From:  

There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network, according to an official British intelligence report seen by BBC News.

The classified document, written by defence intelligence staff three weeks ago, says there has been contact between the two in the past. But it assessed that any fledgling relationship foundered due to mistrust and incompatible ideologies.

That conclusion flatly contradicts one of the main charges laid against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein by the United States and Britain - that he has cultivated contacts with the group blamed for the 11 September attacks.

The report emerges even as Washington was calling Saddam a liar for denying, in a television interview with former Labour MP and minister Tony Benn, that he had any links to al-Qaeda.

"Bush is now suffering from a full blown credibility crisis. In the latest CNN/Gallup poll, about half of all Americans said they think the Bush administration would present evidence it knew was inaccurate. And a whopping 58% said Mr. Bush would even conceal evidence that went against his position to persuade us to go to war in Iraq. Said Mr. Bush, if we could have reached him for comment: 'I promised in the campaign I wouldn't lie about sex. I never said anything about war.'"

- Paul Begala, on CNN's Crossfire

Blair and Bush may believe God is on their side, but it would still be an immoral war.

By: Mary Riddell  

This conflict, the successor to the more legitimate first Gulf War, may be a touchpaper for terror. It may, in David Owen's dreams, also be a necessary prerequisite for a Palestinian solution, although it is hard to see how war would make Israel feel more secure, or Washington's neo-conservatives more benign. Then there is equivalence. Syria, Egypt, Iran, and Libya have chemical weapons. Some rogue states, and the U.S., maintain a cavalier attitude to arms proliferation treaties. Why Iraq? Why now? the peacemakers ask. In part, and paradoxically, through the actions of those who called for Resolution 1441.

But the tide runs fast the other way. Bush is intent on a war predicated, in Dustin Hoffman's synopsis, on "money, oil, power, and suits". In the eyes of humanitarian hawks, it is a war of mercy, even though the prime object is the West's protection. It is also about imperialism, global hegemony, and God.

By: Steve Lopez  

Who but a few men in Washington have designed a war that now stands as our national purpose? And why should anyone fall into line on the orders of George Bush or Dick Cheney, oil and energy company barons who neatly managed to avoid combat in their day?

Maybe I'm a fool to expect any different. From the beginning of time, man has been determined to conquer and plunder the planet. Maybe you have to let go of gravity and step back as only the astronauts could to see the madness for what it is.

"It looks so lovely, so fragile", astronaut Alan Shepard said as he looked at planet Earth from the surface of the moon. "Just imagine the millions of people who are living on it and don't realize how fragile it is."

By: Hendrik Hertzberg  

The most tasteless passage in last week's State of the Union message came about half an hour into the speech, as President Bush was enumerating his administration's successes against Al Qaeda. Three thousand suspected terrorists have been arrested, he said. "And many others have met a different fate", he went on. "Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies." Talk about smoking guns. You could almost see the President blowing across the upturned barrel of his Colt .45.

The other day, Secretary of State Colin Powell was reminded that his boss is in bed by ten and sleeps like a baby. Powell reportedly replied: "I sleep like a baby, too - every two hours I wake up screaming." The President's serenity is more worrying than the General's anxiety is comforting. And the storm approaches.

"...the reason we are heading straight for disaster is that our country and its economy are in the hands of individuals who are (a) ignorant, (b) dogmatic, and (c) arrogant. And (b) and (c) foreclose remedies for (a). As Walter Mondale used to say (uselessly) about the Reagan administration: 'They know all the answers, and what they know is wrong.'"

- the Online Gadfly

"Last year's NASA budget had 132 projects not requested by the agency, at a cost of $536 million."

- Jonathan Karl, reporting on CNN

By: John C. Bonifaz  

In October 2002, Congress passed a resolution that gave President Bush the power to fight terrorism. A loose reading of it would lead one to believe that it gave him the power to start wars. But the content of it does not issue a declaration of war against any nation. Rather, it states that the President "has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States..." It does not and cannot alter the express language of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Only a constitutional amendment could do so.

A challenge to the President's authority to wage war against Iraq would highlight the fact that no such legal groundings exist in this case. Congress has yet to pass any military appropriation acts for this war and has yet to initiate a military draft. The only action Congress has taken is the passage of the resolution last October which, far from declaring war, allows the President to fight terrorism but does not allow him to launch into war against another country.

On the verge of Bush's brutal war for oil, the U.S. proves its arrogance, and the world is disgusted.

By: Mark Morford  

We are going to war with another impoverished, petty country for largely fabricated, faux-patriotic reasons. "Let's roll!" smirks Shrub during an appallingly vague State of the Union address, sending in 180,000 U.S. troops and gearing up to bomb the living crap out of a country that is no direct threat to us whatsoever. Do we not see?

