James van Luik

[By clicking on this signature one has access to all articles of the JvL Bi-Weekly.]

(Editor's note: Of course, one must applaud all those people in and out of the military who have come to realize that the American Administration has been lying about most everything, and about Iraq. The reasons for attacking Iraq and destroying the country were nothing but lies. The propagandizing of the American mind was an outstanding success, but slowly the public has realized that it has been duped. It wants its soldiers to come home.

Now there is a "new" development: it's called Iran this time, and once again the public is being propagandized: that Iran is building or about to build nuclear weapons!!! The American public is being saturated with the same set of lies as was used about Iraq. We're being threatened! The code for public consumption, however, is that Israel is being threatened! Obviously, if this were true, a major American military outpost in the Middle East would be threatened. Not plainly stated but plain enough. Clearly Iran and most if not all Arab countries and many other countries wish that the American military base, Israel, were no more. I would think this is obviously wishful thinking. And coming soon: the future enemy is to be China. Just a simple point: China hasn't a single military base abroad; the US has well over a hundred military bases in other countries round the world.

A second point: what annoys those in various American administrations is the very idea, the gall that a country such as Iran or any other country, say Cuba or Venezuela may want to protect itself from US well known aggressiveness. This simply cannot be tolerated. But one can legally argue, what right has the US government to attack any sovereign country? Also, it seems to be a question of amnesia when one doesn't recall that the US is the number one world super nuclear military power, more so than Russia, Israel, Pakistan, India, France, and Great Britain combined, and it has used this power ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)

1. AMERICAN ROAD LEADS OFF A CLIFF

HOLLY SKLAR

BOSTON -- THE AMERICAN DREAM doesn't need to go on a diet in the new year. It's been shrinking for years.

We are becoming a nation of Scrooge-Marts and outsourcers -- with an increasingly low-wage workforce, instead of a growing middle class. Even two-paycheck households are struggling to afford a house, college, health care and retirement.

The American Dream is becoming the American Pipe Dream.

"The vast majority of American workers (70 percent) think 'the American Dream' has been or will be harder for them to financially achieve than it was for their parents' generation," according to the Principal Financial Well-Being Index.

We are living the American Dream in reverse.

The hourly wages of average workers are 11 percent lower than they were back in 1973 (adjusted for inflation), despite rising worker productivity. CEO pay, by contrast, has skyrocketed -- up a median 30 percent in 2004 alone, in the Corporate Library survey of 2000 large companies.

Median household income has fallen an unprecedented five years in a row. It would be even lower if not for increased household work hours. Americans work over 200 hours more a year on average than workers in other rich industrialized countries.

We are breaking records we don't want to break. Record numbers of Americans have no health insurance. The share of national income going to wages and salaries is the lowest since 1929. Middle-class households are a medical crisis, an outsourced job, or a busted pension away from bankruptcy.

The congressional majority voted the biggest cut in history to the student-loan program, at a time when college is more important, and more expensive, than ever. Public-college tuition has risen even faster than private tuition, jumping 54 percent over the last decade (adjusted for inflation).

Our shortsighted government, beholden to powerful campaign contributors and lobbyists, is cutting rungs from the ladders of upward mobility, while cutting taxes for the super wealthy.

That's not the American Dream.

Contrary to myth, the United States is not becoming more competitive in the global economy by taking the low road. We are in growing hock to other countries. We have a huge trade deficit, a hollowed-out manufacturing base, and deteriorating research and development. The infrastructure built by earlier generations has eroded greatly, undermining the economy, as well as public health and safety.

Households have propped themselves up in the face of falling real wages by maxing out work hours, credit cards and home-equity loans. This is not a sustainable course. The low road is like a shortcut that leads to a cliff.

We will not prosper in the 21st Century global economy by relying on 1920s corporate greed, 1950s tax revenues, pre-1970s wages, and global-warming energy policies.

