Note: We apologise to our subscribers for the delay in publishing On Target. As most will know, this has been due, in part, to the Deputy Editor's absence in hospital, not least for a longer period than was expected. Global events have been moving fast, and continue to do so. Much of the material that appears in this and will appear in the February and March editions, will therefore post-date the nominal date of issue. For continuity, and because of the limitations of space in a newsletter which prevents extensive repetition, it is important to consult the following editions of On Target: The events and back-ground to the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York (1)(2); Double Standards at the heart of the conflict (3); The planned attack on Iraq (4); Further perspectives on the conflict (5); The coming war in geopolitical-economic terms (6).

WAR, AND OTHER MATTERS REFLECTIONS FROM A HOSPITAL BED

An enforced rest, of some four weeks, does at least offer time for reflection. Such interludes generate the thought that the state of the Nation, to say nothing of the world, is such that one may as well laugh as cry. With your stricken Deputy Editor's predilection for grandchildren in mind, known to many subscribers, we may as well get the whimsy out of the way first. In simple engineering terms, a hip joint replacement operation involves the substitution of an artificial ball and socket joint and a process rather like boning a joint of meat. As a result the disturbed tissue must be allowed a period of several weeks in which to consolidate again, during which time false moves may cause a dislocation. Nevertheless there are those whose post-operative euphoria leads them prematurely to resume driving, gardening or useless pursuits such as golf. The stay in hospital is normally around seven days. For your Deputy Editor events proceeded extremely smoothly in the hands of a fine orthopaedic team until Murphy's Law took over with two freak dislocations before even leaving the hospital. Seven days became twenty eight.

For once, misfortune could not be blamed on G.M.D.s (Grandchildren of Mass Destruction). One such, a female of the species, Gertie Pratwinkle, did penetrate the outer defences of the hospital but was so overawed by the atmosphere of a ward creaking on Zimmer frames and crutches that it uttered not one single word from the visitor's chair, in the manner of a missile that has failed to explode. One for the Guinness Book of Records perhaps? The excuses are over, now to business.

Four weeks in hospital gives one time to study a succession of one's fellow beings as they come and go with their repaired hips and knees. They may be said to represent a fair cross section of public opinion, and the observer learns from their conversation and the newspapers they read. To carry out research one is accustomed regularly to handling a wide range of newspapers, with long experience in summing up the content from a perusal of the title and key lines of each report or article. In hospital newspapers are devoured line by line; and not simply to pass the time. Yet who can be aware of the alien American-Jewish financial interests behind the strongly pro-war, pro-Israel line taken by Rupert Murdoch's newspapers? In these war-ridden times is anyone aware of the close links between Rupert Murdoch, Express newspapers owner, pornographer Richard Desmond, and the current war-minded International Socialist Government of Prime Minister Blair?

Ailing before his knee operation, the tall, stooping, good-natured former Royal Marine is due to pass on to another hospital for further treatment. He worked as an artisan in his later years and is already past seventy. Each day he purchases the Daily Mail before passing it on for others to read. Does he judge the pro-Israel line on the basis of its Anglo-Jewish Zionist-oriented contributors Peter Hitchens and Melanie Phillips? Does he even know that Phillips is married to Joshua Rozenburg, Legal Editor of The Daily Telegraph or the significance of this connection?

The retired owner of an electroplating business and, deceptively on first acquaintance, the prickly, sourly-disposed, retired Merchant Navy Captain, both read the Telegraph. Both reflect the instinctive authoritarian political and social positions expected of the ostensibly Right-Wing readership. But have they ever noticed that, despite the superficially "conservative" posture of this key newspaper, the socially destabilising, Politically Correct trends in our society are reported, but that no positive campaign is ever mounted against this, apart from concerns about social engineering in Education?

Have they tumbled to the uncomfortable truth that traditional Left-Right social and political dichotomies and positions are fast losing relevance in a globalising world of corporate Power and International Socialism, or that these agendas are becoming synonymous in the United States dominated global economic climate? Do they realise how attempts are made to marginalise widespread public concern about the war against Iraq as motived and manipulated by the extreme political Left alone? Do they realise the significance of the double standards applied in the case of Israel and how, or why, this is virtually ignored by politicians and the Mass Communications Media with only a few honourable exceptions. Do they understand the opinion-forming significance of a newspaper whose board of directors are a microcosm of geopolitical influence and Zionist Power? Do they know that Telegraph Newspapers are owned by Lord Black's Hollinger International group?

As opinions are expressed and exchanged in the chat and banter of a hospital ward, do these good people realise that Richard Perle, former Chairman of the United States Defence Policy Board, frequently consulted on United States foreign policies by British radio and television channels, is also a Hollinger director, even when he writes for Black's Telegraph or Spectator? Can they qualify this with the fact that as a young Congressional aide, Perle was guilty of passing confidential State Department information to Israel?

David Frum, formerly President George W. Bush's speech writer, the man behind the "Axis of Evil" theme, wrote in The Daily Telegraph of 24th March, 2003, that "Blair must find the courage to turn his back on the E.U.". Such views were clearly part of the Black-Hollinger strategy, not for an Independent Britain, but to lure the United Kingdom into political and economic subservience to the United States; ultimately the North American Free Trade Agreement (N.A.F.T.A.), and the America-Israel axis. But then, who would connect Edward Luttwak or Michael Ledeen, both of whom have written leaders in Telegraph News-papers, with Perle, or with Joseph Churba's powerfully pro-Israel International Security Council, or with other influential American-Jewish figures associated with Churba like Professor Richard Pipes and Yossef Bodansky?

In the lengthy process of promoting Israeli interests, covering up for Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians, and systematically talking up war against Iraq, the record of former Telegraph Editor Sir Max Hastings is a key to understanding Lord Black's position following an article in The Spectator in which William Cash alluded to the Jewish proclivities of Hollywood (The Guardian, 7th October, 2002). You don't understand, Max. My entire interests in the United States and internationally could be seriously damaged by this"
So much for those who would deny, as anti-Semitic if nothing else, the extent of the ruthless political, financial, commercial and media global outreach of organised Zionist-Jewish Power.

Examples of the exercise of this Power are numerous and on record. That we may be deemed by some to take a somewhat singular line here, especially in the case of Israel-Palestine is, in truth, no more than to redress the balance. Yet how little ordinary people know in spite of the political positions they adopt on the basis of what they have been brought up and encouraged to believe in by omission and the systematic massage of their perceptions. How can they know when every effort is made to conceal truth and the influences and interests at play?

Conversation waxed and waned across the ward; reluctant surprise rather than fixed or bigoted positions resulted when some of these truths were revealed. The Merchant Navy Captain proved to be amenable to argument, wryly humorous and was one of the few who made a point of giving chocolates to the nurses when he was discharged. One is reminded of an old Yorkshire saying that "There's nowt so queer as folk".

PICKING UP THE THREADS OF DECADENCE AND GREED

War with Iraq had been openly in the air since the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, on 11th September, 2001. This suited the neoconservative Zionist pressure group within the United States Administration, led by Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Edward Luttwak, Kenneth Adelman, William Kristol and company.