Let's get it even straighter: There is zero proof that Iraq is producing any sort of serious WMD of any significant threat or lethal potential, certainly nothing remotely dangerous to the United States, and even the weapons we do think they might be hiding and even those few the inspectors actually found are either empty canisters with a range of about 12 miles or rusty hulls of weapons we knew they had back in 1992. Swell.

Straighter still: There is zero direct threat to the United States from Iraq. None whatsoever. No long-range nukes, no Hefty bags of anthrax, no seething cells of bearded Islamic fundamentalists heading over to sodomize our daughters and steal our Ford Expeditions and use up all the credit on our Starbucks cards. Clear?

By: William Rivers Pitt  

Powell's presentation relied in no small part upon an intelligence dossier prepared by the British Government entitled: Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation. That report plagiarized large swaths of an essay written in September of 2002 by a graduate student from California named Ibrahim al-Marashi. Al-Marashi's essay appeared in the September 2002 edition of a small journal, the Middle East Review of International Affairs.

After a close analysis of the identical text from both reports, it is also clear that Britain altered key words to give their report a more sinister and ominous twist. The British report states that the Iraqi intelligence agency is "spying on foreign embassies in Iraq". The al-Marashi essay's version states that the Iraqi intelligence agency is "monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq". The rhetorical leap from "monitoring" to "spying" is evident.

In another portion of the British dossier, Iraq is accused of "supporting terrorist organizations in hostile regimes". The al-Marashi essay's version states that Iraq is "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes". The insertion of the word "terrorist" is manifestly provocative.

A disturbing series of questions is raised by this matter...

"The reason this concert is important is that the old energy economy that's cheating us as a planet is very well organized, highly centralized, rich as can be, and very well politically connected. And the new energy future is decentralized, entrepreneurial, and needs people like you to say: 'Give me a clean car, give me solar shingles to put on my roof... Give me a clean future.'"

- Bill Clinton, opening for the Rolling Stones last night in Los Angeles

"I believe that [Bush] has taken the events of 9/11 and has manipulated the grief of the country and I think that's reprehensible. I don't think that the reasons we have been given for going to war are the honest reasons. If they are saying it's about the fact they have WMD and that gives us the liberty to pre-empt and strike because we think they might hit us, then what prevents Pakistan from attacking India, what prevents India from attacking Pakistan? What prevents us from going into North Korea? I believe that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power, and oil."

- Dustin Hoffman

By: Norman Solomon  

Tacit erasure of inconvenient history - including his own - is integral to the warm relationship between Powell and U.S. news media. There's a lot to erase. For instance, in January 1986, serving as a top aide to Pentagon chief Caspar Weinberger, he supervised the transfer of 4,508 TOW missiles to the CIA, and then sought to hide the transaction from Congress and the public. No wonder: Almost half of those missiles had become part of the Iran-Contra scandal's arms-for-hostages deal.

As President Reagan's national security adviser, Powell worked diligently on behalf of the Contra guerrillas who were killing civilians in Nicaragua. In December 1989, Powell - at that point the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - was a key player behind the invasion of Panama.

The Gulf War catapulted Powell to the apex of American political stardom in early 1991. When he was asked about the Iraqi death toll from that war, Powell said that such numbers didn't interest him.

There's a difference between these far right wackos and those of yesteryear: today they're in power.

By: Molly Ivins  

It sounded no more than usually loony to me - equating Islam with fascism and terrorism, plus the usual attacks on feminazis, the dread environmentalists, family planning, Harry Potter, and other menaces to civilization. No crazier than the John Birch Society or the militia movement I've known all these years. But reporter Michelle Goldberg noted one striking difference: The conference was attended by people in power. Vice President Dick Cheney gave the keynote speech, and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao spoke, as did House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Senate Whip Mitch McConnell, Republican National Committee Chair Marc Racicot, etc.

Cheney told the crowd: "CPAC has consistently championed those ideas that make America great."

The great ideas that followed were Ann Coulter, who has to be one of the silliest woman in America, attacking "the treason lobby" - the Democratic Party - whose platform "consists in breaking every one of the Ten Commandments". Aw, Ann, we're very big on "Honor thy father and thy mother."

"Our of Democracy must be not only the envy of the world, but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."

- Bill Clinton, our last ELECTED President

"When the economy begins to recover as it will. Interest rates will then go up, because there will be a big demand for money and the government will be the pig at the trough. And it will hurt in America as it will hurt around the world. It's bad economics and I don't think you can justify it. Everybody else is being asked to sacrifice for this war on terror, and you and I are getting a tax cut from the Social Security retirement fund of middle class people. It's not right. We don't need it and you know it's not right. It's just not right. It can't be justified and it's not good economics."

- Bill Clinton, our last ELECTED President, on Larry King Live

By: E.J. Dionne Jr.  

...Conservatives acknowledge that Bush's long-term goal is to reduce the federal government's capacity to act - yes, to spend - without saying so publicly. The large tax cuts the President has put on the table, conservative columnist Donald Lambro wrote candidly this week, "are, in effect, Mr. Bush's stealth initiative to curb future spending - big time". Exactly. And if you look carefully, most of the spending cuts will be in programs for the poor and near-poor.

