To give you a frame of reference in context to this article, I originally wrote it in response to a email I recieved from my mother, which tries to scare its readers into believing Iraq, terrorism, and terrorist attacks are more closely linked than they truly are. I've noticed a huge spike in fear-driven rhetoric leading to this inevitable war in Iraq, and this email is just one example of such. If you'd like to view the original mass mail I received, I have it post up here. My original email response has been reformatted to become a stand-alone web article. I feel it is important enough for me to post publically and should be used as primer before trying to discuss and understand the current global issue of Iraq as it relates to terrorism and the world.

The American government and the corporate mass media's use of 'fear' in propaganda is all too common and should be scrutinized before being taken into serious consideration. In recent months, the government has issued a large number of hypothetical scenarios of terrorist attacks on the United States in attempts to appeal to citizen fear against one's personal safety and now against 'economic prosperity' that ultimately affects one's personal comforts. Not surprisingly, the Administration is using all its cleverly timed "terror alerts" and news buzzclips to subliminally marry 'Iraq' with 'terrorism' in the public eye. Many of these outlandish claims from President George Bush aren't even respected by the Central Intelligence Agency. In this BBC article entitled CIA undermines Propaganda War, first there is implication that a 'propaganda war' exists, then CIA Director Tenet states that Bush's terrorism claims are simply untrue. The CIA is constantly resisting pressure from the Bush Administration who has been described to "contaminate the intelligence process" by some CIA analysts (reference LA Times article). As a concerned citizen, you should be aware of these fear tactics that the Administration continues to agitate in order to press on for what the Pope called "an unfounded and immoral war" in Iraq.

Through the disastrous failures in Vietnam, the U.S. government has since learned that there are two fronts to every military campaign: the warfront and the public support front. Vietnam lost public support because for the first time ever, the media (and ultimately the TV viewing Americans at home) were introduced to the frontlines of war in a gruesome, uncensored form on a new technology known as 'broadcast television'. Never before have the realities of modern warfare been brought into American homes with such graphic realism. Prior to Vietnam, we only had radio news. The visual aspects of real war shocked and appalled the American public, and it was from that point on that public support for the Vietnam War plummeted. Since Vietnam, the U.S. government has learned a valuable lesson in controlling the spread of fact and information in the media.

It is known that the majority of this nation formulates its opinions based solely off of information absorbed from mass media news outlets (CNN, CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC). This of course opens the door for controlled expression of truth and information by diverting the public's concern and attention away from the real issues and onto tangent issues that serve only to distract and/or further political agendas. This is one of the most effective forms of government propaganda because it denies the viewers any sort of historical context in answering the question of "why?". Other common tools of propaganda that I've observed on cable news include false and errant accounts used to incriminate, outright fabrications, human experience (personalized news), telling only half the truth, and omitting political or historical context when presenting fact. Anyway, over the months while I watched 24-hour news stations (such as MSNBC and Fox News), I became increasingly concerned with the heavy right-wing bias, rampant propaganda, and especially the avoidance of contextual fact. This journalistic incompotence I beared witness to became my motivation in authoring the article below...

So let's move on to the issues at hand. George Bush & Company make a case for war with Iraq on the following grounds:

1) Links to terrorist groups; the supposed 'War on Terror'

2) Broken United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions

3) The threat of weapons of mass destruction.

4) Humanitarian concerns over human rights violations

5) Liberation of a people from an evil tyrant

Below I will address each and every one of these arguments for war and intellectually debase them by their merits, in-turn building an even stronger case against war. Please take the time to read what I have written before you judge the legitimacy of this war.

1) Links to terrorist groups; the supposed 'War on Terror': I listed the "terrorism threat" first and foremost for a very specific reason. For in the roots of terrorism, which our nation is largely responsible for, lies the key to the problems from which argument #2, #3, #4, and #5 stem.