We will not prosper relying on disinvestment in place of reinvestment. We can't succeed that way any more than farmers can "compete" by eating their seed corn.

As Business Week put it in a special issue on China and India, "China's competitive edge is shifting from low-cost workers to state-of-the-art manufacturing. India is creating world-class innovation hubs, and its companies are far better performers than China's."

The United States will not succeed by shifting increasingly from state-of-the art manufacturing and world-class innovation hubs to low-cost workers.

Contrary to myth, many European countries are better positioned for the future than the United States, with healthier economies and longer healthy life expectancies, greater math and science literacy, free or affordable education from preschool through college, universal health care, less poverty, and more corporations combining social responsibility and world-class innovation.

Among the world's 100 largest corporations in 2005, just 33 are U.S. companies, while 48 are European. In 2002, 38 were U.S. companies and 36 were European. CEO-worker pay gaps are much narrower at European companies than American.

The United States dropped from number one to number five in the global information-technology ranking by the World Economic Forum, whose members represent the world's 1,000 leading companies, among others. The top four spots are held by Singapore, Iceland, Finland and Denmark, with Sweden number six

Instead of pretending the problem is overpaid workers and accelerated off shoring, we need to shore up our economy from below and invest in smart economic development. Let's make that our New Year's resolution for the American Dream.

2. THE AMERICAN 'GRAND STRATEGY'

JAMES VAN LUIK

The American 'Grand Strategy' outlined by the (Project for A New American Century) PNAC in 2000 was in the making for at least almost a decade. As noted by David Armstrong, an investigative reporter for the Washington DC-based National Security News Service, unclassified documents from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, authored principally by current Vice-President Dick Cheney as well as by other key government officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld, reveal continually updated planning 'for global dominance'. The series of documents outlines a consistent direction for US foreign policy that Armstrong characterizes as 'the Plan'.

Plan was published in unclassified form most recently as Defense Strategy for the 1990s, when Cheney was ending his term as Secretary of Defense under the presidency of George Bush, Sr., in 1993. The Plan, 'a perpetually evolving work', again surfaced in June 2002 as 'a presidential lecture in the form of a commencement address at West Point', and was leaked to the press as yet another Defense Planning Guidance …'

'It will take its ultimate form as America's new national security strategy … The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the US to maintain its overwhelming superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friend and enemies alike. It says not that the US must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.'

The international terrorist threat, following on from the September 11^th terrorist attacks, is being used to justify the US drive 'to rule the world', implementing plans and strategies that were formulated quite independently (i.e., long before those attacks). Under the guise of fighting international terrorism on a crusade for justice , the US-led 'War on Terror' in reality continues a far more familiar tradition of Western crusading for the expansion of power and profit. International terrorism thus plays a functional role in world order under US hegemony. President Bush needs terrorist Osama. Without bin Laden, Bush would have no permanent world-wide target, and thus no legitimacy for the new 'Pax Americana'. Other bogeymen such as SH—who are alleged (without evidence) to be linked to Al-Qaeda – play a similar role in the strategic and highly lucrative Persian Gulf region, which appears to be one of the first stepping-stones by which the Bush administration intends to consolidate its empire-building strategy in the Middle East and beyond.

Although I am not specifically arguing against Huntington, author of "The Clash of Civilizations", whose theory is in many ways a product of a rising trend within the Western political establishment, it is intended in part to be, if indirect—a rebuttal of his essential thesis. I want to point to the thrust of Western policy in the Middle East by contextualizing current events in the light of the historic pattern beginning with the former imperial policy of direct regional control.

