TWO CITIES

In 1973, my wife and I visited London on our honeymoon. The city intrigued us for many reasons. But, we only spent a month in Great Britain before returning to the U.S.

After we returned to Rhode Island, something became apparent to us that we never experienced before. London was special and we couldn’t forget the city. In 1975, we moved to London and lived there for six years.

Before I moved to London, I had been to many major U.S. cities: New York, Boston, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta and others. They were interesting to visit, but none was London.

One can not achieve the totality of any city within a month’s visit. It takes much longer and the person must live among the Londoners, not just be a visitor.

In our first year in London, we learned much. We saw scenes of happiness among the people. It was so different for us to see the morning crowd of kids walking to their schools. Many had school uniforms and they all looked quite happy, despite their having to spend the next few hours in a classroom. Scenes like this are rare in the U.S. Most kids go to school by bus or are driven by relatives or friends. We never saw the swarms of kids walking to school that London produced.

The great public transportation system was another highlight. There was no place in London where one was not within walking distance of a bus stop, train station, or underground station. All the various methods of transportation were linked so that one could go to any area of London and not be far from his/her destination.

After a year, the culture shock had worn off and my wife and I had new British friends. I became involved in baseball and basketball promotion, so I visited many areas of Greater London. During these travels, I noticed the uniqueness of areas that was lacking in the U.S. Sure, many U.S. cities have a Chinatown or another area that is inhabited by people who originated from countries outside the U.S. But, they were not as deeply rooted as the various parts of London. Plus, I once read that there are 50 distinct accents of the English language in London alone. After a while, one can almost tell where a person lives and his/her place in the class structure of Britain just by the accent used.

One thing that was very interesting is the affinity that Londoners had for their city, regardless of their politics, religion or lack of, class, and style of dress. If the English national football team was playing at Wembley Stadium, you could always count on a sellout crowd of close to 100,000 people. Working class mingled with the upper class. They looked different from each other and surely cast their ballots for different candidates in elections, but they cheered for the same team.

In 1947, Hubert Gregg, from the Islington area of London composed the song, "Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner." It quickly became an anthem. During my stay in London, I must have heard the song hundreds of times. You hear it in pubs, schools, clubs, anywhere one can break out in song. And, whether working class, middle class, or upper class, Brits always took advantage of making an excuse to sing the song. The lyrics are short and poignant. Only the people singing it can choose how many times they want to repeat the verses:

I moved from London to The Netherlands in September 1980 to pursue a baseball coaching career in the Dutch major league. I spent two years in The Netherlands and became burned out on baseball. Since the age of eight, I was addicted. Finally, after 26 years, I kicked the habit.

My next move was to San Diego in the U.S. Because of changing countries three times in a few years, it took a little while for me to re-gain my adoration for London. But, today I consider the six years I lived there to be the finest of my life in many ways. I learned much and began to look at the world through different eyes. When I returned to the U.S., I realized that my new view of the world did not necessarily fit in with the citizenry. Most U.S. citizens have never traveled outside their own country and they would tell me that they were proud of that fact. To them, living in another country was tantamount to being a traitor.

So, where is all this talk of London taking me? I do have a point to make.

A few days ago, the website www.uruknet.info ran a piece that showed dozens of pictures of Baghdad prior to the March 2003 invasion. I saw all the kids going to school with smiles on their faces. I saw street vendors. I saw buildings that were hundreds of years old and I saw modern buildings. I saw parks. And, I saw a great diversity of clothing worn by the Baghdad residents. I saw London all over again. The signs were in a different language and the clothing styles varied from those of Londoners. But, I saw Baghdad as a special city: one that the people adored, regardless of background.

Today’s Baghdad is far different. A couple of days ago, a major study called Baghdad the most violent city in the world. That is no designation to be proud of. Just a couple of decades ago, Western press called Baghdad the "Paris of the Middle East." Now, it’s nothing more than a sewage-ridden city with people begging for water and food. They are imprisoned behind concrete walls that separate neighborhoods. If they wear the wrong clothes, they may be shot. In 2006, the entire Iraqi national tennis team was shot to death on a street in Baghdad for wearing shorts. The once Paris of the Middle East is now the shithole of the world. Despite all this, the quisling government in the Green Zone and the U.S. administration are speaking of the great success of the new "democratic Iraq." Unfortunately, the brain-dead public of the U.S. has been manipulated enough to believe it. If you take a look at some obese person, swilling his beer while watching his favorite football team on TV, all the time farting and bragging about how loud he can perform the feat, he will tell you about the great successes in Iraq.

Let’s turn the situation around and compare the fate of Baghdad and if a similar destruction of London occurred. The new London would have many warning signs erected in a language they did not understand. Each unique section would be walled off from the rest of London. If a person in Chelsea wanted to visit a relative in nearby Richmond, it would take all day just to make the trip, all the time having the traveler’s eyes scanned to see if his/her irises matched those on record of the authorities. This few-mile journey would include several checkpoints.

Wembley Stadium would be in ruins. The national English football team would be massacred because they wore shorts. Southall, an area populated by many Indians and Pakistanis would be shut completely off from the rest of London. No longer would the vendors be able to show their goods on the street and no longer would a visitor be able to smell the fragrance of the smells coming from the fruit or spice stands erected on the street. Plus, all Hindus, or Muslims would be terrified to leave their houses because the new rulers would have designated England to be an official country of one religion only.

Earl’s Court, an area in which many gays live and socialize would be leveled and the population would be hunted down and killed for its sexual orientation.

The River Thames would be so polluted that health of people living nearby would be threatened. Big Ben would be a pile of rubble. Pubs would be shut down and anyone seen drinking alcohol would be subject to torture or death.

In 1978, Jeff Wayne released an album called "War of the Worlds." It was based on the same story broadcast in the U.S. in 1938 in which Martians invade Earth and destroy everything in their way. Jeff Wayne’s version is about London, however, not New Jersey, the location mentioned in the first War of the Worlds broadcast. The album is a mixture of narration, music, and illustrations. The destruction of the Houses of Parliament is depicted, as well as the blowing up of all the bridges that cross the River Thames. People have no food and they panic. Much of Jeff Wayne’s rendition is eerily similar to the March 2003 invasion and ensuing destruction of Baghdad by Western forces. There sre fire and explosions. The public panics and has no where to escape. I would recommend anyone who has not heard Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds to obtain at least some of the portions of the production and listen to how London was ravaged and burnt just the way Baghdad was. However, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds is fiction. Baghdad’s destruction is not.

London is still London. Baghdad is no longer Baghdad. I only wish British people, or anyone who has visited London, put themselves in the shoes of the people of Baghdad today. They would not be able to envision such a destroyed and walled London. The sad part of all this is that it was a Brit, living in London at the time, Tony Blair, who so readily offered military activity to destroy Baghdad. And, he was proud of his actions, according to recent statements by him.

The people like Blair, Bush and all those politicians who supported the invasion of Iraq are nothing better than filth. Yet they were the ones who called for Baghdad’s demise. While Iraqis are scrambling for a liter of non-toxic drinking water, the architects of the March 2003 invasion are bragging about their accomplishments over cocktails and some phony party held in honor of the great strength of the U.S.

It is amazing how blind most of the human race is.

WALLS

U.S. citizens, for the most part, are gullible about anything their government officials say about security. Just mention "security," and a politician gets a free ride, costing billions of dollars, in concocting some ridiculous plan to "enhance the security of the American people." Few object or show the illogic of such schemes. But, the politician running for office who out-securities his/her opponent will usually win. A common phrase used by politicians so they can gain votes is to accuse his/her opponent of being "soft on security." Immediately, the person labeled with this idiotic title would be ostracized and considered "un-American."

On the other hand, most U.S. citizens pride themselves on the fact that the U.S. is an open society, much more than other nations of the world. But, while talking of such freedoms, each day, the rights of U.S. citizens are being trampled in the halls of Congress or in the White House.

Let’s look at one aspect of the new security measures for the U.S. — the border fence between the U.S. and Mexico. So far, billions of dollars have been spent on this debacle. Before its construction, the quotes given for the construction of the fence were about one or two billion dollars. Nobody even checked reality. It is now anticipated that the project, if finished, will cost in excess of 50 billion dollars.

For decades, the U.S. citizenry had been told that fences and walls were despicable anywhere in the world. Then, the Soviet Union would be blasted for the presence of the Berlin Wall. Every American grew up with this image of walls being terrible things that keep people inside, not to protect against people trying to enter from the outside.

Today, walls and fences are in vogue. The Palestinians of the West Bank are being split apart daily by new walls being erected by Israel. Gaza is also being "walled in." But, the U.S. heralds this as an astute method for Israel to protect itself, despite many observers calling Gaza one huge prison.

A former B-grade actor who was elected president of the U.S. once exclaimed, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," while he stood in front of the Berlin Wall. Today, there is no Berlin wall, but the same government that gave Gorbachev the order is either assisting in the building of walls to keep people apart, or not admonishing those who are building walls.

In 2007, various sections of Baghdad were walled-in and checkpoints erected. To add salt to the wounds, the cement used to make the concrete for these walls was purchased from Israel. The only thing the walls did was to accelerate the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad.

Now, the Iraqi quislings who are running the show want to outdo the U.S. plan of placing various walls inside Iraq. They want to build a wall around the entire city.

According to a recent report in the Financial Channel:

Before March 2003, who could have envisaged Baghdad with a wall around it? Despite the city undergoing a deadly embargo, it was still the capital of the Arab world. Today, it is laden with destroyed buildings and lakes of sewage. The Iraqi stooges say they want to protect Baghdad from "terrorists," many of whom, in reality, are not terrorists, but resistance fighters. The illogic challenges one’s imagination.

Missing from this scenario are the voices of the people who used the Berlin Wall as a scapegoat of totalitarianism. They are either mute, or they advocate a wall around Baghdad. After all, some contractors from the West will surely have a part in grabbing some of the money allocated for the job. Baghdad has little electricity and hardly any drinking water, but a brand new huge concrete wall surrounding the city is deemed more important than water and electricity for the inhabitants.

At one time, the people on the Earth lived without walls. Then, humankind began to go to war with each other, so communities built walls to protect themselves from the outsiders, who had to climb the walls to get into the protected area. Many of the attacking soldiers were killed while trying to scale these walls.

Then, the military brains of the day figured out that if they could propel objects over the walls, the people inside would be helpless to stop the projectiles. Walls became higher and surrounding areas were made difficult to travel on, so the missiles weren’t powerful enough to create havoc. But, the instruments used to shoot the missiles were made stronger and the people inside the walls lost their false sense of security. This balance has been going on for millennia.

What will Baghdad’s wall become: an element of protection for the citizens of Baghdad, or a costly white elephant of a project that will enslave the people of Baghdad?

One thing I know for sure, I have yet to hear a U.S. administration official say, "Mr. Maliki, tear down this wall."

ONCE UPON A TIME …

Once upon a time, there was a country called Iraq. It was prosperous and had an abundance of oil that not only fueled the nation’s energy needs, but it provided incomes for families and also revenues to build a modern infrastructure.

This oil was nationalized by the Iraqi government in 1973. Other emerging nations also had much of this black gold, but they either gave it away to foreign firms, receiving a small percentage as a sales commission, or they squandered it as the new governments that replaced their former imperial masters copied the ways of their former occupiers by allocating the revenues to a small circle of elite friends. Those who fought the occupiers for independence quickly took on the same tactics as their former rulers.

Iraq was different. From 1973 on, the oil that came from Iraq created revenues that were given to the people. Within a decade, Iraq, a nation that had a 30% literacy rate in 1973, was declared "illiteracy free" by the UN.

The new Iraq looked and acted nothing like the old Iraq. Modern superhighways criss-crossed the nation. Housing was abundant and moderately priced. Iraqi doctors and educators were visiting Arab countries and supplying them with their knowledge, all at no cost to the recipients of the benevolent actions of the Iraqi medical and education systems. The country was comprised of people from various racial and religious backgrounds, but all citizens proudly called themselves "Iraqi."

Iraq’s success was not viewed in a positive light by all, however. Its neighbor Iran, who had just experienced a revolution against the Shah, quickly transformed itself into a theocracy. Its new president, Ayatollah Khomeini quickly stated, "My eyes are on Baghdad." Khomeini never realized his goal, however. A determined and proud Iraqi military thwarted Iran’s plans to create a "greater Persia."

By now, Iraq had grown too economically and culturally for the U.S. and Iran. Plans were put into motion to degrade Iraq and rid the country of the same government that made Iraq worth fighting for. It took about 15 years, but Iraq was finally destroyed.

The new rulers were Iraqis who had not lived in their home country for decades. Iranian influence quickly came to the forefront as they and their Iraqi stooges began to transform Iraq into their idea of what the country should be. And, the results have been quite ugly. Prior to 2003, the Iraqi public enjoyed heavy metal music and rock n’ roll. The new regime changed this and anyone who plays or listens this style of music quickly disappears and his/her body is found floating in a river, with or without a head. Women used to wear stylish clothes, such as mini skirts and slacks and jeans. If they walked out their own doors today dressed in such a manner, they would disappear and probably never be seen again. Four years ago, the Iraqi national tennis team was assassinated on a Baghdad street for wearing tennis shorts, an "un-Islamic" act according to the authorities.

Under the Ba’ath regime, honor killings virtually disappeared. The civil law of the country construed such actions as murder and the few who participated once the Ba’ath were in power, were tried and sentenced for murder. Last year alone, more than 2,000 honor killings occurred in the Kurdish area of Iraq. No one stood trial for murder.

Since 2003, more than a million Iraqis have lost their lives either by being the targets of US military hardware, or by the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing by death squads who paid allegiance to Iran. Baghdad has now been ethnically cleansed.

The nation that took pride in its heritage is now in shambles. There are no more Iraqis. The inhabitants of this area are now Shia, Sunni, Chaldean, Assyrian, Turkomen, Kurds and other minority factions. Iraqi’s enemies even took away the name for the nationality of the people living in Iraq.

Today’s Iraq has little electricity, little garbage collection, next to no healthy drinking water. The diminishing number of farmers can’t even plant crops using their own seeds. Iraq’s temporary viceroy, Paul Bremer, made sure that Iraqi farmers had to purchase genetically modified seeds from Monsanto. Signs in the south of Iraq are popping up in the Farsi language, not Arabic.

The recent "elections" in Iraq were heralded as the beginning of a prosperous and free nation. Nothing is further from the truth. The two main presidential candidates were foreigners. Ayad Allawi possesses a British passport and he lives in Wimbledon. Nouri al-Maliki is a proven terrorist who attempted to assassinate the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, as well as its foreign minister, Tariq Aziz. He spent most of the three decades preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq in Iran and Syria. And the West is in such denial that it thinks these two men are held in high esteem by the Iraqi citizenry.

Today’s Iraq is a shithole. There is nothing to indicate that it will once again be the jewel of the Arab world that it once was only a few decades ago. In the past, Iraq was looked upon with dignity by Iraqis and foreigners alike. Today, it is considered to be a ruined Third World county. Even the easily-acquired billions of dollars of cash that was stolen by Western governments and employees, as well as Iraqi stooges, after the 2003 invasion has dried up. In theory, this money was meant to rebuild the destroyed nation of Iraq. In reality, it just greased the palms of many foreigners and quislings.

The only chance Iraq has to regain its former status lies with the Iraqi resistance, which is still conducting daily attacks on US bases or against Iraqi sellouts who assisted the US and Iran in taking over Iraq. In the international community, Iraq is considered a non-entity. But, not so long ago, this was not the case.

The US has flooded the media with information stating that the "new" Iraq is flourishing and the choice to undertake "regime change" worked wonderfully. But, the reality is that this propaganda is a fairy tale. And fairy tales are for kids.

IRAQ ELECTS TERRORIST

The recent Iraqi elections did provide one positive aspect: they were even more absurd than a Three Stooges episode.

First, we had the current faux president of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki. I don’t have to write much about him because most people are aware of his ludicrous and deadly actions as "Butcher-in-Charge" who is stationed in the Green Zone of Baghdad. If he were to greet the people, in the same manner of his predecessor, President Saddam Hussein, his body parts would be strewn all over Iraq. It would be no stretch of the imagination to assume he is a major stockholder in the U.S. firm Black and Decker, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of drills. However, the U.S. company markets their drills to do-it-yourself handymen to make improvements on their houses. Al-Maliki used the drills to test how long a human being could live while having his head drilled.

His main opponent was Ayad Allawi, a has-been former "prime minister" of Iraq. His tenure was short-lived. The Iraqi people did not take him seriously. In an act meant to outdo al-Maliki and his ilk, Allawi once lined six young men, who were arrested and not charged with any crime, against a wall and shot them in the head with his revolver.

The Iraqi people had no real choice in the elections. It was Murderer #1 versus Murderer #2. Despite their so-called differences, both shared a similar past: neither had lived in Iraq for decades prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Both praised the U.S. invasion and, recently, Allawi went out of his way to profusely thank the U.S. for the losses it suffered while "freeing" Iraq.

Many people are well aware of al-Maliki’s past few years of murderous activities. Few, however, realize that in the 1990s, Allawi was the force behind the killing of more than 100 innocent Iraqi civilians at various venues, such as bus stops and cinemas. The word "terrorist" is used in broad terms by various groups and causes. Allawi’s actions qualify him to be a terrorist no matter what definition is used.

At a press conference in November 2001, George Bush stated:

Let’s take a look at a terrorist who eventually became Iraq’s prime minister. On May 28, 2004, when the U.S. government announced that Ayad Allawi would become Iraq’s interim prime minister, most people asked, "Who?" Before this time, he was unknown to the U.S. public

Ayad Allawi was an Iraqi exile living in London. When he first moved to London, he was a member of Iraq’s Ba’ath Party. Shortly after, he changed sides and sold his services to the British spy agency MI6. Later on, he collaborated with the CIA as well.

In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration had placed the assassination of Saddam Hussein at the top of its agenda, albeit in a covert manner. The plan was for Iraqi dissidents to meet in the north of Iraq (at the time under the protection of U.S. forces) and march to Baghdad. The U.S. was to supply air power and weapons.

Allawi was the man for the job. He was in charge of a U.S.-sponsored Iraqi expatriate group called the Iraqi National Accord (INA). The first part of the operation was to create havoc in Baghdad. For months in 1995, INA agents blew up bus stops, cinemas and stores in Baghdad. At least 150 civilians were killed and many more injured.

Syndicated columnist Eric Margolis of the Toronto Sun was one of the few journalists who wrote about the plan. In his column, "The Bay of Camels," of August 25, 1997, he stated, "Terrorism is bad, it seems, when used against Americans or Israelis, but fine when used against Iraqis."

The title of Margolis’ column was a mockery of the "Bay of Pigs" invasion by Cuban dissidents backed by the U.S. that turned into an embarrassing defeat. The Iraqi debacle in 1996 had similar implications, yet gained little publicity.

The Iraqis discovered who was behind the terrorist attacks and arrested INA agents in Baghdad. In addition, Iraqi special agents had already infiltrated the would-be insurgents. The scheduled invasion was doomed before it began. Infiltration by Iraqi government assets, along with a decision by the U.S. not to supply air cover, made it a non-starter.

At the time, a civil war was raging in the north of Iraq between the two largest Kurdish factions. One of their leaders, Massoud Barzani, asked Saddam Hussein for help in putting down his rivals. The payoff for Iraq was that Barzani alerted the Iraqis to the huge CIA operation in Irbil, in the north of Iraq. Iraqi troops destroyed the CIA program and helped Barzani take over Irbil, then they returned to Baghdad.

After the failed coup, Allawi was protected by the U.S. and he fled to England, although he still was a major behind-the-scenes player involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Many know of the escapades of Ahmed Chalabi and his group, the INC, but Allawi was just as important to the U.S. and he continued his work for the CIA after the failed strategy to get rid of Saddam.

On November 13, 2004, The Spectator, a British publication, ran a feature by Andrew Gilligan called "The Strongman of Baghdad." According to the article:

The "ringing up the CIA" to which Gilligan refers consisted of an Iraqi officer calling a CIA agent in Amman, Jordan, who was anxiously awaiting word of how the operation was progressing. When the CIA operative answered, the Iraqi officer said, "Gotcha!"

Allawi continued to rake in the revenues from the British and American intelligence agencies. He, like Chalabi, continued to turn out the most outrageous allegations about Saddam Hussein and Iraq. The more preposterous, the better. Gilligan added:

Allawi’s acts of terrorism, lying, and bilking the U.S. and Britain of millions of dollars were well-rewarded: he was appointed Iraq’s prime minister. As the leader of a quisling government, Allawi had virtually no support and the people of Iraq did not respect him. Even Saddam Hussein’s opponents who lived in Iraq their whole lives despised Allawi.

The U.S. spent millions of dollars listening to advice on Iraq, but those they asked for information always gave them the wrong information. Not one penny was spent on listening to the opinion of Iraqis in Iraq, not exiles living in luxury who had no idea of Iraqi attitudes. Gilligan summed it up:

Let’s go back to the 1996 "Bay of Camels" debacle and look at how then President Bill Clinton handled the affair. He had to take some military action against Iraq, yet he could not admit that the U.S. ran the world’s largest CIA operation in Irbil and that it had been completely knocked out.

On September 3, 1996, Clinton told the press:

There was not one word about the CIA operation or that the Iraqi army defended against an assassination attempt. The most curious aspect of Clinton’s explanation was the area in which the missiles were sent. If Iraqi troops were "abusing" the Iraqi people in Irbil in the north of Iraq, logic would say that a military response would have been conducted in the north. But, Clinton added:

Iraq did not conduct "offensive operations" in the south. It was in the north. Even a few reporters asked why the south of Iraq was whacked when the Iraqi troops were in the north. Clinton gave a feeble excuse and the press bought it.

The reason Clinton sent any cruise missiles was because of the outcry from Congress to retaliate, but, he could not tell the truth. At the time, the press had no information about the huge CIA operation that had been destroyed.

The operation was not un-noticed by Congress. Most members knew of the CIA operation, but were tight-lipped. After the fiasco, the Democrats tried to downplay the event, while the Republicans went for the jugular.

A document from the House Republican Policy Committee, called "U.S. Intelligence Debacle Worst Since the Bay of Pigs," was released on October 8, 1996. The report was primarily an attack on Bill Clinton’s "weakness" on Iraq, but, much information was included of which the U.S. public was unaware. According to the report:

Though it was the Republicans who brought out the real facts about the debacle in Irbil, they did not do so for altruistic reasons or to enlighten the U.S. public about situations in Iraq. The report was a partisan swipe at a Democrat president. In fact, before the situation turned sour, most Republicans supported the idea of trying to have Saddam Hussein overthrown from within.

The main U.S. asset, Allawi, was quickly transported out of Iraq with most of the U.S. agents. The Iraqi stooges, who thought they were being well-protected, were left defenseless against the Iraqi troops and they paid a hefty price.

Allawi is in the major leagues of terrorists. But, the U.S. has protected him and Allawi now splits his time between an expensive, well-guarded house in Jordan, and another residence in London. Some working class Moslem may get arrested in his house in the U.S. and accused of being a terrorist because of his reading material, but one of the world’s most notorious terrorists is protected by the same government that said there will be no safe haven for any terrorist in the world

THE INTEGRITY OF SADDAM HUSSEIN

It seems like an eternity since Iraq was invaded and destroyed in 2003. It’s hard to believe that less than seven years ago, Iraq was a functioning country, even though it was under an encompassing embargo. Nine months after the invasion, Saddam Hussein was kidnapped by U.S. forces and three years later, he was hanged by a bunch of masked cowards. This three-year period gave a chance for the world to see the real Saddam Hussein: a man of integrity who would not abandon his cause of Iraqi independence.

In November 2006, everyone heard the verdict that Saddam Hussein will be hanged. And, many people read the obligatory remarks from the stooge Iraqi government and the U.S. and U.K. governments. I will not get involved with these idiotic statements. All those who praised the decision did not take into consideration that the verdict would make Iraq a much more deadly place that it already was.

I will talk about Saddam Hussein, the man. This is not a history of his regime, but a view of him and his steadfastness after April 9, 2003.

To me, it is hard to conceive how a man of his age endured more than a lifetime of hardship, torture and personal bereavement in less than four years without losing his mental faculties or selling out to his opponents.

In July 2003, Saddam Hussein saw photos of his two dead sons on television. Their bodies were ridden with bullet holes. His 14-year-old grandson was killed along with his sons in the hours-long attack on a house by hundreds of U.S. military personnel. The U.S. government probably considered it to be in bad taste to exhibit the grandson’s body on television.

In December 2003, Saddam was kidnapped by U.S. forces. However, he was not found in a "spider hole" as the commonly-accepted myth states. He was surrounded in a friend’s house by U.S. Marines. For a while, he fought it out with the Marines, but finally surrendered because he and his friend were well-outnumbered.

For the next two days, Saddam was drugged and tortured. Then, the U.S. administration showed a disheveled Saddam to the world in an attempt to denigrate him. Although he had been captured two days earlier in a house, the administration made it appear that the pictures they showed of Saddam were taken on the spot of his apprehending. The attempt at degradation backfired. Within minutes of the pictures being shown in Iraq, thousands took to the streets in pro-Saddam demonstrations.

For the next few months, he was not allowed to see a lawyer. In that time, he was tortured and questioned. Also, he was offered deals by the U.S. that would get him an "out of jail free" pass if he cooperated. He never capitulated to their whims.

Saddam Hussein was not allowed to see his family. Most of his correspondence to them was either not delivered, or highly censored. By now, most humans would be willing to say anything their captors desired.

One day, I was talking to my friend Frank Morrow who produced the finest political show ever on U.S. television: Alternative Views. We discussed how Manuel Noriega collapsed in a few days in U.S. incarceration and spilled his guts. Frank said to me, "Saddam is made of sterner stuff." He could not have been more accurate.

On his first day in court, Saddam was a few minutes late. The judge asked him why he was not on time and Saddam told him that the elevators of the building were not working. The judge then said he would ask the Americans to try to fix the faulty lifts. Saddam looked the judge in the eye and said, "Don’t ask them. You tell them. You are an Iraqi." The judge was silent. The accused prisoner had to give him a lesson in citizenship.

