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

(Editor's note: "I wake up in the morning, read the newspaper, and feel that we are an occupied country, that some alien group has taken over. I wake up thinking: the US is in the grip of a president surrounded by thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water or the air, or what kind of world will be inherited by our children and grandchildren." Howard Zinn)

(Editor's note: "True and false, good and bad, openly become categories of the political economy; they define the market value of men/women and things. The commodity form becomes universal, while at the same time, with the disappearance of free competition, the "inherent" quality of the merchandise ceases to be a decisive factor in its marketability. A President is sold, leased or rented like an automobile, and it seems hopelessly old-fashioned to judge his political statements in terms of their truth or falsehood—what validates them is their vote-keeping or vote-getting quality. To be sure, the President must be able to perform the function for which he is bought, leased or rented: he must be able to assure business as usual. In the same way, the quality of an automobile is determined (and limited) by the margin of profit. The automobile, too, must perform the function for which it is bought, but this "technical" quality is "overlaid" with the qualities required by the sales policy: excessive power, debilitating comfort, shiny but bad material, etcetera." Herbert Marcuse)

1. HIROSHIMA AFTER SIXTY YEARS: THE DEBATE CONTINUES

BY

GAR ALPEROVITZ

This weekend marks the 60th anniversary of the August 6, 1945 bombing of Hiroshima. One might think that by now historians would agree on all the fundamental issues. The reality, however, is just the opposite: All the major issues involved in the decision are still very much a matter of dispute among experts. An obvious question is why this should be so after so many years.

Did the atomic bomb, in fact, cause Japan to surrender? Most Americans think the answer is self-evident. However, many historical studies–including new publications by two highly regarded scholars--challenge the conventional understanding. In a recently released Harvard University Press volume drawing upon the latest Japanese sources, for instance, Professor Tsuyohsi Hasegawa concludes that the traditional “myth cannot be supported by historical facts.” By far the most important factor forcing the decision, his research indicates, was the Soviet declaration of war against Japan on August 8, 1945, just after the Hiroshima bombing.

Similarly, Professor Herbert Bix–whose biography of Hirohito won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction–also writes in a recent article that “the Soviet factor carried greater weight in the eyes of the emperor and most military leaders.”

Many Japanese historians have long judged the Soviet declaration of war to have been the straw that broke the camels back–mainly because the Japanese military feared the Red Army more than the loss of another city by aerial bombardment. (They had already shown themselves willing to sacrifice many, many cities to conventional bombing!)

An intimately related question is whether the bomb was in any event still necessary to force a surrender before an invasion. Again, most Americans believe the answer obvious–as, of course, do many historians. However, a very substantial number also disagree with this view. One of the most respected, Stanford University Professor Barton Bernstein, judges that all things considered it seems “quite probable–indeed, far more likely than not–that Japan would have surrendered before November” (when the first landing in Japan was scheduled.)

Many years ago Harvard historian Ernest R. May also concluded that the surrender decision probably resulted from the Russian attack, and that “it could not in any event been long in coming.” In his new book Hasegawa goes further: “[T]here were alternatives to the use of the bomb, alternatives that the Truman Administration for reasons of its own declined to pursue.”

(On the other hand, one recent writer, Richard Frank, argues Japan was still so militarily powerful the U.S. would ultimately have decided not to invade. He justifies the bombing not only of Hiroshima but of Nagasaki as well. Japanese historian Sadao Asada believes that “there was a possibility Japan would not have surrendered by November” on the basis of the Russian attack alone.)