My point, ultimately, is that this record of Western policy in the Middle East, specifically in the Persian Gulf, is unambiguous evidence of a system resulting in surrogate imperialism that has been quite deliberately developed by the Western powers in order to protect and secure their regional interests which have remained fundamentally the same since the colonial era. The significant difference between the new stage of surrogate imperialism and the colonial system from which the former has developed is the more sophisticated and subtle structure of nation-states co-opted, manipulated and to a high degree effectively controlled by Anglo-American power. When that system of control shows signs of collapsing – for instance by the rise of indigenous nationalism – the necessity of Western military intervention is invoked to protect that system, and brutal military force is utilized to impose Western will. The hysterical Anglo-American drive for war in the Persian gulf since 11 September 2001 is a late example of this, manifesting at once the imminent collapse of this system of control due to a variety of factors (especially depletion of world energy resources and regional political developments) and the consequent urgent desire on the part of the Anglo-American elite to immediately intervene to protect, consolidate and expand that system. Consolidation and expansion is hoped to be achieved by the military invasion and permanent occupation of the Persian gulf, converting the Anglo American alliance – under US leadership – into a direct regional power with the capacity to restructure the entire Middle East. I wish to point out that both Clinton's administration positions and Kerry's pronouncements in the presidential campaign were no different from that of the Bush administration.

Next, one should ask from where is this military and expeditionary money to come?

It can only come from the discretionary money at the disposal of the Congress. This money is divided into essentially two parts: that devoted to Health, Education and Welfare, and the overall military budget.

So, by cutting taxes extravagantly as has been done, what has happened is that the General Population is told that there will be far less money for Health, Education and Welfare. This has certainly become obvious as Medicare, and the latest drug bill, supported by AARP, is being cut while the push to get Americans into HMOs, which are basically insurance companies, is being intensified.

Or put more generally, there has been a purposeful shift of the tax structure towards income taxes and away from investment taxes. This means, of course, that those whose incomes depend on employment will bear the increasing tax burden of providing for themselves through private arrangements. Please note that neither party is supporting labor strengthening legislation.

A simple example: The New York City subway system is considered to be a subsidy, based on taxes, to the GP. Therefore by increasing the subway fare, the subsidy is reduced and therefore taxes for the corporations can be decreased. Another example: I was recently in SF. Try getting the subway to the airport, the cheapest and most convenient way, before 8:00AM. Impossible as subway service to the airport doesn't begin until 8:00AM when the working class goes to work.

3. U. S. COMING AROUND TO THE TRUTH

ROBERT FISK

Watching the pathetic, old, lie-on-its-back frightened Labrador of the American media changing overnight into a vicious Rottweiler is one of the enduring pleasures of society in the United States. I have been experiencing this phenomenon over the past two weeks, as both victim and beneficiary.

In New York and Los Angeles, my condemnation of the U.S. presidency and Israel's continued settlement-building in the West Bank was originally treated with the disdain all great papers reserve for those who dare to question proud and democratic projects of state. In The New York Times, that ancient luminary Ethan Bronner chided me for attacking American journalists who -- he quoted my own words -- "report in so craven a fashion from the Middle East -- so fearful of Israeli criticism that they turn Israeli murder into 'targeted attacks' and illegal settlements into 'Jewish neighborhoods.' "

It was remarkable Bronner should be so out of touch with his readers that he did not know that craven is the word so many Americans apply to their groveling newspapers.

But the moment a respected Democratic congressman and Vietnam war veteran in Washington dared to suggest the war in Iraq was lost, that U.S. troops should be brought home now -- and when the Republican response was so brutal it had to be disowned -- the old media dog sniffed the air, realized that power was moving away from the White House and began to drool.

On live TV in San Francisco, I could continue my critique of the U.S. folly in Iraq uninterrupted. Ex-Mayor Willie Brown exuded warmth toward this pesky Brit who tore into his country's policies in the Middle East. It was enough to make you feel the teeniest bit sorry -- though only for a millisecond, mind you -- for the guy in the White House.

All this wasn't caused by that familiar transition from Newark to Los Angeles International, where the terror of al-Qaida attacks is replaced by fear of the ozone layer. On the East Coast, too, the editorials thundered away at the Bush administration. Seymour Hersh, that blessing to U.S. journalism who broke the Abu Ghraib torture story, produced another black rabbit out of his Iraqi hat with revelations that U.S. commanders in Iraq believe the insurgency is now out of control.