The outraged United States Government had demanded scalps. It was a replay of numerous Hollywood cowboy "B" movies; horses or cattle had been rustled, and honour could only be satisfied by a hanging, regardless of the guilt or otherwise of the perceived culprit. Like Hopalong Cassidy, encumbered by an orthopaedic brace the convalescent phase for this observer involved tackling a large backlog of newspapers, magazines and - inevitably in the modern technological idiom - E-mails. Daily this heap increased as new material flooded in. An accumulation of material has its advantages. It is possible to study press coverage over a meaningful period and to see how rumour and speculation have been deliberately exploited.

So-called expert analysts, talking heads, commentators and, of course, politicians and journalists, make claims and allegations that either serve the purpose of deliberate distortion on behalf of the proprietors - talk-up - or promote views which a few weeks later they would prefer to be forgotten. From many years of research and cataloguing the record we comment on the basis of our own experience and judgement without recourse necessarily to supporting references unless we consider this necessary. Nor do we concede the need for corroboration through any process of "Peer Review". This is largely a Politically Correct mechanism exploited particularly in scientific circles to put the brakes on individual or unwelcome judgement.

Some may recall how this was done in the case of Dr Arpad Pusztai in the field of Biotechnology and the carcinogenic affects of Genetically Modified potatoes on rats when this did not suit the agenda of some of the scientific community, and Government, that had sold out, in our name, to Multinational Biotechnology Corporations like Monsanto(7).

We have emphasised on several occasions that the Mass Communications Media, in many cases promoting an agenda geared to extensive foreign ownership, can lift and exploit situations out of context of the whole. We must allow for this. However, evidence that society is being systematically weakened towards a state of subjugation through social, moral and cultural destabilisation is compelling. This is being achieved in great measure by the flood of legislation from the European Union and the United Nations. This cannot be handled or understood by individual politicians other than by specialisation on selected issues, and can only be applied through a mechanistic, robotic, politically-oriented or directed bureauracy.

In any case government on both sides of the Atlantic is substantially corrupt and unrepresentative of the democratic wishes of electorates, whichever political party holds sway, for what the differences between them are now worth. The initial incorruptible image of "New" Labour, which came to Power in 1997, has been shown by numerous scandals such as the dealings of Peter Mandelson, the ill-fated Dome and the Hinduja brothers to be no better than their "Arms for Iraq" and "Cash-for-Questions" predecessors. Indeed, there is little difference between the International Fabian Socialist Elite and the self-sustaining Socialist Nomenklatura of the Soviet Communist era.
Nowhere has this corruption of Power been more evident than the way in which the Government, lied, cheated, manipulated and brazenly flouted the Laws of the Land during the Foot and Mouth Disease crisis.

With the complicity of International Socialist governments in the European Union we are now witnessing the creeping introduction of an oppressive, bureaucratic unitary State. This has been exposed by former Gulag inmate Vladimir Bukovsky(8). At the heart of this lies the synonymous association between the Globalisation of Power and the Sovietisation of Western society. These processes are infinitely more subtle than under Soviet Communism, but no less effective.

To these same ends, the Office of Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, is conspiring to introduce by stealth a further stage in this Sovietization. A system of Regional Government is being proposed which would fit neatly into a chain of control directly to the European Commission in Brussels. This is based on eight regional "Chambers" or "Assemblies" to replace the present County Council tier of local government in England and parallelling devolved government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Significantly, scarcely a mention has been seen in the Media, let alone debate. Local authorities, except where individuals actively campaign under this agenda, remain largely ill-informed about the implications. "Consultative" meetings and conferences have been held as far as possible with little publicity and even in camera, attendance has been restricted, and questions or material hostile to Regional Government have been suppressed. As always, we are assured that there is no such thing as "Conspiracy" except for the lunatic ramblings of conspiracy theorists!

For several months we have been filing a variety of newspaper reports under the heading "Why Bother?" as we ponder the state of the Country. Much of this material could properly be recorded under the collective heading "Political Correctness". There can no longer be any doubt that Political Correctness is not just another North American fad that has leached across the Atlantic, like the baseball cap. It is a very real threat to stable and accepted social and cultural conditions that often appeals to idealists, visionaries, political activists and the so-called "Race Industry".

We have long been faced with a deadly strategy that has its roots in the French Revolution of 1789 and the teaching of Karl Marx for the destruction of the Existing Order; the World Revolution; thus the Marxian philosophy of the attack on the conventional family, morality, religion, private property and inheritance. Space precludes discussion of oppressive social and moral values and privation with which this can be associated through the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. However, Marx recognised that the English were inherently reluctant to rebel against authority, so he worked through the Irish "Question".

The more subtle approach came from the "Frankfurt School" of Cultural Communism. Established in 1923 as The Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt am Main, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and others worked methodically to destabilise society as we had known it - the Long March Through the Institutions(9).

In 2002, Dr Frank Ellis of the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Leeds, wrote in great detail how Political Correctness, as a part of the Ideological Struggle, has its roots in Marxist-Leninist Doctrine(10). Joseph Pogany, an aide of the Bela Kun, leader of the bloody Bolshevik Revolution in Hungary which followed that in Russia of 1917, slipped into the United States to become "John Pepper". In 1928 he wrote of " . . . white oppression of the Negro masses as a part of the proletarian revolution in America against capitalism"(11). In 2001, Dr Frank Ellis brought this exploitation of Race up to date with the telling title "Race, Marxism and the 'Deconstruction' of the United Kingdom"(12). We believe this must be taken in conjunction with Political Correctness as part of the calculated destruction of our National Identity and History. Key words Dr Ellis includes are "multiculturalism", "race-Marxism", "social and political construct" and "Sovietization".

How are the strands of this continuum of Marx's World Revolution manifested in practice? It is an elusive pattern that emerges only when the many diverse strands are brought together. Let there be no doubt that the strands of destabilisation are no purely Socialist phenomenon. It was taking root through 18 years of Conservative Party rule begun by Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Much took place with the de facto complicity of Tory Ministers with, for example, the pornography that has led to the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe today. Herbert Marcuse had been prominent during the student insurrections in the United States in the 1960s.
Until about this time accepted family, social and moral values had sufficed to a great extent, even given that they could be equivocal or repressive to a degree in practice. But the British Culture is just that. It is not French, German, Italian or Spanish; more or less libertarian, more or less mercurial. It is a consequence of hundreds of years of British history. Yet today public freedoms are being strangled by legislation.

Education along with other public services is severely strapped for funding, but the Stockport College of Further and Higher Education has seen fit to appoint an Equal Opportunities Co-ordinator and to issue 24 pages of guidelines. Reference is made to no less than 14 Acts or Regulations. These guidelines included such absurd advice on usage as: "Lady - class implications", "Gentleman - class implications", "Postman - sexist?", "History - some find sexist", "The Blind - not The - visually impaired better ", "Slaving over a hot stove - minimises the horror and oppression of the slave trade" and "Mrs - some find offensive".

The Police, too, have lost much credibility and respect. Often badly led or represented they are prone to disto-ted politicised priorities, for example when advertisements were circulated in South Wales to solicit information about colour or ethnic-related offences. In November, 2002, the well-known journalist Robin Page was arrested by the Police, illegally detained and disgracefully treated after he had defended rural interests at the Frampton Country Fair, in Gloucestershire, the previous September. He had addressed those attending with the words: "If you are a black, vegetarian, Muslim, asylum-seeking, one-legged, lesbian lorry driver - I want that same rights as you". Tactless maybe; offensive?
No more so than politically loaded official and quasi-official bodies actively promoting these values.