What did the U.S. military think? Here there is also dispute. We actually know very little about the views of the military at the time. However, after the war many–indeed, most–of the top World War II Generals and Admirals involved criticized the decision. One of the most famous was General Eisenhower, who repeatedly stated that he urged the bomb not be used: “[I]t wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” The well-known “hawk,” General Curtis LeMay, publicly declared that the war would have been over in two weeks, and that the atomic bomb had nothing to do with bringing about surrender. President Truman’s friend and Chief of Staff, five star Admiral William D. Leahy was deeply angered: The “use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

Some historians believe such statements may have been made partly to justify postwar funding requests by the various military services. Several years after the war General George C. Marshall did state publicly that he believed the bombings were necessary. On the other hand, long before the atomic bomb was used Leahy’s diary shows he judged the war could be ended. And Marshall is on record months before Hiroshima as suggesting that “these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that... we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave--telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such centers....”

Why was the bomb used? The conventional view, of course, is that it was to save as many lives as possible. But if this is so, several historians now ask, why did President Truman and his chief adviser Secretary of State James Byrnes make it harder for Japan to surrender? Specifically, why did they remove assurances for the Japanese emperor from the July 1945 Potsdam Proclamation warning Japan to surrender? The assurances were strongly recommended by U.S. and British military leaders, and removing them, they knew, would make it all but impossible for Japan to end the war.

A traditional theory has been that the President feared political criticism if he provided assurances to the emperor. But, other historians note, leading Republicans were for–not against–clarifying the terms to achieve a surrender, and were calling for this publicly. Moreover, American leaders always knew the emperor would be needed to order a surrender–and, of course, in the end they did agree to an understanding which allowed such assurances: Japan still has an emperor.

Hasegawa believes the assurances were taken out of the Potsdam Proclamation precisely because American leaders wanted to have the warning rejected so as to justify the bombing–and, further, that they saw the bomb as a way to end the war before Russia could join the fighting. There is other evidence suggesting that policy makers, especially Secretary of State Byrnes, wanted to use the bomb to “make the Russians more manageable in Europe”--as he told one scientist.

(Full disclosure: My own view–as one of the historians involved in the debate--is that the bombings were unnecessary and that American policy makers were advised at the time that a combination of assurances for the emperor plus the forthcoming Russian declaration of war would likely bring about surrender in the three months available before the invasion could begin. I also believe the evidence is strong, but not conclusive, that American leaders saw the bomb above all as a way to impress the Russians and also as a way to end the war before the Red Army got very far into Manchuria.)

Why are historians still struggling over these issues? One reason is that few nations find it easy to come to terms with questionable actions in their past. Nor is this a simple left-right debate. In recent years liberals have been critical of the decision. At the time The Nation magazine defended the bombing while many conservative publications criticized it–including Human Events, and later, the National Review. “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul," former President Herbert Hoover wrote to a friend.

One of the most important reasons the issues don’t seem to get resolved has to do with the historical record. The fact is most discussions concerning the decision to use the atomic bomb were simply not recorded. Not only were such matters handled in an extremely secretive manner, they were largely handled outside the normal chain of command. There is also evidence of the manipulation of some documents and of missing documents in certain cases–and in some instances, evidence that documents were destroyed.

Perhaps one day we will know more and the long debate over Hiroshima will come to an end. We are unlikely, I think, to discover new official sources. However, a new generation of scholars may well be able to ferret out diaries, letters, or additional personal papers in the attics or basements of descendants of some of the men involved. An even more interesting possibility is that the President’s daughter Margaret will one day donate additional papers to the Truman Library. (In her own writing Margaret reports details which seem clearly to be based on documentary sources. However, she has so far refused to respond to inquiries from historians asking for access to these.) A third possibility is that if, as some believe, the Soviets bugged the Truman villa near Potsdam, Germany (or the villas of other American or British officials who were there for the July 1945 meetings just before the bombings), there may be tapes or transcriptions of some key conversations in NKVD or other files in the Russian archives.