To combat and ultimately destroy terrorism around the world, we must first analyze the root cause and the origins of terrorism, namely anti-Western terrorism. Very broadly, I will say that terrorism towards the United States and western powers exist because of United States foreign policy and its consistent goal since the 1940's to further U.S. economic strength by oppressing others in order to maintain U.S. military power and U.S. influence around the world. Now however absurd that statement may sound to you now, if you read my entire explanation for this, I think you will come to the same conclusion as I. When terrorists try to convey a message to the world with their attacks, there exists three critical targets for terror: United States' (1) foreign policy, (2) economic might, and (3) military power.

World Trade Center = A symbol of economic power. The WTC was targeted twice in the last decade by al-Qaeda. The WTC was home to many transnational corporations and financial institutions and was built to reflect the image of our economic power in the world.

Pentagon, USS Cole, Beirut = A symbol of military power. The Pentagon is central point where all U.S. military strategy and military action is planned and decided upon. The USS Cole is symbolic of U.S. military influence, presence, and pressure abroad. The Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon symbolized the military occupation in the Middle East.

White House and U.S. Embassies abroad = Symbols of U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy. The White House was the alleged target of the fourth plane on 9/11. U.S. embassies in Yemen and Libya have been leveled by al-Qaeda. Various other U.S. embassies around the world have been overrun and firebombed by mobs also. An action that seems to say "Get out of our country! Leave us alone!".

Contrary to George Bush's rhetoric, terrorists DO NOT attack us because "we are a beacon of freedom and democracy" as he puts it. Terrorists are actually quite fond of these two principles. It is the United States hypocrisy in our charter to promote freedom and democracy around the world that enrages terrorists. I will go into more detail about that below...

For the last 60+ years, the U.S. foreign policy is that of power politics driven by the neo-mercantile power brokers and central capital holders in Washington DC, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) [the rich man's club], Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), the World Trade Organization (WTO) [the WTO is inclusive of transnational corporations that lobby the government], and the North-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) [an exclusionary pact of the richer Americas]. These parties have a specific interest in preserving domestic control over world capital and world resources while subjugating their threats/competitors: third-world nations with valuable resources. Before I go on any further, let me start at the beginning of this whole mess...

Let's first broaden the issue of terrorism from the United States, to "Western Societies" as a whole. Today when debating the very important issues of globalization, free trade, and world markets, there lies a struggle between the New World Order and the Third World over the Third-world's resources. To paraphrase, the wealthy, powerful nations of the world are fighting the small, poor, third world developing nations for the rights over their resources. And it is an unfair fight.

The First-world VS Third-world battle has been evolving from a prior global conflict. The roots of this conflict can be traced back about 1300 years to the classical struggle of influence between Eastern cultures and Western cultures: namely Christianity and Islam. The latest turning point in this struggle was the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It was the British and French efforts to destabilize the (Islamic) Ottoman Empire (Germany's major trade partner at the time) that started WW1. Before this war even broke, it was known that the victors of WW1 would win the spoils of the Ottoman.

Since the Triple Entente won the war, the British and French were able to break up the Ottoman Empire into several very small, very unstable, very dependant, very controllable puppet states. These states were intentionally designed to follow such immutable characteristics. As independent states they were economically unviable and managed by client-dictatorial regimes who were willing to trade away national resources for legitimized power. These new countries were also made to depend on foreign aid from the British and French in order to survive and thus they were forced to surrender a bit of their economic sovereignty via trade contracts, foreign mandates, and conditions on aid. These small states were also very hard to merge back into larger, more economically viable states since the rulers that were put into power (by the West) were intentionally greedy and unwilling to surrender their power in the interests of the whole. The Ottoman is just one classic example of such clever economic prostration. There are many other more modern examples of this political practice, but for now just remember that most major conflicts in the world that attracted the attention of world powers are, and were, based upon this motive.

In more recent times, in fact just last month, Yugoslavia was once again broken into the even smaller states of Serbia and Montenegro, further shattering the economic viability of the region. Clinton's war in Kosovo played a crucial role in achieving this. And thus the power politics cycle continues. Today, foreign aid agreements have been formed with nations in the Middle East, Africa, South America, and other regions for the same purposes of exploiting these nations for their resources and limiting their ability to object to such actions. Though European colonialism has since died and these newer nations have gained their political independence, they are still very much economic slaves to the New World Order (NWO). They have increasingly limited power over their own economies and increasing dependency on NWO power brokers. Poverty and starvation just happen to be byproducts of this twisted game.