The Feminist movement, given genuine justification and pursuit of equality of opportunity (we had both a lady doctor and dentist before 1939), has also acted as a weapon which has split the Anglican Church and threatened to undermine the Armed Forces, particularly in the United States. The Armed Forces, along with other public services are seriously underfunded. Yet £60,000 of public money was allocated for a study which produced the Report: "Gendered Bodies, Personnel Policies and the Culture of the British Army". This cited, for example, sexism in the use of the term "Manning" and embodied other equally absurd semantic quibbles such as the use of the terms "boy" and "girl".

Homosexuality has a centuries old history. We cannot judge the attitudes of all levels of society, given what should be civilized standards of privacy, discretion and discreet tolerance. Physically, nothing on earth can alter the truth that anal sex is unnatural, or the huge additional load on the Health Service due mainly to AIDS, for which the evidence is compelling enough without endless procrastination and bogus statistics such as the "10 per cent are homosexual" claim(13)(14).

Like attempts to legalise drugs, vast sums of money have been invested in the drive to force public acceptance through powerful organisations such as Stonewall. Pressure for legalisation, even down to primary Education level, is little different to a deliberate and more identifiable military assault - the complementary Ideological Struggle to the Armed Struggle. Now the Minister for Social Exclusion, Regional Co-ordination and Deputy Minister for Women, Barbara Roche, has taken the Politically Correct Ideological attack a stage further with the announcement that "homosexual" is to be officially replaced by the term "Orientation towards people of the same sex".

Sex has been unscrupulously exploited commercially in an age of Globalisation and sophisticated communications. The Media have been allowed to consolidate in huge corporations with the Power to ignore governments, rules of morality and public concern across national and cultural boundaries. The American corporation Pfizer began by marketing the sex pill, Viagra, as panacea for the elderly. In addition to a large plant in the Republic of Ireland, another has been established on an industrial site in Sandwich, in Kent, which is well-known to On Target. Viagra is now being marketed - pushed - to younger generations with claims that "erection problems affect 1 in 10 men at sometime in their lives". Like perversion, where is the proof for this magic 10 per cent formula?

Now brewers are preparing to market purportedly aphrodisiac "Viagra pop" drinks for young people, and the "Morning After" pill is officially to be prescribed for children as young as 11! But almost 20 years ago in 1984-85, under the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher the Health Education Authority was being allowed to publish a range of pornographic literature for young people. This masqueraded as "preventive" or "advisory" material but was a subtle invitation to sexual promiscuity.

In 1999 Prime Minster Blair announced one of his fatuous "initiatives"; this time to tackle the proliferation of teenage pregnancies. This was at a time when pornographic magazines were concurrently being aimed at the young (15). Nothing, repeat Nothing, has since changed meaningfully in this ratchet-like process of Government-condoned social decay. The evidence of connections between Media promotion of sex, along with drugs and violence, has been available for decades without any need for further "initiatives", studies or committees(16)(17)(18)(19)(20), so we may reasonably conclude that the present situation has, at least in part, been brought about by design.

We are gradually being made strangers in our own country by the structures of Whitehall bureaucracy and those responsible for these structures. Indigenous economies in the Third World have been exploited or ruined, and Nations like Afghanistan and Indonesia have been conveniently destabilised by conflict. Behind this lie economic interests, and a need to sustain the Western way of life whatever the cost to others.

The current quid-pro-quo of an apparently uncontrolled flood of asylum-seekers and immigrants is now threatening the stability of local communities and public services, such as Health and Education. This follows on decades of political ineptitude and cowardice. The result has been governmental failure to ensure progressive assimilation into the parent Culture, and the easy option of Multiculturalism.

We will return to the Military scene. Lieutenant Colonel George Richey is the Mayor of Shrewsbury. He was educated at Haileybury in the United Kingdom and graduated from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He was an Army boxing champion and served a full career with the Royal Regiment of Artillery. He served on operations as a light aircraft pilot, and with Headquarters Northern Army Group, when he would clearly have been authorised routinely to handle the highest classified information. He is the author of Britain's Strategic Role in NATO(21). But Colonel Richey was born in Mauritius. When he was six months old he arrived in the United Kingdom. At the age of 72, he has now been refused a passport on the grounds that he is a "foreign national", and has even been forced to the indignity of appealing for help from his local Member of Parliament.

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND - LURCHING INTO WAR

War against Iraq has brought much of what we call the "great soft underbelly" of the public mass to its senses at last. Public perceptions, methodically anaesthetized by television soap and commercialised sport, have been less inclined to wave around in the persuasive wind of the controlled Mass Communications Media. We have argued that changing patterns of society affect people of all classes such that traditional political divisions have become irrelevant in a globalising environment. Only a privileged, impenetrable and self-perpetuating Establishment Elite and their hangers-on - "celebs" and the rest - contrives to survive in a grey area beyond the reach of this evolution.

As if to underline these changing patterns Peter Hitchens asked, in the Daily Mail of 30th March, 2003:
"Why do people think that war is automatically patriotic and conservative?" In the revolutionary idiom of John Pepper 75 years ago, conservatism was synonymous with capitalism and these interests, as such, were the enemy of the people - the proletariat(22). The Armed Forces exist to defend the Security of the Nation and National Interests. But what, and in whose hands, are these interests today as manufacture, services and, of course, jobs haemorrhage abroad along with investment?

A product of the legal profession, Prime Minister Blair, who had not held any ministerial office before he came to Power in 1997, or to our knowledge managed any meaningful business in his life, peddles his Fabian ideals like a child playing with matches in the face of these harsh truths(23). Blair was still in short pants when the United States was fomenting the dissolution of the British and European Empires with their lucrative resources and markets, especially in Africa, where the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), were on record as moving in as the British departed.

In the Middle East there was nothing "moral" in 1952, the year before Blair's birth, any more than in his adolescent "moral" posturing in the run-up to the present invasion. Former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark recorded how the Americans engineered the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Dr Muhammad Musaddiq after he attempted to gain control of the Iranian oil industry. And how, ten years later, the C.I.A. engineered the overthrow of Iraqi Prime Minister, Major General Abdel Karim Kassem, in a bloody massacre with thousands of his supporters, after he had challenged the "absolute stranglehold" of Western oil companies. Clark wrote that "Ever since, the United States has planned to weaken Iraq and control its oil"(24).

The reality is that President George W. Bush has made clear that the present exorbitant and environmentally destructive American way of life will be maintained at whatever the cost. This implies, inter alia, the cost to others who may not go along, as France is discovering following its stance against the United States during the United States Security Council deliberations that led to the invasion of Iraq. The bottom line is a Western economic model based on Power, Profit and Greed - at whatever the cost to others, as Central and Southern America know only too well(25).

