. inspectors were sent to conduct -- were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt for hidden materials across a country the size of California. The job of the inspectors is to verify that Iraq's regime is disarming.
"It is up to Iraq to show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons, lay those weapons out for the world to see and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has happened."

Again Bush is lying. The facts are that Iraq has allowed Blix and the inspectors to visit hundreds of sites. They've found nothing. Zilch. A few leftover empty warheads from the '80s. The key word is empty. Not a trace of chemical weapons were discovered in them.

Bush never thought Hussein would let the inspectors back in, which would be his excuse to invade Iraq and occupy its oilfields. When Hussein let them in, Bush lost his preferred reason to attack. Since then Bush has been in political and diplomatic trouble. He was forced to downplay and disparage the inspectors, knowing they'd come up empty. Bush was reduced to claiming that Hussein had to prove a negative. Prove that you've destroyed the weapons we say you have. We don't have to provide the evidence. You have to prove you don't.
That's a crude setup for war.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration lies on a daily basis about Iraq's biological, chemical, and nuclear capabilities.

"The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons materials sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax."

Wrong again. The UN report said Iraq had the potential to make that much if it was running at maximum capacity. The production log at Iraq's bioweapons facility showed that Iraq wasn't operating its fermentors at full capacity. There's no evidence in UNSCOM or UNMOVIC reports that they believed Iraq produced this much anthrax.

"He hasn't accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he destroyed it."

False and misleading. Anthrax made in 1990 was in liquid form. It would have deteriorated by the mid 90s.

"The UN concluded that Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 litersof botulinum toxin; enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hasn't accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it."

Not so. The UN report in 1999 stated it couldn't account for 460 kg of casein, the growth medium for botulism.That's enoughfor 1200 liters. Only Washington had used that 38,000 figure, not the UN.

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. The could also kill untold thousands. He's not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them."

Notice the repeated rhetorical pattern of deceit.
Again, these are higher than UN and independent estimates. But the former UN weapons inspectors says that at least 95% of Iraq's chemical weapons were destroyed by 1998. So much for the pro-war mantra that "for 12 years Iraq has violated UN resolutions."
And, to repeat, the inspectors have examined Iraq's national rectum for two months and found nothing. And Washington has provided nothing.

"US intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capableof delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them, despite Iraq's recent declaration denying their existence. Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He has given no evidence blah blah blah."

The "upwards of 30,000 munitions" that the US and others supplied Iraq with in the 80s were largely depleted after Iraq used them, with US guidance, against Iranian troops. There's no way of knowing how much remained, especially after the US bombed some of those chemical depots in the gulf war--poisoning hundreds of thousands of US troops in the process with Gulf War Syndrome.
"The International Atomic Energy Agency confimed in the 1990s that Hussein had an advanced nuclear development program, had a design for a nuclear wepon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb."

Bush left out that in 1998 the IAEA also testified that Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled. And on Jan. 27 IAEA chief El-Baradei statedthere was no evidence that Iraq resumed its nuclear program.

"The British government has learned that Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

This is a recycled story that dates way back to 1981-82, right when the US was starting to back Baghdad for doing Washington's dirty work in fighting the Iranian revolution that toppled the Shah. Iraq failed in its attempt to import yellowcake (unrefined uranium from Niger). The US and Britain have never provided any more information or evidence about this. It means nothing now anyway.

"Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

Another false innuendo that's been repeatedly exposed. These tubes have commercial applications, and the IAEA found no evidence they were meant for nuclear weapons.
El-Baradei reported recently that by 1992 Iraq had destroyed its nuclear weapons related equipment, and by 1994 had removed uranium and plutonium from the country. Further, the aluminum tubes which Bush has falsely charged are used for enriching uranium have been found by the IAEA to be used for "legitimate" conventional rockets, "permitted" even by the UN.

This lie is particularly odious, because the accusation that Iraq is building nuclear weapons has been at the center of Bush's propaganda drive for war. The truth is that it's the US which is threatening nuclear war against Iraq in a pre-emptive strike to take out biological and chemical weapons which Washington still hasn't proven exist.

"From intelligence sources, we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the UN inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany inspectors in order to intimidate witnesses. Iraq is blocking U-2 surveillance flights by the UN."

False. Iraq is not blocking U-2 flights, it just can't guarantee their safety. US and British jets are flying over illegal no-fly zones, bombing infrastructures and killing civilians. Iraq has a sovereign right to defend its airspace and national sovereignty. The US should suspend the no-fly zone intrusions, if it really wanted to show it was serious about inspections. Besides, given the U-2 plane that just crashed in South Korea, seriously wounding several people, it's no wonder Iraq doesn't open its airspace to these intruders with open arms.

"Iraqi intelligence officersare posing as the scientist inspectors are supposed to interview. Real scientsts have been coached by Iraqi officials on what to say. Intelligence sources indicated that Hussein has ordered that scientsts who cooperated with UN inspectors in disarming Iraq will be killed, along with their families."

Once again, there's no evidence of this, because it's probably something they've either bribed a defector to say or extracted from some prisoner they've tortured in custody. Neither the UN or the US has provided evidence supporting these charges.

"Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction. But why?

Aside from the weakness of those claims, as we're discovering, but if Iraq does have something left, gee, maybe it's for deterrence against Iraq's far more powerful enemies--the US and Israel, who have far more weapons of mass destruction and have used them against Iraq and elsewhere far many more times.

"The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate or attack."

Why? As discussed above, it's more logical the reason for a weak country to acquire these weapons against aggressive, more powerful foes is for defense, as a deterrent. The CIA has testified it's far more likely that Iraq would use these weapons after they're attacked, when deterrence has failed and they've nothing to lose.
So it's Washington's unbridled militarism and recklessness, fueled by ambitions of conquest in the Middle East--backed by "nuclear arms" and "a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons"--that will "create more deadly havoc in that region."

Remember that for 12 years Iraq has attacked no one. It allowed inspectors to dismantle its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Its airspace and sovereignty were constantly violated when British and US jets enforced illegal "no-fly" zones over Iraq. In 1998, contrary to the lie peddled almost daily by the government and media, Iraq didn't kick out the inspectors. They left because Clinton was about to bomb Baghdad. Further, Iraq had accused the US of using the inspectors as CIA spies to help Allied jets kill Iraqi leaders. Washington denied the charge, but it was later proven to be true. The US was using the inspectors as cover for illegal surveillance activity to be used to target Iraqis.

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

More unsubstantiated, uncorroborated assertions, from intelligence sources they won't reveal, secret communciations and statements by people now in custody, highly suspect information that proves nothing as it was given by unreliable sources who either said what they perceived wanted to be heard or were tortured.

Further, most biological weapons do leave fingerprints, and could be traced to Iraq. This was truly one of the most cynical, dishonest speeches ever given by an American president.