just review the number of resolutions containing articles of impeachment for many officials of the administration, and another, dick cheney and many more. just read article 2, paragraph 2 of nixon’s letters of impeachment. sound familiar? and what about the firings of the attorney generals and the blowing off of an undercover cia officer’s identity? yep, according to james madison that qualifies as an impeachable crime as well.

this essay, although rather long, looks at “why they hate us” and is definitely worth the time if you want the actual truth behind our role in the middle east which the media and political leaders fail to tell us. i have reposted the essay below since the source was a forum and could disappear at any time.

“Why of course the people don’t want war… That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
-Hermann Goering, Nazi President of the Reichstag

I hear the drum-beat of war against Iraq growing louder, and- if just for a moment- I’d like to drown it out with some truth.

Over and over again we hear the pseudo-debate: When should we attack Saddam? How should we attack Saddam? How soon should we attack Saddam?

Set aside for a moment the glaring ommission of the “We should not attack anyone” point of view from our corporate media. Let’s look at the picture as it is presented. Attack Saddam Hussein. Saddam, Saddam, Saddam. Big photo of him with target sights superimposed over his head on the cover of Time Magazine: “Iraq In The Targets.”

Is Saddam Hussein the only person who lives in Iraq?

What is this, a giant video game? Every missile takes away hit-points from the Main Bad Guy at the end of the game?

Here is the reality: after non-stop bombing for well over a decade, Saddam is still alive. He still has all of his hit-points. Over 100,000 Iraqi deaths- the Pentagon’s (very conservative) estimate- during the Gulf War; Saddam was not one of them. Over 1.4 million deaths resulting from the years of post-war economic sanctions against Iraq; Saddam is not one of them. Even though the people of Iraq are not allowed basic necessities like medical supplies, Saddam has not gone without so much as a bottle of Evian or an aspirin during 10 years of sanctions.

More on the sanctions, and our relationship with “The Butcher of Baghdad” in a bit. Let’s talk about bombs.

The common version is that the Gulf War lasted for two months: a quick, clean victory. But the reality is that the bombings never stopped- and continue to this day. Right through Clinton and Bush Part 2. According to the Pentagon, more than 280,000 sorties have been flown since no-fly zones were implemented by the US and Britain (not by the United Nations, as is often reported).

Succinctly put: the US and Britain have been bombing Iraq at a rate that NEVER dropped below twice a month FOR THE PAST TEN YEARS. Over one-third of the resultant casualties have been civilian. Even during the Gulf War, despite those fantastic missile shots on CNN, the Pentagon estimates that 40% missed their targets. And not one of the bombs killed Saddam. They did, however, kill grandmothers, infants, farmers, middle-aged men, teenage girls, etc., etc.

In the year 1999-2000 alone, over 24,000 combat missions were carried out against Iraq.

But how could that be? That never made the newspaper! The US and Britain have been carrying out the longest sustained bombing campaign since WWII, and Peter Jennings never even brought it up? They tell us who Tom Cruise is dating, but not about weekly bombings that kill civilians?

Yes.

As an aside- This is the same media that has “neglected” to mention that the US attack on Afghanistan has now cost MORE Afghan civilian lives than we lost on that horrible day, September 11.
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold

Just as a random example, and to demonstrate that I am not making these numbers up, here is a link to the public report of a single aircraft carrier’s 3-month long mission out of the Arabian Gulf during the summer of 1999, which states that “During this period, CVW-5 flew 1,300 combat sorties over Iraq, and dropped more than 20 tons of ordnance…” This does not include over 8,700 non-combat sorties.
http://www.airpac.navy.mil/news/pr1999/pr99-020.asp
This is ONE ship in a fleet of ships, ONE mission out of literally thousands. Not to get OVERLY logical, but the report also states that about 50 million gallons of fuel were burned during this ONE mission to keep our gas prices down…

Iraq is slightly larger than Texas. What would Texas look like after 20 tons of ordnance were dropped in a 3-month period? How about after 20 tons every 3 months for over ten years? The ten years immediately following a 2-month long attack in which over 88,000 tons were dropped? What would Texas look like? Texas’ population is just over 20 million. So is Iraq’s. What would the people of Texas think if every time they looked in the sky, there were bombers? And bombs don’t just disappear, like they do in video games. They leave behind carcinogens like depleted uranium. The UK Atomic Energy Authority quoted a theoretical 500,000 potential deaths in the region following the Gulf War, if only a fraction of the uranium dust was inhaled.