We have read page-after-page of the illegality of Saddam’s trials. The anomalies are far too many to address in this column. However, with each preposterous turn, Saddam kept his ground and never capitulated to the court.

For months, every conceivable scenario emerged: Saddam was dragged out of court; his lawyers were kicked out of court; defense witnesses were tortured by the court; the judge destroyed a videotape that clearly showed the head prosecutor was lying; and Saddam and a few of his comrades went on hunger strikes.

Still, he showed up in court with the wit and physical appearance of a man decades younger. All the atrocities committed against him never made him appear to be desperate and he never showed signs of caving in.

Headlines of the day portrayed outrage from various groups, individuals and governments over the verdict. Many tried to get the U.N. to intervene in the fiasco, but the chances of justice were slim to none.

I read many quotes from Saddam’s foes and friends after the verdict. Two stick out. The most preposterous comes from the traitor Nouri al-Maliki, the so-called Iraqi prime minister:

The statement is so incredible that most people who read it will believe it. Since Maliki’s appointment, we read about hundreds of professors, scientists and doctors being killed in Iraq by agents of the Malaki government. During Saddam’s time, these professionals flourished and were the pride of Iraq. Malaki has now added them to the long list of fictitious victims of Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Here’s a very courageous quote from Haitham, a 42-year-old resident of Mosul:

Shortly after the verdict, I received a message from someone who is knowledgeable about occurrences on the ground in Iraq. It stated:

Of course, the U.S. press did show any of these photos.

In the U.S., we have the term "family values" shoved down our throats. But, it does not apply to those who are not U.S. citizens. We have already seen how the U.S. treated Saddam’s sons and grandson. One company, called "Herbuilders" quickly produced a doll for kids to play with called "Uday, Dead on Arrival," that showed bullet holes and blood. I can only imagine how quickly this company would be put out of business and charged with a criminal offense if it offered the same doll depicting a U.S. soldier.

The U.S. government (Republican and Democrat alike) are the monsters, not Saddam Hussein. They are perverted and have an affinity for violence and delight in showing the bodies of dead enemies like they are trophies. But, the same people are aghast if someone utters an obscenity or make a joke about the president of the U.S. They are the misfits in the world who should be subjected to a show trial and then unceremoniously dropped into a hole in the ground. This is their version of "family values."

THEY GOT THE WRONG GUYS

On Monday, January 25, 2010, Ali Hassain al-Majid, better known as "Chemical Ali" was hanged by Iranian-backed Iraqi stooges. Slightly more than thee years ago, Iraq’s President, Saddam Hussein, was executed as well be the same Iran-lovers. Both shared the dubious title of having gassed Iraq’s Kurdish population at Halabjah in 1988. However, few people in the West checked out any facts to verify the guilt or innocence of the two Iraqi leaders.

THe most damaging and damning incident for the Iraqi leadership was the gassing of Halabjah, a Kurdish town, in 1988. Halabjah came under attack with chemicals and the world saw the tragedy as people were strewn on the streets. However, the media did not pay a great amount of attention to the incident and it quickly was replaced in the international press.

In the buildup to Desert Storm, Bush I took the Halabjah gassing out of the closet and he made great strides in gaining support for a military conclusion to the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq. All of a sudden we heard him tell the world, "He gasses his own people."

That statement was made so many times by administration officials that it became a household cliché. The problem is that no one ever checked out its authenticity. A few months after Desert Storm, Greenpeace published an in-depth study called On Impact about the reasons for the Gulf War massacre and how, in the future, war should be a last option instead of a first choice. A portion of the report covered the demonizing of the Iraqi leadership. It brought out many lies Bush used to persuade the world to support military intervention. Then, it addressed the Halabjah incident and threw doubt on whose military forces attacked the town with chemical weapons. On Impact quoted two writers from the U.S. Army War College who wrote a book called Iraqi Power and Security in the Middle East. They concluded:

This short statement is devastating in many aspects. If doubt is cast on who gassed the Kurds, many people in American politics will not come out smelling squeaky clean on the issue of integrity. A considerable number of persons stated: "I would not support a war except that Saddam gassed his own people." .

A document from the U.S. Marine Corps contradicted the popular belief of Saddam Hussein being the perpetrator of the gassing incident at Halabjah. On December 10, 1990, a little over a month before Desert Storm began, a document titled "Marine Corps Historical Publication FMFRP 3-203" was released. The main topic was "Lessons Learned: Iran-Iraq War." Appendix B referred to "Chemical Weapons." The report went into the Iraqi use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War and concluded that Iraq used mustard gas, a non-lethal agent, to disperse human waves of Iranian soldiers. Then, it approached the gassing of the Kurds at Halbjah:

It is unlikely that the U.S. Marine Corps would tell its troops, who were about to face combat, a lie perpetrated by propaganda. It was okay for Bush to con the world, but the Marines attempted to research the incident and get its people ready for battle.

The fact that the U.S. Marines "concluded" that Iran gassed the Kurds of Halbjah was not the only striking portion of this document. It questioned the number of deaths. Researchers have come forward who state that several hundred bodies were found, not 5,000.

By 2002, various individuals had time to dissect the reality of Halabjah and in the buildup to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, many came forward to challenge the "he gasses his own people" statement. Included in the naysayers were retired CIA analysts, retired military personnel, journalists and others. They uncovered much proof to show that Iran may have gassed the Halabjah Kurds.

Stephen Pelletiere was the CIA senior analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. From the gassing incident at Halabjah until today, he maintains that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds. On January 31, 2003, the New York Times published a commentary by Pelletiere called "A War Crime or an Act of War?" The article dispelled many myths about the "he gasses his own people" statement:

Pelletiere mentioned many other aspects of the battle in which Halabjah was positioned between the Iraqi and Iranian forces. He also delved into the importance of Halabjah’s location because of water systems and the nearby Darbandikhan Dam. Pelletiere added:

Pelletiere’s piece raised only a few eyebrows, yet it was comprehensive and accurate. The administration had already put forth so much propaganda that the truth was not going to be approached by the mainstream media. Pelletiere’s account should have been the pivotal subject on all the talk shows and in the print media, but it was largely ignored. He concluded:

The basic facts of what happened in Halabjah have been corroborated by the CIA, the U.S. Army War College, and the United States Intelligence Agency. Mohammed al-Obaidi, a university professor in the United Kingdom, who was born and educated in Baghdad, brings up these facts as well as the more recent assessment of the U.S. government that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds in his article of December 20, 2004, titled "What Happened in Kurdish Halabjah?" that was published by various Internet media:

The late Jude Wanniski was relentless in his pursuit of the truth about Iraq. He was an unlikely ally because he was a conservative author and journalist and at one time the associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. However, he possessed unbreakable integrity and truth meant more to him than a political stance.

Wanniski wrote hundreds of thousands of words about Iraq and challenged any journalist who relayed the falsehoods of Iraq to clarify his/her research. None responded. In addition, he issued the same invitation to every U.S. politician who had denigrated Iraq using false information. The result was the same as with the journalists.

On February 18, 2004, Wanniski wrote a column called "Defending Saddam, not President Bush." He stated:

Jude Wanniski was on top of the Iraq issue like no one else. I have written about the date of July 18, 2004 being one of extreme importance because Tony Blair announced to the world that 5,000 bodies had been found in mass graves in Iraq, not the 400,000 he had told the world in November 2004. Before this statement had time to be uploaded to the Internet, Wanniski sent me this message: "I suppose you saw that Downing Street now says "5000" bodies have been unearthed, not 400,000. JW."

The relentless search for truth was paramount with Wanniski. He died at his computer while writing an article about Iraq on August 29, 2005. The world lost an incredible human being who defied his own acquaintances with his principled stand.

There are a couple of issues that should make anyone with an inquisitive mind question the story-line of various U.S. administrations about Halabjah. First, many pictures and videos have been shown of Iraqi planes and helicopters in the air that supposedly unleashed the gas on the Kurds. The problem with this scenario is that the gas was dispersed by artillery, not from the air. Artillery rounds were found to be the culprit, not bombs.

Secondly, not one person from the Iraqi military has come forth to say he was involved with the operation: not one pilot, nor a supply person, nor a truck driver, nor a clerk. There was, and probably still is, a huge amount of cash awaiting an Iraqi military participant in the gassing of the Kurds who will come forward. The oft-said statement that "Saddam would kill him or his family" is no longer relevant. This lack of someone claiming the bounty is probably the best evidence to refute the general impression that "he gasses his own people."

Ali Majid got caught up in the propaganda and was dubbed "Chemical Ali" by the Western press. However, no one in Iraq ever called him that. Most Iraqis, whether pro or anti-Saddam did not believe the gassing of the Kurds was committed by Iraqi troops. They were befuddled by such stories put forth by Western news sources.

Those who put the hangman’s noose on both Saddam Hussein and Ali Majid are far more responsible for the gassing of the Kurds than Saddam or Ali ever were.

#3

On January 1, 2010, I and a few dozen friends commemorated the life of President Saddam Hussein, who was murdered three years ago by the U.S., Iraqi stooges, and Iranian-backed death squads. This was our third commemoration. We always meet on January 1 of each year, instead of the actual date of Saddam’s assassination, because it is a national holiday in the U.S. and most people don’t have to go to work.

This year’s event was, as last year’s, held at my house. It was the most-attended of any of our commemorations. More than 40 people participated. The group was diverse. About a third of them were female. The ages of those assembled were from 21 to 92. There were Rastafarians, Guyanese, Portuguese, Iraqis, Colombians, Mexicans, Canadians and US citizens. They came from all walks of life: professors, cement truck drivers, school teachers, linguists, professional wrestlers, restaurant workers, publishers, and retired people, among others.

Normally, we have a party that mostly consists of a short discussion about Saddam and everyone states a few words. Then, they feast on the great food that took my wife and mother-in-law two days to make. This meeting was different. The discussion lasted for over three hours. Five hours after the celebration began, there were still a half dozen people at my house discussing the legacy of Saddam Hussein.

I asked a few people who live in other parts of the U.S. or in foreign countries, to send me messages about their thoughts of Saddam. Some had even worked with him over the years. Most are people who never met Saddam, but realize his achievements, despite the lies and propaganda thrust on him over the years. Below are the statements sent to me. Some are brief and others are quite long. But, they all show their admiration for Saddam Hussein and his accomplishments. I read them to the people and all were impressed and learned a little more about Iraq’s great president.

_______________________________________________________

Saddam Hussein was one of the great leaders of the past several decades. This statement may shock people who have only supped at the table of Western propaganda, but his accomplishments at bringing a small Third World country into a full-fledged, modern country should rank with the best in modern history. His efforts in establishing a peaceful, secular state in a country with potentially explosive religious divisions and ethnic diversity were masterful. Saddam's integrating people from all religious groups and the Kurds into the government and military seems to have been almost miraculous. Under his direction education and culture flourished. His generosity toward his Arab neighbors, both as countries and as individuals, is a beacon toward which other Middle-Eastern countries should follow.

The stature of this giant is in direct, obverse relationship to the lies that the Western governments and media had to constantly tell in an attempt to hide the true nature of Saddam's Iraq.

This is the third anniversary of the martyrdom of Iraq President Saddam Hussein. It is an occasion to reflect on his qualities and qualifications as the greatest of Arab resisters and the most unwavering champion of the Arab nation. We may do so by citing authoritative and eloquent Islamic, Arab and even American sources, as well as the words of the man himself, as he addressed Americans and his fellow Iraqis from captivity and as he faced his martyrdom.

We will begin with the Editor of the Islamic "New Trend", Dr. Kaukab Siddique, who outlined and summarized Saddam's heroic struggle in the following terms:

"Under the most severe sanctions and embargo in the history of modern times, he kept the Iraqi people united and refused to surrender Iraq's sovereignty...
"Saddam knew that the U.S. had decided to attack Iraq with overwhelming military force but he refused to surrender. Russia offered him a chance to spend the rest of his life in luxury in a dacha in the Crimea but he refused.
"Owing to Saddam's persistent support for the Palestinian people and for martyrdom operations against Israel, every Zionist Jew in America, from professor to politician, raised a storm of dirty propaganda against him. It was evident that International Jewry would destroy Iraq.
"The choice before Saddam was to die like a lion or live like a jackal. He decided to die like a lion.
"Famed U.S. novelist (Tom) Clancy, closely connected to the military establishment, revealed that the U.S. tried to kill Saddam 33 times during the sanctions decade before the war.
"When the massive bombardment of Baghdad known as 'Shock and Awe' began, the primary target was Saddam. A superpower was trying to kill the President of a sovereign nation. Saddam decided to go down fighting.
"When the U.S. actually captured Baghdad and occupied Iraq with 135,000 heavily-armed troops with tremendous firepower, Saddam went underground and continued to lead the Resistance. The President had become the Mujahedeen, a first in modern Arab history! Saddam's sons and his grandson went down fighting against the occupation forces.
"After nearly nine months of fighting, the Americans captured Saddam. Among his meager possessions was a little notebook in which he kept account of every dollar he spent in the Jihad. Such was his honesty.
"During the show trial which was held to 'convict' the mujahid President, it became apparent that the charges against him were bogus. His attorneys were terrorized and the witnesses against him remained concealed. He stood strong throughout the trial, constantly seeking inspiration from the Qur'an and urging the Iraqi people to resist the occupation.
"Finally the U.S. arrived at its pre-determined plan to execute Saddam. This execution on 'Eid day was a slap in the face of the entire Islamic world.
"Saddam went to his martyrdom with a demeanor which was so calm, spiritual and full of the light of faith in Allah that people could see what a martyr is like: unafraid, focused on the honor of Iraq and the Arab and Muslim people and admonishing his Shi'ite executioners about their shameful behavior as agents of America."

Saddam's martyrdom inspired Layla Anwar, author of the blog-site "Arab Woman Blues" to address him as in these terms:

"Forgive me, Sir, I am not a very sophisticated woman. I speak a simple language, the language of the heart. No one hardly ever recognizes this dialect these days. But I have a feeling that, despite all your alleged hardness, You would.
"You know, my Dad before passing away said to me a few sentences that have remained with me since. He said 'My daughter, many things will come to pass in this life. You will face many trials and many errors. One thing you need to be certain of, though, don't ever lose your integrity or your dignity. The day you sell those, you will have sold your soul, and all is downhill from there.
"Sir, I am proud that you have not sold either. In that, you have helped us preserve our own intact. As for the rest, don't worry about them. They will end up cited as thugs, profiteering, sectarian, opportunistic hypocrites.
" What pains me most is that they succeeded in massacring yet another True Iraqi, a True Iraqi among many thousands. And that is what you are."

Saddam addressed the American people directly from his captivity in a handwritten letter dated July 7th, 2006, less than six months before his martyrdom:

"People of America, I address you not from weakness nor as a supplicant. I, my people, my brothers, comrades, my nation, we address you on the basis of our moral and human responsibility. I tell you that officials whom you know, and first among them your President, lied to you and deceived you and tricked you, using the media that portrayed Iraq to you as incorrigible and Saddam Hussein as a hateful dictator, and that his people hate him and are just waiting for their chance to get at him. Some of them just wallowed in lying falsehood to the point that they openly declared that the Iraqis would meet the invading armies with roses and celebration.
"I know that lots of people don't do a lot of analysis; they don't have the time or the ability or the desire to do careful assessments when presented with falsified news so as to uncover the truth. The American people had no chance to inquire, for example, why, if the people of Iraq hate Saddam Hussein, how he managed to defeat the Iran of Khomeini after eight years in the aggressive war that Iran sought to impose on us under the slogan of exporting the revolution beginning with Iraq? People of America, the victory over Khomeini's Iran was not due to the short length of the war, but came only after eight years of grinding warfare in which tens of thousands fell, hundreds of thousands on the Iranian side.
"If Saddam Hussein were a dictator, why did he establish a parliament with elections for the first time in the year 1980 during wartime, when there had been no parliament in Iraq since 1958? If he and his government were dictators, how could he visit schools, universities, towns and villages and spend the night with the people wherever the sun went down? How could he travel around and lead at he battle front during the day, even in the trenches in the front lines on the battlefield among the Muslim soldiers?
"Yes, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, your government deceived you, and you, or rather most of you, had no chance to inquire of themselves or of others in order to discover the truth because the Zionists in the lobby who advocated the war together with some of the centers of power were deceiving you and tricking you, hiding from your eyes the real truth, exchanging the facts for falsified and slanted information. Last but not least in this regard, if Saddam Hussein were a dictator hated and despised by his people, how is it that his people endured him and why was he chosen President by referendum?
"People of America, the misfortunes that have afflicted you and afflicted our Arab Nation and within it our heroic Iraqi people, including the breakdown of America's standing and reputation, were only caused by the reckless behavior of your government and by pressure from Zionism and power centers that influenced your government to commit those crimes and scandalous actions for specific ends that have nothing to do with the interests of the American people. The massacres and the blood flows in the streets and countryside of Iraq in torrents and the responsibility for that falls on America before all others. You know, or rather you have now come to learn, that neither the stooges whom the Americans brought in on board their aircraft or as shamefaced presents aboard their tanks, nor Iran, which pushed and still pushes forward those who support it and whom they support, would be able to cause the bloodshed or the destruction of the honor and the
property of our people and our state had not America undertaken the aggression and invasion and issued the orders, It is still issuing orders in the Green Zone. Therefore America bears the burden of all those crimes and outrages. So, will you put an end to what is going on by using the methods of direct truth without evasion and digression, or will you invite the machine of death to continue to eat away at the flesh of Iraqis and the flesh of Americans without doing anything to resolve this?"

Jeff Archer, President of the Palestine Iraq Committee, distinguished American writer and investigative journalist and author of the incomparable "The Mother of All Battles", the authoritative book on the U.S. war against Iraq, brought out many little-known facts about Saddam's Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party-led government and its accomplishments in the face of the obstacles imposed by Imperialist and Zionist assaults. Besides the monumental advances in education, literacy, medicine, housing, women's rights and the welfare of children and the elderly, Archer noted:

"Many western observers are not aware that Saddam Hussein was well-regarded in much of the world. Brazilians remember that thousands of their countrymen were recruited by Saddam to build the advanced highway and bridge systems that once crisscrossed Iraq. Egyptians did not forget that two million of their countrymen owned and worked land in Iraq prior to January 1991.
"The Lebanese remembered the dozens of Iraqi trucks that showed up daily at the Lebanese border during that country's civil war. They were laden with food and clothing for any Lebanese person in need. The convoys' recipients included all Lebanese, not just certain factions of those battling in the civil war. Most Palestinians display a picture of Saddam Hussein on their walls. Over the years, many nations have temporarily supported the Palestinian cause, only to withdraw aid once threatened by the U.S. Saddam Hussein, even during the embargo years, supported the Palestinians with no exception, while other Arab regimes did not want to get involved because they did not want to upset their puppeteers in Washington and Tel Aviv."

In his Final Will, dated 26 December 2006, four days before his execution, Saddam displayed his magnanimity and his steely resolve and commitment to Iraq and the pursuit of social justice and liberation. Speaking to the Iraqi people, he exhorted them in the following fashion:

"The enemies of your country, whether they are invaders or Persians, found that (your) unity prevented them from enslaving you. Thus they drove their old-new wedge in the midst of you and the foreigners with Iraqi nationality responded; the hearts of these foreigners were wither already full of hatred or the envious in Iran filled them with hatred.
"They thought (that) they would vanquish you through sowing division between you and the true sons of the people in order to weaken the will and turn the sons of the country against each other rather than turn them against the real enemies. In order to confront the real enemies, we all have to pull together, even if we act under different banners...
"Brothers, mujahideen and fighters, I call on you to do this, and to abandon malice, because malice does not leave the one who harbors it any chance to be fair and just, and because it closes the minds. Malice takes the one who harbors it away from balanced thinking, correct choices, avoiding what is wrong, and prevents him from seeing the changes in the minds of those he thinks to be enemies, especially the delinquent ones who repent and go back to the true path, the path of the true people and the glorious nation.
"Brothers and sisters, my sons and sons of Iraq, comrade strugglers, I call on you not to hate the peoples of the countries that have committed aggression on us. I call on you to distinguish between the decision-makers and the people. Hate only the deed. Even if someone's deeds deserve to be fought, do not hate him as a human being. Do not hate the individuals who do evil, hate only the evil deed itself, and repel that evil as it deserves."

Layla Anwar summarizes the purport of Saddam's life, struggle and martyrdom as he approached the hour of supreme sacrifice:

"They say you were authoritarian and totalitarian. Come and see them now. See their fascism infesting the streets. See it in every neighborhood, see it in every corner. You said Women are the pioneers of this Arab Ummah, come and look at us now. Rape has replaced sexual intercourse, censorship has replaced education and forced domestication has replaced public life.
"You said Education is the sign of a Progressive Ummah. Our schools and universities are empty, and our brains drained and killed. You said Health is Free for all. Our hospitals are dilapidated and our doctors in exile. You said Kurds are our brothers, they are now trained as snipers by Israel. You said Christians and Muslims are part of this mosaic called Iraq. The Christians are fleeing by the thousands and the churches are deserted.
"Look at me Sir. I am a product of this wonderful mosaic called Iraq. I am half Muslim and half Christian, and the Muslim half has Shi'as and if you dig hard enough you will find Kurdish, Armenian, Turkish, Chaldean, Arabic roots all the way back...
"Where is my place now Sir? You are about to find your place soon, like a bird flying to nest into the arms of the sky, while I am left behind waiting my turn, and in the meantime searching, desperately searching for a place to rest my tired head, and finding none.
"Sir, I heard they will execute You within 36 hours, in time for the 'Eid, our sacrificial feast. You did say you are willing to be sacrificed for Iraq. You still believe they are worth it. I envy your Faith. May you go in Peace now, my True Iraqi."

Such a one as Saddam Hussein will never die. He will always live in the hearts and souls of the honest, suffering, dispossessed people, wherever people face slavery and oppression and whenever they fight for justice and dignity. He will abide forever, long after the Bushes, Clintons, Obamas and the predatory denizens of Congress, the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department and Wall Street have gone to the final and lasting hell which they deserve, long after the exploiters and oppressors and their minions have rotted into oblivion.

Saddam Hussein will remain and endure as a shining light, an immortal in the pantheon of the truly great, a testament and an example to all that we could be, should be and need to be if we indeed seek to better ourselves and our world.

I wish I could be with you in person. I must tell you that I hesitated a great deal in participating in this year’s commemoration to the death of Saddam Hussein, who is still the legitimate leader of Iraq, whom I hugged and kissed more than once. There is nothing that I can say or add that gives the man what he truly deserves. Had Saddam capitulated and yielded to the demands of George W. Bush and his gang, had he surrendered his country’s resources to U.S. multinational corporations, had he accepted the illegitimate existence of the Israeli settler state, Saddam Hussein, like Mubarak of Egypt and Abdallah of Saudi Arabia, would have continued to be the only and the undisputed leader of Iraq.

Saddam insisted to see Iraq free. He insisted to have all Iraqis enjoy the wealth of their lands. In a savage world dominated by barbaric powers that suck the blood of developing nations and have no regard to democracy and human rights, this behavior is not acceptable. It is a crime punishable by death. Saddam was greater in captivity and death than when he was free and alive, with the intent, determination and potentials to free every Arab from the humiliation of defeat, occupation and subjugation to foreign powers. He is a "Jesus" that we were able to hear, talk to, see and touch. He chose to stand on the cross with his head high while his executioners stood by trembling. He died for our salvation as Arabs and as Muslims. He is real not mythical. Despite the heavy iron weight tied to his feet and the chains around his hands, he walked with dignity and pride. Even those mislead Iraqis who had opposed him while he was alive, today regret their former stand. Today they recognize his sacrifices, value and greatness. They yearn for the return of the good old days when Iraqis were united as one people regardless of their nationality, religion or faction. They all enjoyed security, peace and harmony. They all had plenty of food to eat, clothes to wear, free and highly advanced education and health services, even during the ugliest thirteen years of economic sanctions imposed by Washington. Above all, Iraqis were proud and free as a people. Even Iranian officials who fought him for eight years finally realized and admitted that Iraq under Saddam had been better off than Iraq of today ruled by thugs who entered the country behind American tanks.

Saddam is physically and peacefully resting in his grave in Takrit, his beloved hometown. However, his spirit is alive. He is present among all freedom fighters. We have seen him in action. He leads the resistance to occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. Recently, he has started to appear in Yemen, north and south, fighting the Saudis who are waging a criminal war on behalf of their American masters. A year ago, billions of people worldwide have witnessed him repulsing Israeli savage air, sea and land attack on Gaza. Israeli leaders were obliged to admit that their army, the fourth military power in the world, which is equipped with the U.S. most destructive military arsenal, was defeated.

Saddam lives not only among Arabs and Muslims. He lives in the minds and hearts of all oppressed, as well as all freedom loving people around the globe, including this gathering. As long as there is injustice, oppression and wars of greed, Saddam will be alive and well. Saddam will be everywhere, and the mother of all battles will not be ending.

Greetings Comrades and Friends

I would like to seize this opportunity of the anniversary of the assassination of the martyr leader Saddam Hussein to greet you on behalf of Iraq, its people and their valiant resistance, assuring you that the people of Iraq are determined to defeat the invasion the U.S. and Iran to Iraq.

In the seventh year of the invasion of Iraq crystallized some great truths it is very necessary to refer to:

1- The Invasion of Iraq has turned into a U.S. domestic nightmare, manifested by the serious financial crisis; some U.S. sources estimated the costs of the war on Iraq between 3 and 4 trillion dollars. Public debt reached $ 12 trillion, a staggering figure, and wounding many thousands of Americans with physical and psychological disabilities .

2- We have seen the end of the welfare society in America, and America entered the process of decay and deterioration, rapidly and dangerously, to the extent that some U.S. states called for secession from America .

3- The economic crisis in America coincided with the success of the Iraqi resistance in the prevention of American control of the oil industry and turn it into an investment. If we remember that one of the most important strategic goals of the invasion of Iraq was the control Iraq's oil and invest it , we realize that the lack of stability and security, which are the most important conditions for successful investments, we understand the failure of a plan to control Iraq's oil. The investment does not mean to steal oil from Iraq, but to rebuild the Iraqi oil industry and turn Iraq into the primary source of oil in the world, and put Iraqi oil under U.S. control, in full. Iraqi resistance prevented safe control of the U.S. to the oil, thanks to the armed operations that made stability in Iraq impossible.