When those same Iraqi gunmen last week again took control of the city of Ramadi (already "liberated" four times since 2003), the story shared equal billing on prime time television with Bush's latest and infinitely wearying insistence that Iraqi forces -- who in reality are so infiltrated by insurgents that they are a knife in the United States' back -- will soon be able to take over security duties from the occupation forces.

Even in Hollywood hitherto taboo subjects are being dredged to the surface of the political mire. "Jarhead," produced by Universal Pictures, depicts a brutal, traumatized Marine unit during the 1991 Gulf War.

George Clooney's production of "Good Night, and Good Luck," a devastating black-and-white account of World War II correspondent Ed Murrow's heroic battle with Sen. Joe McCarthy in the '50s -- its theme is the management and crushing of all dissent -- already has paid for its production costs twice over. Murrow is played by an actor, but McCarthy appears only in real archive footage. Incredibly, a test audience in New York complained that the man "playing" McCarthy was "overacting." Will we say this about Bush in years to come? I suspect so.

And then there's "Syriana," Clooney's epic of the oil trade that combines suicide bombers, maverick CIA agents, feuding Middle East Arab potentates and a slew of disreputable businessmen and East Coast lawyers. The CIA eventually assassinates the Arab prince who wants to take control of his own country's oil while a Pakistani fired from his job in the oil fields because an American conglomerate has downsized for its shareholders' profits destroys one of the company's tankers in a suicide attack.

"People seem less afraid now," Clooney said in Entertainment magazine. "Lots of people are starting to ask questions. It's becoming hard to avoid the questions." Of course, these questions are being asked because of the more than 2,000 U.S. fatalities in Iraq rather than out of compassion for Iraq's tens of thousands of fatalities. They are being pondered because the whole illegal invasion of Iraq is ending in calamity rather than success.

Still they avoid the "Israel" question. The Arab princes in Syriana -- who in real life would be obsessed with the occupation of the West Bank -- do not murmur a word about Israel. The Arab al-Qaida operative who persuades the young Pakistani to attack an oil tanker makes no reference to Israel -- as every one of Osama bin Laden's acolytes assuredly would. It was instructive that Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" did not mention Israel once.

So one key issue of the Middle East remains to be confronted. Amy Goodman, whom I used to enrage by claiming that her leftist Democracy Now program had only three listeners (one of whom was Amy Goodman), is bravely raising this unmentionable subject. Partly as a result, her "alternative" radio and television station is slowly moving into the mainstream.

Americans are ready to discuss the United States' relationship with Israel. And the United States' injustices toward the Arabs. As usual, ordinary Americans are way out in front of their largely tamed press and television reporters. Now we have to wait and see if the media boys and girls will catch up with their own people.

4. THE IRAQ DECLARATION: RACING THE TRUTH TO WAR

RICK GELL

As the debate rages over pre-war intelligence, the work of UNMOVIC, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection team that carried out WMD inspections and reviewed the 12,000 page "Iraq Declaration," is rarely discussed. December 7, 2005 marks the third anniversary of the declaration, and its submission is central to the discussion about how the Bush administration led the country to invade Iraq.

Critics are unearthing, almost on a daily basis, evidence of pre-war intelligence that challenged the existence of WMDs hidden by the administration. But in the months leading up to the war, UNMOVIC was publicly providing daily reports and regular briefings on WMD inspections -- information that was neither fixed nor hidden. The White House Iraq Group (WHIG) that included Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin read these reports and at first shifted their claims to emphasize mobile chemical labs and underground facilities. But as each day passed, and their rationale for war became less and less plausible, the WHIGs realized they were racing the truth to war.