And it is due to this plight around the world that terrorism against the West emerges. Countries in the Middle East continue in this struggle between East/West and 1st/3rd World and have found that the use terrorism is their only weapon against this economic conquest (they obviously cannot go to war with the NWO powers directly). Terrorism grows in strength as people of these poor nations become increasingly frustrated with their own repressive governments and all the while they see the connection between Western support for these non-progressive, authoritarian regimes. In the context of modern issues, the restructuring of Afghanistan, and later even Iraq, with it's very noble intentions (of course), still has its underlying purpose of forming yet another very controllable, very dependant nation in the region, and of course to set up a more agreeable pro-Western government as a pivoting point for future military campaigns.

Now you have a better sense of why we continue to stand alone as the most productive nation in the world, and why third-world nations have remained third-world nations with very little progress to speak of in the last hundred years. But how did we come about as the world's most powerful nation?

The rise of the United States as a world power was a result of colonial Europe draining all of its resources into protecting its interests abroad during WW2 along with their needs to protect and fight the war at home. It was no fluke that the United States became endowed with so much power in this time as the US Government decided to sit on the sidelines for the first six years of war selling everyone military supplies and rations in what was a very favorable business arrangement for the rising nation. For six years the United States sat on its proverbial hands while Hitler swept across continental Europe and North Africa and while Hirohito took Asia and nearly the entire South Pacific. This period of US military stagnation was juxtaposed with a huge economic explosion as America became the leading nation in industry and crediting. If it wasn't for Japan's bombing of the naval base in Hawaii, the United States may have never entered the second world war.

In order to maintain this rise to power today, our government must take steps to subdue the competing nations who pose a huge threat to our power. Remembering that those with the most power fear losing it the most, I ask you: Who has the most to lose when nations like Saudi Arabia and Iraq develop free-market capitalist democracies? The United States does. The European Union does. The transnational banks and corporations do. To open up third-world countries to self-sustenance, free trade, and economic independence is to decentralize power from one market segment to another, from the West to the East. This transfer of power is what alarms the neo-mercantile power brokers and central capital holders the most.

Here's a relevant quote from the State Department following WW2 and the rise of the United States as a world power:

"We have 50 per cent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 per cent of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality ... we should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratisation ... [we] must deal in straight power concepts ... [and not be] hampered by idealistic slogans about altruism and world-benefaction"

-- George Kennan, U.S. State Department Policy Planning, Study #23, 1948

As you can see by this quote from the State Dept, it has long been the policy of the United States (since the end of WW2) to horde wealth, control resources, and control the capital of the world. Today the GDP of the poorest 48 nations (a quarter of the world's countries) is less than the wealth of the world's three richest people combined. Kennan's policy of power by disparity continues to be the primary focus of United States foreign policy. The establishment of this new policy began to take shape in our perpetuation of the Cold War in the coming years.

Russia, post-WW2 suffered the brunt of Hitler's attack (~80% of Hitler's armies) and lost the most life of any nation involved (an estimated 27 million deaths). They suffered vast devastation to infrastructure, industry, agriculture, and received very little foreign aid afterwards from anyone. Yet from ruins they were able to show the world that through rapid independent development, they could rise to become a world power. This presented the underlying threat of the Cold War, which was that: developing or struggling nations might be able to use their own resources for themselves and become an example for other such nations to follow.