4- It is important to be aware that the Iraqi resistance has broken the political process, because the USA wanted to build a political system, stable and strong, to implement its plan in Iraq. The success of the resistance in the failure of the political process has led to fragmentation and division of political forces that have cooperated with the occupation and loss of any hope in the success of the occupation, thus the occupation has reached an impasse.

5- If you look at Iraq now, we are seeing resistance has matured and become more united and determined to liberate Iraq without any compromise with the U.S. occupation, as reflected in the refusal of the resistance to negotiate with America, unless the U.S. administration accepted the pre-conditions stated before , the most important is the unconditional and complete withdrawal from Iraq, and compensation.

6- Yes, there is a change in the working methods of resistance, but the basic equation in Iraq, stayed in favor of resistance, the commander of U.S. forces officially admitted that the number of the resistance operations is 700 per week, and if we accept this figure which is much less than the true figure, one hundred operation a day is large number not achieved by any resistance in the contemporary world.

7- Final note I wish to mention is that the resistance now in its seventh year of the invasion: more accurate, organized, and more intellectually consistent after shrinking the role of the takfiris

Dear Comrades and Friends,

Let me ask the following question: Who is the architect of this resistance and its leader? He is the martyr Saddam Hussein, who built a resistance several years before the invasion and put together the rules and provided them with arms and men trained about ten million Iraqis in guerrilla warfare, although he died. But it persists because the men who were prepared by Saddam Hussein are leading the resistance now.

The other question is: as long as the resistance continues is Saddam Hussein really dead? Or is he alive living in the conscience of the people and fighters in Iraq? He is alive because the principles he lived and died for are still alive and winning in Iraq.

Greetings to all and my best wishes for a new year, and for a free and united Iraq.

A Free and United Iraq, the way our hero - Saddam Hussein , taught us so. I will not use the word -- the late Saddam Hussein - for me, Saddam Hussein is still very much alive, even though in his physical form, he is no longer here.

For me, he is still around - very much alive, among us ; in his thoughts, his struggles, his ideals, his courage, his bravery... all of which represent to me the Spirit of Iraq, the Spirit of Mesopotamia, of which Saddam was a faithful and loyal son. And the Spirit of Iraq cannot and will not die....Saddam Hussein embodied that Spirit.

His supra intelligence, his stuborness, his defiance, his commitment, his devotion, his resilience, his steadfastness, his care, his pride, his honor, his roots... are still with us today...They did not die and no one, absolutely no one can lynch those atttributes.

And a man (and a woman) live on by their attributes...

Bodies are just forms, they will go, but history records the non physical...And Saddam Hussein will go into History books. History books that will either denigrate him, vilify and demonize him even more and history books that will praise and remember him as a, visionary, and as the only leader, statesman, person and human being that met his "fate", his ultimate destiny - albeit one devised by the powers of darkness - with so much faith, dignity, honor, nobility and an ultimate surrender - a sure sign of a clean, clear conscience.

You see, when facing death, and I really don't want to give a sermon here, but bear with me - facing death is the ultimate test for any human being.. And that test is a sure indicator of a man's past, present and future...

Saddam Hussein faced his death like an unprecedented hero. I defy all those present today, to give me one example of anyone else who faced Death in the eye like Saddam Hussein did. No one in the history of mankind, not to my knowledge anyways, was able to do so, except maybe for Jesus Son of Mary. But Jesus son of Mary was no ordinary human being, he was a prophet. And Saddam Hussein was neither a God, nor a Prophet.

When you come to think of it, deeply think of it, this is no small matter. This is the essence of the matter, because the final minutes determine who the man truly was and is...

Since the occupation and since his departure, the Truth does not stop emerging, no one can stop the Truth from emerging and Saddam knew that...and he counted on the Truth and he counted on you and I and all those who care to carry the Truth forward...

The Truth about the conspiracy, the complicity, the lies, the cover ups, the deceit, the fabrications, the falsifications...the Truth is slowly emerging...The Truth has to fight it ways through, just like Saddam did...and just like the honorable Iraqis do...Falsehood is a very thick, dense, well armored veil...and the struggle to bring the Truth forth is exactly that - a struggle.

A struggle that also entails a struggle against the Occupation, the Anglo American Iranian Israeli occupation of this land...and through that struggle, that resistance, under its various forms, of which I like to believe I am only a tiny peg, through that -- Truth emerges and will continue to emerge breaking its way through, like a water current, sometimes gentle and sometimes less so....

Saddam Hussein gave the ultimate sacrifice. In some western circles, he was likened to Jesus son of Mary...He paved the way -- it is now up to you and I to continue in the path...

Thank you for listening to me, and even though I am not with you in body, I am still with you through my words and my thoughts.

And a special thank you to J.Archer aka Malcolm Lagauche, who yearly makes sure that the flame of Truth never dies.

Long live Iraq, Free and Dignified and Long Live Free Palestine.

The occasion of the martyrdom of president Saddam Hussein is an important yearly event for the prupose of study and empowering reflection.

In it we take time to remember one of the greatest of anti-imperialist revolutionary fighters of the last 100 years. It is a time of revolutionary rejuvenation where we dedicate time to study the great accomplishments made by president Saddam during his 70 odd years of heroic life and for the immortal contributions that he has left behind for us.

President Saddam was an inspirational figure and heroic martyr akin to great anti-imperialist names of the last 100 years, such as: Che Guevara, Mao Tse Tung, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jung Il, Michel Aflaq and Jamal Adbul Nasser and the many others who dedicated their lives to accomplish empowerment and freedom for the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized by the criminal acts committed by imperialism and colonialism.

President Saddam was a true Arab nationalist revolutonary hero who adhered to the principles of the great Arab Baath Socialist Party and served its causes faithfully for decades as he ascended to martyrdom in 2006.

He was a true and honest student of founding leader Michel Aflaq who created the path of Arab nationalism in the last five decades by the establishment of the Arab Baath Socialist Party in 1947, that raised the slogans of unity, liberty, and socialism for the Arab nation; and to which president Saddam Hussein and his comrades was an exempleray practitoner.

For many years president Saddam worked faithfully to service the Baath party and its evnentual victory that resulted in it taking power in Iraq in 1963. He put his life on the line many times and was imprisoned to enable that revolutionary victory of the party from taking place.

He eventually took the responsbility to lead the party and Iraq by ascending to the presidency of Iraq in 1979. During that time the enemies of the Arab nation did not waste any time and attacked him almost immediately. The reactionary forces of Ayatollah Kohomeini attacked Iraq in 1980, "israel" attacked Iraq in 1981, and the eventual invasion and destruction of Iraq by Arab reactionaries and US imperialism took place in 1990 and culminated in the invasion and destrcution of Iraq in 2003.

During this time president Saddam never betrayed the causes of his party or nation and fought as a true lion first developing Iraq into a modernized nation and then resisting Zionist, Iranian, and Western imperialism fiercly and trhough armed struggle until his martyrdom in Iraq in 2006 at the hands of his enemies who lynched him in a crime of history gone unchalleged by general opinion and Western public opinion especially.

What was amazing about president Saddam and his fallen comrades-now that we refelct upon their experience- is how they were conducting revolutionay anti-imperialist struggle when most had given up in the after-math of the collapse of the then fallen anti-imperialist Soviet Union in 1990 and the end fo the Nasser experience with the death of the Arab nationalist hero Jamal Abdul Nasser.

Preseident Saddam's last words were long live the Arab nation and Palestine is Arab from the river to the sea.Those were his last words after uttering the Islamic Shahdah and with that he left us-the new generation fo Arab nationmalists- with an important program to follow on.

The death of president Saddam Hussein was a new begining for the Arab nationalist revolutionary program in all-as he intended for his death to be-and a new era of fierce anti-imperialist struggle that he and his comrades ushered.

President Saddam's path is now continued with his comrade Izzat Ibrahim AlDouri leader of the Baath party and leader of the Iraqi resistance inflicting today a historical defeat on US occupation forces.

What president Saddam said is now being fulfilled. He promised to make Baghdad the city where American soldiers will committ suicide and that Iraq will defeat America. The correctness of his words and his vision is what we are witnessing today.

Glory all glory to the fallen martyr president Saddam Hussein on the occasion of his martydom!

I had the honor to know President Saddam Hussein in person.He was a true leader a gentleman and down to earth. I have witnessed him roaming the streets of Baghdad early in the morning to find out first hand how things really were .His visits were to working class neighborhoods. The Iraqi media showed him inquiring about the elderly and about their wellbeing, chatting with children and examining the kitchens to see what the people lack. These surprised visits helped him to take the appropriate decisions to improve the state of the people and to give an excellent example to the people who were in charge to care and be concerned.

He had a special direct phone in his office through which people can call him and speak directly to him about their problems and complaints, and who was not satisfied was invited to a weekly meeting at the palace where people were invited discuss with him their complaints.

Iraq to him was part of the Arab Homeland and the doors of Iraq were open to the Arab people. Millions came to work and hundreds of thousands came to study at the Colleges and Universities of Iraq where education was free.

The people of Iraq will remain faithful to you Mr. President because they have known you for long time in the battlefield of Jihad and struggle. You are their guiding light and the force that motivates them to carry the banner of liberation until Iraq is free.

Saddam Hussein’s Greatest Legacy: December 2003 to December 2006

Michael Boldin spoke of the lies and deceit of the U.S. administration in his piece "Saddam Was Right and Bush Was Wrong," published online by www.populistamerica.com on December 30, 2006:

Boldin is one of the few writers who went right to the core of the problem of the demonizing of Saddam Hussein. If those who accused Saddam of myriad atrocities had been exposed as liars about virtually every aspect on Iraq, how could they transform themselves into purveyors of truth in describing Saddam Hussein and his regime?

Al-Quds of al-Arabi assessed the situation in a logical manner. Its editor, Abdel Bari Atwan, told Aljazeera News:

The pundits had a great time writing about Saddam Hussein’s execution. Many work for huge publications with limitless resources for research, yet they chose to re-hash old discredited information and add a few new untruths as well.

These represent only a few statements made in the Western press. But, in newspapers from Brazil to Russia, from India to Indonesia, from Pakistan to Venezuela, and many other nations, the media were much kinder to Saddam Hussein and the barbaric end he experienced.

Many Western observers are not aware that Saddam Hussein was well-regarded in much of the world. Brazilians remembered that thousands of their countrymen were recruited by Saddam to build the advanced highway and bridge systems that once crisscrossed Iraq. Egyptians did not forget that more than two million of their countrymen owned and worked land in Iraq prior to January 1991. Indians did not forget the reciprocal dealings with Iraq and how the Ba’athists gave support to Indian causes. The Lebanese remembered the dozens of Iraqi trucks that showed up daily at the Lebanese border during that country’s civil war. They were laden with food and clothing for any Lebanese person in need. The convoys’ recipients included all Lebanese, not a certain faction of those battling in the civil war. Most Palestinians display a picture of Saddam Hussein on their walls. Over the years, many nations have temporarily supported the Palestinian cause, only to withdraw aid once threatened by the U.S. Saddam Hussein, even during the embargo years, supported the Palestinians with no exception, while other Arab regimes did not want to get involved because they did not want to upset their puppeteers in Washington and Tel Aviv.

It didn’t take long for the world to see how quickly the bogus court that tried Saddam became unraveled. On March 9, 2007, the headlines for Al-Jazeera News read, "Saddam Judge Flees Iraq." Raouf Abdel-Rahman was the judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein, Barzan al-Tikriti (Iraq’s former intelligence minister) and Awad Hamed (former head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court) to death. All were hanged.

Abdel-Rahman was the second judge on the trial in which the defendants were accused of crimes against humanity for the execution of 148 people from the city of Dujail in 1985. The first judge, Rizgar Amin, resigned. He accused the U.S.-allied Iraqi officials of scripting the trial for him. When Abdel-Rahman came on board, the so-called trial turned into a fiasco. He constantly kicked the defendants and their lawyers out of the court room. He made public statements before the end of the trial in which he stated that Saddam was guilty. When a defense witness came forth with a video tape showing how the head prosecutor, Jaafar al-Musawi and a prosecution witness, Ali al-Haidari had lied, Abdel-Rahman confiscated the video tape and had the witness, along with three other defense witnesses, arrested and tortured.

When the appeals court turned down the request of Saddam’s defense team about the death verdict, Abdel-Rahman had to set an execution date within 30 days of the appeal verdict. Saddam was hanged within four days, on the date of the beginning of a Moslem holiday.

For a few months, Abdel-Rahman relished in his image as a no-nonsense, tough judge. The truth differs. He stood against everything a judge is supposed to represent: to find the truth. He lied and he was a fraud. He was brave while he was protected by the U.S. Army in the Green Zone, but once the hangings were conducted, it appears that Abdel-Rahman must have lost some of his protection. He fled to Great Britain.

There is one aspect of this mockery that is confusing. Abdel-Rahman asked for "political asylum" in Great Britain. Political asylum is usually requested by citizens of countries in which they are not allowed political, social or religious rights that other citizens enjoy. Abdel-Rahman was a product of the quisling Iraqi government. He was right in the middle of all the shenanigans and violence the pretenders thrust on Iraq. Why did he ask for "political asylum" when he was a mainstream player in the sordid politics of Iraq?

It is probable that there were many Iraqis who were offended by Saddam Hussein’s show trial and hanging and some were probably picking up the stench of Abdel-Rahman’s scent. Even the U.S. and the Iraqi stooges would have been unable to give him enough security to ensure that he would be alive at retirement age.

Abdel-Rahman may have been the temporary victor because of his actions in an unfair Iraqi courthouse that led to the hanging of Saddam Hussein. But, in death, Saddam Hussein won the battle against him as Abdel-Rahman made a secret and cowardly exit from Iraq.

At the time of the writing of this book, a very ill Tariq Aziz is being tried on false charges. Out of nowhere, Abdel-Rahman reappeared in Baghdad. It appears that no one wanted to be the judge who orders the hanging of Aziz, so the quisling Iraqi government made a deal with the person who handed down Saddam Hussein’s death sentence. It will be interesting to see Abdel-Rahman’s actions after the trial. He may well return to England for his extended vacation.

Saddam Hussein knew how his life would end, but he was well aware that his legacy would be part of the equation that will resurrect Iraq. He never sold out, not even at the end when he was offered chances to be freed from prison. He knew that if he sold out, he would have sold out Iraq.

Long after his execution, Saddam Hussein still gained ludicrous press coverage. On the first anniversary of the hanging, two British newspapers ran stories about the one-year anniversary.

On December 31, 2007, the British daily newspaper, The Telegraph, ran an article called "Few Gather to Remember at Saddam’s Tomb." It was written by Akeel Hussein and Colin Freeman. Here are a few statements:

This pieces is a horrible example of journalism, especially coming from such an established newspaper as The Telegraph. The tone of mockery is normally never seen in a feature article. Plus, the inaccuracies are glaring. Even from Saddam’s naysayers I have never seen the last words attributed to him that this stooge tag-team wrote. However, the facts are true: only a few dozen people showed up at Saddam’s grave.

Now, let’s go a few miles across London and see how The Times handled the same story. Deborah Haynes and Ali Hamdani collaborated on the article "Thousands Prevented from Visiting Saddam Tomb on Anniversary of Execution" that was published on December 30, 2006.

Let’s take a look at a sampling of this article:

Two stories used basic facts (and some fiction on the part of The Telegraph) in depicting the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s murder. However, only one stated why there were so few people at Saddam’s grave.

If Saddam Hussein is a spent force in Iraq, why does the U.S. and its quisling allies keep people from visiting his grave? They are cowards with absolutely no integrity and can only function surrounded by tanks and enough military hardware to incinerate the entire country of Iraq. So much for "bringing democracy to Iraq."

Since the publishing of my book, the Iraqi quislings have gone even further in keeping people away from Saddam’s grave. According to an article in Al-Jazeera News of July 6, 2009, titled "Iraq Bans Visits to Saddam’s Grave:"

If Saddam Hussein is a spent force in Iraq, why does the U.S. and its quisling allies keep people from visiting his grave? They are cowards with absolutely no integrity and can only function surrounded by tanks and enough military hardware to incinerate the entire country of Iraq. So much for "bringing democracy to Iraq."

______________________________________________________________

NOTE: The entire three portions of this series is included in my book, The Mother of All Battles. For the month of December 2009, Uruknet readers, as well as those on other sites, will receive a discount for the 400-page book. The price is $20 per book. When ordering, mention this offer. For non-U.S. readers, the postage is $12.95. I can fit two books into each USPS Priority envelope. This postage is a one-price limit for any amount of what can be put in the envelope. If two people want to order the book, each can pay for the book and have them shipped in one envelope, making the shipping cost half of what it would be if only one book was inserted. Just click on the link following the picture of my book below to order

Part Two

The announcement of the verdict backfired. The U.S. thought it would further erode Saddam’s importance to the Iraqi public, but just the opposite occurred. The website www.al-moharer.net posted this message shortly after the announcement:

Wednesday-Friday, December 25-27, 2007

Part Two

The announcement of the verdict backfired. The U.S. thought it would further erode Saddam’s importance to the Iraqi public, but just the opposite occurred. The website www.al-moharer.net posted this message shortly after the announcement:

Iraq has been totally destroyed, not just physically, but emotionally. All of Saddam Hussein’s enemies hold equal responsibility in the destruction. They not only murdered Saddam, but Iraq as well. Shortly after March 2003, some people and institutions, such as Ahmed Chalabi and Haliburton, made a quick financial killing. Those days are gone. Today’s thieves in the stooge government can only count on small change to steal. The Iraqi people had everything they own, physically and emotionally, stolen.

THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER

As we approach the third anniversary of the murder of President Saddam Hussein by U.S. and Iranian-backed cowards, the current stooge prime minister of Iraq, Maliki, is sparing no effort in attempting to erase the memory of Saddam and the Ba’ath Party from Iraq’s collective remembrance. Most leaders who are killed in a coup or an invasion of a foreign country usually have their corpses paraded around for the people to throw things at, or they are buried in some junk heap in a landfill and forgotten. Not so with Saddam. His memory and his accomplishments are alive and well in the psyche of millions of Iraqis.

On December 5, 2009. Al-Jazeera News ran an article called "Longing for Saddam in Kikrit." It began:

For a few months, Maliki has blamed every act of violence in Iraq on Saddam Hussein supporters, despite most being conducted by his own government. A day does not go by without Maliki denigrating Saddam Hussein. He is obsessed. The main reason for this preoccupation is that Maliki realizes the Iraqi people are much more proud of Saddam than himself. Jealously prevails.

The following is a recent article I wrote that goes into detail about how Maliki is trying to make Saddam’s memory disappear. His methods are not working.

First, they took his name out of Iraqi history books. Then, they made a criminal charge that constitutes a two-year prison sentence for displaying a picture of him in public. Now, the Iraqi government has banned people from visiting Saddam Hussein’s grave.

According to an article in Al-Jazeera News of July 6, 2009, titled "Iraq Bans Visits to Saddam’s Grave:"

First, for years we heard Saddam and his sons called "butchers" by the West. But, the remains of him and his sons indicate the most brutal form of butchery. His sons were chopped to pieces by hundreds of bullets and artillery shells, while Saddam’s body was defiled by rabid Iran supporters after he was hanged. The imagery of butchery lives in the graves of the Hussein family, but it was butchery imposed by outsiders, not by Saddam and his sons.

Last week, I gave a speech at San Diego State University to a class of Professor Khaleel Mohammed, a well-known expert on Islam. The kids were mostly aged from 18-21 and most did not even remember the March 2003 invasion of Iraq because of their young age at the time.

I spoke about the re-writing of Iraq’s history in Washington, D.C. by U.S. personnel and how the history books were blank from the years 1968 to 2005. Most of the students seemed skeptical of my assessment. They could not believe the U.S. would pull such dirty tricks.

The professor injected a statement. He told of his being a professor in Toronto at the time of the invasion and that he was contacted by the U.S. government to discuss the subject of Iraq’s education. They flew him to Washington, D.C. and offered him a top post in the program of re-writing Iraqi history. He said the salary they offered was astronomical. But, once the discussions began, he knew this was not a job he could perform. He was told that Iraqi history was to be re-written in Washington and it must reflect U.S. propaganda and turn the Iraqi education system into a carbon copy of the U.S. system. The professor said he refused because he would not be able to live with himself if he participated in such a venture.

Then, he pointed to a middle-aged woman in the class and said, "We have an Iraqi in class who went through the times of Saddam. What is your opinion?" She said that she learned more in the seventh grade in Iraq than she has at a top U.S. university. I asked her when she graduated from Baghdad University and she replied, "1985." She then said she taught high school for a few years. But, her next statement kind of shocked the students, most of whom only knew what U.S. propaganda had thrust on the public. She said, "In those days, we had freedom. Under Saddam, we had total freedom. Not so today. My niece, a Christian, has to be fully-veiled when she leaves the house, despite it being against her beliefs. Plus, what there is of an education system today in Iraq is pathetic."

Today, I sent Professor Mohammed the Al-Jazeera article about banning visitors from Saddam’s graveside. Here is his response:

This is not the first time people were stopped from visiting Saddam’s grave. On the first anniversary of his death, thousands were not allowed to pay tribute. According to an article in The Times of London, called , "Thousands Prevented from Visiting Saddam Tomb on Anniversary of Execution," and published on December 30, 2007:

In December 2003, after the announcement of Saddam’s capture by U.S. troops, the streets of Baghdad were filled with pro-Saddam supporters. The following day, U.S. military personnel surrounded a Baghdad school, Adnan Kheiralla Boy’s School, and dragged about 40 students by their hair and held them for a couple of days in cages. Their crime? They had a picture of Saddam Hussein in their class.

Such actions are not indicative of a "democratic" society, one that was forced on Iraq by the U.S. The other day, I saw an automobile bumper sticker with the words "Free Iraq" on it, commemorating the new democratic Iraq. Another sticker, on the other side of the bumper, heralded the praising of Jesus for freeing the Iraqis.

If Saddam is such a spent force, why are the stooges in Baghdad so bent on denying his existence or stopping people from visiting his grave, or even mentioning his name? Logic tells us that if the denigration was true, the Iraqi quislings would promote Saddam’s "brutal legacy." Plus, Maliki is very jealous. Saddam’s presence could command hundreds of thousands of people to show up to listen to his greetings to the Iraqi people. If Maliki gave a public speech, he couldn’t get a swarm of flies to attend even if he had barrels of honey surrounding him.

Today, the "Arab street’ considers Saddam Hussein as one of the greatest leaders in Arab history, arguably the greatest in modern times. Even some of his critics from before the March 2003 invasion are now speaking of his foresight. In my book, The Mother of All Battles: The Endless U.S.-Iraq War, I include a speech given by Saddam Hussein at the Amman Summit in Amman, Jordan on February 24, 1990. Point-by-point, he laid out the future of the Arab world if it did not recognize and resist U.S. plans for domination of the Arab entity. The leaders did not listen, but the Arab people did. Today, they see that speech as the blueprint for U.S. hegemony in the Arab world. It’s too bad the leaders did not take the message to heart.

News analyst and Middle Eastern expert, Husayn al-Kurdi passed on his comment today about the ridiculous decree that makes it illegal to visit Saddam’s grave:

One thing is a fact that upsets the pretenders in Baghdad: no matter how many laws are enacted or how many arrests are made, the Iraqi people will not forget Saddam Hussein and the accomplishments of his leadership and those of the Ba’ath Party. The more they try to eliminate Saddam’s memory, the more they fail. Saddam made Iraq worth fighting for.

A BLACK CAT IN A DARK ROOM

In Britain, hearings are being held about the lies leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. At first, the commission members attempted to whitewash all the incidents. But, parents of those killed in Iraq have put enough pressure on the commission to get at least some truth out. In the past week or so, they have changed their tune and have admitted to much of what we already knew, but it’s the first time public figures of the government of Britain are telling a portion of the truth. There is so much pressure being put on them, that they have opened up subjects, albeit mostly to save their own careers. The publicity being given these hearings is loud enough that if the commission members kept on lying, their falsities would be published in every newspaper in the country.

However, there is still one issue they evade: the fact that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) since 1992. Their statements say that they ignored information that Iraqi WMD may be degraded by 2002 and they would be of no use. Another swerve is that they say that Iraq lacked the delivery systems for WMD and could not use them. They still will not admit there were no WMD in Iraq and it was irrelevant whether the Iraqis had proper delivery systems. If there is nothing to deliver, the question of delivery is null and void.

The front page of the Baghdad Observer of June 11, 1995 is just one of the items that proves Iraq had no WMD. It shows a picture of Saddam Hussein in the middle, flanked by two articles ("Iraq’s Cooperation with UN Must Be Rewarded" and "Iraq Pins Hope on Next SC Report to UN Council") in which it is clearly stated the Iraq said all its WMD were destroyed. However, even this message has been tweaked by current journalists, historians, and politicians. After the embarrassment of not finding even one gram of WMD, the new story line was that Saddam hoodwinked the world by keeping them thinking Iraq had WMD when it didn’t. If this was the case, I doubt the two articles of the front page of the Baghdad Observer would display Saddam with two articles discussing the destruction of the country’s WMD in 1991 and 1992.

When one looks back at statements and articles by Iraqis during the period of 1991 to 2003, it is uncanny how accurate they were. On the other hand, much of what the U.S. put forward has been shown to be outright lies.

For instance, in October 2002, the U.S. issued a document called "Key Judgements: National Intelligence Estimate." It concluded that Iraq was constantly developing its stockpile of WMD and, at times, maintained that the 2002 inventory of Iraqi WMD may be larger than that of the country prior to 1991. The report included many doomsday scenarios.

This document was publicised world-wide. Virtually every daily newspaper in the U.S. carried it, or excerpts from it. Many foreign countries saw it as well and it helped convince some leaders who were on the fence about whether to support a war or not to come aboard the U.S. ship. In looking at the document today, one would have a hard time finding even one bit of truth. Even U.S. administration officials admitted it was way off; after the illegal invasion, of course.