Just to drive home the reality of what “going to war” means, let’s look at the long-term human cost of the last attack. During the last war, the US intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water supply. Again, this is all according to the pentagon, not some radical gone wild with conspiracy theories.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_511rept_91.html
Argue amongst yourselves as to the morality of this decision, whether or not it was a legitimate military target, etc. Let’s just look at the reality of it. Dirty water leads to disease, and it was predicted, accurately, that Iraqi civilians would not have any clean water. In the Pentagon’s own words, “This (strategy of destroying water and sanitation facilities) could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease… Epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid could occur… Poorer Iraqis…would not be able to meet their needs.”

“Epidemics of disease” DID occur, and are occuring still today. The people of the region surely consider this to be “biological warfare.” This is the nature of war. War is terrorism, multiplied by a thousand. We all bristled with anger when Timothy McVeigh called his victims “collateral damage.” We think of the photograph of a lifeless child being carried by a fireman. That photograph has been taken 500,000 times in Iraq. We should be just as incensed at the “collateral damage” of our own missiles and bombs as we are at the bombs of our enemies.

For over a decade the people of Iraq have been, in a word, terrorized.

If we want to get involved in a tit-for-tat exchange, like Israel and the Palestinians, with the entire Middle East- attacking Iraq is a great way to get things started. We’ll terrorize their people with expensive weapons, then they’ll terrorize our people with cheap weapons. If we want to reduce, rather than enhance, the prospects of further terrorism against our own people, we should take a look at WHY it happens. When an IRA bomb goes off in Northern Ireland, Britain doesn’t just carpet-bomb Belfast. They seek out and punish the criminals, to be sure, but they also try to understand the grievances that lead to such an attack. Anything else would be reckless.

So- Why Do They Hate Us? Dan Rather told us that the people of the Middle East are “jealous.” George W. Bush tells us they hate the fact that in America people are “able to realize their dreams regardless of who they are.” Certainly possible.

That’s how the government and its shill media answer the “Why Do They Hate Us?” question for us, the simple-minded citizens. Ok, fine. How do the US intelligence agencies answer that same question, when they are talking behind closed doors?

In 1974, Ralph Nader authored the Freedom of Information Act, which requires the US Government to make public all declassified documents. All you have to do is look, and you’ll know what your government is really up to.

Let’s look at some of the REAL history of US involvement in that area. Rewind to 1958.

In 1958, Eisenhower asked his National Security Council (now run by former Chevron executive Condoleeza Rice) the same question that everyone has- rightly- been asking since September 11. Namely: “Why Do They Hate Us?” He told his intelligence advisors that there seemed to be a “Campaign of hatred” against the US in the Middle East, and wanted to know why. In no uncertain terms- in National Security Council Memorandum 5801/1, “Statement By The National Security Council Of Long-Range U.S. Policy Toward The Near East,” January 24, 1958- they told him why.

To paraphrase: The Arab poor feel that the US supports dictators who trade oil for US weapons. They believe that the US stifles Democracy to maintain access to the region’s oil (A representative quote: “In the eyes of the majority of Arabs the United States appears to be opposed to the realization of the goals of Arab nationalism. They believe that the United States is seeking to protect its interest in Near East oil by supporting the status quo and opposing political or economic progress. . .”). In 1958 they felt that the “Cold War” was merely a pretext for maintaining the status quo.

Furthermore, the report states that the reason we have so much trouble countering these perceptions is because they are all basically true. We DO prop up dictators all throughout the Middle East so we can take the oil. We DID use the “Cold War” as a pretext for imperialism.

Even today, we hear about how we are “Losing The Propaganda War.” Even today, we are “Losing The Propaganda War” because so much of what our enemies say is simply true. Those policies have not changed, over the decades and across both parties. These are not the words of an “Anti-American Radical” or a “Blame America First Liberal,” they are the words of the US Government’s own intelligence community. They don’t “Hate our freedom,” they hate the fact that we prevent theirs.

Even after making the “Why They Hate Us” question crystal-clear, in 1963 the CIA sponsored a (failed) coup to overthrow Iraq’s government and install Saddam’s Ba’ath Party. According to the minutes of a meeting with his advisors, Eisenhower interjected “vociferously” at the suggestion that there was a communist threat. Despite his vocal objection to the suggestion that the Soviets were involved, that’s exactly what they told us, how our government justified the coup to the citizens who just wouldn’t understand the real reason.