2. PEACE DECLARATION

MAYOR TADATOSHI AKIBA, HIROSHIMA

This August 6, the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing, is a moment of shared lamentation in which more than 300 thousand souls of A-bomb victims and those who remain behind transcend the boundary between life and death to remember that day. It is also a time of inheritance, of awakening, and of commitment, in which we inherit the commitment of the hibakusha to the abolition of nuclear weapons and realization of genuine world peace, awaken to our individual responsibilities, and recommit ourselves to take action. This new commitment, building on the desires of all war victims and the millions around the world who are sharing this moment, is creating
a harmony that is enveloping our planet.

The keynote of this harmony is the hibakusha warning, "No one else should ever suffer as we did," along with the cornerstone of all religions and bodies of law, "Thou shalt not kill." Our sacred obligation to future generations is to establish this axiom, especially its corollary, "Thou shalt not kill children," as the highest priority for the human race across all nations and religions. The International Court of Justice advisory opinion issued nine years ago was a vital step toward fulfilling this obligation, and the Japanese Constitution, which embodies this axiom forever as the sovereign will of a nation, should be a guiding light for the world in the 21st century.

Unfortunately, the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty this past May left no doubt that the U.S., Russia, U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and a few other nations wishing to become nuclear-weapon states are ignoring the majority voices of the people and governments of the world, thereby jeopardizing human survival.

Based on the dogma "Might is right," these countries have formed their own "nuclear club," the admission requirement being possession of nuclear weapons. Through the media, they have long repeated the incantation, "Nuclear weapons protect you." With no means of rebuttal, many people worldwide have succumbed to the feeling that "There is nothing we can do." Within the United Nations, nuclear club members use their veto power to override the global majority and pursue their selfish objectives.

To break out of this situation, Mayors for Peace, with more than 1,080 member cities, is currently holding its sixth General Conference in Hiroshima, where we are revising the Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons launched two years ago. The primary objective is to produce an action plan that will further expand the circle of cooperation formed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the European Parliament, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other international NGOs, organizations and individuals worldwide, and will encourage all world citizens to awaken to their own responsibilities with a sense of urgency, "as if the entire world rests on their shoulders alone," and work with new commitment to abolish nuclear weapons.

To these ends and to ensure that the will of the majority is reflected at the UN, we propose that the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, which will meet in October, establish a special committee to deliberate and plan for the achievement and maintenance of a nuclear-weapon-free world. Such a committee is needed because the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and the NPT Review Conference in New York have failed due to a "consensus rule" that gives a veto to every country.

We expect that the General Assembly will then act on the recommendations from this special committee, adopting by the year 2010 specific steps leading toward the elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020.

Meanwhile, we hereby declare the 369 days from today until August 9, 2006, a "Year of Inheritance, Awakening and Commitment." During this Year, the Mayors for Peace, working with nations, NGOs and the vast majority of the world's people, will launch a great diversity of campaigns for nuclear weapons abolition in numerous cities throughout the world.

We expect the Japanese government to respect the voice of the world's
cities and work energetically in the First Committee and the General
Assembly to ensure that the abolition of nuclear weapons is achieved by
the will of the majority. Furthermore, we request that the Japanese
government provide the warm, humanitarian support appropriate to the needs
of all the aging hibakusha, including those living abroad and those
exposed in areas affected by the black rain.

On this, the sixtieth anniversary of the atomic bombing, we seek to
comfort the souls of all its victims by declaring that we humbly reaffirm
our responsibility never to "repeat the evil."

"Please rest peacefully; for we will not repeat the evil."

3. BIG STAR-SPANGLED BANNER LIES FOR WAR

NORMAN SOLOMAN

A lot of people want to believe that the current war on Iraq is some kind of aberration – a radical departure from the previous baseline of U.S. foreign policy. That's a comforting illusion.

Yes, the current administration in Washington is notable for the extreme mendacity and calculated idiocy of its claims. But – decade after decade – the propaganda fuel for one U.S. war after another has flowed from a standard set of lies.