Led by Hans Blix, UNMOVIC was given 45 days after the adoption of Resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002 to resume inspections, but quickly completed their first inspection in 19 days. Hans Blix, an old hand at WMD inspections in Iraq, had a team at the ready. His first stop in Baghdad, after a four year absence, was the Canal Hotel, where he re-opened the dusty offices belonging to UNSCOM United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that had been sealed awaiting the resumption of inspections in 1998.

Resolution 1441 was meant to give Iraq a "final opportunity" to comply with the disarmament foreseen in Resolution 687 in 1991 and Resolution 1284 in 1999. Resolution 1441 called for "immediate, active and unconditional cooperation" and included the ability to make inspections anytime, anywhere, without announcement -- including presidential palaces. The resolution gave UNMOVIC the right to "request names of personnel currently or formerly associated with Iraq's programme for WMD and missiles" and remove them and their families from Iraq for interviews, if necessary.

Their first preliminary assessment of Iraq's 12,000-page Declaration came in a briefing on December 19th to the Security Council. Reaction was mixed. I spoke with Hans Blix in preparation for this article about the 12,000 page declaration and he recounted how the Iraqis complained about "disproving the negative." In retrospect, he suggested 30 days was not nearly enough time for Iraq to fully describe their entire petrol-chemical and industrial infrastructure.

But Hans Blix also had no illusions. As he reported "during the period 1991-98, Iraq submitted many declarations called full, final and complete. Regrettably, much in these declarations proved inaccurate or incomplete or was unsupported or contradicted by evidence." Blix found much of the document a rehash and re-submission of previous materials and lacking the supportive evidence that he and UNMOVIC considered essential to support Iraq declarations that no WMDs existed. While the Iraqis had become fully cooperative with regard to prompt and immediate access to sites -- anywhere at anytime, they were still playing a game of cat and mouse with respect to supporting documents -- the budgets, destruction records, transportation notes and personnel lists that could answer open questions about anthrax programs, VX and other weapons.

The December 19 report to the Security Council mentions an allocation of $32 million. Hans Blix was quick to point out that UNMOVIC had limitless funds, "hundreds of millions if necessary," and was just getting up to speed. Part of the resolution included a seven percent share of funds from the now discredited Oil for Food funds. Biologists, chemists and other inspectors were taking refresher courses and engaging in mock inspections. Airplanes were on the tarmac, and UNMOVIC was ready to hit the ground running.

After 60 days, in the January 27, 2003 briefing to the Security Council, Hans Blix reported that "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance -- not even today -- of the disarmament that was demanded of it." There were still major issues -- from an accounting discrepancy of 6,500 chemical bombs, to the discovery of 122mm chemical rockets, to the lack of convincing evidence for the destruction of 8,500 liters of anthrax, to a refurbished missile production infrastructure, to the slow release of personnel lists.

But there was good news. The UNMOVIC staff now had 260 members from 60 countries and an "inspection apparatus that permits us to send multiple inspection teams every day all over Iraq, by road or air," Blix affirmed. Three hundred inspections of over 230 sites were completed, eight helicopters in use, and advanced chemical and biological analytical facilities were recently installed in Baghdad. The German government was sending unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles and experts to run them. New Zealand was contributing medical and communication teams. New experts were being trained in Vienna.

The WHIGs couldn't have been pleased. Dick Cheney, Mary Matalin and Karl Rove are nothing if not shrewd. And the thought of a UN sponsored, internationally staffed, technologically advanced inspection team in place throughout Iraq was a bane to conservatives and not their vision of foreign policy. It could threaten their ultimate goal of regime change. As each day passed, the chances of finding huge stockpiles and weapons facilities diminished. Their argument for invasion would disappear. The clock was working against them.

On February 14th, UNMOVIC reported to the UN that 200 chemical and 100 biological samples had been analyzed and concluded that "the results to date have been consistent with Iraq's declaration." Inspections were conducted without notice and full cooperation -- "industrial sites, ammunition depots, research centers, universities, presidential sites, mobile laboratories, private houses, missile production facilities, military camps and agricultural sites .... At certain sites, ground-penetrating radar was used to look for underground structures or buried equipment." In a word -- thorough.