Behind the outrage that followed the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11th September, 2001, and the planned war against Iraq lie a complex of competitive oil pipeline networks, natural resources and political scenarios across the Middle East, the Balkans, Afghanistan and the former Soviet satellites. The real issues were transparent in Daniel Johnson's absurdly hysterical leader in The Daily Telegraph of 12th September, 2001, only hours after the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, when no definitive evidence could possibly have come to light. Headed "War to the death between America and Islamic terrorists", this underlined months of fabricated attempts to identify Iraq with earlier attacks. Significantly, Johnson also gave the game away by calling into play such issues as the Jewish question, anti-Semitism and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Whatever the outcome as more and more of Iraq is destroyed rather than liberated, war, which is now being threatened against Syria and Iran in due course, proceeds like a Schwarzenegger movie with only cosmetic regard for, and almost complete indifference to, the Islamic Culture.

Samuel P Huntingdon in "The clash of civilisations" postulated that future conflict would be based on some eight different cultures which would cut across national boundaries and obsolete ideologies. Super-imposed would be the Western economic model - "economic modernisation". Here lies the real clash, that of economic enslavement and a usurious financial system diametrically opposed to Islamic principles (The Sunday Times, 14th October, 2001). This was no more clearly expressed that by Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, when he referred to attempted excursions into the Malaysian economy as a "Jewish conspiracy". Subsequent efforts by the controlled Western Media to embroil him in an unsavoury court case tended to prove the point.

Behind the moral facade we are now seeing more of the reality. The United States economy is in debt to the tune of some $8,000,000, 000,000. War boosts the fortunes of the Military-Industrial Complex. Smash a country up again after 10 years of draconian, destructive sanctions, place the indigenous oil resources safely under control, and we have further lucrative prospects: Privatisation under foreign ownership, a debt burden through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.), and more profits accruing to corporations such as Bechtel and Haliburton with a few crumbs for the United Kingdom. Cynical? Let us wait and see.

Another reality is that the Western economic model is based on deregulation, and is geared to the United States dollar, the virtually unlimited creation of "money", and hence a spiral of debt chasing its own tail. Behind this we find a network of largely privately controlled central banks created in the first half of the Twentieth Century. At the centre of this web lie the Bank of England, the United States Federal Reserve Bank, the City of London and Wall Street. Feasting off this, concurrently dependent on it, and driven by it are the mighty Multinational, or Transnational, Corporations (T.N.C.s).

In the United Kingdom the bulk of the public finance requirement is founded on "money" created by this private banking system and borrowed at interest in the form of taxation, as a charge against the British taxpayer. Pull the plug on an already dangerously implosive global economy, as occurred on 11th September, 2001, and the whole structure begins to unravel together with everything geared to the dollar, including government revenue from taxation, individual retirement investment, and an already escalating mortgage and personal debt burden encouraged by the same private banking and financial services system.

It is important that all concerned with the state of the Nation should understand the truths behind individual debt slavery and the inability of governments properly to fund vital functions such as Health, Law and Order, Pensions, Education and Defence. The other side of this coin, of course, is that "money" can always be made available for war. This is explained in detail by Michael Rowbotham in his The Grip of Death - A study of modern money, debt slavery and destructive economics(26).
Arguments about the creation of public money are dealt with concisely and in lighter vein by James Gibb Stuart(27), and regular monthly briefings are contained in the newsletter Prosperity(28).

On the 10th March, 2003, an Early Day Motion was tabled by a group of seven Members of Parliament. The subject was "Publicly Created Money and Monetary Reform - A New Finance Initiative". It was supported by the Forum for Stable Currencies. However, Left Wing journalist Robin Ramsay had exposed five years earlier, in 1998, how the City of London in collusion with elements of the Treasury, had conspired after the 1939-45 War to obtain control of first the Conservative Party, and then the Labour Party financial policies. He revealed that both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had been a party to the conspiracy under the leadership of Neil Kinnock.

He also wrote of the close ties of this faction with the influential transatlantic elite(29). In this light Fabian ideals become a chimera. "New" Labour, synonymous with International Socialism is already becoming a servant of the International Financial Elite. There seems little doubt that the "New" Labour Government is committed to the gradual destruction of British Agriculture and the progressive urbanisation of much of the land for some corporate International Socialist perception of the European whole which will incorporate the much cheaper agricultural potential and labour market of new East European and Balkan candidates.

Prime Minister Blair has also sold out to the concept of Trans-National Corporations such as Monsanto. Another giant, BP-Amoco has close connections to the present Government, and is the second biggest oil corporation after Exxon-Mobil. In the Financial Times list of the world's largest companies for 2002, "Global 500" records United Kingdom capitalisation as $1,400,000,000,000. This is second only to the United States at $9,300,000,000,000. One asks therefore, with this degree of corporate wealth, why is there always such underfunding of public services for ordinary people? Is this just an accident, or is it deliberate policy?

The Armed Forces have been seriously underfunded for several years. Some 18 years ago during the "Options for Change" debate about force reductions, the editor of a leading broadsheet newspaper told a retired senior officer that the proposals were a waste of time because the Treasury had already made the decision. It is therefore no surprise that the Ministry of Defence announced that certain allowances were to be reduced precisely at a time British servicemen were being deployed to the Persian Gulf to put their lives on the line in the war against Iraq. Only the "mad officials" of the British Civil Service are capable of such measures. Where was the Blair intervention, the Blair "initiative" on this occasion?

The Armed Forces have been repeatedly subjected to cheeseparing and salami-slicing reductions. That serious shortages of, and shortcomings in, equipment have occurred because funding has been removed or inadequate is no surprise. This point was made by Major General Corp, a former Director-General of Equipment Support (Army), who should know ("Penny-pinching incompetence saps morale", The Daily Telegraph, letters, 4th February, 2003). We cannot be inside the minds of those planning and conducting war against Iraq. We have available open source information and our own experience and judgement.

Our A3 scale pages of press cuttings on Iraq number 1191 at the time of writing, and have been carefully studied. We cannot predict the outcome of the war. Those whose knowledge we respect, with extensive long time contacts in Iraq, inform us of the lasting hatred felt for the United States and Great Britain for the privation caused by ten years of ruthlessly applied sanctions and illegal bombing. Over-whelming technical and military superiority must eventually bring conventional victory to the Coalition Forces. Whether resources, and the will, exist for the Iraqis to wage indefinite guerrilla war remains to be seen. The resources, and the will of Islamic organisations world-wide, and the ability to inflict revenge on Western Nations also remains to be seen.

We must remember that the easy option of associating Islamic resistance with "Terrorism" per se is a distortion. Terrorist methods are a legitimate form of warfare on the part of those faced with overwhelming odds, as occurred widely behind the Axis lines in 1939-45. Middle Eastern communities were faced with this implied charge of "Terrorist" activities throughout 2002, when the United States was preparing for a war that had been intended well before the attack on the New York World Trade Centre, in September, 2001. United Nations Resolution 1441, approved by the Security Council in November, 2002, had been strongly debated under United States pressure and fell just short of giving the United States a blank cheque to invade Iraq. Thus the text left the requirement for a further Resolution in question. The United States intended to go to war in any case and did so when France threatened to veto a second Resolution that was left at the drafting stage ("Bush fails to persuade all with new Iraq resolution", Financial Times, 23rd October, 2002; "Defy us now and we go to war", The Daily Telegraph, 9th November, 2002).