That very fear threatened the stranglehold the U.S. and Western Europe had on the world economy over the next 40 years. "Containment" was geared more towards emerging economies that threatened our share of the market. This form of containment became the objective behind most puppet conflicts and most political coups during the Cold War Era. We said we were "containing Communism" "preserving stability" "promoting democracy". Well the pure and simple truth is that very few of our conflicts involved Soviets at all, and many times we were overthrowing popular democracies and replacing them with dictatorships! We were supplying the warlords, the factions, and the dictators with arms and training. The United States government trained the very first Islamic extremists, the Mujahdeen Fighters of Pakistan, in terror tactics in the hopes that they'd help us destabilize the Soviet Union. Dig deep enough and you'll find that oppression of national economies capable of challenging our own was the motive behind our involvement in Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and South America over the years.

But oppression alone wasn't enough to control the Middle East. The Arabs of the Middle East were unique in that they are bound together in brotherhood by a common faith (Islam). This meant that even more extreme measures for subjugation and control would be needed in that region. Thus the United States Arms Trade began. The Middle East became the most heavily militarized zone in the world and billions of dollars worth of "aid" was being poured from the wealthiest nations into puppet regimes in the Middle East. And incidentally it was from these harsh, authoritarian regimes, which we put into power, that the most extreme interpretations of Islam were made. Thus we gave rise to the highly-unifying religious doctrines of Islamic terrorism.

"Arabs are responsible for their own plight because of their constant bickering and disunity."

This is a popular argument I've heard by many of the talking heads in the media and no doubt one that some reading this might also believe in. This blanket statement neglects the larger history and complications of political maneuverings and support for various regimes in the region by the West. A part of the discord in the Middle East comes from the frustration and disagreement on how to handle what they see as unilateral US interests in the region. Frustrations between Arabs and their governments over how to stand on the Israel-Palestine conflict further polarize the people and their governments. Those governments that oppose US policy are marked as "terrorist nations". Such is the case with Syria and Lebanon. Those that comply with us like obedient little dogs are called our "allies" and their terrorist following is ignored. Such is the case with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

The United States' involvement in the Middle Eastern plight is pretty deep. Essentially we empower the feudal Middle Eastern governments; we support them politically and financially. Look at how many regime changes have taken place in Middle Eastern nations in the past century. Every time a dictator that Washington elects steps out of place, we remove him from power and put in another pawn to take his place. Historically, we pick the factions to back, and the ones we've picked have purposefully been authoritarian, repressive, and non-progressive in principles. We also supported the tribal rivalries in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and as "peacemakers" we ignored others in India, Pakistan, and Egypt, because we knew that all this violence would have an effect in segregating a region that had the dangerous potential in unifying and acting collectively as a peaceful nation of nations in their own interests. So contrary to popular belief, Arab-Muslims are in fact a very brotherly people with each other. It is their natural tendancy to unify and rise up as a collective people that the United States and other NWO powers make concerted efforts to instigate conflict in the region to destroy those hopes and dreams.

Many in the region see the oppression from their leaders coming from the support by the West, America in particular. In regimes considered "friends and allies" to the United States, some of the worst human rights abuses are committed. Reference Amnesty International's website regarding our long-standing buddies Saudi Arabia. We are extremely supportive of the Saudi monarch in spite of the crimes against humanity they commit on their own people. The Saudi citizens see this close relationship, they realize that it is the U.S. that empowers their nasty regime and allows them to oppress freedom and democracy in their land. In other cases, regimes that have previously been friendly to the United States have been supported for geopolitical reasons, regardless of how they treat and rule over their people. Only when they have gone too far (i.e.: affected "national interests") are they demonized or in some ways regarded as hostile (often appropriately so). Such is the case currently with Iraq.

"A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague."

-- Michael Dobbs, "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup", Washington Post, December 30, 2002