For the first time, Hans Blix included a section on "intelligence" in his briefing, discussing the role of foreign intelligence on the inspection process and Colin Powell's now infamous speech of February 5, 2003 to the United Nations. Hans Blix politely acknowledged intelligence agencies must protect sources and methods, and be assured information provided will be handled in the strictest confidence. He stated, "UNMOVIC had achieved good working relations with intelligence agencies and the amount of information provided has been gradually increasing."

Gradually increasing? The world was preparing to go to war and countries were holding intelligence back? Hans Blix explained in a follow up interview last week that foreign intelligence was only provided to Dimitri Perricos, his successor at UNMOVIC, and the deputy in charge of inspections at the time, along with another senior executive at the agency. Blix estimated "all in all about 100 sites suggested from all intelligence agencies together and that some three dozen actually were visited in the months we were present in Iraq." Blix referred me to the Butler Report, which closely examined the role of British intelligence. The British had given UNMOVIC 30 pieces of intelligence, which related 19 different sites. The report states UNMOVIC visited seven sites and found Volga engines (long-range missile components) at one, nuclear scientific documents at another and conventional ammo at a third. In Blix's recollection, UNMOVIC only made findings at three sites provided by intelligence, "the conclusion from Butler would be that all three were British and none was from the US."

I followed up with Dimitri Perricos last week, who confirmed that UNMOVIC was only able to follow-up on 40% of the sites provided by intelligence before the war began, but emphasized these searches were not random, and as logic would dictate, focused on credible and high-priority sites first. He would not reveal what percentage of the intel sites were provided by the US government.

Ninety days into the inspection process in 2003, and troops had started amassing at the Iraqi border. Was the threat of war working to improve the Iraqis cooperation with Blix's inspection process? Absolutely. But going from threat to war is a huge step. One has to assume the administration was feeding UNMOVIC every morsel of intelligence they had, as the war got closer.

If Donald Rumsfeld knew "exactly" where the weapons of mass destruction were located, he would want them unearthed before an invasion. It would be immoral and insane to leave known weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's hands and then attack, putting the troops at risk. Why hold any intelligence back if it could reveal a site and confirm the argument for war?

There is only one possible explanation. The WHIGs knew the intelligence was coming up empty, had no more intelligence to provide UNMOVIC and needed to act. To this day Hans Blix says he does not know whether there were other weapons sites he was not told about.

After 90 days and hundreds of inspections, what would the "conservative" approach have been? In early March French Mirage aircraft were scheduled to join the inspection effort and German drones were ready to go. Millions of dollars in equipment was arriving in Cyprus and the Russians were offering an Antonov aircraft with night vision capabilities. As Blix reported, UNMOVIC was "still expanding its capabilities" with new experts "from 22 countries, including Arab countries" ready to join the effort.

On March 7, 2003, UNMOVIC gave the last briefing before the start of the war. Hans Blix continued to complain about the lack of supporting documents provided by Iraq. UNMOVIC had investigated US claims of mobile biological trucks and underground facilities, found no evidence of their existence and were ready to double the search effort with their unlimited budget. Disposal sites of VX missiles were being re-excavated; private interviews were finally beginning in earnest. Hans Blix stated in the briefing, "Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyze documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months." A "work programme" was scheduled to be delivered on March 18th 2003 that would outline UNMOVIC's "proposed list of key remaining disarmament tasks." UNMOVIC was evacuated on the day the document was delivered. The war started the very next day.

Forget Joe Wilson, Colin Powell, Ahmad Chalabi and Curveball. Simply look, as they say, at the facts on the ground. After 700 go-anytime inspections at over 500 go-anywhere sites, many actually suggested by US intelligence sources, it's proof positive that the WHIGS were not interested in reality as they made their case for war.