Some of the boilerplate lies are implicit assumptions about Uncle Sam's benign and even noble intent. Other deceptions rely on more specific whoppers, endlessly whirling through the news media's spin cycle. From one war to the next, certain themes are played up more than others – but the process always involves building an agenda to start a war, trying to justify the war while it's underway, and then claiming that the war must continue as long as the man in the Oval Office says so.

Sometimes a war begins suddenly, filling the national horizon with a huge insistent flash. At other times, over a period of months or years, a low distant rumble gradually turns into a roar. But in any event, the democratic role of citizens is not simply to observe and obey. In the United States, what we think is supposed to matter. And for practical reasons, top officials in Washington don't want to seem too far out of step with voters.

The president leads a siege of public opinion on the home front – a battleground where media spin is the main weapon. A media campaign for hearts and minds at home means going all-out to persuade us that the latest war is as good as a war can be – necessary, justified, righteous and worth any sorrows to be left in its wake.

Along the way, media outlets routinely march to the drumbeat of key themes:

* America Is a Fair and Noble Superpower

* Our Leaders Will Do Everything They Can to Avoid War

* Our Leaders Would Never Tell Us Outright Lies

* This Guy Is a Modern-Day Hitler

* This Is About Human Rights

* This Is Not at All About Oil or Corporate Profits

* They Are the Aggressors, Not Us

* If This War Is Wrong, Congress Will Stop It

* If This War Is Wrong, the Media Will Tell Us

* Media Coverage Brings War Into Our Living Rooms

* Opposing the War Means Siding With the Enemy

* This Is a Necessary Battle in the War on Terrorism

* What the U.S. Government Needs Most Is Better PR

* The Pentagon Fights Wars as Humanely as Possible

* Our Soldiers Are Heroes, Theirs Are Inhuman

* America Needs the Resolve to Kick the "Vietnam Syndrome"

* Withdrawal Would Cripple U.S. Credibility

In a society with significant aspects of democracy, persistent spin is necessary to gain and retain public support for war. The war-makers rely on "perception management" techniques that effectively promote certain themes; the better we understand those ongoing themes, the more clearly we'll be able to see through them. Such understanding can blow away the fog of media war and enhance democratic participation in decisions that are truly matters of life and death.

4. WIDESPREAD IGNORANCE

SAM HARRIS

President Bush has endorsed the pseudo-scientific notion of "intelligent design" (ID) and declared it to be a legitimate alternative to the theory of evolution. This is not surprising, as he has always maintained that "the jury is still out" on the question of evolution.

But the jury is not out -- indeed it was well in before President Bush was even born -- and anyone familiar with modern biology knows that ID is nothing more than a program of political and religious advocacy masquerading as science.

It is for this reason that the scientific community has been divided on just how (or whether) to dignify the spurious claims of ID "theorists" with a response. While understandable, I believe that such scruples are now misplaced. The Trojan Horse has passed the innermost gates of the city, and scary religious imbeciles are now spilling out.

According to several recent polls, 22 percent of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to earth sometime in the next fifty years. Another 22 percent believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44 percent who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews, and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution.

As the President is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national importance.

Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from these developments and are now thumbing scripture, wondering how best to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country who vote mainly on the basis of religious dogma.

More than 50 percent of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" view of people who do not believe in God; 70 percent think it important for presidential candidates to be "strongly religious." Because it is taboo to criticize a person's religious beliefs, political debate over questions of public policy (stem-cell research, the ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia, obscenity and free speech, gay marriage, etc.) generally gets framed in terms appropriate to a theocracy. Unreason is now ascendant in the United States -- in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum. There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality. Likewise, Stephen Jay Gould's notion of "non-overlapping magisteria" served only the religious dogmatists who realize, quite rightly, that there is only one magisterium.

Whether a person is religious or secular, there is nothing more sacred than the facts. Either Jesus was born of a virgin, or he wasn't; either there is a God who despises homosexuals, or there isn't. It is time that sane human beings agreed on the standards of evidence necessary to substantiate truth-claims of this sort. The issue is not, as ID advocates allege, whether science can "rule out" the existence of the biblical God.