Saddam didn’t become vice-president until 1974, then president in 1979. Significantly, this is the same year the Iranians overthrew our puppet dictator, the Shah- who was installed after we overthrew their Democratically Elected government in 1953. That government had intended to nationalize their resources, to take the oil out of the hands of Western corporations.

These are all textbook examples of “Why They Hate Us,” according to US intelligence agencies.

I bring this up not to needlessly criticize the actions of our past, but to put this upcoming war into historical perspective.

We are about to go to war to overthrow Saddam and install yet another, more compliant, dictator.

Now, “The Cold War” is called “The War On Terrorism.” When we do it in South America- for example Plan Colombia or the recent coup attempt in Venezuela- it’s called “The War On Drugs.” It’s all the same “war.” It’s called imperialism.

A topic for another time. Back to Iraq, and the “Propaganda War.”

Another mantra, repeated somewhere in the mainstream media every single day: We know that Saddam Hussein is such a terrible person that we must attack because “He gassed his own people.”

There is no doubt that Hussein is a monster and a criminal. But his most monsterous crimes, including the gassing of his own people, were committed WITH OUR SUPPORT.

If this crime were even on the radar screen for actual reasons that the US intends to attack Iraq again, it would pass an easy test: What was the US reaction immediately after the crimes were committed? Simple enough question. If this was really why we are planning another attack in October, our government would have reacted with condemnation. But that is not the answer to the test.

The answer is that we INCREASED weapons sales, including chemical and biological “weapons of mass destruction.”

According to a 1994 Senate report, up until 1990, the US Commerce Department approved the sale of the following biological materials to Iraq: Bacillus Anthracis (anthrax), Clostridium Botulinum (a source of botulinum toxin), Histoplasma Capsulatam (cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord, and heart), Brucella Melitensis (a bacteria that can damage major organs), Clostridium Perfringens (a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness), Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance), Escherichia coli (E. coli), genetic materials, human and bacterial DNA, and dozens of other pathogenic biological agents.

“These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction,” the Senate report stated. “It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program.”
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/medsearch/FocusAreas/riegle_report/report/report_s01.htm (Scroll down to footnote 55 or so)

The report noted further that U.S. exports to Iraq included the precursors to chemical-warfare agents, plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities, and chemical-warhead filling equipment, as well as chemicals used in “weapons of mass destruction”, such as thiodiglycol (used in mustard gas).

According to a 1991 House investigation, “From 1985 to 1990, the United States Government approved 771 licenses for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment with military application. [Only thirty-nine applications were rejected.] (For a list of US corporations who made money off of these atrocities, click this link http://www.progressive.org/0901/anth0498.html )

All of this was approved by the Reagan and Bush Part I administrations, despite evidence that Iraq was engaging in chemical and biological warfare against Iranians and Kurds since as early as 1984.

On 12 April 1990, 2 years after “he gassed his own people” in the Kurdish city of Halabja in Northern Iraq, killing 5,000 people and wounding 10,000 (according to the UN), Saddam Hussein shook hands with 5 US Senators: Democrat Howard Metzenbaum, and Republicans Alan Simpson, James McClure, Frank Murkowski, and Bob Dole. It was a friendly meeting. You can read the transcripts of what was said.

Again, all of this is public information. And yet the media continues the mantra: “He gassed his own people,” as if that- and not the fact that Iraq has the world’s second largest oil reserves- is why we must “attack Saddam.” It takes a genuine effort to be so blind to the facts- facts of which the Arab world is quite aware. So goes the “Propaganda War.”

There is little doubt as to the real motivation behind this new push to invade Iraq: OIL. Much, much more can be said on the topic of oil, and of Bush and Cheney’s ties to Saddam- before and after “he gassed his own people.” Let’s stick to why attacking Iraq will decrease, rather than increase, America’s national security.

After September 11, the Wall Street Journal asked “moneyed Muslims” of the region “Why Do They Hate Us?” They gave 3 answers. One was the same answer as we heard in 1958- our support of dictators. This is almost 50 years later. Both of the main political parties have asked the exact same questions, gotten the exact same answers, and maintained the exact same policies.