Prime Minister Tony Blair is tied by an umbilical economic cord to the United States. He remains at bay in Parliament and with the British public. The "Dossier" of "evidence" promised in Spring, 2002, failed to materialise, but the rhetoric went on. Finally published in the Autumn of 2002, the Dossier contained little tangible evidence. At about this time several thousand pages from the Iraqi Weapons Declaration submitted to the United Nations were hijacked by the United States. These pages were laundered by the United States to remove evidence of American, British and European complicity, which must have been known to the British Government. A British "Dossier" was finally produced for the Security Council meeting with the United Nations Weapons Inspectors in February, 2003. This proved to be an embarrassing fabrication based partly on a ten-year-old student thesis and Arabic voice intercepts that translated into the Western vernacular!.

Predictably Blair lost out to the Americans on the proposed second Resolution and a United Nations lead. Throughout the Prime Minister has shifted his ground, from the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, to Weapons of Mass Destruction, the threat of an attack on the United Kingdom, regime change and the "moral" connotation. To listen carefully is to be reminded of the callow, shallow rhetoric of a fifth form debating society. Secretary of State for Defence, "Geoff" Hoon - and for that matter Stephen Byers, a disaster as Transport Secretary - like Blair have minimal experience of any range of cabinet appointments, no record of running an organisation of any note, and come from the cloistered environment of the Law. Nor do those most involved demonstrate any first-hand experience of the Middle East or the Islamic Culture, much less speak or write Arabic. That Blair should have challenged Saddam Hussein to submit a list of "eight points" shortly before the invasion revealed a laughable ignorance of the nature of his adversary.

Blair and Hoon deploy the British Armed forces like children playing with lead soldiers. No doubt they are briefed by the Ministry of Defence, but to commit Forces to the Middle East in late January for a campaign scheduled for mid-March shows scant appreciation of the operational, organisational or logistic complexities. Preparation and the state of the equipment and amenities were a disgrace. That a soldier posted to the heat - in both senses - of operations in the Middle East in February should only receive his desert uniform in April - less trousers - is but one very small example. An old adage runs "Horses first, men next, officers last". That Hoon chose to go on a skiing holiday, however brief, despite constant pressures - for which he is well paid - before visiting the troops, brings nothing but contempt!

That Hoon in Parliament should blandly condone the use of cluster bombs against civilians is inexcusable. We have the report of Rosalie Bartelli, an acknowledged expert from Canada, during the Balkan campaign in 1999: " . . . according to the statement, an extensive investigation by the Ministry of Internal Affairs revealed that British made cluster bombs with radioactive (depleted uranium) and chemical contents were used, prohibited by International Law. The victims were young boys". It is known that Depleted Uranium (D.U.), tank ammunition is in use. The long-term carcinogenic and other affects for both friend and foe are also well-known. A further factor in the war is that of the massive use of firepower, and the relationship of this to inadequate training, and command and control procedures, that result in "Friendly Fire". It is impossible to believe that our political masters have allowed sufficient time for shake-down exercises and the operational co-ordination and rehearsal of the so-called Coalition Forces in their eagerness to despatch forces to the theatre.

The record historically of United States Armed Forces is unenvious. Since Afghanistan this includes Canadian troops, civilian villages, Syrian civilians, Kurdish troops, journalists, a British aircraft and an attack on a British helicopter, British armoured vehicles and, of course, "own" troops. That a tank weapon should have been used on the 15th floor of a Baghdad hotel, killing three journalists, in response to what could only have been small arms fire, beggars belief.

COALITION LIES, HALF LIES AND HALF TRUTHS

Speculative talk-up and assumptions and conclusions have been framed on the most friable of evidence, if any. Examples of this are The Daily Telegraph of 13th February, 2002, which declared that "Al Qa'eda 'has nerve gas from Iraq'", with virtually no substance. On 13th November, 2002, the Daily Mail claimed that "Saddam 'will hit allied troops with deadly nerve gas". We are still waiting. A statement by The Sunday Telegraph of 28th January, 2003, that "U.N. inspectors uncover Saddam's nuclear bomb" was later refuted by the Inspectors. On many occasions one is tempted to ask "Please finish the sentence". A favourite of Prime Minister Blair is that Saddam Hussein has killed 1,000,000 of his people, but this is never endorsed with the deaths of 1,000,000 innocent Iraqis, including 500,000 children as a consequence of draconian sanctions imposed by the United States and the United Kingdom.

During one of his visits to the United States Prime Minister Blair passionately condemned the execution of two British prisoners, but, having made capital of this, failed later to endorse it with the official statement that the men had died in action. Much has been made of the brutal treatment of British and American prisoners in contravention of the Geneva Convention. But no reference is ever made to the infamous "Turkey shoot" at the end of the Gulf war of 1991; described by Ramsey Clark and Martin Yant, when fleeing Iraqi soldiers and civilians were ruthlessly massacred, and when Iraqi troops were buried by bulldozers, many of them still alive(30)(31). Ramsey Clark also gives a graphic description of the deliberate slaughter of Iraqi troops who were attempting to surrender(32).

Whatever the outcome of the invasion of Iraq in the short or long term, we have to ask where are those Weapons of Mass Destruction, the threat of their use in battle, and the threat to the domestic security of Western nations? This was a linchpin of the case for removing Saddam Hussein. In the report below, Dennis Hans explains in detail the dishonesty in presenting the United States case. The text has been edited to suit the layout of On Target.

Lying Us Into War: Exposing Bush and His "Techniques of Deceit"
by Dennis Hans

Biographical Note. Dennis Hans is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Post (Canada), Slate and the Black World Today. He has taught courses in mass communications and American foreign policy at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

President George W. Bush and his foreign policy team have systematically and knowingly deceived the American people in order to gain support for an unprovoked attack on Iraq. Before I catalogue the Bush administration's "Techniques of Deceit," let me acknowledge that no United Nations resolution requires the President to be honest with the American people. The fine print of Resolution 1441 imposes no obligation to treat Americans as citizens to be informed rather than suckers to be conned. He may mislead, distort, suppress, exaggerate and lie to his heart's content without violating a single sentence in 1441. So if compliance with 1441 is all that matters to you, read no further.

Why lie? The President and many of his top advisers have wanted to invade and overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein for a long time. But they knew they couldn't sell such a war against Iraq to a majority of Americans and a majority in both houses of Congress if they acknowledged just how pitifully weak and unthreatening Iraq really is. If, however, the administration could portray Iraq as an imminent, mortal threat to the United States and even a shadowy accomplice in the terrorist attacks of 9-11 then a majority of the population might come to see an invasion of Iraq not as unprovoked United States aggression but as a wholly justified response to what Iraq did to us. That is precisely what the administration has done.

In an October poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, "66 percent believed [Saddam] was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States." Yes, two thirds of Americans had come to believe a horrible thing about Saddam that the Bush administration knew for a fact was false, even as it encouraged its lesser spokespeople to continue to promote the connection. According to a Knight Ridder poll conducted in January(a), 41 per cent of us believe Iraq has a nuclear weapon right now and another 35 per cent are unsure or refused to answer the question. Only 24 per cent know what Bush knows for an absolute fact: Iraq has no nukes. And even many in that 24 per cent might not realize that Iraq would still be several years away from developing a nuke even if we did the unthinkable and allowed them to import the vast array of hightech equipment needed just to get started.