On the other hand, in November 2002, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Naji Sabri, sent a letter to the Unite Nations refuting the report. Then, he gave in detail the standing of Iraq in regards to its WMD. He mentioned when they were destroyed and how programs were never re-started. The U.S. called the letter a big lie and condemned the Iraqis for again trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the world. In looking at the letter today, it is extremely accurate in every detail.

Sabri's letter received little attention, other than the obligatory denouncement by the U.S. Few people read it.

When Iraq and the U.S. shared diplomatic ties in the 1980s, Nizar Hamdoon was the Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S. In Washington, he was well-regarded and built many friendships. In the 1990s, with no diplomatic ties between the two countries, Hamdoon was called back to action and served as the Iraqi Ambassador to the U.N. In 2000, he was replaced and called back to Baghdad to serve in the Foreign Service.

Hamdoon was very visible in the U.S. and many people remember him from television appearances, although he was usually lambasted by interviewers. His was a lonely job. On July 4, 2003, a few months after the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, Hamdoon died of cancer.

Let's to back to the latter part of 1998. The U.S. was accusing Iraq of concealing the most deadly chemicals on Earth and in December, Clinton ordered the bombing of Iraq and called the procedure Operation Desert Fox. Most people remember this as the "Iraq/U.N. standoff." Even the method of removing the inspectors from Iraq was a lie. The U.N. ordered the inspectors from Iraq a few days before the bombing, yet the U.S. always stated that Saddam Hussein kicked them out.

During this time, Nizar Hamdoon wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times called "A Black Cat in a Dark Room." The paper carried it, yet few people took it seriously. Go back to the time and refresh your memory and you will see how exact and precise Hamdoon was in his assessment. He did not lie, yet few listened. He clearly stated that Iraq was free of WMD.

"A BLACK CAT IN A DARK ROOM"

by Nizar Hamdoon

Much has been said and published about recent standoffs between Iraq and the United Nations arms inspectors. But those criticizing Iraq for suspending its cooperation with the United Nations special commission on arms inspection, better known as Unscom, give no recognition whatsoever to the underlying reason that led Iraq to adopt this position. It is time to set the record straight.

First, the whole world knows by now that Iraq has lost well over a million of its people as a direct result of the sanctions that have been in place for eight years. A former president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, was chillingly correct when he called sanctions a "peaceful, silent and deadly remedy." U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright herself characterized them as "the toughest multilateral sanctions in history." Many critics seem to think the government of Iraq is supposed to stand idle while watching a whole generation of its people melt away like snowflakes.

Second, Iraq has complied with all the fundamental requirements of disarmament in Security Council Resolution 687. Unscom itself admitted this reality in its April 11, 1997 report to the Security Council when it said, "The accumulated effect of the work that has been accomplished over six years since the cease fire went into effect between Iraq and the coalition is such that not much is unknown about Iraq's proscribed weapons capabilities." But the United States and Britain refuse to recognize this fact. Their role in preventing the Security Council from closing the clearly done nuclear file a few months ago is a case in point.

The disagreement between Iraq and the inspectors is not on existing weapons. No weapons or sites have been discovered by the Unscom inspectors on their own since 1991. Those that have been found have been produced by the Iraqi government itself. Rather, the recent disputes involve paper documentation that precedes the gulf war. Those issues can be pursued in the context of the already established ongoing monitoring regime.

There are two main questions that need to be asked when assessing Iraq's compliance with disarmament requirements: does Iraq still possess proscribed weapons or the means to produce them, and is the monitoring process working? The answer is no to the first, yes to the second. Unscom's allegations about documentation are nothing but excuses to manufacture a crisis whenever one is needed to prolong the sanctions.

Iraq has said all along that there must be a creative way to reconcile the two goals: the need for more documentation and the easing of the suffering of the Iraqi people. Unscom, unfortunately, is insisting on everything or nothing.

Iraq will never be able to satisfy Unscom because it is being asked to prove the negative: that it does not have any more weapons. There is, of course, no way Iraq can prove that it has nothing if it has nothing. How many more Iraqis will have to die because Richard Butler's team has not yet found another document, which cannot be located because there is no such document in the first place? The inspectors are searching for a black cat in a dark room where the cat does not exist.

Third, many American officials have stated that even if Iraq complies with the Security Council's resolutions, the United States will not approve the lifting of sanctions. The declared goal of Washington is to remove the current government of Iraq. We wonder of this goal is in line with the letter and spirit of international law and the United Nations resolutions. Iraq continues to believe that the resolutions are used by the United States as a cover for an illegal political agenda. The allocation of money to the Central Intelligence Agency for subversion in Iraq is just a unit in this series. One might wonder why Iraq should continue being part of this futile and endless game.

Fourth, Ms. Albright claims that every Iraqi receives a daily ration basket equivalent to the recommended caloric intake of the average American. Perhaps she needs to review the latest reports by the United Nations and other organizations which state that millions of Iraqi children and women are still suffering and that the oil-for-food program is not adequate. For instance, the 1998 World Disaster Report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies described Iraq as a country under siege and said 16 to 27 percent of the population is malnourished.

Finally, many high-ranking American officials keep speaking about Iraq as being a threat to American interests and the region. We would like to assure these officials, and through them the American people, that Iraqi is eager to live in peace with its neighbors and the world. But Iraq will not submit to intimidation, bullying and coercion. Peace will come only through dialogue based on mutual respect for the principles of independence, sovereignty and the observance of international law.

On August 22, 2007, Jonathan Schwarz wrote a column for his website, www.tinyrevolution.com, called "Advancing the Debate on My Faith in Saddam Hussein." In it, he related to a recent dialogue he had with Michael Cohen, a former speechwriter for the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. during the Clinton administration.

COLUMBUS AND APPLES

"In fourteen ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue," began the annual ditty in U.S. elementary schools in the 1950s and 1960s. Reciting this poem was an obligatory performance that was followed by the kids taking out their Crayola crayons and illustrating Columbus and his three ships; the Nina, the Pinta and he Santa Maria.

All the depictions of Columbus showed an honorable and brave man: one worthy of the accolades given him. For years, the common question in kids’ schools was, "Who discovered America?" Naturally, the answer was "Columbus."

We just had a federal holiday in the U.S. in honor of the great navigator. However, for the past few years, the size and number of celebrations of Columbus have diminished considerably.

After some years, it became evident that Columbus did not discover anything. People with villages, governments, trading operations and transportation were already there. Then, we learn that Columbus was in the wrong place. He thought he had reached India, hence the misnomer of Indians being thrust on the native population.

What Columbus did was open up a route for European nations to follow in his footsteps and travel to North and South America. Instead of Columbus being the discoverer of America, he, in fact, was the first soldier in the battle for stealing North and South America from its inhabitants. When the smoke cleared, about 30 million Native Americans had died because of the European explorers and their following generations. Some Native Americans were outright killed by weapons and others died from diseases they had never encountered. Columbus was the initiator of one of the most deadly holocausts in world history, only being outdone by the deaths of African-Americans in the slave trade over the centuries.

Once the initial discovery of Native Americans was heralded, the Catholic Church became involved. Instead of just plundering the Western Hemisphere of its riches, the native savages had to be converted to Christianity. If they refused, they were killed. If they accepted, they were allowed to live in slavery.

In my area of southern California, there was a large number of Native Americans who belonged to the Kumeyaay tribe. They were devastated. Their villages were burned and many were killed. The survivors who chose the path of Christianity were enslaved in the Catholic missions and on ranches.

Instead of being ashamed of such a past, there are many missions throughout California that are kept up as tourist attractions. San Diego has several missions from the 18^th century that welcome tourists from all over the world. Even the city’s major league baseball team denotes this past: the San Diego Padres. The team logo shows a priest (padre) wearing the typical clothing of the heyday of the missions.

For years, Columbus Day has been a holiday in the United States. Almost every community holds a parade. The Italian-American clubs, the Knights of Columbus, and the Sons of Italy all come out in commemoration of their most notorious national hero.

In the 1990s, however, things began to change. In 1991 in San Diego, a counter Columbus Day parade occurred on the border with Mexico. Thousands attended, especially those San Diegans of Hispanic heritage. Since then, the annual parade and demonstration has outdrawn the official Columbus Day parade held in downtown San Diego.

Three years ago, Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, had heard enough about the merits of Christopher Columbus. That year, October 12, in Venezuela, was officially called "Indian Liberation Day." This has been a very popular change in Venezuela. Bolivia is also attempting to set the record straight. On October 12 of 2006 year, Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, held a conference with Native American delegates from all over North and South America.

Let’s get back to San Diego. The once strong Kumeyaay tribe has been splintered into smaller segments; each with a name and the Kumeyaay designation. For instance, those Native Americans living in the Lakeside area of the county are the Barona Band of the Kumeyaay Nation. Other local tribes are the Campo tribe, the Sycuan tribe, the Jamul tribe and the La Posta tribe. They are all Kumeyaay, but have been split by the white man.

In the early 1990s, all the San Diego tribes were dirt poor. Then, they became involved with casinos. Today, most are very rich and have powerful political clout. After all, they donate much money to local economies and offer thousands of jobs.

With this quick turnaround, one would think it would have helped the Native Americans restore some of the pride they lost centuries ago. This has not been the case.

The Barona tribe now has a huge casino; a multilevel luxury hotel; a championship 18-hole golf course; and several gourmet restaurants. They are rolling in money. After the expansion, the Barona tribe officially called its business ventures "Barona Ranch and Casino." To a Native American, the term "ranch" is identical to that of "plantation" for an African-American. It should be the last thing they would want to call themselves. Imagine an African-American restaurant calling itself "The Plantation." The logic of the Barona tribe eludes me.

Let’s go to the Campo tribe. In 1991, one of their committee members told me that Native Americans have two days a year that are devastating to their pride: Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. He was very upset how mainstream America celebrates these holidays with no thought to the feelings of Native Americans.

In September 1992, the Campo tribe purchased the weekly newspaper of which I was the editor. This was the first adjudicated newspaper in the U.S. owned by a Native American tribe.

I thought this was a wonderful mix. The tribe kept me on as editor and I assumed I would be able to write about Native American history and other sociological issues concerning natives. Each day, I would hear tribal committee members denigrate white people. Most of the time, they were right and I agreed with them. "The lying white man," "The white man’s justice," etc. were terms that I heard frequently.

I wrote a feature article concerning the prior year’s anti-Columbus Day parade and thought the committee would like it. They were now the publishers, so I showed them my articles before they went into the design stage of the newspaper. When they read my article, which actually was quite mild, they went through the roof. "We can’t print this," said the chairman. I asked, "Why?" He bellowed, "It will upset the white man." The prior publishers (two middle-aged apolitical white women) would have had no problem with the article.

I had two emotions after this experience. The first was the hypocrisy of denigrating the white man and then not wanting to publish an article that may "upset the white man." The second was a sadness of the total lack of pride these Native Americans had.

Before the Campo tribe bought the paper, I learned of a term for Indians who suck up to the white man: apple. An apple is red on the outside and white on the inside. A similar analogy would be the term "Oreo" that was affixed to African-Americans who cowered to the white man decades ago: an Oreo (an American snack item) is black on the outside and white on the inside.

My days at the newspaper were numbered. It folded a few weeks later because of a total lack of competence on the part of the publishers. But, I saw first-hand what an "apple" was and it was disgusting.

Since then, the Campo tribe has gained money from its own casino. Many once-poor Native Americans are now experiencing a fruitful life in southern California. However, the spokespeople for the tribes now sound like Rush Limbaugh. They support and sponsor many pro-war demonstrations and parades and tell how proud they are to be Americans. I have spoken to a few tribal members who are not on committees and they have told me of their disgust of the hypocrisy of their leaders solely to gain financial benefits.

And, here’s the biggest irony: the first building one sees when he/she enters most of the San Diego County tribal lands is a huge Catholic Church.

THE DAY THE COLD WAR CAME TO LA MESA

In 1983, I moved back to my home country, the United States, after having spent the prior eight years living in England and The Netherlands. What I thought would be a seamless transition of culture has turned into a 26-year odyssey. The country had changed immensely from 1975, the year I left for Europe. I am still trying to find out what went wrong.

In addition, I moved to one of the most conservative areas of the nation: San Diego County.

By 1984, I saved enough money to open my own business. In the U.S. I had worked in the sporting goods trade for years, so I thought this would be a natural business for me to start. Because the weather is almost tropical in the area, golf and tennis are played year-round, so I highlighted those two sports.

I found an area of La Mesa, a small city bordering San Diego, that had a quaint look to it and was not as commercial-looking as the numerous strip malls. Little did I know that this portion of La Mesa was distrustful of outsiders and was laden with racists.

I went to the city hall and gathered the paperwork necessary for the knowledge of building codes. My building fit all the necessary rules. Most of the businesses were painted in a dull beige or rust color, so I decided to turn mine into a tri-shade of blue, both inside and outside.

About a week after I opened the business, I received a call from a city official. She was terse and asked, "When are you going to paint your building?" I explained that I had just finished the painting. Then, she said it was the wrong color. We went back-and-forth over this and she admitted that there was no stipulation about the color, but the area tried to keep its "traditional" look intact. Fifty years prior, there was only a dirt road in the area, so I told her, "The only traditional look of La Mesa would be tepees and covered wagons." She was irate.

I could see now that some of the local businesses were trying to undermine me. When I went to get my business license, the city planning board denied it. When I asked why, they said, "Your sign is on a building wall and our rules stipulate that a sign must not be a part of a building wall."

I went back to my store and checked out their allegations. My sign consisted of several sheets of plywood erected above the building wall and held up by wooden planks inserted at an angle into the roof. Then, I checked out other businesses in the area and discovered that about 90% of them were out of code. My store was one of the few that adhered strictly to the code. I went to the library and found a document from an international meeting in 1913 that set the standards of a building wall for international interpretation.

I again visited the planning commission and told them that my sign was not part of the building wall. One member said, "We say it is." I then opened up the document explaining the definition of a building wall and they all turned their heads away and one said, "We don’t want to see it." When I mentioned that 90% of the businesses in the area were out-of-code, they told me, "We don’t care. We’re talking about you business, not anybody else’s.

I knew a lawyer in San Diego from the law firm for which my wife worked as a paralegal. I told her my story. She said, "Let me make a call." A few minutes later, she called me and told me to pick up my business license. In her discussion with the planning group, she brought up the point of "prejudicial application of the law" and inferred a lawsuit was imminent. The planning group quickly changed its assessment of my business.

I had a nice business going; nothing to make me rich, but I met a lot of people and thew work was interesting. Soon after I opened, an incident occurred that did not sit well with the other business owners. A black customer bought a set of golf clubs from me and soon after, many black customers came into my store with business card in hand. The first black customer spread the word that there was a golf shop that wouldn’t screw black customers.

The section of La Mesa in which I was located saw very few black people. If one happened to be walking down the street, every business owner would stand in front of his/her store and give a dirty look, letting the black person know he/she was not welcome in this area of town. When blacks began to become regular customers, I would wait until they got in my store and then take a walk out front. Sure enough, there were store owners staring at my store. I used to holler, "Anything wrong? Is my store on fire or something?" Quickly, the cowards disappeared into their own businesses.

By 1988, I had variuos interesting regular customers who stopped my almost daily just to talk. They were not the standard conservative element that inhabited the area. Some were black; some had long hair and beards; some males had pony tails; and some of the females did not dress in the subdued manner that was expected in La Mesa. But, the owners begrudgingly accepted me and I did not confront them unless confronted first.

A rumor was spreading that a major movie was in progress and the street on which my store was located would be the scene of a glorious parade in which the hero rode at the head of the parade with the city mayor. I called the La Mesa Chamber of Commerce and was told this was true. Then, I asked if the movie company would be compensating the business owners for the wear and tear that their buildings would suffer. The Chamber said that the production company would not compensate any business.

I then called the movie company. An official stated that about $10,000 was allocated to the La Mesa Chamber of Commerce for the use of the portion of La Mesa Boulevard where my store was located. I smelled a rat. It was evident that the La Mesa Chamber president, Gordon Austin, who was slicker than 10 eels, would pocket the money along with one or two accomplices.

I asked about the storyline of the movie and the company told me that Sidney Poitier and River Phoenix were the stars and that Richard Benjamin was to be the director and the title was "Little Nikita." This was no amateur production. They added that River Phoenix was to play a U.S. teenager about to embark on a college career and he discovered his parents were Soviet spies. Poitier was the FBI person who would unveil the plot and Phoenix would turn his parents in. And, Gordon Austin, the CEO of the La Mesa Chamber of Commerce, was slated to play the part of the mayor of La Mesa, although the town was called Fountain Grove in the movie. In other words, this was another standard fare commie-bashing movie.

The day before the filming, a huge crew showed up with trucks laden with U.S. flags and red-white-and-blue banners. I watched as store-after-store was adorned with these patriotic symbols. They went up the opposite side of the street and began to come down my side of the thoroughfare. The store next door, called "Pretty and Plump," had just undergone its makeover. The employees stood out front and were mesmerized by the transformation.

Then, I heard a voice say, "Great, this store already has a place for a flagpole." He was speaking of my store. When his crew began to insert the flagpole in the bracket, I stopped them. I told the head of the crew, "There will be no U.S. flag on my store." He ignored me and I repeated myself loudly. He asked, "Who are you?" I said, "I own the fucking place." He then sarcastically asked, "What to you want, a Russian flag?" I responded, "No flags. Isn’t that quite easy to understand." "How about an Italian flag?" he queried.

My employee was a young woman who had at one time been though rehabilitation for methamphetamine addiction. She was now clean. She asked the guy, "Why don’t you take another snort, asshole?" Then, she explained to me that he was all juiced up. "Look at your nose," she told him. At that time, I knew little about the indications of whether someone was on speed or not. I have seen so many people who used the stuff since then that I can spot someone who is, or was, heavily into methamphetamine with ease.

Finally, the production guy said, "You just wait. I’ll take care of you." He then went to find a Chamber of Commerce official. By now, a crowd was building, including many of the local business owners.

Moments later, a crass-looking woman asked the production person, "Where’s he at? I’ll fix him." She didn’t know that I was standing right next to her. I asked, "Who the fuck are you going to fix?" She snapped, "You watch your language." I then said, "My language is correct. I used a verb, noun, and object. But, you exhibited the epitome of stupidity in asking a question with a ludicrous redundancy: ‘Where’s he at?" Her face was beet red and she was irate, yet she had little to say because she would have looked even a bigger fool than she was.

Then, I gave my assessment of the situation. I loudly stated, "I don’t want any fucking flag on my building and neither do I want any of the red-white-and-blue ribbons. I don’t care if every building on the block is adorned in such a manner, but don’t touch my store."

Some of those assembled were put out by my lack of "patriotism," but I quickly changed the subject and told them they were being cheated. I stated, "The La Mesa Chamber of Commerce is getting paid $10,000 by the movie company for using La Mesa Boulevard as the parade scene. Yet, the Chamber told me they were receiving nothing. The production company told me about the remuneration. In other words, none of you will get shit out of this, but this woman and Gordon Austin will be lining their pockets with cash. Think about that."

Within seconds, the woman left my store in a huff. Following her were several local business owners asking questions about the financing they heard was non-existent. The woman waved her hands back and forth and told them she had no comment.

The day of the filming was hectic. La Mesa Boulevard was lined with thousands of people. The casting department put out a message calling for people to participate. They did not get paid, but some were content to be able to say they were in a movie. Throughout the scene, I stood in my doorway with my employee next to me. We both had our arms crossed and looked at the event for what it was: a staged movie that portrayed xenophobia and resulted in a few local officials getting their palms greased.

I never saw the movie because I would not waste my money on such trash. But, I knew someone who had a videotape of it and asked if I could watch a portion. I fast-forwarded the tape to the parade scene. There was La Mesa Boulevard laden with people standing and sitting in front of stores adorned with red-white-and-blue cloth, paper, cardboard, and flags. Right in the middle of the businesses, La Mesa Golf, Tennis, Etc. was plainly seen only with its tri-color blue paint. It stood out like a sore thumb, but it looked far better than any of the contrived stores that surrounded it. If you ever see the videotape of this movie, or know someone who has one, check out the parade scene. I had a major role in its depiction, yet you will never see my name on the list of credits.

For years, I have been aghast at the misuse of the apostrophe in the English language. The punctuation mark is used primarily for two reasons: to denote the possessive of a word, or to contract a noun and a verb. One example would be, "The dog’s owner." In this instance, a person could easily determine that the dog belonged to someone. Without the apostrophe, the sentence would not make sense. To denote a sentence in which an apostrophe would be appropriate for contracting a noun and a verb, "The dog’s taking a leak on a fire hydrant" would depict an accurate occurrence. Again, taking out the apostrophe would make one question the meaning: are there many dogs urinating and the verb ‘are" is missing would be a logical question.

By far the worst offender of words using apostrophes consists of the words "its or it’s." This is something that does not fit into set rules. "It’s" is a contraction for "it is," not a word to denote possession. "Its" is the word that depicts possession. In the past 10 years, of the hundreds, or thousands, of times that I’ve seen these words used, the majority are wrong. By far, the biggest culprit is using "it’s" to describe the possessive. So what, you may ask? Anyone with more than a sixth grade knowledge of the English language would look at the incorrect word "it’s" and ask "it is what?" But, the misuse has taken hold in such a way that few people know the difference or care to.

Then came the use of apostrophes to denote the plural of words, instead of possession or a contraction. "Dogs became "dog’s." "Cars became "car’s." The list is long and tedious. One does not have to speak faultless Shakespearean English to be confused about these quandaries. Year-after-year, the number of words that are inserted with apostrophes to denote the plural are increasing. Unfortunately, the number of people who say ‘So what?" are increasing at the same rate.

On September 4, 2009, the renowned British author Keith Waterhouse died. He was a prolific author and journalist. I did not read many of his works, but his most famous was Billy Liar, a book that was made into a movie and a television series. He also wrote the TV series "That Was the Week that Was," a groundbreaking satirical look at British politics.

When I read his obituary, I discovered that Waterhouse was outspoken about the misuse of apostrophes. In fact, he began and organization called the Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe (AAAA). Members included other journalists who decried the downfall of the use of the apostrophe.

At first, I thought the increasing misuse of the apostrophe was unique to this side of the Atlantic. Most U.S. citizens have a hard time composing a three-sentence paragraph. With the advent of Internet communication, with all its illogical abbreviations and smile logos, I began to assess these aberrations as the beginning of the downfall of the English language. If enough mis-uses and stupid abbreviations came into play, it would be impossible for someone from Des Moines, Iowa to communicate with someone from Dultuh, Minnesota. I am by no means a strict purist on the use of the English language, but once each person begins to take shortcuts, soon the language will be incomprehensible, when the whole idea behind the use of language is to make a common method of communication.

I was wrong on that one. A few years ago, as I began to receive more and more e-mail messages from old acquaintances from Britain whom I knew decades ago, I saw the same aberrations. Evidently, today in Britain, greengrocers (fruit and vegetable market owners) are the worst offenders of this new lack of accuracy in the use of apostrophes (not apostrophe’s). Included below is an article that appeared in the British newspaper the Daily Mail last year. It is quite long but is well worth the time to read.

I am not usually a person who belongs to groups, but, if Waterhouse’s AAAA is still up and running, there is a chance I may put in my application.

Apostrophe Catastrophe! The Rogue Apostrophe Is Spreading Like Measles. It's Time to Fight Back...

By Victoria Moore
Last updated at 7:32 AM on 18th November 2008

This all started with a drink. But it very nearly didn't because when I looked at the cocktail list in the otherwise swanky Charlotte Street Hotel in London and discovered that martini's (sic) were £10.50 and classic's (sic) £10.50 I momentarily lost my thirst.

The price was bad enough. But did you have to pay extra if you wanted to have your drink correctly punctuated? And would a martini - mine's made with Plymouth gin, please, very dry, shaken with a twist - taste as good if it also contained a stray apostrophe?

Caught up in a spasm of punctuation-rage I, perhaps slightly aggressively, asked the poor waitress what those two utterly extraneous apostrophes were doing there. She backed away hurriedly and sent over the assistant bar manager.

Mariusz Szymecki may have been Polish but his English was fluent. Or almost fluent.

'Both spellings - martini's and martinis - are correct,' he said firmly. 'I know this is right because, when I heard what you wanted to know, I checked it on Google.'

On Google? Who in the name of a thousand question marks would rely on Google to be an authority on anything, least of all a grammatical matter?

The internet is awash with misspellings and punctuation solecisms. Nor is it much better out there in the real world. And the poor apostrophe is the subject of more abuse than any other dot, dash or squiggle.

For decades the nation's pedants have sighed and tutted over the so-called greengrocer's apostrophe - the one you find on piles of fruit and vegetables advertising the fact that apple's and banana's are for sale by the pound or kilo when no apostrophe is required to complete the plural.

If only apostrophe errors were confined to market stalls! Instead they have spread like a contagion, infecting public signs and notices, literature from reputable institutions, menus and shop signs - not to mention press releases, letters and emails.

According to a new study, the apostrophe causes more problems than any other punctuation mark. Almost half of 2,000 adults who sat a simple test were unable to use it properly.

But is anyone really bothered? On Newsnight last week even the great interrogator Jeremy Paxman seemed prepared to shrug off the apostrophe problem, saying: 'Maybe it's redundant now.' Or if Paxo had his way, 'maybe its redundant now'.

Nonsense! It may be under threat, but we should stand up for the simple apostrophe.

We should defend its honour - as the Daily Mail's own Keith Waterhouse has done for some time, with his organisation the AAAA ( Association for the Annihilation of the Aberrant Apostrophe).

I decided to spend a day policing apostrophes. Surely if people realised the error of their ways they would be moved to do something about it, wouldn't they?

I am barely awake when I stumble on my first howler, on the sandwich board outside the Shiraz Cafe, a greasy spoon on Hammersmith Road, West London, between my flat and the office, advertising 'pasta's, jacket potato's and panini's'.

Inside, Roshi, the Iranian proprietor, smiles beatifically when I inform her of the problem.

'I don't care,' she says mildly. But I do, I say. I don't add that the sight of an airborne curl of black where there should only be the white of the page stirs in me feelings of biliousness. I had worried that this might be a bit of an overreaction, until I read popular grammarian Lynne Truss on the subject.