There are an infinite number of ludicrous ideas that science could not "rule out," but which no sensible person would entertain. The issue is whether there is any good reason to believe the sorts of things that religious dogmatists believe -- that God exists and takes an interest in the affairs of human beings; that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception (and, therefore, that blastocysts are the moral equivalents of persons); etc. There simply is no good reason to believe such things, and scientists should stop hiding their light under a bushel and make this emphatically obvious to everyone.

Imagine President Bush addressing the National Prayer Breakfast in these terms: "Behind all of life and all history there is a dedication and a purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful Zeus." Imagine his speech to Congress containing the sentence "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that Apollo is not neutral between them."

Clearly, the commonplaces of language conceal the vacuity and strangeness of many of our beliefs. Our president regularly speaks in phrases appropriate to the fourteenth century, and no one seems inclined to find out what words like "God" and "crusade" and "wonder-working power" mean to him. Not only do we still eat the offal of the ancient world; we are positively smug about it. Garry Wills has noted that the Bush White House "is currently honeycombed with prayer groups and Bible study cells, like a whited monastery." This should trouble us as much as it troubles the fanatics of the Muslim world.

The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us. Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. It is time we recognized that this spirit of mutual inquiry, which is the foundation of all real science, is the very antithesis of religious faith.

5. IT IS A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH!

OSCAR HECK

Previous to 1991 I was, as most of us, just another person who believed what I was told ... and never really questioned it. I believed in good faith and in the honorability of governments and the media. After 1991, it all changed for me ... as it did for most Gulf War Veterans, many of whom to this day continue to suffer from an unknown illness, a "mystery illness." I witnessed first hand how sick some of the soldiers were in Kuwait.

According to several sources, the US government tested Agent Orange and depleted uranium (DU) weapons in Puerto Rico.

"Test trials of Agent Orange were carried out in Puerto Rico. The US imposed a military government on Puerto Rico a century ago when it was seized from the Spanish. The island of Vieques (40 miles off the coast, population 5,500) has been used for target practice by the US military for the last 60 years.

Since 1980 it has been used for test firing of depleted uranium munitions, chemical contaminants have found their way into ground water, local crabs have 20 times the normal levels of heavy metals, cancer rates amongst the island's population is twice the national average ...

In a locked room of Tu Du Obstetrical and Gynecological Hospital in Saigon are rows of formaldehyde-filled jars containing deformed fetuses, a grotesque illustration of Man's inhumanity to Man. The level of poverty in Vietnam prevents the preservation of further examples. Many of the living have fared little better, limb deformities, cancers."

The USA is using nuclear weapons.

In order to bypass laws and to allow for the use of napalm weapons against Iraqis in the recent invasion of Iraq, the US military (or someone) simply changed the name of the weapon and slightly modified the ingredients. In much the same way, the US government has been deceiving us regarding depleted uranium ... which has been used in weapons against Iraqis and Afghanis in the recent US invasions.

Depleted uranium weapons are apparently not categorized as nuclear weapons.

This is where we have been fooled, once again. We have been led to believe that DU is basically harmless. It turns out that this is not the case. DU is very dangerous and there is reliable information to support this. Weapons that contain DU are essentially nuclear weapons ... and the USA has been using them in large quantities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US government is using nuclear weapons!

Please read the following: it is written by Leuren Moret who is an international radiation specialist and environmental commissioner for the City of Berkeley, California. Below are sections of the article.

(Editor's note: Leuren Moret's complete article is the last one, No. 7, in this issue of the Bi-Weekly.)

"I have worked in two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, and in 1991 I became a whistleblower at the Livermore lab. Depleted uranium is very, very, very nasty stuff: Depleted uranium (DU) weaponry meets the definition of weapon of mass destruction in two out of three categories under U.S. Federal Code Title 50 Chapter 40 Section 2302."