How do people get such ridiculous thoughts in their head? A dishonest administration plants them there with a steady drumbeat of exaggerations, distortions and lies. In a process I call "lie and rely" (b), the administration relies on a cowed and craven news media to present their lies to the American people as fact or at a minimum, as still to be confirmed assertions by respected officials with a reputation for truth-telling. A handful of print reporters occasionally exposing the most egregious lies can't begin to overcome the effect of the steady drumbeat of lies reported as truth day after day on television.

If we factored out of the opinion polls all the people who have internalized White House disinformation as fact, support for the President's position would plummet. Without the support of these mis-led millions, Bush wouldn't have been able to ramrod through Congress a blank cheque declaration. He wouldn't have had that blank check to use as a bludgeon against the United Nations, and the United States wouldn't be on the verge of committing an act of unprovoked aggression.

How Bush lies: The Techniques of Deceit

Although Bush presents himself to the world as a plain-spoken, straight shooting friend of the common man, he regularly employs a variety of techniques to deceive the very people most inclined to trust him. So far, I have tallied 15 techniques. But there are more to be uncovered, and there are far more examples than I can include here. Consider this the tip of a deceitful iceberg. In the paragraphs that follow I first will describe the technique of deceit. Then I will illustrate it with one or more quotations or propaganda themes, placing within brackets that portion of the quote that illustrates the technique. Then I will explain how the President applied the technique. Unless otherwise noted, the President's words are from the State of the Union address.

1. Stating as fact what are allegations often highly dubious ones (this is a staple of Bush's speeches and [Secretary of State Colin] Powell's United Nations presentation; I'll limit myself to three):
a. "From three Iraqi defectors [we know] that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved from place to place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein [has not disclosed] these facilities. He [has given no evidence] that he has destroyed them."
Comment: What we "know" is that defectors make this unproven claim. We don't know if they were paid or coached to make the claim, or volunteered it on their own. For more on this, see Point 9 of the analysis of Powell's address by Dr. Glen Rangwala, Lecturer in Politics at Cambridge University, an advisor to Labour Party opponents of Tony Blair and perhaps the world's foremost authority on United States claims about Iraq, which may explain why one never sees him in the United States media (c). Rangwala notes that one defector made no mention of the laboratories in his first press conferences. It was several months later, after "debriefings" by the United States and the Iraqi National Congress, that he started talking about mobile laboratories. [Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector] Hans Blix told the Guardian newspaper of Britain (d) he has seen no evidence that these mobile labs exist. Acting on tips from the United States about laboratories disguised as food testing trucks, he investigated. "Two food-testing trucks have been inspected and nothing has been found," he said. That doesn't mean that such laboratories don't exist, but at this point there simply is no proof of that claim. It is not an established fact.

b. "The British Government [has learned] that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Comment: Wrong verb. What he should have said is the Brits assert this but have produced no evidence of its veracity. The Brits have offered no date for these efforts, but "recently," in this case, may well mean "the 1980s."
I.A.E.A. [International Atomic Energy Authority] director Mohamed Elbaradei has for weeks been asking so far, in vain for the United States and Britain to provide "specifics of when and where." He said in a January 12 interview, "We need actionable information." (Interview cited by Rangwala in his invaluable "CounterDossier ll," (e).

c. "We've [learned] that Iraq has trained Al Qa'eda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases." (Bush's televised October speech)
Comment: The Los Angeles Times reported a few days after that speech that C.I.A. [Central Intelligence Agency] director "Tenet's letter was more equivocal, saying only that there has been 'reporting' that such training has taken place. Unlike other passages of the letter, he did not describe the reporting as 'solid' or 'credible.'"(f).

2. Withholding the key fact that destroys the moral underpinning of an argument (and, in Powell's case, reveals him to be a blood-drenched hypocrite): "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant, who [has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people.]" (Bush's October speech)
Comment: The problem here is that much of Bush's national security team aided and abetted those crimes. After the worst attack, on Halabja in 1988 near the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the Reagan team covered for Saddam by implicating Iran, then prevented Congress from imposing tough sanctions on Iraq.
Joost R. Hiltermann, an official with Human Rights Watch, shows in a recent column for the International Herald Tribune(g) that Saddam was likely emboldened to use ever more lethal concoctions to polish off the Kurds because he knew from past gassing experience in 1983, 1984 and 1987 that he could always count on the support of Reagan, Powell and George H. W. Bush. The latter's son has yet to mention this in any of his righteous condemnations of Saddam. There are any number of governments who have the moral standing to condemn Saddam's gassing of the Kurds. The one headed by George W. Bush does not. Powell, of course, is the current Administration's knight in shining armour, the trusted figure who commands the respect even of the European leaders who cannot stomach Bush. But give a listen to Peter W. Galbraith, former United States Ambassador to Croatia and now Professor of National Security Studies at the National War College in Washington, D.C.: "the Kurds have not forgotten that Secretary of State Colin Powell was then the National Security Adviser who orchestrated Ronald Reagan's decision to give Hussein a pass for gassing the Kurds."(h).

3. Misrepresentation And Invention: "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were finally denied access, a [report] came out of the I.A.E.A. that they were [six months away from developing a weapon]. I don't know what more [evidence] we need." (Bush speaking at a news conference September 7 with Tony Blair).
Comment: As Joseph Curl reported three weeks later in the conservative Washington Times, there was no such I.A.E.A. report: "In October 1998, just before Saddam kicked United Nations Weapons Inspectors out of Iraq [actually, they were withdrawn], the I.A.E.A. laid out a case opposite of Mr. Bush's September 7 declaration: 'There are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of weapon - usable nuclear material of any practical significance,' I.A.E.A. Director-General Mohammed Elbaradei wrote in a report to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan"(I). To this day, the administration has yet to produce a convincing explanation for Bush's bogus assertion.

4. Delegated Lying and Team Lying: Iraq was involved with 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, via an Iraqi agent who met him in Prague in the Spring of 2001, and thus the Iraqi regime may have participated in some fashion in 9/11. (summary of major, long lasting propaganda theme)
Comment: For the most outrageous, easily disproved, yet highly effective lies, such as the Iraqi connection to 9/11, sometimes the wise course is to assign personnel far removed from the President to push the lie. That way, the President's credibility won't suffer when the facts - known to the Administration months before it stopped peddling the lie come out. And in a perverse fashion, the man at the top of this disinformation pyramid, the President, gains credibility for the disinformation in his own speeches, because commentators will note what a cautious and careful performance it was, given that he steered clear of the not-yet confirmed 9/11 connection.

The farther out of the loop the designated lie-pushers are, the better: The Administration can more easily keep from them the intelligence data that flat out refutes the lie, which helps those lie-pushers who are more convincing when they think what they're saying might be true than when they know for a fact it's not true. For our purposes, whether the speaker believes what he says is irrelevant. What matters is that the Administration is consciously deceiving the public. The most aggressive pushers of this story have been neoconservative extremists Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Ken Adelman and Frank Gaffney, who either serve on the Defense Policy Board or are otherwise tangentially connected to the administration. (Gaffney has even tried to link Iraq to the 1995 terror bombing in Oklahoma City.) See this article (j) for details on how this myth stayed alive long after intelligence pros definitely disproved it.

Of course, now that the Atta link has petered out, another al Qaeda "connection" of comparable validity is being spread this time by Powell and Bush.