The Arabs also listed for the Wall Street Journal two other reasons for anti-US sentiment in the region. One was our unconditional support of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinain land- now in its 35th year. Suffice it to say that our media has been less than forthcoming on that issue as well- also a topic for another time. But the other reason for the hatred is the sanctions against Iraq. Let’s look at those.

Imagine if suddenly Texas were to be sealed off, from even medical supplies, and 5,000 children under age 5 died EVERY MONTH as a result. This is what is happening right now, today, in Iraq, according the the UN. Are Iraqi children somehow less valuable than our own?

Just to continue the “investigative journalism” into the behavior of our corporate media: how well have we been informed of the effects of the sanctions? Greta VanSusteren of FoxNews (We Distort, You Decide) told her audience that one of the reasons “Why They Hate Us” in the Middle East is that “Over one-thousand Iraqi children have died” as a result of the US/UK led sanctions.

OK, over a thousand. Not EXACTLY a lie. Sort of a Clinton-Truth. 500,000 is, technically, “over 1,000.”

Again, see for yourself- all of this is very public information. Do a search for IRAQ SANCTIONS on the National Institute of Health’s public research forum,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed
Or on the United Nations’ Children’s Fund site
http://www.UNICEF.org

It is now estimated that over 1.4 million people- including well over 500,000 children under age 5- have died as a direct result of the sanctions. Basic supplies that people need- including medical equipment and water treatment equipment- are denied the civilians of Iraq by the United States and Britain. According to the World Health Organization, “Since the onset of sanctions there has been a six-fold increase in the mortality rate for children under five and the majority of the country’s population has been on a semi-starvation diet.”

For those who argue that it is Saddam who is starving his people, again- look at the facts. Read statements of Hans von Sponeck ( http://www.rwor.org/a/v23/1130-39/1132/sponeck_iraq.htm ), the former UN Humanitarian Aid Co-ordinator for Iraq, or former Assistant UN Secretary General Denis Halliday, both of whom resigned in disgust, with Halliday stating, “We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral”.
http://www.counterpunch.org/iraqhostage.html

For those who- for sheer delusional paranoia- believe that somehow these hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs have managed to miss some huge weapons stockpile stashed away somewhere (doubtless slipped under our 280,000 radar screens), read the statements of former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, who also resigned in disgust in 2000, stating that �the reality is that when you judge Iraq�s current weapons of mass destruction capabilities today, they have none.� Ritter is not some bleeding heart peace-monger. He is an avowed Republican and a 12 year Marine Corps veteran. He is also very much opposed to the upcoming attack. http://www.truthout.com/docs_02/07.25A.wrp.iraq.htm

There is much more to say on the topic, and many more received truths to dismantle. For example, assertions that Iraq- under a notorious murderer of radical Muslim groups- was somehow involved in the attacks on September 11.

The fact is, that the people of the Middle East have lived under US-backed dictators since WWII. We give the dictators weapons, they give us oil. The people share in none of it. This is how things are set up, it’s exactly how Britain did it when THEY were the “superpower.” Britain called it “the Arab Facade.” You can go to any US Government website, click on the Freedom of Information Act link, and request documents regarding US policy in the Middle East- all of it goes right up to today. And all of it presents a much, much different picture than what we see on this side of “The Matrix” of corporate-filtered news designed to elicit patriotism and not knowledge.

If you care about the children of Iraq, if you want peace with the people of the Middle East- then please, spread the word. Forward this essay to friends, even friends you know will disagree or get angry. Write to your congressman or congresswoman ( http://www.house.gov/writerep ) and senators ( http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cfm ). Write to newspapers and magazines. Get people talking. After September 11, most people realize that they haven’t been getting the full picture of US foreign policy.

Read alternative media. Here are some good links:

http://www.Zmag.org
http://www.AlterNet.org
http://www.CounterPunch.com
http://www.IraqAction.org
http://www.EndTheWar.org
http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/MiddleEast/Iraq/Bombing.asp
An excellent talk by Scott Ritter, who has not been invited to testify before your representatives. Burn a CD of his talk and send it to your congressperson.
Radio4All.org/unwelcome Show #113

Right now, there is a 17 year-old young man in Iraq whose entire memory is filled with US bombs. If we are to keep him away from groups like Al Qaeda, we need to rethink the values of our empire. The prospect for peace is absolutlely in our hands, and it is our responsibility to lead our leaders.

Thanks for your time,
Mike.