Strict: If you still persist in writing: 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by lightning according to author Lynne Truss

'No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice,' writes Truss in her bestselling Eats, Shoots And Leaves. 'If you still persist in writing: 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.'

Goodness. Fortunately, wandering around Hammersmith, Kensington and Notting Hill I don't find a single aberrant it's. I do, however, find wheelbarrows full of greengrocer's apostrophes. There is one at an odds-and-ends shop advertising 'Pashmina scarf's' for £3 each.

'Yeah,' says a shop assistant when I take him to task on it. 'I know it's wrong. But someone else did that sign. He left about a month ago. We might get round to changing it.'

There are several more offenders on the menus of nearby cafes and bars. There is even one, threatening to 'copy plan's', plastered on the window of Copywell, a printing and copying centre.

Surely it should be incumbent on a printer to put his apostrophes in the right place. I drag a charming young graphic designer called Anam Islam out on to the pavement to show him the problem.

'Yeah, that is wrong,' he admits. 'And I did that one. It's funny because I was watching a documentary on apostrophes the other week and thought that I always got them right.'

Perhaps one of the reasons we remain so confused about the apostrophe is that it is relatively new to our language. The last punctuation mark to be standardised, it has been around in its present form for about 150 years.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the first record of the actual word 'apostrophe' in English is in Shakespeare's late 16th century play Love's Labour's Lost and that it is rooted in the Greek for ' turning away, or elision'.

This makes perfect sense: originally an apostrophe's job was merely to indicate the omission of letters, and this remains one of its most basic - and easily understood - tasks.

You need only think of contractions such as can't and daren't, dates such as the '80s or poems such as A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns - 'Till a' the seas gang dry my dear/ And the rocks melt wi' the sun' - to see how it works.

And yet for some reason many people seem to find it tempting beyond belief to apply apostrophes to a word as if they were visual garnish.

It's not just fruitsellers who do this: a barrister friend shows me a letter to a judge positively strewn with extra apostrophes.

Plurals of abbreviations or acronyms are particularly prone to this treatment. How many times have you seen a sign offering CD's? And another friend, a policeman, tells me he often comes across ASBO's.

Serial offender: Greengrocers are regular offenders when it comes to putting apostrophes in the wrong place.

But worse than that, after popping into Nationwide Building Society to pick up a leaflet on savings, I find it blithely expounding on the subject of ISAs (fine) but also ISA's (not fine).

I phone the press office to remonstrate. 'The apostrophe shouldn't be there, no,' admits a jolly man on the end of the line.

'It would appear to be human error, though rogue apostrophes do seem to be increasingly prevalent. We'll try to remember to take it out on the next print run.'

By now I have been staring so hard all day at apostrophes that I am beginning to lose it. I can see them when I close my eyes, crawling like dark, specky insects across my retina.

And I haven't even tackled their possessive use yet.

According to the latest study, this is where people really struggle. Most of us are fine with the fact that, as well as missing letters, apostrophes are used to indicate possession.

So, the bike belonging to the boy could be written as 'the boy's bike'.

But what if the boy's name is James? Do we refer to James' bike? Or to James's bike?

It started with a drink: Victoria Moore's rage about misplaced apostrophes began when she saw martini's (sic) were £10.50 on a hotel menu

And what if there are several boys, all with bikes? When brain is engaged, most people are happy that the correct answer is 'the boys' bikes'.

But for some reason we are not entirely comfortable with this end-of-word apostrophe, particularly when it falls at the end of a sentence.

It's an aesthetic objection and we deal with it by. . . just missing off the apostrophe. Because we feel like it. Here are two examples: Visitors Toilet (seen in a hospital); Parents Association (countless schools).

As I am musing on this, an email arrives from a PR contact inviting me to a Ladies Social Evening.

Just as I finish emailing prissily back, 'Dear Ellie, Shouldn't it be Ladies' Social Evening?' my friend Tanya phones. 'Oh God, who cares about apostrophes?' she says, 'I think people who are uptight about them probably make terrible lovers.' Is there a chance I am taking this too far?

John Richards does not think so. Based near Boston in Lincolnshire, he is a retired journalist with bushy eyebrows and an absolute intolerance of misplaced apostrophes.

'It makes me feel despair more than rage,' he confides. 'I set up the Apostrophe Protection Society four years ago. I have tackled people in person. Usually offenders just get letters. I've sent out thousands. You can only plug away.'

Mr. Richards blames ignorance and laziness for our troubles. He is engaged in a minor squabble with the proprietor of a local teashop who insists on offering customers tea's.

'When I asked him about it he said he wouldn't change it because he thought it looked better with one in. What can you do? Needless to say, I haven't been in there for a tea or coffee.'

But what's this? Mr. Richards has also written a letter of complaint to the sainted Lynne Truss. He claims she has got something wrong. Before I tell you what it is, perhaps you could try to answer the following question. Which is correct?

(a) Dos and don'ts (b) Do's and don'ts (c) Do's and don't's The answer, according to Ms Truss, is (c). She says that for plurals of letters and certain words then an apostrophe is required.

For example, if you were asking how many s's there are in Mississippi or talking about the noise a crowd made on bonfire night - 'There were lots of oooh's and ahhh's.'

The answer according to Mr Richards is (a). He says: 'Lynne Truss can write what she likes but she's got to justify why you might use one when there are no missing letters and no possessive sense.

'There is no role for the apostrophe in plurals at all.'

Who will arbitrate? Well, David Crystal, professor of linguistics at Bangor University, isn't one for taking sides but he does believe that apostrophes in plurals are sometimes necessary.

'What if I ask you to dot your i's and cross your t's? How will you spell that? If you didn't use an apostrophe you'd have the word 'is' instead of i's.'

As he puts it in his book The Fight For English: 'Inserting an apostrophe is as good a way as any of showing there is an unusual plural.'

But Crystal goes further, and makes a good case for there to be a little more leniency in tricky circumstances.

'Punctuation has always been a matter of trends,' he says. 'Commas, hyphens, semicolons, apostrophes - all have been subject to changes in fashion.

Thinking about these issues as a two-part solution (correct vs incorrect) doesn't help.

'As with many linguistic issues, there are three solutions - correct, incorrect and optional (i.e. can't decide!). Pedants forget about context, which is what removes ambiguity in most cases.

For example, in the case of the Parents' Association, there could be no such thing as an association for one parent, so the apostrophe is simply unnecessary, which is why most people leave it out.

'The other thing people forget is that when the rules were drawn up 150 years ago, it was by printers who forgot about exceptions - such as some plurals - that had been in the language a long time.'

This is the point at which I decide I have had enough of apostrophes. Yes, it will still distress me to be offered a list of martini's or cocktail's. But I think in future I may require a more niche challenge. It's time to protest against the split infinitive.

UNREPORTED REPORTS

In the past few months, we have seen numerous reports about Iraqi homosexuals being tortured and killed, many times by agents of the stooge Iraqi government. All the mainstream multi-million-dollar organizations, such as Newsweek and CNN are cashing in on their supposed "scoops." However, they are three or four years out of time. In 2005, I, and a few others, notably Pat Sherman and Doug Ireland, wrote extensively about the issue. It took the mainstream media four years to come out with "revealing information."

Before I go into detail about the reporting, both from 2006 and the current surge in articles being thrust on the public, I would like to address an issue that may throw off some of the importance of writing about the slaughter of homosexuals. I have read commentaries by people of various nationalities who oppose the Iraqi invasion by the U.S. and have loudly stated their disgust with the ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Sunnis, Chaldeans and other minorities, state that they don’t care about homosexuals being targeted in Iraq. They may be opposed to homosexuality for religious or cultural reasons. But, that is not the issue here. No one has to accept the culture of another to defend that person’s right to be able to live if he/she is a contributing member of society. I am not homosexual, but I will fight with all my power to stop a program that allows for the torturing and killing of homosexuals. We shouldn’t be arguing about the merits or demerits of homosexuality, but about the civil rights of human beings on the Earth.

Scientific facts show that about 10% of all humans are born homosexual. About 10% of all humans are born left-handed. For centuries, any minority has been the target of society’s mainstream. Until the 1950s, in the U.S., if a kid wrote left-handed in school, the teacher would hit him/her with a stick on the left hand that created great pain. This was to stop the deviants from pursuing their natural left-handedness.

Today, homosexuals are targeted in many countries, but there are signs of a letting up of violence against them. If you remember, the nitwit president of Iran told the United Nations that there were no homosexuals in Iran. The audience laughed hysterically at his statement. Homosexuality is not contagious. No heterosexual person can catch homosexuality. It is a generic trait.

I’ll give you a story about my earlier years in which someone educated me about the point of bigotry and how it backfired on him. When I was 18, I worked in a large company with four buildings. On occasion, I would be walking to another building and run into the timekeeper, who was openly homosexual. We would talk about sports and music and then go our separate ways when we reached our destination. He was merely a casual acquaintance.

One day, a fellow in his 40s approached me and said that I should watch out for the timekeeper. I was curious why he was so worried about my welfare. He told me, "He might take you around the side of the building and try to suck your cock." The thought never occurred to me that he would try to do that.

A few days later, another individual whom I casually knew approached me and said, "I heard what that guy told you the other day about the timekeeper. Let me tell you a story of what I used to do when I was your age."
He then told of how he and two of his friends, each Friday night, would go to an area in Newport, Rhode Island which gay men frequented. He said they would then pick one out walking on the street and beat him up and take his money. In the U.S., this was commonly called "Rolling a fag." (In Britain, the same term indicates someone rolling a cigarette with tobacco and paper.) During the days of open violence against black Americans, whites would gang up on a black and beat him up. This was called "Nigger Knocking." We Americans are great at creating slogans for violence.

Getting back to the fellow who used to "roll fags," he continued, "One Friday night, my friends and I saw a homosexual of average build and about 5’ 8" tall. We thought he would be an easy target. Well, he beat the shit out of the three of us at the same time. We were laying on the ground, and he stood above us and said, ‘Don’t you ever try to do that to anyone again.’ The lecture hurt more than the beating. Let me tell you now, homosexuals are human beings just like everyone else. Don’t listen to those guys who tell you to be afraid of them."

Growing up, I had been misled many times by advice from "adults." Once you become an adult yourself, you discover how many jerks are out there who mislead younger people. The advice I was given by the person who retired from "rolling fags" after his thrashing was one of the few good pieces of advice I had ever received from adults during my teenage years.

Now, let’s get to the meat of reporting on the Iraqi pogrom against homosexuals.

In 2005, I reported about Ayatollah Sistani’s fatwah calling for the killing of homosexuals in the most severe manner. Two weeks later, George Bush called Sistani a man of great courage and integrity.

Reports about the slaughter began to emerge from gays who fled Iraq. Pat Sherman, a California journalist, contacted me and asked me what information I had. Then, he began to call people and get their statements about the violence against gays and lesbians. First, Nancy Pelosi dodged the issue and admitted she had not heard of this. Her official statement was, "I oppose bigotry in all forms." She had power to do something, but evaded the issue. Barney Frank, a homosexual congressman who is an advocate of gay rights told Sherman he had never heard of what was happening in Iraq and he would return Sherman’s call within 24 hours. He never called back. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also pled ignorance of any knowledge of homosexuals being killed in Iraq.

Today, all the human rights groups, as well as Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank are outspoken opponents of the violence against Iraqi homosexuals. Once it became in vogue to oppose the actions, everyone wanted a piece of the action. When they could have acted four years ago, they were mute.

Here’s the big story that is now forgotten. In the articles that appeared in 2006, Iraqi gays told of the days prior to the March 2003 invasion when they were treated like human beings under the Ba’ath government. Ali Hili, an Iraqi gay activist who fled to London was a guest on the WBAI-FM radio show, Democracy Now in April 2006. He told the host, Amy Goodman:

Each gay Iraqi in the earlier days of reporting on the violence against them in Iraq told of how they led normal lives under Saddam. One said, "Those were the most glorious days of our lives." But, as we know, stories like this don’t make good news. The Western press relished anecdotes of Saddam being a butcher.

Then, the reporting stopped. About eight months ago, the "Johnny Come Latelies" began to give the situation much ink. For about a month, one of the standard questions asked was, "What was it like for gays under Saddam?" They received only responses of praise of the Ba’ath regime. Most reporters wanted the homosexuals to say that Saddam burned their balls in hot coals, or sliced off their penises. No such stories emerged.

In the past three months, I have read myriad reports about the current effort to erase homosexuals from Iraqi society. However, not one asked the question of the plight of gays under Saddam. The reporters learned their lessons and never ask the question any more. They probably were told by higher-ups to eliminate the question from their queries. I have yet to see any reporter mention this aspect of the subtle change of leaving out the question of the lives of gay Iraqis under the Ba’ath regime. All the human rights groups are now pushing the subject and the leftist press is inundated with appeals to help Iraqi gays. But, not one word is asked any more about the lives of Iraqi homosexuals prior to March 2003. The answers would embarrass the faux human rights groups and the milquetoast liberals who pick and choose their enemies in the same manner that the U.S. and its stooges call the shots of who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. They are as hypocritical, sometimes more so, than the conservative element they are always denigrating.

MISSIONARY IN REVERSE

A few years ago, I was speaking with a local author who told me that her book, North American Martyrs, was about to go through its third printing. She explained that the book was about six Roman Catholic missionaries who were killed by Native Americans in what is today Michigan in the 18^th century.

I told her that the title confused me and that a more appropriate moniker would be North American Terrorists. She was not happy with my remark. As she was explaining the plight of the missionaries, the words of Chief Pontiac of that area came to mind: "They come with bible in one hand and sword in the other."

Mark Twain once made a world speaking tour and chronicled it in his book Following the Equator. He spoke in many areas that were occupied by Western powers who stole the land from the indigenous people, all in the guise of saving them through Jesus. Twain was very emotional as he described the sadness and despair he saw in the native populations. He said that the Western world brought practices and items to these areas that thoroughly made the locals disheartened and almost in a state of submission. Items such as religion, clothing, a work schedule and a monetary system based on concepts the locals did not understand.

We have recently seen how the U.S. military has combined its deadly weapons with bibles in making Iraqis and Afghanis submit to foreign ideals. The missionary work goes on unabated.

However, there is a case that shows a reversal of the normal Christian missionary attempting to change the ways of the native populations. Recently, the book Don’t Sleep: There Are Snakes, by Daniel Everett was published.

Everett was a Christian missionary with an aptitude for language skills. A tribe in Brazil, the Piraha, had never had their language translated into any other. Everett was called on to chronicle the language and bring the word of Jesus to the savages.

In 1980, he made his first trip to a Piraha village and spent almost a year there. He became very friendly with the people and observed that they were great survivalists.

When he began to talk about faith with the locals, Everett seemed to come up against a brick wall. He explained:

At first, Everett was confused about the questions he was asked, but he thought he could eventually convince the natives for their need for Jesus. But, the Piraha became more pointed in their questioning. One day, a native asked, "What does Jesus look like? Is he dark like us or light like you?" Everett responded, "I’ve never seen him. He lived a long time ago, but I do have his words." The questions became more difficult to answer. They said it was impossible to have his words if he hadn’t seen or heard him. Everett added, "They made it clear that if I had never seen this guy, they weren’t interested in any stories about him." He continued:

Everett returned to the U.S. to gather his thoughts. He said:

Instead of trying harder to convince the Pirahas that they needed help, Everett looked at himself to see if he was in the wrong, not the natives. He explained:

It took Everett almost two decades to remove himself from the closet. When he did, he experienced exactly what he thought would occur: many of his friends left him and his wife of 35 years divorced him. Two of his three children disowned him. But, he did what he thought was right and did not feel comfortable living a lie.

Today, Daniel Everett is a leading linguist. His disagreement with some of Noam Chomsky’s ideas of linguistics have become controversial reading in the field.

A few months ago, his two distant children made peace with Everett and his new life is very full and interesting. He gives credit to the Piraha for his changes in his views and his current fulfillment of his desires in life.

Recently, the BBC4 radio network reviewed his book on its book-review program. It is about 10 minutes long and can be seen and heard at the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr3q6Cid1po

WHAT ABOUT REAL HEALTH INSURANCE?

People are hitting the streets in the U.S. in masses. Every day, we see violent demonstrations. We have seen fights and even guns brandished by some of the protestors. Speakers at "town hall" meetings have been shouted down to the point that the meeting must cease. The subject of these raucous events is the proposed overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system by Barack Obama.

Let’s be clear about one thing. Obama’s plan is merely window-dressing for business as usual. The supporters of this scheme maintain the U.S. will finally have a national health service. This is only lip-service to the administration.

On the other hand, the opponents are using outright lies to denigrate the planned changes. They accuse the Obama administration of bringing socialism to the U.S. Also, they maintain that the new legislation would require the killing of older people so the government would not have to pay for their health services.

Both sides have outright lied about most of the proposed legislation. There are various articles that have been written that expose the dishonesty of both camps, so I’ll not elaborate on the falsehoods. Plus, both sides have been generously financed by special interest groups.

The figures of the new plan that are being bandied about are astronomical, up to almost $2 trillion. But, there is little talk of something that could drastically reduce healthcare prices: health.

Various estimates put the number of U.S. citizens who are obese at 50-65%. Until a few years ago, tobacco was considered the number one killer of U.S. citizens. That has changed. For the past few years, problems caused by obesity have created more deaths in the U.S. and a drastic increase in healthcare costs. Are we seeing and hearing about a national program of health awareness? Of course not. A healthier U.S. would mean decreased profits for some billionaires.

There are myriad websites with very astute information on how to live a healthy lifestyle. But, they receive little attention compared to the number of overweight Americans. Worse, however, is the fact that there is absolutely no national program of health awareness coming from the U.S. government (Democrats and Republicans alike). Nothing.

In the U.S., people only pay attention to things they see on TV or hear on radio that are repeatedly broadcast. Most Americans will tell you (falsely, of course) that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and also was the force behind 9-11. This subject was run into the ground by the U.S. media. For a national awareness of one’s health, we need the same kind of relentless publicity, coming from the government itself. Fat chance.

Ask any number of U.S. citizens what’s America’s most popular beer, or who Oprah’s next guest will be, and about 90% will give an accurate answer. But, ask the same people how many Americans suffer from diabetes and you’ll get either a blank stare or a guess. Maybe one in a hundred will come close.

Current numbers vary from 23.6 million to 24 million U.S. citizens with diabetes, depending on which study you read. From 2007 to 2009, the number has increased by 15%. Most studies predict that in 10 years, about 50 million Americans will have diabetes. If this is not an epidemic, I don’t know what is.

Just 90 miles south of the U.S., there is a country that is combating diabetes: Cuba. About 10 years ago, the government began an education program. From the first grade up, Cuban kids learn of diabetes in school and how to prevent the disease.

The Cubans went even further than education: the government began an organic farming program. Farmers were paid to raise and sell crops to the government, which, in turn, sold them cheaply to the public. If a farmer had a surplus after selling his goods to the government, he was allowed to sell those privately.

Today, there are more than 7,000 plots occupying more than 81,000 acres on which organic food is farmed in Cuba. Many of these are located in urban areas as well as rural venues. In Havana, there are more than 200 gardens, some in small spaces between tower block estates, that supply the city’s population with more than 90% of their fruit and vegetables. The farmers are obligated to farm a certain amount of products for the Cuban government. The surplus then belongs to the farmers who sell it for profit, which is divided among them.

After the Soviet Union dropped Cuba like a hot potato, the island country found itself without finances. At that time, Cuba imported much of its food, so it had to change its methods to feed its citizens. The Independent daily newspaper of Great Britain ran a story on August 8, 2006, titled, "The Good Life in Havana: Cuba’s Green Revolution." According to the article:

Currently, the population of Cuba suffers diabetes at about 10% the rate of U.S. citizens who have the disease. Maybe the malady will be eradicated in Cuba someday.

In addition to diabetes, obesity creates deadly problems with one’s heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. But, there is no national program to dissuade people from over-eating or eating processed foods that create fatal diseases.

For instance, a recent report stated that someone at age 30 who eats one hot dog a day, or the equivalent in a processed meat, will be 21% more apt to have contracted colon cancer within five years than those who do not adhere to such dietary habits. Another report said that if someone eats two hot dogs a day for 10 years, that person will have a 90% chance of attaining colon cancer.

Now, let’s look at some of the crowds who recently have sprung up to either support or oppose the sleight-of-hand Obama healthcare plan. Most of the people carrying signs and who loudly state their opinions are obese (see photo at the beginning of this article). Not one is carrying a sign to oppose the eating habits of U.S. citizens.

Recently, a Florida doctor tried to gain the public’s awareness for a healthy eating regimen. What is his reward? He was fired and is facing lawsuits. According to an article posted on MSNBC on August 13, 2009, called "Florida Doctor Ousted After Denouncing Donuts:"

He then added signs stating: "Hamburger Spare Tire," "French Fires Thunder Thighs." He also mentioned Kentucky Fried Chicken by name as he tried to educate the public about the perils of fried chicken. But, his criticism of donuts did him in. The article continued:

(For non-U.S. readers, Dunkin’ Donuts is a nationwide donut shop that sells dozens of styles of donuts. Currently, there are more than 5,000 Dunkin Donut outlets in the U.S.)

A small portion of the U.S. public is aware of the hazards of processed food and attempt to eat organic items. Unfortunately, they are not widely available. Many towns may offer a "Farmer’s Market" for a few hours on one day a week in which farmers can sell their goods. Unlike Cuba, however, the prices of organic food in the U.S. are much higher than those of processed items. In other words, it is a luxury to try to eat healthy food.

The cost of healthcare in the U.S. far exceeds the cost of a preventive educational program about health for the U.S. public. Imagine if the U.S. called off the war in Iraq for one week. The savings in money would allow the government to produce and supply the public with healthy organic food. But, there are two problems with such a plan: 1. Nobody would make a profit, therefore making the plan un-American. 2. Instead of killing people, the money could be spent on helping people live, again another un-American concept.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, both major parties referred to the mainstream American as "Joe Six-Pack." What a degrading term, yet it was embraced by the public. Despite its abhorance, the term is quite accurate. Millions of U.S. males sit in front of a TV, swilling beer, and cheer for their favorite football team, or holler obscenities at the TV when the opponents score. About the only cardiovascular exercise they practice consists of their lung power and their vocal chords. Just think if these same millions of football fans decided not to watch the Sunday NFL game and took a walk or a swim and quenched their thirst with fresh fruit juice or water. But, again, that is un-American. It would be considered a part of a communist plot.

I have always maintained that those nations who oppose U.S. hegemony are wrong in their approach to bring justice to the world. Instead of speaking up against the imperialist actions of the U.S., they should keep quiet and out of the radar. Within a few decades, the U.S. public just might eat itself to death.

U.S. DEMOCRACY: AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY

"This is America. If you have a gripe, write to your congressperson," we’ve been told. After all, we’re no dirty commies and we don’t live under a dictatorship. Most U.S. citizens have bought into this horseshit.

Here’s the reality.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama had a webpage in which he heralded that he wanted to listen to everyone’s opinion. But, there was no e-mail address to send his campaign a message. The only way one could correspond was to sign up for an Obama Supporters group. Then, the webpage said that Obama wanted to hear from everyone why they adored him. I signed up and sent in my gripes, never to receive a reply. I didn’t expect anything else, but at least I went through the motions to be able to say I tried the system and it failed miserably.

Let me give you a recent look at correspondence with the system. Don’t forget, these messages came from and went to Democrats, the supposed party of the people who deem themselves inclusive to all elements of the U.S. public.

I received this message a few days ago from info@barackobama.com:

malcom --

All throughout August, our members of Congress are back in town. Insurance companies and partisan attack groups are stirring up fear with false rumors about the President's plan, and it's extremely important that folks like you speak up now.

So we've cooked up an easy, powerful way for you to make a big impression: Office Visits for Health Reform.

All this week, OFA members like you will be stopping by local congressional offices to show our support for insurance reform. You can have a quick conversation with the local staff, tell your personal story, or even just drop off a customized flyer and say that reform matters to you.

We'll provide everything you need: the address, phone number, and open hours for the office, information about how the health care crisis affects your state for you to drop off (with the option of adding your personal story), and a step-by-step guide for your visit.

According to our records, you live near Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office in San Diego, CA.

Sign up now to visit Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office in San Diego this week.

(Not your representative, or think there might be another office that's easier for you to get to? Click here to find a different office.)

As you've probably seen in the news, special interest attack groups are stirring up partisan mobs with lies about health reform, and it's getting ugly. Across the country, members of Congress who support reform are being shouted down, physically assaulted, hung in effigy, and receiving death threats. We can't let extremists hijack this debate, or confuse Congress about where the people stand.

Office Visits for Health Reform are our chance to show that the vast majority of American voters know that the cost of inaction is too high to bear, and strongly support passing health reform in 2009.

Don't worry if you've never done anything like this before. The congressional staff is there to listen, and your opinion as a constituent matters a lot. And if you bring a friend, you'll have more fun and make an even greater impact.

INGRATES

I have lived in three countries and have spoken to people from many nationalities. All consider human life to be valuable and all are protective of their own countrypeople. However, I have yet to meet someone of non-U.S. origin who holds the opinion that one life is more important that those of millions of people who do not share his/her nationality. Welcome to the U.S., a country that not only considers the life of one U.S. citizen to be superior to multitudes of lives of foreign nationals, but threatens nations who assist the U.S. in returning U.S. nationals to their homes, even though they have been held under criminal charges.

A couple of days ago, former President Bill Clinton became a national hero once again (he had previously achieved this status with talk show comedians during the Monica Lewinsky affair). He went to North Korea and gained the release of two U.S. journalists who had been tried and convicted for crimes against the nation of North Korea. There are those who maintain the two women were innocent, while others point to activities that show their guilt. One thing is sure: North Korea acted in a benevolent manner in releasing the two reporters.

For a few days prior to Clinton’s arriving back in the U.S. with the former prisoners, we did not hear too much about U.S. gripes against the Koreans. But, it did not take long for the administration to once again denigrate the same country that released the U.S. citizens.