When the United States was allied with Iraq, the CIA removed them from the terrorist hot list in 1982 so that they could sell them 'dual-purpose' chemical and biological weapons intended to be used against the Iranians, whom the U.S. felt threatened their control over the Middle East. The U.S. government supported Iraq in the Iraq-Iran war, through the gassing of the Iranians and the gassing of the Kurds. The White House was behind Saddam when he used chemical weapons on the Iranians. That is why there were no indictments brought forth for the use of weapons of mass destruction back then. American Type Culture Collection and the United States Center for Disease Control were two of the major institutions that shipped batches of viruses and poisons to Iraq. The U.S. also had little to say at the time when Saddam gassed Kurdish rebels in his country. In fact, first the U.S. supported and encouraged the Kurds to rise up and fight, then they denied refuge to the same Kurds when Iran signed a treaty and sealed their border leaving them marooned in Iraq for the slaughter. Ronald Reagan even strengthened our trade relationship with Iraq in the months following Saddam's mass murder of the Kurds! This puppeteering game we like to play is also a root cause of terrorism. Arab-Muslims are first-hand witnesses to United States rackateering on their homeland. They watch the U.S. government play war games with their brothers' and neighbors' lives. They see how the U.S. pits two Muslim peoples, differentiated only by political boundaries drawn up by the West, against eachother. They see the hypocrisy in Bush's war campaign in Iraq, which is argued upon by historical events that his contemporaries initially supported!

2) Broken United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions: a large part of this public campaign for war is built on the fact that Iraq has broken 14 UNSC resolutions. Well this of course sounds terrible and unacceptable to the American public as a stand-alone fact, however, when put into the context of the UNSC as a whole, the severity of such violations dwindles. If you reference this website, you'll see that while Iraq violates 14 UNSC resolutions, our "good buddies" Turkey and Israel are violating many more. Turkey is currently in violation of 23 Security Council resolutions. Our pals in Israel are currently violating 31 Security Council resolutions. In fact, there are currently 91 United Nations Security Council resolutions that are being violated by countries around the world other than Iraq. Yet there is no mention of these 91 broken resolutions, and heavy emphasis placed on these 14 tied to Iraq. This only further illustrates the point that the United Nations is a pool of interest groups only concerned with "violations" worthy of an ulterior political end. Is it any coincidence that all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council also happen to be amongst the top ten richest global economies? I think not.

The point is that President Bush has no interest in diplomacy with Iraq. From day one, George Bush and Tony Blair have had an openly hostile stance towards Iraq, while other permanent Security Council members like Russia and France have taken a more measured approach to the situation. Bush has no real interest in disarming Iraq. His goal is to legally attack Iraq without violating international law under the United Nations. He uses the U.N. as a platform to gain political support, as not to appear unilateral in approach. The fact is that Iraq is currently a very weak nation that has been stripped of 95% of its military weapons. Iraq was at its military peak in 1991 prior to Desert Storm. Today they pose no threat to anyone regionally or worldwide because every country that Iraq is a threat to, is even a greater threat to Iraq itself. Due to this utter lack of material evidence in support of war, one can only assume that it is based on a hidden agenda. Nevertheless, Bush has already hinted at illegally proceeding in a pre-emptive war on Iraq, further harming the sanctity of the United Nations and dangerously tipping the scales of stability in the world. Here is a great article that delves further into Bush's game of power politics.

3) The threat of weapons of mass destruction: Again, this argument lacks historical and political context for the purposes of propaganda. First and foremost, it was from 1988 till up to 1993 that the United States supplied chemical and biological weapons to Iraq. The U.S., U.K., and Germany were avid allies to Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war. We supplied them with arms, battlefield tactics, intelligence, and weapons of mass destruction to defeat the Ayatollah regime, which overthrew our puppet regime, the Shah. Around this time period chemical and biological weapons were strictly a Western technology that few other countries had the resources to develop independantly. The United States Center for Disease Control and the American Type Culture Collection sent a laundry list of deadly pathogens, toxins, and poisons to Iraq. This is outlined in more detail in this article from the West Virginia Gazette. Here is another article from the Washington Post that outlines how we went to bed with Iraq in the 1980's and early 1990's.