5. Straw Man: "The risks of doing nothing, the risks of assuming the best from Saddam Hussein, it's just not a risk worth taking."
Comment: Notice that Bush doesn't name anyone who advocates "doing nothing." The whole idea behind doing inspections and containment is that everyone knows we can't take Saddam at his word. Here, for instance, is former President Jimmy Carter's eminently sensible and no-violent "do something" strategy to ensure the security of Iraq's neighbours as well as the United States(k).

6. Withholding the key fact that would alert viewers that the purported grave threat is no-existent: "We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of Manned and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles [U.A.V.s] that could be used to disperse chemical and biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using U.A.V.s for missions [targeting the United States]." (October speech)
Comment: Bush omits the fact that the vehicles have limited range, thus requiring Saddam to transport the vehicles to our coast line without being detected. The odds of that happening start at a billion to one. (Dana Millbank exposed this lie last October in the Washington Post. The Post link has expired, but you can read this summary of the lies Millbank exposed(l).

7. Using mistranslation and misquotation to plant a frightening impression in the minds of trusting citizens that is the exact opposite of what you know to be true: "Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls [his 'nuclear mujahidin his nuclear holy warriors]." (October speech)
Here Bush plays on two fears of the public: of Islamist holy warriors and nuclear weapons. But Saddam runs a secular state and has no ties to Islamist terrorists such as Al Qaeda (despite other lies to the contrary). As for nukes, Iraq's production capabilities had been destroyed completely by 1998, and today Elbaradei is in the process of verifying that Iraq has not taken even the first baby steps in what would be a mammoth effort to rebuild a nuclear infrastructure, an infrastructure that would be virtually impossible to hide. Equally insidious on Bush's part is the mistranslation and misquotation. In "CounterDossier II" (m), Dr. Glen Rangwala, observes that the speech Bush is referring to was delivered by Saddam "on 10 September 2000 and was about, in part, nuclear energy. The transcription of the speech was made at the time by the B.B.C. Monitoring Service. Saddam Hussein actually refers to 'nuclear energy mujahidin,' and doesn't mention the development of weaponry. In addition, the term 'mujahidin' is often used in a non combatant sense, to mean anyone who struggles for a cause. Saddam Hussein, for example, often refers to the mujahidin developing Iraq's medical facilities. There is nothing in the speech to indicate that Iraq is attempting to develop or threaten the use of nuclear weapons."

Was Bush aware of the mistranslation and misquotation? We'd have to inject him with truth serum to find out. Even if some senior intelligence official did the deed and kept the accurate quote and translation from Bush, it's obvious who is setting the deceitful tone in the Administration. The official would have every reason to believe that this is just the sort of dirty trick played on the unsuspecting American citizenry, not Saddam Hussein that this President would love.

8. Putting the most frightening interpretation on a piece of evidence while pretending that no other interpretation exists: "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes [suitable for nuclear weapons production]." Those tubes, unaltered, happen to be a perfect fit for a conventional artillery rocket programme. For details, see the tubes section in my essay "An Open Letter to the United Nations About Colin Powell" (n). The Washington Post's Joby Warrick (o), adds this: "The tubes were made of an aluminum-zinc alloy known as 7000 series, which is used in a wide range of industrial applications. But the dimensions and technical features, such as metal thickness and surface coatings, made them an unlikely choice for centrifuges, several nuclear experts said. Iraq used a different aluminum alloy in its centrifuges in the 1980s before switching to more advanced metals known as maraging steel and carbon fibres, which are better suited for the task, the experts said. Significantly, there is no evidence so far that Iraq sought other materials required for centrifuges, such as motors, metal caps and special magnets, United States and international officials said."

Following Powell's address, Susan Taylor Martin of the St. Petersburg Times reported this: "Powell's speech was 'not quite accurate' on two points, according to the Institute for Science and International Security, a non-partisan organization in Washington that deals with technical aspects of nuclear proliferation. Contrary to Powell's claim, anodized tubes are not appropriate for centrifuges and the anodization, designed to prevent corrosion, would have to be removed before the tubes could be used, said Corey Hinderstein, assistant director: 'It's not to say it would be impossible to use anodized tubes for centrifuges but it adds an extra step.' She also challenged Powell's comment that the tubes must be intended for a nuclear program because they meet higher specifications than the United States sets for its own rocketry. 'In fact, we found European-designed rockets that had exactly this high degree of specificity,' Hinderstein said."

9. Withholding highly relevant information that would weaken your case, because what you really want to obtain from the citizenry is "the uninformed consent of the governed": North Korea's "secret" nuclear weapons programme wasn't a secret to the Administration last Fall. Yet it kept the information to itself, waiting till very late in the Congressional Debate over Iraq to inform not the entire public and Congress, but merely a relative few members of Congress. Thus, the Bush team didn't have to explain well before each House even began to debate the various Iraq resolutions exactly why the Administration had no problem seeking a non-invasion solution to a crisis far more grave and imminent than Iraq.

10. Bold declarations of hot air: a. "[The only possible explanation], the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate or attack."
Comment: "Deterrence" is also a generally understood reason to develop Weapons of Mass Destruction (W.M.D.). Just ask the leaders of North Korea, Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia and the United States. Deterrence and regional "balance of power" considerations were obvious factors in Saddam's efforts in the 1980s to develop nuclear weapons. Not the only factors, but factors nonetheless.

b. "Every chemical and biological weapon that Iraq has or [makes] is a direct violation of the truce that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991." (October speech, national television)
Comment: As Rahul Mahajan correctly observes(p): "There are no credible allegations that Iraq produced chemical or biological agents while inspectors were in the country, until December 1998. The reason we don't know whether they are producing those agents or not since then is that inspectors were withdrawn at the United States behest preparatory to the Desert Fox bombing campaign." Visit the Institute for Public Accuracy website (q) for detailed critiques of Bush's major addresses on Iraq.

11. Creating in the public mind an intense but unfounded fear: "[Knowing these realities], America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof the smoking gun that could come in the form of a [mushroom cloud]." (October speech).
Comment: Iraq cannot turn American cities into mushroom clouds because it has no nuclear weapons and no long range missiles to fire the nukes it does not have. The world is not about to let Iraq under Saddam resurrect its nuclear weapons programme. But even if the world did, Iraq would still be several years away from being able to develop that bomb.

12. Citing old news as if it's relevant today, while leaving out the reason it's not: "The International Atomic Energy Agency [confirmed] in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein [had] an advanced nuclear weapons development program, [had] a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb."
Comment: I.A.E.A. has also confirmed, that they shut the programme down and destroyed all the production facilities seemingly relevant facts: In October 1998, Elbaradei reported to the United Nations "There are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance" (r).

13. Transference: "[This nation fights reluctantly], because [we] know the cost, and [we] dread the days of mourning that always come."
Comment: Bush is deliberately confusing the sensible, compassionate American people with his bellicose, bullying self.

14. Hallucinatory lying: Bush's assertion, based on absolutely no evidence, that Saddam hopes to deploy al Qaeda as his "forward army" against the West: "We need to think about Saddam Hussein using al Qaeda to do his dirty work, to not leave fingerprints behind," he told a Republican audience in Michigan prior to the congressional elections. (See David Corn's report at The Nation's website(s).
Comment: "We need to think about" Bush using Adelman, Woolsey, Perle and Gaffney to do Bush's dirty work, so as to not leave presidential fingerprints on the hoariest lie of all that Iraq was an accomplice in 9/11.