Less than 24 hours after all the news networks reported on the return of the women, headlines of the day read, "U.S. Warns ‘Provocative’ North Korea." Remember Obama the anti-war person of a couple of years ago? He’s now the one publicly denigrating North Korea. He could have had the decency to wait a few days before he began his anti-North Korea tirades, but that would have been un-American.

Recently, another event occurred that showed once again that the U.S. will go to any means to denigrate innocent governments. On August 2, 2009, the U.S. Navy announced that the body of Michael Speicher had been found in the desert in Iraq.

If you remember, Speicher was officially the first member of the U.S. military to be killed in action in the Gulf War of 1991. It seemed the case was closed. However, over the years, the truth was turned around and shortly before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. government had rewritten history to say that Speicher was alive in an Iraqi prison. Administration officials brought up instances of Iraqis seeing him, limping and in terrible health. In a speech to the U.N. on September 12, 2002, George Bush used the rumors of Speicher’s being held prisoner as one of the reasons for invading Iraq. Again, the life of one U.S. citizen was worth more than the 26 million lives of Iraqis.

Over the years, many groups were founded for the purpose of gaining Speicher’s release from an Iraqi prison. Millions of Americans took up the cause. Then, in August 2009, a Bedouin stumbled across his body in the desert. Speicher was never captured. He was never a prisoner and the Iraqis never tortured him. His plane was shot down over the western part of Iraq and an unknown local person buried it out of respect.

Even after the March 2003 invasion when the U.S. had access to all of Iraq, harsh words about Speicher’s supposed capture and imprisonment permeated the subject. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida was at the forefront of denigrating the Ba’ath regime. According to an April 24, 2003 CNN article, "Initials May Offer Clue to Missing Gulf War Pilot:"

For years, we heard, "Saddam did it." But, the reality of Speicher’s death and the discovery of his body were much more mundane than all the conspiracy theories thrust against the Iraqi government.

From January 18, 1991 until April 9, 2003, the Iraqi government always maintained it did not recover Speicher’s body and that he was never captured. With all the years of speculation and the obligatory blaming of Saddam Hussein, now that the truth is out, I have yet to hear one person in the U.S. government apologize to the former Iraqi government for the fiasco that was created by the U.S. government and a portion of its population. Not one.

In 1995, there was a case of Iraqi benevolence that gained much publicity, yet still highlighted the ungrateful attitude of the U.S.

On March 13, 1995, two U.S. citizens (William Barloon and David Daliberti) were captured inside Iraq. Both worked for U.S. civilian contractors and maintained they lost their way trying to visit a friend in Kuwait.

At that time, the Iraq/Kuwait border was heavily reinforced by a deep ditch with towering fences on each side. The pair was well inside Iraq and it would have been almost impossible for them to have accidentally wandered into Iraqi territory.

They were taken to Baghdad and tried on charges of espionage. The couple received a sentence of eight years in prison. The Clinton administration then began its cover-up efforts. Spokespeople said the Americans were not spies because they did not have road maps with them at the time of their arrest. Most of the U.S. public believed the administration’s assessment. There is one aspect that few people took into consideration: spies do not go on a mission with roadmaps. They have memorized exact locations. If a spy used a roadmap, he/she would be put in the same category as Inspector Clouseau of Pink Panther notoriety.

With two of its citizens, accused spies, in Iraqi hands, one would think the U.S. would have been a little humble in its attempts to get them released. No such luck.

According to Douglas Jehl, author of "Americans in Iraq Given 8-Year Term," in the March 26, 1995 edition of the New York Times:

On March 27, 1995, the ante was raised. Steven Greenhouse wrote an article for the New York Times, "U.S. Vows to Press Hard on Iraq to Free Americans," in which he said:

For the entire time this story gained headlines, the U.S. press called Barloon and Daliberti "hostages." There is a substantial difference in meaning between the words "hostages" and "prisoners," but the subliminal message created by calling them hostages raised the ire of the U.S. citizens.

On March 30, 1995, the Iraqi government allowed a Polish diplomat and a reporter for CNN to visit the pair in prison. They stated that the prisoners were in good health.

On July 17, 1995, Bill Richardson, at the time a U.S. congressman, visited Baghdad to try to obtain the release of the pair. Saddam Hussein granted a pardon and allowed them to leave Iraq.

Despite the act of goodwill on behalf of the Iraqi government, the U.S. continued a barrage of insults toward the country. Warren Christopher, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, assured the public that the U.S. promised nothing in return for the pair’s release.

Bill Richardson returned to the U.S. as a hero and was in the media spotlight, but, his statements about Saddam Hussein changed immensely and he made many jokes about the Iraqi president.

During the negotiations, Richardson crossed his legs and had the bottom of one shoe pointing right at Saddam, who left the room and returned to see Richardson with both feet on the floor. Saddam’s aides explained to Richardson that the bottom of a shoe was one of the gravest insults in the Arab world. A similar effect would occur if someone negotiating with the U.S. president held his middle finger aloft during the conversation. When Saddam returned, the negotiations continued. He was gracious enough to leave the room and allow his assistants to quickly explain this aspect of Arab culture to the congressman.

When interviewed by PBS, Richardson mentioned the incident. Then he made fun of the affair and said he thought his life may have been in danger and that his Iraqi hosts may have imprisoned and tortured him for the gaffe. Richardson and the program host laughed and made fun of the Iraqis.

Over the next few years, Richardson made many disparaging remarks about Saddam Hussein:

• "This allowed Iraq to starve its own people and blame the sanctions for their suffering. Under the oil-for-food program, we have taken this excuse away from Saddam." (March 1999)
• " … and multilateral sanctions are central to our efforts to contain Saddam." (March 1999)
• "But I also believe it is important that Saddam’s oil revenues be used to relieve the suffering of the Iraqi people rather than by Saddam Hussein for his own criminal purposes." (December 2002)
• "Well, Saddam Hussein, you can never predict what he is going to do, but it is obvious that he is going to put his foot forward; he is going to say, ‘We have no illegal weapons.’" (December 2002)

Very few national leaders would have released two convicted spies with nothing to show in return. There were no "thanks, Saddam" messages coming from the U.S. Instead, Iraq received more threats and many denigrating remarks from the person who visited the country to secure the release of the two prisoners. Until the obvious became clear, Richardson maintained that Iraq had stockpiles of doomsday military equipment.

One aspect of this scenario was not put in place until long after Richardon’s visit to Iraq. While he was negotiating with Saddam Hussein, cinemas, bus stops, schools and other venues were being blown up in Baghdad by terrorists. The perpetrators were eventually caught. They were members of the CIA-backed Iraqi National Accord (INA), a group of Iraqi exiles who attempted to create chaos in Baghdad in an effort to ripen discord and sow the seeds for a coup against Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath government.

The leader of the exile group was Ayad Allawi, who later became a U.S.-appointed prime minister of Iraq. By the time the terrorist attacks in Baghdad were thwarted, about 150 Iraqi civilians were killed. This reign of terrorism was financed and supported by the U.S. administration.

While Iraqi civilians were being killed by a U.S.-sponsored program, Richardson gained the release of two U.S. prisoners held in Iraq. The current version of Western history of this time makes Saddam Hussein look like the bad guy and Richardson the good guy. The facts contradict the history.

There was one moment in which Saddam Hussein claimed verbal victory over Richardson. Laura Blumenfeld wrote an article, "A Little Diplomacy Goes a Long Way," for the Washington Post of December 13, 1996. She stated:

THE CLOSED DOOR

Nineteen years ago, incidents occurred in Iraq and Kuwait that changed the world and thus began the U.S. quest for word domination, an effort that gained momentum and is in full-swing today. According to the United States, "another Hitler" had just unleashed military forces that were in the first stage of taking over the world. Kuwait on August 2, 1990, then the imminent fall of Saudi Arabia would create a domino effect in which a madman in Baghdad would unleash chemical and biological weapons upon the area that would herald the beginning of the end of humankind on Earth.

After all, in April 1990, Saddam threatened to burn half of Israel. Much of the U.S. press quoted Saddam as saying, "I will make sure half of Israel burns." However, this was only a portion of the sentence. The full statement read: "If Israel attacks Iraq, I will make sure half of Israel burns." Saddam made reference to what Iraq would do if Israel used a nuclear weapon to attack Iraq. Immediately, Western officials said, "Look at that madman. He’s threatening to burn half of Israel." It seems they forgot the first half of the sentence.

If Ronald Reagan had made such a statement in reference to an attack on the U.S. from the Soviet Union, he would have been labeled a patriot. But, Saddam was designated an unstable madman.

With the propaganda well in place before Iraq crossed the border of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, there was little chance that the truth about the Iraq/Kuwait problems would emerge. There was even less chance that a diplomatic solution would occur, let alone be allowed to begin.

Negotiation as a tool to settle the crisis that emerged when Iraq crossed the border into Kuwait on August 2, 1990 was disallowed by the U.S. From August 3, 1990, the diplomatic door was slammed shut and nobody could pry it open, despite the efforts of many to negotiate a settlement. You might recall that there was a term being spread between August 3, 1990 and the start of Desert Storm: "The Nightmare Scenario." This term was used to describe George Bush’s worst vision: Iraqi troops pulling out of Kuwait.

Most Americans view August 2, 1990 as the date that the Iraq-Kuwait crisis began, but Iraq knew long before that Kuwait was involved with undermining the economy and political structure of Iraq. Saddam Hussein asked on February 23, 1990 in Amman, Jordan, "Aren’t American ships still patrolling the Gulf even though the war between Iran and Iraq is over?" He made reference to the presence of the U.S. Navy that was in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War, supposedly to protect merchant shipping. When the war was finished, there was no further purpose for the U.S. Navy to maintain its occupation of the Gulf, but the fleet remained.

The U.S. military presence in the Gulf, combined with the information that Iraq had acquired concerning Kuwait’s techniques in trying to undermine the Iraqi economy, led Iraq to believe it was targeted, but Iraq thought a diplomatic conclusion could be reached. On March 3, 1990, Saddam Hussein met with King Hussein of Jordan in Baghdad. When the conversation turned to the problems between Kuwait and Iraq, Saddam Hussein told his Jordanian counterpart, "In time, reason and goodwill would finally prevail in this matter." Shortly after, Saddam Hussein met with Senator Robert Dole and explained his country’s plight to the American lawmaker. When Dole returned to the U.S. and met with George Bush I, he told the president that Saddam Hussein is "the kind of leader the United States can easily be in a position to influence."

Before the Iraqi intervention in Kuwait, most Arab countries were concerned about problems that may arise from an invasion. However, the American public was unaware of the months of negotiation that Iraq had conducted in attempting to defuse the situation. At that time, the American press rarely covered events in the Middle East unless they involved Israel. When announced that Iraq had crossed the border of Kuwait, most Americans considered this an unprovoked act of aggression. The ignorance of the American public about the Middle East allowed Bush to turn U.S. public opinion against Iraq.

Another bit of misinformation fed to the American public concerned the linking of the Palestinian’s plight to Iraq’s pulling out of Kuwait. In August 1990, Saddam Hussein stated that he would withdraw troops from Kuwait if discussion of the Palestinian question could begin. He was looking to the future and wanted to address major problems in the Arab world that had been put out of sight by much of the Western world. Immediately, we heard the term "no linkage." The Bush administration told the American public that Saddam Hussein was using this as a ploy and that he had never championed the Palestinian cause before. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Throughout early 1990, Yasser Arafat was a frequent visitor to Baghdad and he and Saddam Hussein worked on the two biggest issues of contention in the Middle East — the Palestinian problem and the Iraq-Kuwait dilemma.

On May 24, 1990, King Hussein of Jordan told Saddam Hussein, "At the next (Arab) summit in Baghdad, I intend to demand financial aid not only for Jordan, but also for the PLO." Saddam answered, "Leave it to me — I’ll force them to pay."

On the agenda at the May 28, 1990 summit in Baghdad was the disparity between rich and poor Arabs.. Saddam Hussein strongly inferred that the rich countries of the Gulf were not pulling their weight in helping the less fortunate, such as Jordan, Iraq and the Palestinians. When the subject of money arose, he said:

Saddam Hussein had always worked closely with Yasser Arafat. In fact, he helped convince the Palestinian leader to adopt a more moderate stance in dealing with the U.S. When the U.S. public was told that Saddam was only using the Palestinian issue as a ploy, they were told another lie. History shows that the Ba’athist government worked right up until the March 2003 invasion of Iraq in helping the Palestinians. Even the more recent assistance received negative press in the U.S. The administration mentioned that the Iraqi government paid a stipend to the families of suicide bombers, therefore, Iraq supported terrorism. In reality, the Iraqi government paid benefits to the families of all those Palestinians who died at the hands of the Israelis during the Palestinian intafada. Saudi Arabia also contributed to those families, yet the Saudis were not depicted as terrorists because the U.S. still had troops stationed there.

After his capture in December 2003, Saddam Hussein was not allowed to talk to a lawyer for months. When he eventually was visited by Khalil al-Dulaymi, the Iraqi lawyer who represented Saddam in court, despite all that had happened since March 2003, the conversation quickly turned to the Palestinians. Saddam Hussein told al-Dulaymi:

Despite Iraq’s efforts to reach an agreement with Kuwait, the Emirate continued to demand money from Iraq. Leaders of other Arab countries were becoming concerned that the situation could become more volatile and most were surprised at Kuwait’s insistence on immediate payments.

On July 28, 1990, King Hussein of Jordan spoke with Sheikh Sabah, the Kuwaiti foreign minister. The king was perplexed at Kuwait’s attitude and he told the foreign minister about his concern that Iraq may take military action. The Kuwaiti response was curious because Iraq had not yet invaded the Emirate and, in theory, the U.S. had no defense agreement with Kuwait. Sheikh Sabah told King Hussein, "We cannot bargain over an inch of territory. It is against our constitution. If Saddam comes across the border, let him come. The Americans will get him out."

Iraq maintained that the U.S. was collaborating with Kuwait to undermine the Iraqi economy and Sheikh Sabah’s statement inferred knowledge of future U.S. military intervention. When Iraq crossed the border of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, the whole world focused its attention on the Middle East. Unfortunately, Iraq’s military intervention was the first information to which most Americans were exposed in the Iraq-Kuwait dispute, making it possible for the U.S. administration to create its own version of the incident. Hardly anybody knew about the fruitless discussions that led to the invasion.

Saddam Hussein’s strategy was to garner world attention to his plight and then withdraw from Kuwait and start earnest negotiations. He had no idea of the magnitude of the U.S. plan to turn the world against Iraq.

Shortly after Iraqi troops crossed the Kuwaiti border, King Hussein talked with Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi president mentioned that most problems could be resolved at a scheduled mini-summit to be held in Cairo, Egypt on August 4. He then said he did not want any condemnation by an Arab country of the invasion prior to the meeting. King Hussein took the role of mediator and said he would talk to the other Arab nations. He foresaw few problems.

One of the first calls King Hussein made was to the Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak. After the king explained the situation, Mubarak replied, "I’ll support you."

On the same day, August 2, 1990, King Hussein called President Bush to explain the latest developments in negotiations. He wanted to obtain Bush’s commitment that he not pressure Arab countries to issue communiqués criticizing Iraq’s actions for at least 48 hours. At the time of the call, Bush was on an airplane from Washington D.C. to Colorado. The Jordanian leader told Bush, "We (Arabs) can settle this crisis, George … we can deal with it. We just need a little time." Bush’s reply was, "You’ve got it. I’ll leave it to you."

King Hussein thought he was dealing with an honorable person, and, when the conversation ended, he took Bush’s word that he would do nothing for 48 hours. Bush did not wait 48 seconds to start thwarting the efforts of a negotiated settlement.

While the Arab world was awaiting the mini-summit in Cairo, scheduled for August 4, George Bush was already lining up allies to condemn Iraq, despite his promise to King Hussein to remain quiet for 48 hours. On August 3, 1990, Saddam Hussein issued a communiqué announcing he would begin to withdraw Iraqi troops from Kuwait on August 5. He was confident that the mini-summit scheduled for August 4 would reap benefits for everyone. Saddam, as well as the entire Arab world, was unaware of the American duplicity that was occurring.

On August 3, 1990, Bush met with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell. The topic was the option of military force against Iraq. Powell told Bush, "If you finally decide to commit to military forces, Mr. President, it must be done as massively and decisively as possible."

Meanwhile, on August 3, in Amman, Jordan, matters worsened. King Hussein met with his foreign minister, Marwan Al Qasim, and stated, "I have very good news. Saddam Hussein has told me he’s going to pull out of Kuwait." The foreign minister was a little more up-to-date on the situation and he wasted no time telling the king, "You haven’t heard, but the Egyptian Foreign Ministry has just put out a statement condemning the Iraqis for invading Kuwait."

King Hussein realized he had been duped by Bush. Egypt was an Arab country that held much influence and its condemnation could destroy all possible negotiations. The king did not know at the time that Bush had already called Mubarak and cancelled a $7 billion Egyptian debt in return for Mubarak’s condemnation — a debt George Bush had no right to forgive under U.S. law.

An irate King Hussein called Mubarak and asked, "Why did you release that communiqué? We had an agreement not to do something like that until the mini-summit took place." Mubarak answered, "I was under tremendous pressure from the media and my own people. My mind is not functioning." King Hussein angrily told Mubarak, "Well, when it starts functioning again, let me know."

Egypt’s condemnation virtually shut the door on diplomacy. The August 4 mini-summit was cancelled and King Hussein told his brother, Prince Hassan, "The Arabs ought to have proved that they could settle the conflict themselves. We shouldn’t have failed. Anything can happen now. We must expect the worst."

Meanwhile, events were occurring in the Soviet Union that would help isolate Iraq in the international arena. On August 3, U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker met with the Soviet Foreign Minister, Edward Shevaerdnaze. It is curious to see that Bush had promised King Hussein 48 hours of silence on August 2, yet less than 24 hours later, the U.S. Secretary of State was in the Soviet Union to discuss the Iraq-Kuwait issue. Baker urged his counterpart to assist in issuing a joint U.S.-Soviet statement condemning Iraq’s actions. Shevaerdnaze responded, "We insist that the Soviet Union won’t accept any gunboat diplomacy on you part." Baker assured him, "There won’t be any unilateral action by the U.S. unless American citizens are in danger." Shevaerdnaze made clear his government’s stance by stating, "Above all, no military operations."

Shevaerdnaze’s diplomatic, but weak, response assured Baker that the Soviets would not interfere with U.S. war plans. Despite Shevaerdnaze’s "no military operations" statement, the U.S. was already lining up its military machine to travel to the area.

The diplomatic initiatives and the Iraqi statement of August 3 calling for the beginning of a withdrawal of Iraqi troops on August 5, 1990, have become the most under-reported aspects of this period. Without U.S. deceit, the situation could have been solved. Few people ever read about these occurrences.

On August 4, Bush called President Ozal of Turkey and tried to persuade him to stop Iraqi oil flowing through Turkish pipelines. At first, Ozal resisted, pointing out that Turkey and Iraq were experiencing good business relationships and that Turkey depended on Iraqi fees for using the pipeline. Bush then told the Turkish leader that Saudi Arabia had halted the flow of Iraqi oil through its pipelines. Ozal hesitatingly agreed to Bush’s request.

When Bush talked to Ozal, he lied about the Saudis. He had not yet asked them to cut Iraq’s oil flow. With Ozal’s commitment in hand, Bush had the ammunition to ask the Saudis to close their pipelines and they acquiesced.

Yasser Arafat traveled to Baghdad on August 5 and met with Saddam Hussein. Despite the setbacks, both were still optimistic about a negotiated settlement. Saddam told Arafat, "A political solution is absolutely essential." The PLO leader answered, "I completely agree."

Saudi Arabia still was not convinced that American troops should be stationed in the Middle East. As late as August 8, 1990, King Fahd was blaming Kuwait for the problems. He stated, "I have a lot of criticisms to make of them (the Al Sabah family who rules Kuwait). They didn’t pay their debts. They are largely responsible for this crisis." Shortly after, however, Fahd allowed the unlimited incursion of American troops on Saudi soil.

On the same day as King Fahd’s condemnation of Kuwait, Bush made a declaration that received much more media coverage than the king’s and set the tone for the future. In six days, he had made enough backroom deals to be able to proclaim, "A line has been drawn in the sand."

Yasser Arafat was now traveling all over the Middle East trying to put together a meeting that could ease the tensions. He tried to convene a meeting in Baghdad, but the U.S. persuaded some sides that it would not be in their interests to attend. On August 10, Arafat stated, "It’s a mistake. If the delegation had gone to Baghdad, it could have reached a solution that would have settled the Gulf crisis."

By now, King Hussein knew that he and others who tried to negotiate peace had been double-crossed by the United States. On August 13, in Baghdad, he lamented:

By August 15, the American administration knew it had cornered Iraq and it was only a matter of time until a final plan for slaughter was designed. On that day, an advisor to Bush summed up the administration’s attitude. He told the president, "It’s true we’ve promised to consult Congress if there’s a war. In other words, we’ll phone them just after the first bombs have been dropped."

To add to the deceit, Bush made a statement the following day (August 16) that heralded the beginning of a U.S. military presence in the Gulf. He told the press, "We’re there to protect Saudi Arabia against aggression and nothing more. And we’ll withdraw when they request."

During this aspect of the U.S. military buildup, the U.S. administration stated that Iraq was preparing to invade Saudi Arabia. Iraq denied all the allegations and it stated it had no territorial designs on the kingdom. Most military analysts said that Iraq could have taken over Saudi Arabia within two or three days if it desired. Even General Schwarzkopf admitted that if Iraq attacked Saudi Arabia prior to December 1990, American troops would have been massacred and there would have been a "Dunkirk-like exodus" of American military personnel from the Gulf. Unlike the U.S., Iraq was honest about its intentions. It was only interested in straightening out its differences with Kuwait.

Over the next few months, many attempts to negotiate a settlement arose. Every one was obstructed by the U.S.

On November 30, 1990, hope appeared. In what seemed to be a complete change of attitude, George Bush put forth a plan for negotiations. He proposed that Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz come to Washington for talks and that U.S. Secretary of State James Baker travel to Baghdad for discussions with the Iraqi government. His invitation was for talks "at any time before January 15, 1991" (the date the United Nations had affixed for allowing military force to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait).

The optimism was short-lived. Bush had no intention of allowing such talks to take place. When the Iraqis came back with dates of January 3 and January 12, Bush said they were too close to the January 15 deadline, despite his original offer to meet "at any time before January 15."

In a compromise effort, Tariq Aziz and James Baker met on January 9, 1991 in Geneva, Switzerland. Aziz wanted to negotiate, but Baker only handed a letter to Aziz warning the Iraqis that the U.S. was prepared to annihilate Iraq. Despite other last-minute attempts for peace from King Hussein, Yasser Arafat and others, there was no way of obtaining a non-military settlement. George Bush had closed the door for negotiation and locked it months before.

Pérez de Cuéllar met with Saddam Hussein just prior to the start of hostilities and the Iraqi president designated the U.S. as the aggressor when he told the U.N. secretary-general,

THE QUEST FOR THE KNUCKLEBALL

Bad news. Tim Wakefield is on the disabled list. I know, most of you are saying, "Who the fuck is Tim Wakefield?"

Wakefield is a 43-year-old pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. At the half-way mark of the 2009 season, he was leading the American league in wins. Again, you may say, "So what?"

By the age of 43, most major league baseball players are former major league players. They already had a special night at their home stadiums in their last year, being awarded with the obligatory SUV and other gifts. Then, they become distributors for beer companies or real estate agents, with the occasional appearance at an old-timers reunion where they sell their autographs. By then, their protruding stomachs (which they never possessed in their playing days) are lying on the tables in front of them.

However, Wakefield, at such an advanced age for a baseball player, was experiencing his finest year as a major league pitcher. Does he have a secret elixir that contains substances from the fountain of youth? No, his longevity on the hill comes from his throwing the most mis-understood and hard-to-hit pitch: the knuckleball.

Wakefield was a first-baseman in the Pittsburgh Pirates minor league system. He was told he would never make it above the AA level of the minor leagues. But, Wakefield was determined to give it his best try. He showed the team he could throw a knuckleball, although he never pitched before. The Pirates sent him to a single A farm club and gave him a chance. He pitched well, and within three years, the major league club called him up to the big show. In 1992, he amazed the baseball world as he compiled an 8-win and 1-loss record for the latter portion of the season.

In 1995, he was traded to the Boston Red Sox, and currently he is nearing the 200-win career mark as a major league pitcher. In the history of the sport, with thousands of pitchers who participated in the major leagues, only 110 have won 200 games or more in their major league careers. This number indicates excellence of all-time pitching statistics. If Wakefield had not injured his back recently, he may have made the 200-win mark this season. If not, he surely will exceed the number next year, unless his back injury is career-ending, which it does not appear to be at this time.

So what? you may ask. The "so what" is that Wakefield is the only active knuckleball pitcher in the major leagues.

The pitch is much slower than other offerings of pitchers, such as a fastball, curve, or slider. But, it dances erratically on its trip to the plate, making it almost impossible to hit.

You may think this is a no-brainer: everyone should throw a knuckleball. It’s not that easy. Few people can make it dart in different directions consistently. And, most baseball managers and coaches do not understand the pitch and do not give anyone who throws it a chance. They always maintain that if the knuckler does not "knuckle," it will be a straighter-than-an-arrow offering that will be knocked out of the park. Rarely do they use the same logic for a pitcher who "hangs a curve" and gets hit hard.

True, if a knuckleball pitcher is having a bad day and the wind is to his back, he will not last long. This is a hazard for the knuckleball pitcher.

I read about the knuckleball in about 1960 when Hoyt Wilhelm was confusing batters with it. For the next three years, I tried to throw one. I read all the pitching books and followed the instructions to a tee, but it never did anything but travel to the plate in a slow, straight line. I gave up.

During the 1970s, I read the book Ball Four by former New York Yankee, Jim Bouton. It was a story, not an instruction manual. However, he mentioned the knuckler and he stated, "Make sure the ball is cupped in the hand with the fingers on top." Never had I read before that the ball should be against the palm of your hand. Most other pitches are thrown with the ball away from the palm.