If there exists such a necessity to disarm unstable dictatorships of weapons of mass destruction, then perhaps Bush should start with the larger, more imminent threats. Threats such as India with their nuclear and chemical weapons, Pakistan with their nuclear and chemical weapons, Syria with their chemical weapons, Russia with their nuclear and biological weapons, China with their nuclear and chemical weapons, Egypt with their chemical and biological weapons, Iran with their nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, Israel with their nuclear weapons, North Korea with their nuclear weapons, the list goes on and on. It is also worth noting, in this pressing case for links to terrorism combined with weapons of mass destruction, that the Syrian, Egyptian, Iranian, Saudi Arabian, North Korean, and Pakistani governments ALL support terrorist groups with money, training, and safe haven. Iran and Saudi Arabia each donate over $100 million annually to the Hamas and Hezbollah, two equally potent anti-West terrorist groups. Iraq has no proven or documented ties to terrorist groups. The most you could connect the two are with Saddam's verbal endorsement of anti-Semitic activities in the Middle East. But that is a far cry from the imminent threat or terror-sponsoring that George Bush would like us to believe in.

Also worth noting is that while Egypt has chemical and biological weapons, there has never been a chemical or biological terrorist attack despite their financial and logistical ties to the Islamic Jihad of Egypt. While Pakistan supports the Sipah-e-Sahaba, an active terrorist group local to the region, there has never been a nuclear or chemical attack carried out against its targets either. Many more such examples exist where a government clearly tied to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction don't necessarily tie terrorists themselves to weapons of mass destruction.

So in context, there is no imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism in Iraq. Iraq has no priority in the allegded War on Terror. In fact, the Administration's futile efforts to link Saddam to terrorism includes what I can only describe as insults to public intelligence. First Bush told America that U.S. Intelligence found an al-Qaeda camp set up in Northern Iraq. However, he failed to also mention that Northern Iraq is completely controlled by United States Special Forces, has been for years. Second, Bush used a tape recording broadcast on Al Jazzera, an Arab newsgroup, as evidence that Saddam and Osama are linked. However, in that same tape recording, Osama bin-Laden urges Iraqis to rise up and oust Saddam Hussein from power. Osama bin-Laden is of the belief that religion and government are inseperable. Since the government of Iraq is secular, Osama sees Saddam as an illegitimate ruler because his regime does not follow Islamic law. Osama bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein are diametrically opposed in political ideology to begin with, so how can they now be brothers in arms? Currently there is no proven direct link to terrorism support in Iraq. That is a fact. Most people in the international community realize this fact and are highly doubtful that any such link exists.

4) Humanitarian concerns over human rights violations: Bush has repeatedly used the human rights concerns in Iraq and Afghanistan to press on for war. This is because from a propaganda point of view, human experience provides an emotional and moral necessity to fight and also helps to demonize the enemy and justify our cause--a very powerful tool of propaganda to be aware of. You will see the human rights card being pulled by the government frequently in every military campaign they press on for, a righteous cause indeed, but one that is very often misdirected in context to the current global issue of human rights...

To cite our government's total apathy towrads human rights, it was the United States that supplied the weapons used to gas over 5,000 Kurdish insurgents in Iraq. It was the United States that denied refuge-status to those Kurds that pleaded for it while stranded in Iraq. It was the United States and the United Kingdom that further militarized Saddam Hussein after the gas attacks in Iran. It was the Donald Rumsfeld that was re-establishing diplomacy with Iraq in 1983-1984, the same time Iraq used chemical weapons on their foes. It was Ronald Reagan that , vetoed a Senate initiative to deny Iraq U.S. techonology in the aftermath of his gas attack. So you see, the United States is very selective on who it chooses to demonize, when it chooses to demonize them, and for what reasons that they are evil. Often while striking their own involvement in the situation from record as well.