15. Withholding the key fact that would show your principled pose to be a pose devoid of principle: "Saddam Hussein [attacked Iran in 1980] and Kuwait in 1990." (United Nations speech, September 12, 2002)
Comment: The Swedish government is entitled to condemn Iraq for invading Iran. The current United States government featuring key players from the very Reagan Administration that supported Iraqi aggression through much of the 1980s is not. If you surround yourself with officials who supported the aggression in real time, you're not entitled to be angered by it 20 years later.

What To Do With A President Who Is Trying To Lie Us Into War

It is not one single lie that has an effect on the public. It is the cumulative effect of dozens of lies, big and small, reiterated daily and challenged rarely. That is the effect that has brought us to where we are today. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, speaking January 19th on ABC(t), offered the media splendid advice on how they should handle in their broadcasts and articles a leader that lies: "Well, first, Saddam Hussein is a liar. He lies every single day. . . . He is still claiming that he won the war. His people are being told every day that they won. It was a great victory in 1991 when he was thrown out of Kuwait and chased back to Baghdad. Now, it seems to me that almost every time you quote something from him, you should preface it by saying 'here's a man who has lied all the time and consistently.'"

Note: The Internet references below have been carefully validated for any one who wishes to follow the relevant items up in more detail.
(a) https://www.miami.com/mid/miamiherald/4911975.htm
(b) https://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0301/S00062.htm
(c) https://www.traprockpeace.org/firstresponse.html
(d) http://truthout.org/docs_02/020603A.htm
(e) http://traprockpeace.org/weapons.html
(f) https://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire.la-na cia11oct11.story
(g) https://www.commondreams.org/viewsO3/Oll7Ol.htm
(h) https://www.boston.com/globe/rnagazine/2002/1215/coverstory_entire.htm
(i) https://www.washtimes.com/national/20020927 500715.html
(j) http://slate.msn.com/id/2070410/
(k) http://alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=15084
(l) https://www.thedubyareport.com/malleablefacts.html
(m) http://traprockpeace.org/weapons.html
(n) http://commondreams.org/views03/0204/07.htm
(o) https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articies/A35360 2003Jan23.html
(p) https://www.accuracy.org/bush/
(q) https://www.accuracy.org
(r) https://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030302-104219-8508r.htm
(s) http://thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml? bid=3&pid=124
(t) https://www.democraticunderground.com/articies/03/01/25_rumsfeld.html

REFERENCES

Note: Prices are shown where available from Bloomfield Books, and represent only a selection relevant to the theme of this edition of On Target. A wide range of reading may be found in the Stock Price List (S.P.L.), which may be obtained post free on request from the address on the last page. Books temporarily out of stock are annotated*. Out of print, or older works, may be obtained through the Book Search Service, or the Second-Hand Book Service, both of which are operated by Mr. T.G. Turner, for which details are available as for the S.P.L.

(1) See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Oil; On Target Vol. 31, Nos. 5 & 6, 8th & 22nd September, 2001.
(2) September The Eleventh, 2001; in three parts, On Target Vol. 31, Nos 7 -13, 6th & 20th October, 3rd & 17th November and 1st, 15th & 29th December, 2001.
(3) Terror Western Style - On Western Terms; On Target Vol. 31, Nos. 14 & 15, 12th & 26th January, 2002.
(4) Iraq In The Global Scenario; in three parts, Nos. 18 - 23, On Target Vol. 31, 9th & 23rd March, 6th & 20th April and 4th & 18th May, 2002.
(5) Power, Greed And Money - Target Iraq. The World, Courtesy The International Community; On Target Vol. 32, Nos 1 & 2, 13th & 27th July, 2002.
(6) Why A Major War Is Needed. The Global Economy And Those Who Control It; in two parts, On Target Vol. 32, Nos. 7 & 8, 5th & 19th October and Nos. 9, 10 & 11, 2nd, 16th & 30th November, 2002.
(7) On Target Vol. 28, Nos. 25 & 26, 5th & 19th June, 1999.
(8) Bukovsky, Vladimir. Is The European Union the New Soviet Union? Available as a CD or audiotape, both priced £7.00.
(9) Conspiracy, Revolution And Moral Decay; in two parts, On Target, Vol. 29, Nos. 6 & 7, 11th & 25th September and Nos. 8 & 9, 9th & 23rd October, 1999.
(10) Ellis, Dr Frank. "Political Correctness and the Ideological Struggle: From Lenin and Mao to Marcuse and Foucault". The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Winter, 2002.
(11) Pepper, John, alias Joseph Pogany, John Schwartz, John Swift etc. American Negro Problems. Workers Library Publishers Inc., 1928.
(12) Ellis, Dr Frank. "Race, Marxism and the 'Deconstruction' of the United King-dom". The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Winter, 2001.
(13) Green, Stephen. The Sexual Dead End. BroadviewBooks, 1992. £11.75.
(14) Rueda, Enrique. The Homosexual Network - Private Lives And Public Policy. The Devin Adair Company, 1982.
(15) Teenage Promiscuity And Pregnancies - A Stage In The Destabilisation Of The Nation; On Target Vol. 29, Nos. 1, 2 & 3, 3rd, 17th & 31st July, 1999.
(16) Reisman, Judith A., Ph.D. "Soft Porn" plays hardball - Its Tragic Effects on Women, Children & the Family. Huntington House Publishers, 1991. £9.95*
(17) Davies, Christie. Permissive Britain - Social Change in the Sixties and Seven-ties. Pitman Publishing, 1975.
(18) Pornography: The Longford Report. Coronet Books, 1962.
(19) Eysenck, H.J. and D.K.B. Nias. Sex Violence And The Media. Maurice Temple Smith Ltd., 1978.
(20) Itzin, Catherine. Pornography - Women, Violence and Civil Liberties. Oxford University Press, 1992.
(21) Richey, George. Britain's Strategic Role in NATO. Macmillan & Co., 1986.
(22) Pepper, John. Op. cit.
(23) Blair, Tony. The Third Way - New Politics for the New Century. The Fabian Society, 1998.
(24) Clark, Ramsey. The Fire This Time - U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf. Thunder's Mouth Press, 1994.
(25) Rowbotham, Michael. Goodbye America! Globalisation, debt and the dollar empire. Jon Carpenter, 2000. £13.25.
(26) Rowbotham, Michael. The Grip of Death - A study of modern money, debt slavery and destructive economics. Jon Carpenter, 1998. £17.95.
(27) Gibb Stuart, James. Fantopia. Ossian Publishers Ltd., 2000.
(28) Prosperity is published monthly, for which the annual subscription is £15.00. Enquiries should be made to 268 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4JR; Tel: (0141) 353 6900 or E-mail; admcc@admcc.freeserve.co.uk
(29) Ramsay, Robin. Prawn Cocktail Party - The Hidden Power Behind New Lab-our. VISION Paperbacks, 1998. £11.95.
(30) Clark, Ramsey. Op. cit.
(31) Yant, Martin. Desert Mirage - The True Story Of The Gulf War. Prometheus Books, 1991.
(32) Clark, Ramsey. Op. cit. p 47.

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