As Hans Blix told me, "The results should have told them the intelligence was not that good." He was being kind. No, Cheney and the WHIGs knew their intel was bad, WMDs and huge weapons programs a distant memory and their publicly stated reason for going to war, fading fast. Before the inspection team could reach full strength, before offices in Basra could be opened, before hundreds of Iraq-personnel interviews could take place, before Russian night-vision aircraft could arrive, before a work program could be delivered, before the 12,000 page Iraq Declaration could be fully vetted, before a mere 100 days of inspections could be completed, the plug was pulled and the best solution for dealing with Iraq's WMD threat ended.

5. THE TRIAL OF SADDAM HUSSEIN/

ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT MUST REJECT COLONIAL 'JUSTICE'

SARA FLOUNDERS

The trial of Saddam Hussein, which has opened with much international publicity, is a desperate attempt to justify and convey some legitimacy on the criminal U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is an effort to demoralize and divide the resistance to the occupation. It has nothing to do with justice or truth.

All the political forces internationally that have opposed the 15-year-long U.S. war on Iraq--which has included starvation sanctions, bombing and invasion--should also oppose all the efforts to justify the continued occupation, including the present trial of the former Iraqi leader and seven members of his government.

Regardless of the wide spectrum of political views on the character of Saddam Hussein’s government, it is essential to oppose this U.S. justification for the war. To be silent on this issue is to give credibility to a U.S.-created phony court at the giant U.S. command center called the Green Zone.

The U.S. government has no right to have even one soldier in Iraq. It has no right to bomb, sanction or starve the Iraqi people. It has no right to impose a colonial government or to establish courts in Iraq. It has no more right to decide the fate of Saddam Hussein than it does to control the oil and resources of Iraq.

The detention of Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants, along with tens of thousands of other Iraqis, is all based on a criminal, illegal war of aggression.

The Iraqi Special Tribunal and the trial of Saddam Hussein are also a violation of international law. The Geneva Convention, to which Washington is a signatory, explicitly forbids an occupying power from creating courts. In addition, the trial itself, along with the total isolation of the defendants and denial of all visitation and legal rights violates the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights.

The defense lawyers who have stepped forward have been threatened and intimidated. Two lawyers on the defense team have been assassinated.

Today in Iraq there is no judicial system. There are no codes, no laws, no courts. There still is no agreement on a constitution. The entire structure of the Iraqi state was destroyed. In its place is only the most brutal form of outright military domination.

The Iraqi Special Tribunal has been illegitimate since its very formation. It is a creation of L. Paul Bremer III of the U.S., former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority--the illegal, occupying power. Bremer initially appointed Salem Chalabi, the nephew of Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, to organize and lead the court.

Chalabi had returned to Iraq from exile with the aid of U.S. tanks in April 2003. He opened a law office to draft the new laws that have reopened Iraq to foreign capital, in collaboration with the law firm of former Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, a war profiteer, an ideologue of the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld cabal and a principal architect of the war.

Bremer also appointed the tribunal judges. The funding and the personnel are totally controlled by U.S. forces. The U.S. Congress has appropriated $128 million to fund the court. Of course, the court has no jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S. forces in the invasion and occupation!

Role of demonization

The trial underway now is part of the sustained U.S. effort to totally demonize Saddam Hussein. This has been an essential part of the 15-year war on Iraq.

U.S. propaganda has relentlessly described Hussein as an evil madman, a brutal dictator and a threat to the entire planet who was poised to strike with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons within minutes. He was charged with having a role in 9/11 and being in league with al-Qaeda.

Both Republicans and Democrats knew this was a fraud. U.S. bombs had destroyed Iraq’s entire industrial capacity. But no politician was willing to challenge the demonization.

Every U.S. war against oppressed peoples and nations has begun with saturating the entire civilian population with war propaganda that so demonized the leader of the targeted population that any crime was treated as acceptable and beyond question. This has been true since the wars against Native populations and the demonization of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo and many, many other Indigenous leaders, up to the leaders of every progressive or revolutionary struggle over the past 50 years.