This made sense. If the ball was against the palm of the hand and was pushed away, a vacuum would be created behind the ball making it change directions. And, a knuckler is not thrown with the knuckles, but with the fingertips. It is pushed forward by the fingers, and when the ball is on its way to the plate, there is no spin. Every other pitch in baseball requires spin to break in a certain direction. If a knuckleball spins, it will not break.

In 1979, at age 31, my playing days were behind me. However, I thought that I should learn a knuckleball to be able to teach it to aspiring pitchers. I was one of the few coaches in the world who understood the knuckleball and wanted to teach it to pitchers. At the time, I was living in England and running various baseball programs for players of all ages and playing levels.

I needed a catcher who would not complain about squatting down for a half hour at a time trying to catch my pitches that would be all over the place. A 16-year-old British girl who was a catcher in a mixed league (male and female) that I ran volunteered. Well, she volunteered after I asked her a few times.

She was a tall athletic girl who had no problem catching my slower offerings as I tried to master the elusive knuckleball. Her only quandary was chasing the balls I threw over her head or in the dirt in trying to gain some kind of mechanics for the pitch.

Almost every day at about 3:30 in the afternoon, I picked her up and brought her to the baseball field. The first few times were horrible. I did not throw one floater. The ball still had spin. But, I did not give up.

After about two weeks, I unleashed a pitch that had no spin. As soon as it left my hand, I knew I had found success. It seemed to take minutes to reach the catcher as it first broke left, then right and straight down. I did it.

The feeling of that first successful knuckleball pitch was indescribable. It was like a magnetic device was controlling the flight of the ball even though I threw it. Magic.

It took about three more weeks until I was consistent with the knuckleball. By then, most had no spin. But, as I was getting better throwing the pitch, it became more hazardous for the teenage female catcher.

Unlike other pitches in baseball, one cannot control the direction of the break of a knuckleball. A curve ball always goes away and down: a slider away, etc. Once the knuckleball is released, a pitcher can only hope it hops and it gets somewhere near the strike zone. By the time we were finished and I had accomplished my journey of throwing a knuckleball with consistency, the girl had bruises on every part of her body that a baseball could hit: primarily the forearm and thighs. And, a few bruised fingers as well. She never complained once about performing such an unglamorous task for those few weeks.

In 1981, I began to manage baseball in the Dutch major league, a circuit that was equivalent to about single A level minor league ball in the U.S. I took a young pitcher with promise and taught him the knuckleball. A 20-year-old Eric de Vries won the Most Valuable Pitcher Award in The Netherlands. When asked the reason for his turnaround, he told the press, "The knuckleball."

The following year, I was with another club. Eric, playing for a new American manager, had a mediocre year. I noticed he did not throw one knuckleball. When I asked him why, he said, "My new coach told me not to." Then I asked the reasoning and he told me, "He said that if it does not break, you’ll get hit hard." Some things never change.

Today, at age 61, I am stiff and sore from my years of playing sports. In two months, I will have a hip replacement that will once again make me part of the world of the walking. But, if I have it in me, after my hip replacement, I still will be able to warm up and throw a futhermucker of a knuckleball. All thanks to that 16-year-old British girl.

IRAN/IRAQ CONCEPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

My last column, "What Did April Say?" drew much response from readers. Most were supportive, saying they did not know the specifics of the meeting between April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990. However, a few questioned my assertion that Iran contributed to the atmosphere of the times which led to outright war. One, in particular, said Iran did "NOTHING" to provoke Iraq.

For some time now, the opinion that Iraq started the war and was the aggressor has been taken for truth by much of the world. Western propaganda, once Iraq ran afoul of U.S. desires and the U.S. and Kuwait began to undermine the Iraqi economy after the Iran-Iraq War, has been successful and virtually nobody questions the version given by the U.S. of Iraq being the dirty bastards who attacked innocent Iran.

In a response to this re-writing of history by the West, I supplied a link to an excellent article written in 1981 concerning Iran’s aggression that provoked both countries to enter and all-out war. Unfortunately, few have tried to even look at the matter. The so-called "progressive" communities of the West are adamant that Iraq began the war. Their war-mongering right-wing opponents don’t even have to mention the subject because the leftist dupes have passed on the falsehoods even better than the political right wing has.

In May 2005, the quislings in Baghdad blamed Saddam Hussein for starting the war. But, look at the people concerned. Many had fled Iraq in the 1970s and 1980s and fought on the side of Iran. Ahmed Chalibi, everybody’s most popular crook extraordinaire, actively called for the defeat of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. If you don’t remember, Chalibi is that great Iraqi patriot who left Iraq in 1958 and did not return until 2003. He supplied the U.S. government with the most outrageous lies about Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party and he received $97 million from the Clinton administration to keep lying.

Amidst all the outrageous lies, a spark of truth and a man of integrity appeared: Jude Wanniski. For years, he questioned the West’s version of Iraqi history. For instance, when he wrote about the Anfal Campaign and its alleged 182,000 murders of Kurds by the Baghdad regime, he always asked the same question, but received no answers: Where are the bodies?

Wanniski was far from a radical political subversive. At one time, he was the associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was an economic advisor to Ronald Reagan from 1978 to 1981 and his book, The Way The Word Works, is regarded by many as the blueprint for Ronald Reagan’s economic programs.

But, something along the way changed Wanniski’s views on many items. On October 27, 2004, he publicly denounced George Bush. Wanniski stated: "Mr. Bush has become an imperialist — one whose decisions as commander-in-chief have made the world a more dangerous place."

Shortly before his death on August 29, 2005, Wanniski confessed that if he knew that the information in his best-selling book was to be used for the U.S. political establishment to make the rich in the world much richer and the poor much poorer (a fact that he admitted to), he would never have written it.

In fact, it was Jude Wanniski who led me to the details about Tony Blair on July 18, 2004 admitting to the British press that he "mis-spoke" in November of 2003 when he announced to the world that more than 400,000 Iraqis had been found in mass graves from Saddam Hussein’s time in power. At that famous July 18, 2004 press conference, Blair admitted that fewer than 5,000 bodies had been recovered and that half were from the Kurdish area and were killed in the 1990s civil war between Kurdish factions in Iraq, not by the Ba’ath government. A few days ago, while going through old e-mail messages, I came across one that Jude sent to me concerning Blair’s change of figures. He knew and told me of Blair’s statement before it was made public in Britain. Unfortunately, Blair’s change of position never made it to the U.S. press. Not one word was written in the U.S. about the revised number of bodies and U.S. government agencies, such as USAID, still use the 400,000 figure today in their literature.

Below, are two articles that go into detail about incidents preceding the "official" beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in September 1980. Wanniski speaks of obvious facts that have been lost in the translation of events prior to all-out war by the U.S. political establishment as well as most of the U.S. population. The propaganda machine was intense and successful. Plus, with Saddam dead, as well as many of the leaders of Iraq’s Ba’ath regime, there is no one to dispute the revisionist lies that now are disguised as history.

The other article was written by the Iraqi Embassy in Washington D.C. in 1985. You may say, "Well, it is biased because it was written by the Iraqis themselves." However, no matter who wrote it, there are enough facts, quotes, dates and places named that report on incidents of the time.

Instead of saying that Iran was a benign entity after its revolution, let’s look at some facts of the time. And, let’s remember that the Iranian revolution came into place with the participation of socialists, communists, secularists, and civil rights activists, as well as the Islamists. However, once the Shah left the country, the Islamists, under Ayatollah Khomeini, took over the leadership of those millions of Iranians who took to the streets and made it an Islamic state. Many leftists, intellectuals and working class people were murdered or fled the country, despite their participation in ridding Iran of the Shah.

Iraq Started the Iran/Iraq War?

If you continue to wonder why the "insurgents" in Iraq continue to blow themselves up to prevent the interim government from gaining credibility among the populace, please note the report that the new "interim government" has confessed that Saddam Hussein started the eight-year war with Iran in 1980. All these years, the people of Iraq believed the war grew out of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini's call for Iraqi Shi'ites to overthrow Saddam in order to install a sectarian Shi'ite government in Baghdad. And the United States for all the eight years of the war thought so too, didn't it? Else why support Iraq in the war, re-opening diplomatic relations with Baghdad, and sending Don Rumsfeld to pow-wow with Saddam to arrange for military and financial assistance?

Can it be that practically every member of the new interim "government" in Baghdad either fought on Iran's side in the war or was in exile, a la Ahmed Chalabi, openly rooting for the defeat of Iraq by the Iranians? Hasn't the New York Times, which says it is mystified by the determination of the insurgents to lay down their lives to preserve chaos, noticed that the new Baghdad regime is a government of quislings?

It is said that there were a million Iraqi casualties in the war against Iran. Practically every Iraqi family – whether Shi'ite, Sunni or Kurd – lost a father, brother or son to Iranian weaponry (conventional and poison gas). These are the official estimates of the U.S. government, by the way, not my figures or those of the news media. But the question I raise is how can the Times consider the insurgency a "mystery" when it must have noticed there is not a genuine nationalist in the new government, one who fought heart and soul against Tehran. The people of Iraq look over the crowd and see three dozen replicas of Benedict Arnold – handpicked by the occupying army.

As for who started the war, you need only ask yourself why Saddam would take on a country three times the size of Iraq, 60 million to 20 million, without ever showing the slightest intent of carrying the fight to Tehran. When the escalating skirmishing grew into open war, the Iraqi army moved several dozen miles into Iran and stopped, seemingly ready to come to terms. It was the deranged Ayatollah Khomeini, whose followers overthrew the Shah of Iran (a client of the U.S. government in the Cold War), who announced upon his return to Tehran from his exile in Paris, that Saddam Hussein was at the top of his list of enemies... and it was he who called upon his Shi'ite followers in Iraq to change the secular regime in Baghdad, replacing it with a fundamentalist regime that would make him happy. The Ayatollah is no longer around, of course, having lost the war with Iraq in August 1988, but if he were he would be delighted to see the regime change was carried out by the American people, who sent their sons and daughters to overthrow Saddam and install the puppet government that now smiles upon Iran.

What a mystery.

One of the first questions Iraqis are asked is, "Why did you start the war?" Disputes between Iraq and Iran have been settled in the past by peaceful talks, not war; most recently in 1975 when Algeria helped to negotiate an agreement on international borders, acces to the Shatt al-Arab waterway, and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

Friction between Iran and Iraq did not actually begin on September 4, 1980. This date marks only the onset of armed hostilities in the Iran-Iraq conflict. The present deterioration of relations between the two countries is directly correlated to Khomeini’s rise to power. Khomeini put a new twist on the old disputes over borders, territory, and non-interference, using sensitive areas to promote discord.

Fundamental to current conflicts are the basic ideological differences now found between Iran and Iraq. Under Khomeini, Iran has followed a line of religious fanaticism, one which recognizes no political or geographic limits to the expansion of its control and influence. Iraq, on the other hand, adheres to a policy of nationalism, rejecting the domination of religious elements in the administration of the state while espousing freedom of belief and practice and unity among its peoples. These diametrically opposed ideologies are the core of the Iran-Iraq war.

Almost immediately after coming to power, Khomeini began to focus on the overthrow of the Iraqi government as the first logical stepping stone in his expansionist policy. A slow, but deliberate, series of provocations ensued, beginning with the new Iranian government’s disavowal, in June of 1979, of the 1975 Algiers Accord. Khomeini freed himself from the constraints of this accord under the pretext that it had been concluded by the shah and sponsored by the United States. The Algiers Accord and its subsequent protocols provided for a definitive settlement of borders and strict adherence to non-interference in internal affairs by joint committees set up for that end. Khomeini disregarded the Algiers Accord, the settlements based upon it and refused to implement them. Khomeini’s disregard for this accord put a halt to the committees’ work.

While the Iraqi government was extending its goodwill gestures to the new Iranian government and encouraging the development of good relations, Khomeini’s representatives were publicly condemning the Iraqi government and claiming the allegiance of Iraqi Muslims, thus sowing division amongst the Muslims of Iraq and between Iraq’s Muslims and non-Muslims. As Iran’s rhetoric against the Iraqi leadership continued, Iraqi officials proposed to meet with Iranian leaders to discuss bilateral relations. In his address on July 17, 1980, President Saddam Hussein stressed Iraqi support for the Iranian people and expressed the desire for mutual cooperation between the two countries. The Iraqi government invited the Prime Minister of the Iranian Provisional Government to hold talks. This invitation was renewed two weeks later by the Vice-Chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council, Izzat Ibrahim.

At the Non-Aligned Summit Conference, held in the fall of 1979, President Hussein met with the Iranian Foreign Minister on two separate occasions to reaffirm Iraq’s efforts to establish relations of cooperation between the two countries. While at the United Nations, the Iraqi Foreign Minister extended yet another invitation to hold talks on Iraq-Iran relations to his Iranian counterpart. The Iraqi Ambassador to Tehran visited the Iranian President, extending Iraq’s greetings and his own best wishes for the President’s success in pointing relations between Iran and Iraq in the right direction, that is non-interference in domestic affairs of each other’s country.

Despite Iraq’s friendly overtures, the Iranian leadership insisted on its hostile attitude. Throughout March 1980, Iranian officials persisted in their warnings to the Iraqi people to "Beware of the Ba’ath Party and Iraqi leadership." Khomeini issued a statement in late March urging both the youth and the military of Iraq to rebel against their government and to become heroes in a battle to rid Iraq of the Ba’ath and the extinction of Arab nationalism.

In an address delivered by his son on March 21, 1980, Khomeini made Iran’s position clear: "We should exert all efforts to export our revolution to other parts of the world. Let us abandon the idea of keeping our revolution within our borders."

Iran, however, was not leaving its message to chance.. "Iraq is Persian," Iran’s President stated on April 7, 1980, more than five months before the war began. "Aden and Baghdad belong to us," said Iran’s Foreign Minister, Qotob Zada on April 8. Zada went one step further in his remarks the following day, stating that his government had "decided to overthrow the Iraqi government."

Khomeini reiterated and expanded this theme on a weekly basis throughout April. In an impassioned radio address, Khomeini severely attacked President Hussein and asked the Iraqi army to rebel and topple its government. He accused the Iraqi army of combating Islam and again declared the urgency of the revolution’s march towards Baghdad. In a direct appeal, Khomeini said, "The Iraqi people should liberate themselves from the claws of the enemy. It should topple this non-Islamic party in Iraq."

The intransigence of the Iranian position was demonstrated on various occasions. At the beginning of May 1980, the Iranian President claimed it would not be interference in Iraq’s domestic affairs to go to Baghdad to "liberate" the Iraqi people because "We consider the Islamic nation as one and the Imam (Khomeini) is the religious leader for us as well as for Iraq and for all Islamic peoples." (The Imam) feels he is responsible for Iraq as well as Iran."

Foreign Minister Zada spoke at a press conference in Abu Dhabi where he remained firm in his position on Iraq saying, "We do not accept any mediation or dialogue with the criminal (Iraqi) regime … it must disappear and the people of Iraq want to topple their government." In a radio address in Tehran a few days later, Zada said that "because the Ba’ath regime practices oppression against the Muslim people of Iraq … we shall not come to terms with them."

Indeed, ever since its assumption of power, the Iranian regime has embarked on a series of provocative acts against the government and people of Iraq. In late 1979, for example, Iran began a series of attacks on diplomatic, consular, cultural, and commercial missions of Iraq. The personnel of the Iraqi Embassy in Tehran, its Consulates in Muhamara (Khorramshahr) and Kermanshah, Iraqi schools in Iran and the Iraqi Airways office in Tehran were all subjects to verbal and physical acts of aggression.

Many demonstrations, tacitly or otherwise approved by Iranian authorities, took place outside the Embassy with photographs of President Hussein burning and shouts of "death to Iraqi leaders and the Ba’ath Party." These scenes are familiar to Americans who saw their own Embassy overtaken by these same vehement and frenzied crowds.

On October 7, 1979, Iranian authorities asked Iraq to close its Consulates in Muhamara and Kermanshah within three months. Less than one week later, the Iraqi Consulate General in Muhamara was subjected to harsh treatment. Doors and windows were smashed, officials were attacked and records damaged. Similar attacks occurred on three other occasions. On November 1, the Iraqi flag and photographs of President Hussein were lowered and torn and the diplomatic pouch taken by force. By January 11, Iranian authorities decided to deport Consulate employees in these two cities, even before the expiration of the specified departure period. Many employees were mistreated and brutally beaten.

Similar provocations were taking place at Iraqi schools in Iran. Iraqi teachers’ residence permits were not renewed, schools were stormed by Revolutionary Guards and students and teachers were attacked. By the end of 1979, Iranian authorities had closed all Iraqi schools in Iran, but one. Teachers were deported, prevented from taking along their personal belongings, and some were even arrested and interrogated prior to being released for deportation.

As Iraq submitted protests to Iranian authorities over these hostile acts, aggression continued unabated even within Iraqi territory. Along the border there were violations of eastern Iraqi territory and air space; bombings of outposts and border villages which included kidnappings, sabotage, and attacks on Iraqi police patrols and border guards, infringements on Iraqi territorial waters as well as aggression on Iraqi and foreign vessels.

Terrorist acts deep inside Iraq itself resulted in the death and injury of innocent citizens, women and children included. In April 1980 alone, hand grenades were hurled on the campus of Al-Mustansiriyah University; in the capital Baghdad at a student gathering; bombs were thrown at the funeral procession for victims from the Al-Mustansiriyah gathering; assassination attempts were made on the lives of the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, and the Iraqi Minister of Culture and Information, Latif Jassim.

From February 1979, (when Khomeini came to power) until the outbreak of the armed conflict in September 1980, 941 violations against Iraq took place. Iraq notified the Secretary General of the United Nations, The Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, and the Organization of the American States, protesting these provocations on more than 145 separate occasions.

Moreover, the Iraqi Embassy in Tehran approached the Iranian Foreign Ministry regularly while the Iranian Ambassador to Baghdad was frequently summoned to meetings with various Iraqi high officials. Iran’s resolve to interfere in the domestic affairs of Iraq continued to undermine relations between the two neighbors. Khomeini’s disruption of traffic and ultimately the closure of the Shatt al-Arab waterway in September 1980 was a very serious intimidation to Iraq, for this waterway is of major strategic concern for the assurance of Iraq’s access to the sea. Without it, Iraq would be almost landlocked. The Shatt-al-Arab’s significance to Iraq had become increasingly important as early as the 1960s when oil revenues became a valuable source for Iraq’s national budget. An accessible Shatt-al-Arab is also vital for Iraqi trade, and thus to the development of the country.

Iran’s behavior towards Iraq escalated to unprecedented levels of violence from September 4, 1980. Four border towns were shelled constantly by Iranian heavy artillery. The proximity of major Iraqi cities to the Iran-Iraq border made them, especially, vulnerable to any Iranian military initiative. Densely-populated towns and villages in the Zain-al-Qaws area were shelled. The number of deaths and property damage was devastating.

Repeated Iraqi requests that Iran withdraw immediately its military units from Iraqi territories, namely Zain Al-Qaws and Saif Saad (defined as Iraqi territories in all international border agreements binding both countries including the 1975 Accord), and to refrain from shelling Iraqi border towns and villages, went unanswered. Khomeini was unyielding and reaffirming his resolute position.

"How could we reconcile with Saddam Hussein?" he asked in the fall of 1980. "There is no reconciliation with these Iraqi Ba’athists because our aim is Islam and their aim runs counter to Islam." Like the United States, Iraq is a secular state with full freedom of religion and worship for all citizens guaranteed under the law, with a distinct separation of "church and state."

The events which took place before the armed conflict between the two parties, as discussed earlier, clearly indicate that Iran was the party who violated the clauses of the 1975 Algiers agreement, by continuing its occupation of territories that were to be returned to Iraq in accordance with that agreement, by disrupting river traffic and by aggressive interference in the internal affairs of Iraq.

The 1975 Accord states explicitly (article 4), that if any of the two contracting parties violates any article of the Accord, then the whole Accord is null and void.

Iran violated the Accord, not only through the hostile statements of its high officials, who denounced it as "an imperial treaty," but also by interference in Iraq’s domestic affairs. With the Algiers Accord

practically and intentionally abrogated by Iran, with the onslaught of verbal and physical attacks on Iraq, and with Iraqi casualties mounting as a result of Iranian aggression, Iraq was left with little recourse than to protect its territorial integrity to secure the unity of its people and the stability of its government.

In an address to the Iraqi people on September 28, 1980, President Hussein examined the conflict with Iran: "We stressed to the whole world that Iraq has no designs on the Iranian territories and that we do not at all intend to launch war with Iran or expand the circle of struggle with it, outside of defending our rights and sovereignty … We would like to assure the Iranian people that we have no intention of encroaching upon their rights, laying claims on any of their territories, or humiliating them and the Iranian army … We hope that the Iranian regime will benefit from this lesson … and will honorably cooperate with the region’s countries in accordance with this honorable independent trend. It will then guarantee for Iran its legitimate interests, consolidate its security and stability, and keep it away from the policies of aggression and adventures, which have brought it only losses and catastrophes."

WHAT DID APRIL SAY?

We are approaching the 19^th anniversary of the infamous meeting between April Glaspie, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, and Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990. Sadly, this incident has been virtually eliminated from the history of Iraq-U.S. relations. After the cease-fire agreement between the U.S. and Iraq in February 1991, some media attention was given, but that quickly disappeared.

April Glaspie met with Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990 to discuss the future of Kuwait and Iraq.

Before we discuss her meeting, let’s look at background information that led to the point where Iraq was on the verge of invading its Arab neighbor to the south. For many years, the country known as Kuwait was culturally, geographically, racially and economically a part of the area known as Iraq today. Iraq has been identified by different names over the centuries and has been a part of various empires, but present-day Kuwait was always a province of Basra, the southernmost component of Iraq.

In the early part of the 20^th century, the British laid the boundaries that led to the current Middle East. Many of those overran traditional cultures and identities, making the area a hotbed of violence from then until the beginning of the 21^st century. Today, it looks like the conflicts created by these borders may yet spill over into the next century. The Kuwaiti-Iraqi border created hostility and mistrust. Despite the British placing of stooges in power in Iraq during their 20^th century occupation of the country, two of the quisling governments protested the status of Kuwait as an independent country.

Until 1990, the Ba’ath government of Iraq and the emirate of Kuwait held an uneasy truce. At times, both countries experienced amiable relations, but at others, there was an aloofness. The common denominator was that both were populated by Arabs and both used this brotherhood to keep peace.

In 1980, Iran and Iraq went to war. The two countries fought a bloody eight-year conflict that ended in a stalemate. Iran wanted to spread its own Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East and Iraq was the only country in the area that could stop the territorial designs of Iran. Iraq was the buffer that stopped the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, including Kuwait, from falling into Iranian hands. Unlike the hostile attitude of neighboring countries brought on by U.S. intervention in the area, during the 1980s, Iraq’s Arab neighbors stood solidly behind the country that was sacrificing its soldiers to keep the independence of Gulf Arabian countries. In the 1990s, with forceful persuasion by the U.S., countries like Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Qatar, and others turned against their former ally. Kuwait, with much U.S. assistance, was the first to betray Iraq and others followed. Some, however, such as Yemen and Jordan, kept cordial relations with Iraq because the people of these countries forced their leaders not to ostracize the Iraqis.

By the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq’s economy had been greatly weakened. The incidents leading to Desert Storm began to emerge.

Kuwait lent money to Iraq during the war. The money was allocated for the defense of Kuwait, as well as that of Iraq, and the Iraqi government did not expect to be hard-pressed to repay the loans after the hostilities ended, especially because much of the money was used in thwarting Iran from invading Kuwait.

Soon after the cease-fire, Kuwait demanded repayment. Saddam Hussein was shocked that Kuwait would apply so much pressure after his country had spent eight bloody years defending Kuwait from Iranian aggression. When Iraq attempted to discuss the matter of repayment with Kuwait, the Kuwaitis became ever more insistent about immediate remission. The Iraqis knew at that time that the CIA and Kuwait had already instituted measures to further undermine the Iraqi economy, yet they did not realize the severity and progress of those plans.

After Iraq crossed the Kuwaiti border on August 2, 1990, many aspects of this anti-Iraq scheme came out in the open. The Iraqis found a copy of a letter dated November 22, 1989 and marked "Top Secret and Private" that was sent by Brigadier Ahmed Al Fahd (Director General of the State Security Department of Kuwait) to Sheikh Salem Al Sabah Al Sabah (Minister of the Interior of Kuwait). The letter mentions the coalition of the CIA and the Kuwaiti government and their plans to undermine the Iraqi economy. Here are a few highlights:

This letter proved the Iraqi allegations of a definite U.S. plan to keep Iraq’s economy weak so Kuwait could benefit. The release of this letter put a different look on the events of August 2, 1990 and the following few months. Iraq did not enter Kuwait simply to stake claim to Kuwait’s oil. It did so to stop Kuwait and the U.S. from permanently damaging its economy.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz quickly spread the word about the U.S.-Kuwait collusion, but the agenda was written by Bush I and barely a peep was heard about the damning evidence. The world was hearing about "naked aggression" and "another Hitler." In an October 24, 1990 letter to the United Nations, Aziz highlighted the actions of the U.S. and Kuwait that led to the eventual occupation of Kuwait by Iraq. Many crucial points are brought up, so it is important to publish the entire letter:

Months before the beginning of Desert Storm, Tariq Aziz had exposed Kuwait’s duplicity. Instead of looking at the facts, however, much of the world allowed George Bush I to revamp them and portray a different scenario — one in which the Iraqis invaded Kuwait for no reason other than greed and the acquisition of Kuwaiti oil. Logic would tear holes in this assessment. Iraq already had the world’s second-largest oil reserves, so it did not need to grab those of Kuwait. Iraq’s economic existence had been threatened by the U.S. and Kuwait, but it seemed no one was listening.

In 1989, another strange scenario emerged. Iraq began to lose oil from its wells in the Rumailah oil fields, located in the Iraq/Kuwait border area. Iraq discovered that the Kuwaitis had installed a slant drilling operation on the border, enabling them to drill under the boundary and steal Iraqi oil. At the time, the Iraqi government assessed the oil losses at $2.7 billion, but after discovering the enormity of the operation, losses were re-assessed to about $14 billion. The stealing of Iraqi oil was well-documented by Iraq. On July 15, 1990, Tariq Aziz, in a letter to the Secretary of the Arab League, described the theft in detail.