"Since 1991, the U.S. has released the radioactive atomicity equivalent of at least 40,000 Hiroshima bombs into the global atmosphere."

"The U.S. has permanently contaminated the global atmosphere with radioactive pollution having a half-life of 2.5 billion years."

"The U.S. has illegally conducted four nuclear wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and twice in Iraq since 1991, calling DU 'conventional' weapons when in fact they are nuclear weapons."

"DU is the Trojan Horse of nuclear war - it keeps giving and keeps killing. There is no way to clean it up, and no way to turn it off because it continues to decay into other radioactive isotopes in over 20 steps."

"Terry Jemison at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs stated in August 2004 that over 518,000 Gulf-era veterans (14-year period) are now on medical disability, and that 7,039 were wounded on the battlefield in that same period. Over 500,000 U.S. veterans are homeless. "

"In some studies of soldiers who had normal babies before the war, 67 percent of the post-war babies are born with severe birth defects - missing brains, eyes, organs, legs and arms, and blood diseases."

"In southern Iraq, scientists are reporting five times higher levels of gamma radiation in the air, which increases the radioactive body burden daily of inhabitants. In fact, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan are uninhabitable."

"After Vietnam, Henry Kissinger said, 'Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. . .'(from Chapter 5 in the "Final Days" by Woodward and Bernstein)."

Leuren Moret is part of a new documentary called "Beyond Treason." It is about the history of treason by the U.S. government against its own soldiers ... about Atomic veterans, MK-Ultra, Agent Orange and DU. The documentary is co-written by Joyce Riley, spokesperson for the American Gulf War Veterans Association ... and several Gulf War Veterans are featured in the film.

I think it is important for readers to take the time to visit their site. Scroll down to the bottom and you can click to watch "a two minute theatrical trailer." Please watch the trailer ... and then spread the news to others.

It is a matter of life or death!

Although I have not yet seen the documentary, I have a strong feeling that everyone should watch it. I am ordering my copy.

The documentary website states: "From the first Gulf War the VA has determined that 250,000 troops are now permanently disabled, 15,000 troops are dead and over 425,000 troops are ill and slowly dying from what the Department of Defense still calls a 'mystery disease.' How many more will have to die before action is taken?"

This "mystery disease" appears to be caused by the use of nuclear weapons, DU weapons included.

Another site states: "Decades of Nuclear Testing has demonstrated the effects of 1200 nuclear weapon tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site; and the US Government admitted in Nov. 2002, that every living person in the US between 1958-63 was exposed to this fall out resulting in cancer, gene mutation, heart disease, autism, diabetes, Parkinson's, ALS, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome , hypothyroidism in new-borns, obesity and learning disabilities. One out of twelve children in the US is disabled. The fall out did not stop at the US borders. It traveled around the world, as atmospheric dust and remains even in the biosphere/ sub-orbital space today. High breast cancer rates have been co-located in the proximity of nuclear power plants in the west and more so in the east coast areas of the US"

"The long-term effects from over a decade of DU exposures are emerging in Southern Iraq. They are devastating. The increased quantities of radio-active material ( including non-depleted uranium), used in Afghanistan are 3 to 5 times greater than Iraq 1991. In Iraq 2003 they are already estimated to be 6 to 10 times 1991 and will travel through a larger area and affect many more people, babies and unborn. Countries within a 1000 mile radius of Baghdad and Kabul are being affected by radiation poisoning ..."

"Testimonies of fathers and mothers are horrifying. What else do the Americans want ? They killed us , they turned our new-borns into horrific deformations, and they turned our farm lands into grave-yards, and destroyed our homes. On top of all this their planes fly over and spray us with bullets.. we have nothing to lose..."

(Note: Water supplies seems to be one of the main vehicles to deliver radiation to humans!)