It doesn't matter how mild or committed to non-violence the leader is. Consider the case of the kidnapped former priest, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, who was charged with corruption, drug running and gang violence. Today President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran are increasingly portrayed as madmen, dictators and evil incarnate.

Since the days of the Roman Empire, victor's justice has meant humiliation, degradation and placing the defeated leader in the dock in order to establish a new order. It hides the brutality of overwhelming force and gives legitimacy to the new rulers.

The trials of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner in the ante-bellum South were the slave owners' way of cloaking the violence and degrading brutality of slavery in "god-given" property rights. The kidnapping and trial of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic after the 78-day U.S/NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, in which hundreds of civilians died, was a similar case of victor’s justice.

U.S. and WMDs

While the U.S. demonizes Saddam Hussein, it should be remembered that the Pentagon has used weapons of mass destruction not only in Iraq but against countless other defenseless populations, from Korea and the Philippines to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Grenada, Libya, Lebanon and Yugoslavia.

It is the U.S. military machine that should be put on trial for having used the most horrendous weapons, from nuclear bombs to napalm, white phosphorus, anti-personnel weapons, so-called bunker busters and radioactive depleted-uranium weapons.

In Iraq intentional civilian destruction was calculated, photographed and studied. The infrastructure was consciously targeted. Reservoirs, sanitation and sewage plants, chlorine and water pumping stations were bombed. The electrical and communications grids were destroyed. Food production was targeted, from irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides to processing, refrigeration and storage.

In the 1991 bombing more than 150,000 Iraqis died. There were 156 U.S. soldiers killed.

Year after year international delegations that had been to Iraq, including many organized by the International Action Center (IAC) and led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, reported on the impact of the 1991 bombing and the years of U.S.-imposed UN sanctions. The sanctions created an artificial famine. Imports of food, medicine and civilian necessities were withheld.

By the UN's own estimates, over 1.5 million Iraqis died of preventable diseases. Half a million children under the age of 5 years died between 1991 and 1996. Both the sanctions and the bombing, begun under George H.W. Bush, continued through the eight years of the Clinton administration. U.S. bombing continued at an average of 25 raids a day for 12 years.

Ramsey Clark, founder of the IAC, has courageously challenged the legitimacy and legality of the Iraqi Special Tribunal as a legal adviser to Saddam Hussein.

As an international human rights lawyer, his position is entirely consistent with his 15 years of opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq--from his visit to Iraq in 1991 when the U.S. bombed every 30 seconds for 42 days, through the 12 years of starvation sanctions, to his opposition to the 2003 invasion. It is consistent with his principled opposition to other U.S. wars and interventions in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Grenada, Iran, Libya, Lebanon and Panama.

Standing up to demonization is part of standing up to the U.S. war and its propaganda machine.

Target is Iraqi sovereignty

The agents of U.S. imperialism have established corrupt and brutal dictatorships and trained and funded military rule from one corner of the globe to the other--from Indonesia to Chile to Congo.

Their problem with Saddam Hussein was not that he was a dictator. It was that he refused to surrender the sovereignty of Iraq. He refused to give U.S. corporations control over Iraqi oil, nationalized beginning in the 1960s. His worst crime in their eyes was that he refused to bow down to the New World Order.

It is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Blair who should be on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The global movement that opposes the U.S. occupation in Iraq must seriously consider its responsibility to oppose every aspect of the U.S. war--especially the phony courts and staged elections that seek to legitimize and legalize this piracy.

Implicit in the call to bring the troops home now is the demand to stop the whole brutal process of recolonization. This means cancellation of the U.S. corporate contracts that have privatized and looted Iraqi resources, closing the hundreds of U.S. bases and the thousands of U.S. checkpoints, canceling the "search and destroy" missions and closing the secret prisons where tens of thousands of Iraqis are tortured and humiliated. And closing the illegal, U.S.-created courts.