Because of the cooperative relationship between Kuwait and Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein was aghast at the Kuwaiti’s change of heart once the hostilities ceased. Iraq began to find pieces of the puzzle and put them together. The findings were corroborated after August 2, 1990 when the Iraqis found evidence in Kuwait, such as the top secret letter previously mentioned.

Prior to August 2, 1990, the Iraqis had enough facts to present to the Arab world showing Kuwaiti involvement in undermining their economy. To Iraq, this was the beginning of a U.S. intrusion into the area that would not be reversed once put into action. In a speech in Amman, Jordan on February 24, 1990, Saddam Hussein told those assembled of the imminent danger of allowing the U.S. to become involved in regional affairs. (See Appendix XII of the book The Mother of All Battles: The Endless U.S.-Iraq War for the entire speech.) Remember, at the time, the Soviet Union was in existence and was considered a world superpower. The Iraqi president stated:

Despite this ominous prediction, the Arab world did not take much notice. Most of the countries in the region could not envisage a permanent U.S. presence that would dictate U.S. policy to them. Events since 1990, much to the chagrin of regional Arab countries, proved Saddam Hussein’s statement accurate. Today, countries such as Qatar and Kuwait are virtual U.S. possessions.

Kuwait, despite the wishes of its oil-producing partners in OPEC, began to pump much more oil than its agreed quota, bringing the price of oil down on world markets. Every time Kuwait’s actions forced a decrease in the price of oil, Iraq lost millions, if not billions, of dollars, further eroding its economy.

The situation became more tense and Saddam Hussein called for a meeting with April Glaspie, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. On July 25, 1990, they met and Saddam explained his country’s plight to her. He discussed Kuwait’s breaking of OPEC agreements and that his country was in desperate need of money to help rebuild its infrastructure that was damaged in the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. (See Appendix I of The Mother of All Battles for the full transcript.)

After listening, Glaspie then assured Saddam that the U.S. was on Iraq’s side and that the U.S. was in sync with the desires of Iraq to rebuild. She explained:

Saddam Hussein then complained that the U.S. was blocking most orders his government had placed with the U.S. He said:

Those words were quite prophetic. After Desert Storm, with a full embargo in place, Iraq could not import food, so it had to create more agriculturally-based business. In June 1992, U.S. military jets, with their afterburners, destroyed 23 Iraqi wheat fields.

Getting back to the Saddam Hussein-April Glaspie meeting, she responded to Saddam’s complaints about lack of access to American markets with, "I have a direct instruction from the president to seek better relations with Iraq."

The U.S. administration maintained that it was Iraq’s business and not that of the U.S. in the matter of Iraq’s dispute with Kuwait. On July 26, 1990, the day after the Saddam-Glaspie meeting, Margaret Tutweiler, U.S. Department of State spokesperson was asked by the press, "Has the United States sent any type of diplomatic message to the Iraqis about putting 30,000 troops on the border of Kuwait? Has there been any type of protest communicated from the United States government?" She replied, "I’m entirely unaware of any such protest."

On July 31, 1990, John Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, testified to Congress that the "United States has no commitment to defend Kuwait and the U.S. has no intention of defending Kuwait if it is attacked by Iraq."

These messages are not ambiguous, but they were false. Bush had plans ready to destroy Iraq and the crossing of the Iraq-Kuwait border was an appropriate excuse to implement Bush’s designs.

During the war propaganda buildup of the next few months, the subject of the Saddam-Glaspie meeting was kept under wraps. Few Americans knew of the incident. Adding to the intrigue, Glaspie seemingly disappeared. From August 4, 1990 until May 1991, no government official mentioned her or could account for her whereabouts. A few reporters worked up the nerve to ask, but they were ignored.

In May 1991, April Glaspie appeared before the U.S. Senate. Questions were not asked about where she had been for the prior nine months, and the public will probably never know. During her report to the Senate, she told of warning Saddam Hussein not to take action against Kuwait. Most of the senators believed her because she alleged that the transcripts of her meeting with Saddam were altered by the Iraqi government. (The CIA admitted that the transcripts were accurate and that Glaspie had not issued such a statement to Saddam Hussein.) After her testimony, the Senate virtually granted Glaspie hero status.

In July 1991, Senators Clayborne Pell of Rhode Island and Alan Cranston of California came up with a totally different scenario from the one Glaspie presented. They read the contents of secret messages from Glaspie to the U.S. government and assessed that Glaspie blatantly lied to the U.S. Senate.

Pell and Cranston appeared on national television and called Glaspie’s testimony deceitful and shameful. They vowed to get to the bottom of the incident, all the time lambasting Glaspie and her testimony before the Senate. Pell and Cranston announced that they were putting the machinery in motion for a full investigation to begin in September 1991. By mid-October, there was no word of an investigation.

On October 11, 1991, I called Senator Cranston’s office in Washington D.C. When I asked about the impending investigation, there was silence. After a brief pause, I was hesitatingly told that they knew nothing about it and I was advised to call the Foreign Affairs Committee.

I took the recommendation of Cranston’s office and called the committee. After I gave a brief description of the incident, I asked, "Is there any information available?" The woman, who would not identify herself, snapped "Nope!" After a moment’s pause, she tersely added, "There was a meeting scheduled and then postponed indefinitely." Then, she abruptly hung up.

Somehow, the administration squashed the only chance we had of learning the truth behind the Glaspie affair. The question that will never be publicly addressed and answered is: "Did April Glaspie give Saddam Hussein a green light for invading Kuwait out of incompetence (i.e. was the Arab-Arab statement her own?) or was she instructed to say that by the U.S. administration?"

April Glaspie is a shady character at best. According to the U.S. administration, in 1992, she accepted a position at the University of San Diego. Her phone number was listed, yet there never was an answer when it was called, and, there was no answering machine.

In June 1993, the U.S. involvement in Somalia turned from a "humanitarian" mission to one that attempted to capture the newly-demonized Mohammed Aidid. There was much bloodshed. Shortly before the public denigration of Aidid, Glaspie was re-assigned to Somalia. She wrote the new script.

Soon after the Somalia debacle, Glaspie again disappeared, only to turn up in the Rwanda area, where the slaughtering of more than a million people was just getting underway. Prior to her stint in Iraq, Glaspie was stationed in Lebanon during that country’s bitter and bloody civil war. Is the fact that Glaspie happens to appear in areas in which there is violence shortly after her debut a matter of chance, or, possibly the prelude to destruction?

ASTRONOMY ANSWERS MANY QUESTIONS

Throughout humankind’s existence, the sky has always played an important role. Until about 10,000 years ago, humans were baffled by the sky. They understood little about the stars and planets and were mostly scared by items that depicted quick change, such as eclipses, meteors, or comets.

When humans began to form civilizations and to record their existence, the sky took on new dimensions. The peoples of the Middle East watched the stars and, although still superstitious, began to notice that certain positions of stars and planets would indicate certain times of the year with regularity. They realized that the annual re-emergence of some constellations indicated it was time to plant crops. Other constellations heralded he beginning of a rainy season or a dry season. In other words, the beginning of astronomy had occurred.

Centuries after the beginning of astronomy, another of humankind’s inventions occurred that became a major opponent of astronomy — monotheistic religion. The story of the sky began to change. Comets were bad omens. So were solar or lunar eclipses. Meteor showers were heralded as ominous threats to humankind. Today, we understand that a comet is nothing more than a bunch of ice and rock that orbits the Sun. Meteorites are pieces of iron, rock or silicon that occasionally fall to Earth. And, the dastardly eclipses are caused either by the Earth’s shadow blocking the moon’s image, or the moon blocking the Sun’s image.

We must remember that the almost two-millennia practice of ignorance of the sky was not always so. Prior to the advent of monotheism, much progress had been made in the field of astronomy by ancient cultures. For instance, archaeologists have found depictions from ancient Babylon that show Jupiter and four of its moons. No person has eyesight so keen that he/she could see even one of Jupiter’s moons without a telescope. The telescope’s invention was not credited, however, until almost 5,000 years after the drawings were made in Babylon. Many scientists today believe that the ancient Babylonians had invented a basic telescope.

In the year 1581 BCE, a lunar eclipse traveled though the Middle East. There is a clay tablet that commemorated this eclipse (see picture at beginning of article). The message on the tablet was scientific, not mythical. In addition to reporting a lunar eclipse, the ancient Babylonians could predict these events with accuracy.

Let’s talk about electricity. Archaeologists have found that electricity was used to plate coins over 5,000 years ago in Baghdad, Iraq. In China, at about the same time, the same electricity had been discovered and put into making crude batteries.

Once Christianity gained a foothold in society, the Church tried alter science to fit its theology. True science was declared the enemy. Judeo-Christian pseudo-science became standard fare for more than a millennium.

In 394 A.D., Christian activists burned the libraries and museums in Alexandria, Egypt. In these institutions was most of the world’s knowledge, including scientific, that had been gathered over the centuries from many countries and cultures. It has been estimated that about 90% of the world’s knowledge, including astronomy, went up in smoke. It took almost 1,500 years for the world to regain knowledge that already existed at one time — knowledge in the fields of astronomy, science, anatomy, architecture, plumbing, public works, etc.

According to the fifth book of Historia Ecclesiastica:

In ridding the world of "pagan" ideas, the Church eliminated thousands of years of knowledge. Christianity now had an open hand at keeping the western world ignorant of science for the next millennium.

Astronomy turned into astrology. Any legitimate research was a thing of the past. Comets, eclipses and meteors reverted to a "bad omen" status.

In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, real research again came forward. However, those who crossed the line of Church doctrine were put out of business. Galileo had to renounce his findings to save his life.

Prior to the re-invention of the telescope in the early 17^th century, a flurry of astronomers began to see the overall picture. They used mathematics an what they could see with the naked eye to enhance knowledge. At the time, they were not interested in challenging the Church, but only to further astronomical knowledge. It was proven and finally accepted that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but, it was still blasphemy to state that the Earth was not at the center of our solar system. That information would take longer to emerge, although some astronomers were quietly hinting this as a fact.

Many of us today are under the assumption that the great scientists of these times were atheistic, but that’s not true. Most were attempting to combine their religious faith with science. For instance, Sir Isaac Newton is credited with discovering the laws of gravity. He had a few predecessors who came close, but it was Newton whose theory of gravity became known as the most accurate.

Contrary to what one may think, Newton was a very religious man. He wrote millions of words on biblical subjects and was intrigued by Hebrew scripture.

Recently, some of Newton’s lesser-known works have come forward that show he predicted the end of the Earth in the year 2060. He made his calculations based on the Bible. Researchers admit that there are still thousands of volumes of Newton’s works that have yet to be scrutinized. Despite his prolific scientific work, Newton still embraced religion in his research and findings.

The re-discovery of the telescope changed astronomy forever. Astronomers were able to see the physical characteristics of planets as well as their moons. The could now see nebulae and multiple stars. They also saw things they could not explain, but the telescope was the one instrument that heralded the beginning of making sense of the universe.

By the beginning of the 20^th century, the knowledge of astronomy was astute, although still not as comprehensive as today’s standards. The Church had been inundated with too much information to keep saying that the Earth was flat, or that the Earth was at the center of the solar system. Despite new evidence, however, the Church still denied many reasons for what astronomy observed.

In 1923, a discovery was made that irreversibly changed the way we look at the universe. Prior to this new discovery, astronomers had figured out much about the solar system and its movements. They knew that our solar system was but a small portion of the universe. They even knew that our solar system lies near an edge of the Milky Way galaxy, not at its center. But, they thought the Milky Way was the entire universe.

Larger telescopes were being introduced. Some showed unidentified dots of light just beyond the edge of the Milky Way. At first, astronomers considered these specks to be wayward stars or nebulae that were on the outskirts of our galaxy, making them appear to be on the edge of the universe as well.

That vision was shattered in 1923. Astronomers came to the conclusion that these items were other galaxies. Since then, with the advent of even newer and more powerful equipment, billions more galaxies have been discovered. Almost overnight, the size of the known universe increased a trillion-fold.

Today, we know that the Milky Way is an average-sized galaxy in a universe with billions of similar galaxies. Our galaxy, like billions of others, consists of billions of stars. It is about 100 million light years wide, making it an average galaxy consisting mostly of average stars.

Despite all the advances, it was not until the 1990s that a real opening came for seeing the entire universe and its history. The Hubble telescope has been in the forefront of these findings. In addition, recent technology has made it possible for land-based telescopes and others in space to equal the Hubble instrument in their observations.

We have seen the science fiction movies about life in other parts of the universe — the green men with long tentacles, or robot-like beings, etc. However, many people, including astronomers, had concluded that the Earth, with its life-sustaining environment, is a one-time fluke in the universe. Plus, many religions have always stated that life in unique to Earth.

This conclusion is now quickly changing. Since the 1980s, various astronomers have predicted that some stars may have planetary systems. But, this was still only speculation.

Then, in the late 1990s, the first planet orbiting a star outside our solar system was discovered. Then another. And another. Currently, hundreds of stars outside our solar system have been identified and named. New ones pop up almost daily.

It is now known that the vast majority of stars, including our own Sun, are formed in the same manner. After their formation, they spew gases and chemicals into space and his debris collides and forms planets. It is speculated that most stars have planetary systems. Many top astronomers and scientists now conclude that with trillions and trillions of stars experiencing a similar beginning and end, and most with a planetary accompaniment, that life is common in the universe. One British astronomer stated, "Life is probably as common as muck."

Because of the vast differences involved in the universe, we may never encounter intelligent life. Theoretically, the speed of light is the fastest speed possible, making it virtually impossible for other intelligent life to communicate with Earth. If a star is a million light years away from Earth, it is considered close to our planet. And, if a civilization had figured out the technology to travel at the speed of light, it would take a million years just to reach Earth. Life probably is common, yet our species may never find out what other creatures in the universe look like.

Life, however, is not restricted to what we know as intelligent life. Basic forms of life appeared on Earth over two billion years ago in the guise of bacteria. These bacteria, after millions and millions of years, became the building blocks of other life forms. So, there may be life in the form of bacteria in non-Earthly settings that we do have a chance of discovering.

The subject of life on the planet Mars has always held humankind’s curiosity. After we first saw close-up detailed pictures of the planet, it was assumed that it was a huge dead rock.

Recently, the subject of life on Mars has taken on a new life. NASA’s Mars Odyssey space probe showed gullies on that planet that could have been etched by melting snow. Astronomers are now of the opinion that much snow may have existed on Mars at one time and, when it melted, it left these huge gullies.

"Snow acts as a miniature greenhouse and provides a wonderful abode for life," said Philip Christensen of Arizona State University. He added, "Imagine an environment where there is sunlight. There are temperatures above those of freezing liquid water. All of those make a potential for life."

Let’s go to current findings about our universe. The conclusion of a NASA probe five years ago that looked back to almost the beginning of the universe showed that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. Before this conclusion, the age of the universe was measured at between 12 and 15 billion years. However, the NASA probe is precise in its assessment. Every time a space project takes on the task of determining the age of the universe, the results become more specific.

Astronomers call these findings a passage from speculation to precision. The data strongly confirm the "big bang" theory. They also show that the first stars were formed only 200 years after the big bang, not from 500 million to two billion years, as was previously thought. In addition, the movement of the early universe has solved another problem; that of the end of the universe. The scientific community was split into two camps; those who said the universe would expand indefinitely leading to a cold, lifeless universe, and those who maintained that the universe would implode in a chaotic and fiery ending. The former theory was proven correct in the recent study. The universe will expand indefinitely until it becomes so cold that everything will end up as chunks of ice or rock.

There have been distinct findings in astronomy that changed the way we looked at the universe. They include the invention of the telescope and the discovery that the Milky Way is not the entire universe, among others. Almost daily, we are being told of new discoveries, some mundane and minor, and others virtually Earth-shattering.

Not only can we discover knowledge about our cosmic neighbors with astronomy, but we know much more about the Earth. Satellite photography has made it possible to predict weather much more precisely. It also has given us knowledge of plate tectonics that we can use to predict future changes in the Earth.

What does the Church think of such information? I have not heard Pope Benedict speak much of the subject. However, a few years ago, he said that human beings did not evolve from apes. He added that anyone who thinks so is part of a vast "atheistic conspiracy." A little more than 16 centuries ago, it was the pagans whom the Church blamed for putting bad ideas into humans’ heads. Today, atheists hold the same place as pagans did in 394. At least the Church is consistent in its illogic.

Science is the best tool for making sense of life. It is not perfect, but it is the best we have.

WHAT ARE THEY AFRAID OF?

First, they took his name out of Iraqi history books. Then, they made a criminal charge that constitutes a two-year prison sentence for displaying a picture of him in public. Now, the Iraqi government has banned people from visiting Saddam Hussein’s grave.

According to an article in Al-Jazeera News of July 6, 2009, titled "Iraq Bans Visits to Saddam’s Grave:

First, for years we heard Saddam and his sons called "butchers" by the West. But, the remains of him and his sons indicate the most brutal form of butchery. His sons were chopped to pieces by hundreds of bullets and artillery shells, while Saddam’s body was defiled by rabid Iran supporters after he was hanged. The imagery of butchery lives in the graves of the Hussein family, but it was butchery imposed by outsiders, not by Saddam and his sons.

Last week, I gave a speech at San Diego State University to a class of Professor Khaleel Mohammed, a well-known expert on Islam. The kids were mostly aged from 18-21 and most did not even remember the March 2003 invasion of Iraq because of their young age at the time.

I spoke about the re-writing of Iraq’s history in Washington, D.C. by U.S. personnel and how the history books were blank from the years 1968 to 2005. Most of the students seemed skeptical of my assessment. They could not believe the U.S. would pull such dirty tricks.

The professor injected a statement. He told of his being a professor in Toronto at the time of the invasion and that he was contacted by the U.S. government to discuss the subject of Iraq’s education. They flew him to Washington, D.C. and offered him a top post in the program of re-writing Iraqi history. He said the salary they offered was astronomical. But, once the discussions began, he knew this was not a job he could perform. He was told that Iraqi history was to be re-written in Washington and it must reflect U.S. propaganda and turn the Iraqi education system into a carbon copy of the U.S. system. The professor said he refused because he would not be able to live with himself if he participated in such a venture.

Then, he pointed to a middle-aged woman in the class and said, "We have an Iraqi in class who went through the times of Saddam. What is your opinion?" She said that she learned more in the seventh grade in Iraq than she has at a top U.S. university. I asked her when she graduated from Baghdad University and she replied, "1985." She then said she taught high school for a few years. But, her next statement kind of shocked the students, most of whom only knew what U.S. propaganda had thrust on the public. She said, "In those days, we had freedom. Under Saddam, we had total freedom. Not so today. My niece, a Christian, has to be fully-veiled when she leaves the house, despite it being against her beliefs. Plus, what there is of an education system today in Iraq is pathetic."

Today, I sent Professor Mohammed the Al-Jazeera article. Here is his response:

This is not the first time people were stopped from visiting Saddam’s grave. On the first anniversary of his death, thousands were not allowed to pay tribute. According to an article in The Times of London, called , "Thousands Prevented from Visiting Saddam Tomb on Anniversary of Execution," and published on December 30, 2007:

In December 2003, after the announcement of Saddam’s capture by U.S. troops, the streets of Baghdad were filled with pro-Saddam supporters. The following day, U.S. military personnel surrounded a Baghdad school, Adnan Kheiralla Boy’s School, and dragged about 40 students by their hair and held them for a couple of days in cages. Their crime? They had a picture of Saddam Hussein in their class.

Such actions are not indicative of a "democratic" society, one that was forced on Iraq by the U.S. The other day, I saw an automobile bumper sticker with the words "Free Iraq" on it, commemorating the new democratic Iraq. Another sticker, on the other side of the bumper, heralded the praising of Jesus for freeing the Iraqis.

If Saddam is such a spent force, why are the stooges in Baghdad so bent on denying his existence or stopping people from visiting his grave, or even mentioning his name? Logic tells us that if the denigration was true, the Iraqi quislings would promote Saddam’s "brutal legacy." Plus, Maliki is very jealous. Saddam’s presence could command hundreds of thousands of people to show up to listen to his greetings to the Iraqi people. If Maliki gave a public speech, he couldn’t get a swarm of flies to attend even if he had barrels of honey surrounding him.

Today, the "Arab street’ considers Saddam Hussein as one of the greatest leaders in Arab history, arguably the greatest in modern times. Even some of his critics from before the March 2003 invasion are now speaking of his foresight. In my book, The Mother of All Battles: The Endless U.S.-Iraq War, I include a speech given by Saddam Hussein at the Amman Summit in Amman, Jordan on February 24, 1990. Point-by-point, he laid out the future of the Arab world if it did not recognize and resist U.S. plans for domination of the Arab world. The leaders did not listen, but the Arab people did. Today, they see that speech as the blueprint for U.S. hegemony in the Arab world. It’s too bad the leaders did not take the message to heart.

News analyst and Middle Eastern expert, Husayn al-Kurdi passed on his comment today about the ridiculous decree that makes it illegal to visit Saddam’s grave:

One thing is a fact that upsets the pretenders in Baghdad: no matter how many laws are enacted or how many arrests are made, the Iraqi people will not forget Saddam Hussein and the accomplishments of his leadership and those of the Ba’ath Party. The more they try to eliminate Saddam’s memory, the more they fail. Saddam made Iraq worth fighting for.

ANOTHER GRAND ILLUSION

The United States hates Iran and is trying every way possible to unseat its government and possibly attack and invade the country. The recent emergence of street demonstrations shows the Iranian people are fed up and want a revolution and create a government that allows its people freedom.

If you believe the preceding sentences, it is sad to see how easily you are duped and how little you know about history.

I think a statement that I have made many times is much closer to reality:

Without delving too far into history, I’ll give a short background to Iran and Iraq relations since the Iran Revolution of 1979.

The revolution was not conducted by Islamists alone. It included millions of people taking to the street whose goal was to rid Iran of the Shah and a kingdom. The participants included socialists, communists, freedom-loving Iranians, workers, peasants, and others, as well as Islamists. All worked toward the same goal.

When Khomeini returned to Iran, the revolution took on a different look. Once the Shah left, Khomeini consolidated his supporters and became the leader of the revolution. Shortly after, there was a purge of socialists, communists and secularists, the same people who began the chain of events that led to Khomeini’s rise.

Iraq tried on many occasions to sit down with the new Iranian government, that by now had turned into a theocracy. They wanted to draw guidelines for a new mutual beneficial relationship between the two nations in which each country would not interfere in the affairs of the other, but would cooperate in the fields of business and diplomacy. Iran rejected these overtures.

According to a report issued by the Iraqi Embassy in Washington D.C. in 1985:

Despite all the bravado of the U.S. and Israel about being Iran’s enemies, the trio soon began to work behind closed doors. The ultimate goal for the U.S. was to acquire the return of its hostages held in Iran and Israel had a chance to help further advance tensions between Iran and Iraq in the hope of weakening Iraq, an Arab nation that was challenging Israel’s hegemony in the Middle East.

Plans evolved to sell U.S.-made weapons to Iran, with Israel being the broker and earning its 10% agent fee.

Various proposals were put forth, but Khomeini made the final decision. A group of Iranian officials would make the necessary arrangements for U.S. spare parts and eventually missiles and helicopters. And, the person who became the main player for Iran was none other than the current hero of the world’s misled public that thinks he is trying to change Iran’s political makeup: Mir-Hossein Mosavi. According to an article, "Iran Divided and the ‘October Surprise,’" by Robert Parry that was published on June 24, 2009:

The U.S. continued to supply Iran with weapons that killed Iraqis throughout the entire Iran-Iraq War. Some people point to the now-famous picture of Saddam shaking hands with assistant U.S. Secretary of Defense, Don Rumseld, in December 1983 and say this is proof that the U.S. supported Iraq during the war. Rumsfeld’s trip to Baghdad was not to enhance Iraq’s military machine. It was to discuss the diplomatic relationship between Iraq and the U.S. While Saddam and Rumsfeld were posing for the photo, U.S.-made missiles were killing Iraqis, civilian and military alike.

In fact, the history revisionists, mostly from the left, state that the U.S. supplied Iraq with much weaponry during the war. This is another bit of propaganda fed to them so they can distribute it to their "liberal" followers. The truth differs. During the Iran-Iraq War, the U.S. supplied Iraq with about $200 million worth of military equipment, mostly helicopters. China and France each supplied more than $5 billion worth of military equipment, closely followed by the Soviet Union who made sales of about $4.8 billion. Iraqi spent billions of dollars with the U.S. during this time, but most was for civilian goods.

Many reasons have been given for the Iran-Iraq War. Pundits have written many pages of theories. However, most did not hit the mark, especially those since 1990 that have accused Iraq of being the aggressor. The 1985 report from the Iraqi Embassy in Washington D.C. explains the basis for the war quite precisely:

After the cease-fire between the U.S. and Iraq was signed in 1991, supposedly ending hostilities, an uprising occurred in the south of Iraq. From that time until today, we hear that this was a spontaneous insurgency powered by Iraqis who wanted freedom from the Ba’ath government. This is another swerve. The violence began when Iranian agents crossed the border of Iraq and organized the violence. We hear of the brutal putting down of the insurgents by the Iraqi government, yet he never hear of the Iranian-backed Shia butchers who slaughtered many Iraqis. In Basra, multitudes of Iraqi civilians were beheaded by masked henchmen. At the time, photos emerged of them with their scythe-like instruments decapitating people tied to tables. Eventually, the Iraqi government had the situation under control.

A close Iraqi-American friend of mine at the time asked, "What was Saddam supposed to do? Kiss them on the cheek?"

While the fighting was at its heaviest, we saw videos on TV in the U.S. of large protests in Baghdad. Pete Williams, the White House spokesman at the time said, "Demonstrations in Iraq are rare. It looks like the people are upset with the government." The protestors held signs in Arabic, therefore, most Americans had no clue of what they said. My aforementioned friend told me, "The signs were asking the government to put down the Shia uprising." Again, we saw a major twisting of the facts.

In 1991, every Iraqi knew that Iran was behind the hostilities in