What is now happening in Afghanistan and Iraq is what will happen in Venezuela if the US government attacks Venezuela. Children will be born dead and disfigured or worse yet, alive and horribly deformed (as seen in the 2 minute trailer above). People will become sicker and sicker. Cancer will be rampant, soil and water supplies will be contaminated and people will be dying from radiation-induced diseases for generations.

This is not science fiction. This is reality. Take another look at the movie trailer. 340 tons of DU were used in the first Gulf War. 2400 tons of DU were dumped into Iraq during the recent invasion of Iraq by the USA. (On a similar note, the US government is proudly collaborating with the Colombian government -- and perhaps Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador -- in a program to eradicate coca plantations by spraying the plantations with chemicals ... which are apparently -- and no doubt -- getting into the local drinking water supplies!)

I will now quote from a reader of an article of mine. Astoundingly, the reader who made the comment (repeated below), made it after I sent her/him the links to "Beyond Treason."

"There are things we've done wrong and mistakes made that have resulted in tragedy. There are also millions of people walking around the globe today that owe their lives and their freedom to US intervention."

Free to live in nuclear contamination for generations to come?

Free to eat, drink and breath radiation?

Free to live as brain-damaged twisted pieces of flesh?

As I finish writing this article, the same person sends me another letter. Here are parts of it:

"Okay, Oscar, here's Chavez latest insult to my country. He called the United States the 'most savage, cruel and murderous empire that has existed in the history of the world' ... First of all, it's clear Mr. Chavez doesn't know the history of Stalin and Mao who were collectively responsible for ... second, his assertion that America is going to invade Venezuela is completely idiotic ... third, he says Iran is a regime under attack by imperialism and expressed solidarity with the Islamic fascist regime in Tehran ... I've had it with this lying, ignorant, sociopath, Oscar. Hugo Chavez just made an enemy of me, and I am a formidable opponent."

What kind of person would state that someone is now their enemy simply because that person is speaking the truth?

It is because of people who think this way, and react this way, that DU is being dropped on "enemies."
It is because of people who think and react this way that the world, as we know it, will come to an end ... sooner than later.

6. US ADMITS IT USED NAPALM BOMBS IN IRAQ

ANDREW BUNCOMBE

American pilots dropped the controversial incendiary agent napalm on Iraqi troops during the advance on Baghdad. The attacks caused massive fireballs that obliterated several Iraqi positions.

The Pentagon denied using napalm at the time, but Marine pilots and their commanders have confirmed that they used an upgraded version of the weapon against dug-in positions. They said napalm, which has a distinctive smell, was used because of its psychological effect on an enemy.

A 1980 UN convention banned the use against civilian targets of napalm, a terrifying mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene that sticks to skin as it burns. The US, which did not sign the treaty, is one of the few countries that makes use of the weapon. It was employed notoriously against both civilian and military targets in the Vietnam war.

The upgraded weapon, which uses kerosene rather than petrol, was used in March and April, when dozens of napalm bombs were dropped near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris river, south of Baghdad.

"We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches," said Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11. "Unfortunately there were people there ... you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect."

A reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald who witnessed another napalm attack on 21 March on an Iraqi observation post at Safwan Hill, close to the Kuwaiti border, wrote the following day: "Safwan Hill went up in a huge fireball and the observation post was obliterated. 'I pity anyone who is in there,' a Marine sergeant said. 'We told them to surrender.'"

At the time, the Pentagon insisted the report was untrue. "We completed destruction of our last batch of napalm on 4 April, 2001," it said.

The revelation that napalm was used in the war against Iraq, while the Pentagon denied it, has outraged opponents of the war.

"Most of the world understands that napalm and incendiaries are a horrible, horrible weapon," said Robert Musil, director of the organisation Physicians for Social Responsibility. "It takes up an awful lot of medical resources. It creates horrible wounds." Mr. Musil said denial of its use "fits a pattern of deception [by the US administration]".