Stealthy redistribution upward is the theme of Bush's domestic program. Under the cover of promoting growth, Bush is shifting more and more of the tax burden from the wealthy. That's the effect of his elimination of the dividends tax and the huge new tax loopholes being sold as "savings" incentives.

In the meantime, Bush is creating long-term incentives for states to cut their programs to help the poor. On Medicaid, for example, Bush is in theory giving states modest fiscal relief now - not anything close to what they need, of course - but only if they accept the transformation of Medicaid into a block-grant program and cuts in later years. The cuts are disguised by declaring that whatever Medicaid relief the states get now will be a "loan" to be paid back within the next decade.

Editorial from:  

Attorney General John Ashcroft has directed federal prosecutors in New York and Connecticut to seek the death penalty in a dozen cases in which they had recommended lesser sentences. Mr. Ashcroft's orders are a triumph of ideology over good prosecutorial practice. The Bush administration should reconsider them.

Mr. Ashcroft's decisions appear to be driven by a desire to see the death penalty used more. His aggressive promotion of capital punishment is not only wrong, it is badly timed. Popular support for the death penalty is declining, due in large part to the growing number of cases in which DNA evidence is exonerating death row inmates.

"[The Space Shuttle] Columbia carried in its payroll classroom experiments from some of our students in America."

- Gee Dubya Bush, Bethesda, MD, Feb. 3, 2003

"The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself."

- Gee Dubya Bush, Grand Rapids, MI, Jan. 29, 2003

"One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end."

- Gee Dubya Bush, Washington, DC, Jan. 8, 2003

By: Kelli Arena  

The threat of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil is at a higher level than in previous months because of the possibility of impending military action against Iraq, U.S. counterterrorism officials told CNN on Wednesday.

"The threat level is definitely up. Our guys have been told to act as if we have already bombed Iraq", one senior counterterrorism official told CNN.

Government officials said they are concerned that al Qaeda, Iraqi agents, or individuals could launch an attack coinciding with a U.S. strike against Iraq.

...and this is the painting that was covered by the U.N. - at the request of the U.S. - during Powell's war mongering presentation!

By: James Higdon  

Guernica was the name of a sleepy little village in Spain where Hitler, wanting to demonstrate the prowess of his Luftwaffe,

The center of Guernica, Spain the day after the German bombing raid, 1937

conducted a devastating bombing run that nearly wiped out all the men, women, and children of a town that posed no threat to anyone.

Now, so that John Negroponte, the war criminal and felon that G.W. Bush appointed to be United States Ambassador to the U.N., will not be offended, the painting will be covered up whenever news conferences are held at the U.N. which address the coming war with Iraq. And yet I do overstate the situation here. The likely fact is that Negroponte has never much concerned himself with the content of Guernica. The truth is that covering the painting helps to keep the sheep from thinking. A thinking American public might prevent a war that could quite possibly lead, even according to our own CIA, to the most devastating conflict Mother Earth has ever known.

The Bush propaganda machine has convinced Americans that Saddam and the no-longer-mentioned Osama are the same person - and the polls prove it.

By: Kane Pryor  

The Knight Ridder poll raises the specter of an unsettling truth. It suggests that whatever support there is for a war against Iraq, it owes much to the erroneous belief of at least half of the American people that it was Saddam Hussein's operatives who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

If it is disturbing to conclude that many Americans may be supporting a war on the basis of a falsehood, it is potentially even more disturbing to consider how this falsehood came to be. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have received more news coverage than any other single event in history. How could it possibly be that in less than 18 months this event has become a victim of gross historical revisionism?

It was Marx who described religion as the opiate of the people. 21^st Century Americans have television as a general anesthetic. Our collective attention deficit disorder - a disease of morbid intellectual laziness - has permitted the careful packaging of pseudo-information by Madison Avenue to assume an illusion of reality.

By: Katrina vanden Heuvel  

To justify U.N. Security Council authorization for war, the administration would need to show that Iraq's brutal dictatorship poses such a serious and immediate threat to U.S. security and world peace that it must be overthrown by force. It has failed to do that. Containment and robust inspections have worked in the past and can in the future.

Any benefits of going to war to remove Saddam Hussein are outweighed by the possible unintended consequences of fueling anti-Americanism in the Islamic world; undermining the global fight against terrorism; increasing terrorism at home; helping Al Qaeda win more recruits, destabilizing Pakistan, Turkey, and other countries in the region; and risking the lives of U.S. and other troops and Iraqi civilians. Furthermore, the moral, political and economic costs of a likely postwar occupation would mean more spending on war and less on homeland security and unmet domestic needs.

"Bush was tired of rhetoric. The President wanted to kill somebody."

- Secretary of State Colin Powell, on September 13, 2001, as quoted in Bob Woodward's Bush at War

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