Regardless of this, if you want to build a case for war based on humanitarian crises, the nation of China has mass-murdered an estimated 72 million people in the past four decades. Every year in Africa, millions are mass murdered by rival warlords and factions, yet no attention is focused on those actions either. Off the top of my head: Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya, Nigeria, South Africa, Syria, Yemen, Singapore, China, Timor, Cyprus, Burma, Chechnya, Georgia, Bosnia, Croatia, Herzegovina, Latvia, all these regions are responsible for mass killings, mass purposeful starvation, rape, torture, oppression, etc, to a much higher degree than Iraq and in more recent times as well. In some regions the mass killings continue today! In the Sudan, human rights atrocities are being committed on a scale 400 times that of Iraq. Also worth noting is that Iraq's atrocities were committed 14 years ago, while Sudan's atrocities have been ongoing for the last 14 years. Iraq has no precedence in the world in the struggle for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

5) Liberation of a people from an evil tyrant: this is a common pretext for our global military involvements, but it is also most deceiving and fallacious. The United States intentionally puts these oppressive dictators in place in order to stagnate their national economies and force them to depend on foreign aid from us. Let me just cite Iran for an example: When Mossadiq liberated Iran from a British-backed tyrant, the US was supportive of its independence. That is until an oil embargo stagnated Iran's economy to the point where Mossadiq threatened to sell oil to the Soviet Union. At that point, the US and the British joined forces to reinstate the oppressive Shah in Operation Ajax. A political coup was successfully carried out to remove a progressive democratic leader and replace him with an oppressive feudal regime. With their ever so brief yet sweet taste of freedom, the Iran people became yet another bitter enemy of the United States for its credit in Operation Ajax.

In spite of the rhetoric of 'compassion and aid for the world's impoverished', we must remember how the owners of capital have always tried to prevent the development and accumulation of competing capital abroad. The world has a fixed amount of resources, a fixed amount of power. Power and wealth can only shift hands and so therefore the modern day conquest is in diminishing all other's ability to gain a transfer of power. Henry Kissinger realized this when we advised President Nixon to stop buying Middle Eastern oil with U.S. capital and start trading Middle Eastern oil for U.S. arms. This was primarily to preserve all the wealth and capital at home while simultaneously stimulating domestic industry with massive arms buy-ups. God forbid we give the Middle Eastern countries enough capital for them to build up their own markets and industries enough to compete with ours!

The Middle East has the potential to fold United States economic domination since crude oil, used for fuel and raw material, is so abundant and cheap. Labor is also extremely cheap in the region due to a lack of unionization. So the Middle East has the ability to undercut the United States and emerge as a new world power. Remember when the U.S. rose up in the Industrial Revolution, our strength was in industry and manufacturing. Since the Middle East has a free-flowing supply of raw materials and energy, they have ample opportunity to rise up in the same manner we did. This threat continues to be the driving force of U.S. foreign policy and thus our nation becomes a driving force for worldwide terrorism.

FURTHER READING

Bitter Ironies Of Propaganda, Media Lens

A U.S. Invasion of Iraq Can Be Stopped, Foreign Policy in Focus

UN resolution: Dangerous ambiguity, Asia Times

Unilateral Power: By Any Other Name, ZNet

US pressure on smaller Security Council members to vote for war, CIIR

U.S. Arm-twisting Over Iraq War, Institute for Policy Studies

Let Them Hate as Long as They Fear, New York Times

US plan to bug Security Council, The Observer

The U.S. will not release vital evidence against Iraq, YellowTimes.org

USA censors Iraq Report, DemocracyNow.org

Blix Says He Saw Nothing to Prompt a War, New York Times

Claims and evaluations of Iraq's proscribed weapons, Traprock Peace Center

Inspectors Call U.S. Tips 'Garbage', CBS News

The Pure Essence of Stupid, Truth Out

Iraq and Arms Inspectors - The Big Lie, Part 1, Media Lens

Iraq and Arms Inspectors - The Big Lie, Part 2, Media Lens

Turning Towards Iraq, Media Lens

Naked Power: How 'benign' Western Politicians And 'objective' Media Lead Whole Nations Into War, ZNet

Responses to Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, Institute for Public Accuracy

The Gunfight at the UN Corral - Pressing the Press on Iraq, GlobalVision News Network

Powell Addresses the UNSC to Argue for a First-Strike Attack on Iraq; Most of His Claims Can't Be Verified, DemocracyNow.org

Blood Money, t r u t h o u t.org

Responses to Bush's 2003 "State of the Union" Address, Institute for Public Accuracy