The Pentagon said it had not tried to deceive. It drew a distinction between traditional napalm, first invented in 1942, and the weapons dropped in Iraq, which it calls Mark 77 firebombs. They weigh 510lbs, and consist of 44lbs of polystyrene-like gel and 63 gallons of jet fuel.

Officials said that if journalists had asked about the firebombs their use would have been confirmed. A spokesman admitted they were "remarkably similar" to napalm but said they caused less environmental damage.

But John Pike, director of the military studies group GlobalSecurity.Org, said: "You can call it something other than napalm but it is still napalm. It has been reformulated in the sense that they now use a different petroleum distillate, but that is it. The US is the only country that has used napalm for a long time. I am not aware of any other country that uses it." Marines returning from Iraq chose to call the firebombs "napalm".

Mr. Musil said the Pentagon's effort to draw a distinction between the weapons was outrageous. He said: "It's Orwellian. They do not want the public to know. It's a lie."

In an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Marine Corps Major General Jim Amos confirmed that napalm was used on several occasions in the war.

7. DEPLETED URANIIUM IS WMD

LEUREN MORET

My grandfather, U.S. Army Col. Edwin Joseph McAllister, was born in Battle Creek in 1895. He does not know that his first grandchild is an international expert on depleted uranium. I have worked in two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, and in 1991 I became a whistleblower at the Livermore lab. Depleted uranium is very, very, very nasty stuff:

Depleted uranium (DU) weaponry meets the definition of weapon of mass destruction in two out of three categories under U.S. Federal Code Title 50 Chapter 40 Section 2302.

DU weaponry violates all international treaties and agreements, Hague and Geneva war conventions, the 1925 Geneva gas protocol, U.S. laws and U.S. military law.
Since 1991, the U.S. has released the radioactive atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs into the global atmosphere. That is 10 times the amount released during atmospheric testing which was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs. The U.S. has permanently contaminated the global atmosphere with radioactive pollution having a half-life of 2.5 billion years.
The U.S. has illegally conducted four nuclear wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and twice in Iraq since 1991, calling DU "conventional" weapons when in fact they are nuclear weapons.
DU on the battlefield has three effects on living systems: it is a heavy metal "chemical" poison, a "radioactive" poison and has a "particulate" effect due to the very tiny size of the particles that are 0.1 microns and smaller.
The blueprint for DU weaponry is a 1943 Manhattan Project memo to Gen. L. Groves that recommended development of radioactive materials as poison gas weapons - dirty bombs, dirty missiles and dirty bullets.
DU weapons are very effective kinetic energy penetrators, but even more effective bio-weapons since uranium has a strong chemical affinity for phosphate structures concentrated in DNA.
DU is the Trojan Horse of nuclear war - it keeps giving and keeps killing. There is no way to clean it up, and no way to turn it off because it continues to decay into other radioactive isotopes in over 20 steps.
Terry Jemison at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs stated in August 2004 that over 518,000 Gulf-era veterans (14-year period) are now on medical disability, and that 7,039 were wounded on the battlefield in that same period. Over 500,000 U.S. veterans are homeless.
In some studies of soldiers who had normal babies before the war, 67 percent of the post-war babies are born with severe birth defects - missing brains, eyes, organs, legs and arms, and blood diseases.
In southern Iraq, scientists are reporting five times higher levels of gamma radiation in the air, which increases the radioactive body burden daily of inhabitants. In fact, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan are uninhabitable.
Cancer starts with one alpha particle under the right conditions. One gram of DU is the size of a period in this sentence and releases 12,000 alpha particles per second.

Before my grandfather died, he told me that his generation had made a mess of this planet. I wonder what he would say to me now I would tell him to see "Beyond Treason" (www.beyondtreason.com), a new documentary about the history of treason by the U.S. government against our own troops: Atomic veterans, MK-Ultra, Agent Orange and DU. After Vietnam, Henry Kissinger said, "Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. . ." (from Chapter 5 in the "Final Days" by Woodward and Bernstein).