To forestall a clerical-driven religious regime, Washington has a plan to arm small militias.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article8460.htm

by Jacob Weisberg

Slate

04/05/05

The report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction is a government document well worth reading. With impressive precision, the commission shows how massive ineptitude at every spy agency fostered the Bush administration's mistaken assessment of Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical capabilities. The report undermines the popular notion that Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was responsible for feeding all the crappy intelligence to the White House. As it happens, blinkered and uncommunicative bureaucrats at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and elsewhere were fully capable of delivering junk intelligence without any outside help. ... On one central point, however, the report is utterly, laughably, embarrassingly unpersuasive: that our world-altering intelligence screw-up was not the result of political pressure from the White House...

http://www.slate.com/id/2116260/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

by Robert Scheer

AlterNet

04/05/05

Last October, just weeks before the presidential election, I wrote a column stating that the acting director of the CIA was suppressing a report to Congress that was potentially embarrassing to President Bush's campaign. The report had been completed by the CIA's own independent inspector general four months before the election, yet the agency rebuffed Congress' request that it be made public. Now, thanks to last week's release of another report, that of the Bush-appointed Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, we learn that the embargoed CIA report centered on the outrageous case of the now-infamous Iraqi informant known by the code name, 'Curveball.' Unfortunately for the American people, we were to an embarrassing extent persuaded to go to war based on the fantasies of this known liar, the main source of the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had a functioning biological weapons program...

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/21680/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

May 1: May Day Rally for Jobs, Not War - Bring the Troops Home Now!

Union Square 1 pm

Join us May 1 to say, "Jobs, Not War!" Thousands of working people, trade unionists, veterans, youth, and antiwar activists will take to the streets on May Day--International Workers Day--to demand jobs, housing, and education, not war and occupation.

http://www.TroopsOutNow.org


On March 19, thousands of activists, students, veterans, and community organizers joined in a historic march from Harlem's Marcus Garvey Park to Central Park to demand an end to the illegal occupation of Iraq.

The turnout for this demonstration confirms that the antiwar movement has entered into a new phase of organizing against the war. It confirms that the greatest attention must be paid to reaching out to communities most impacted by the war and by the policies of the Bush Administration. These communities are the targets of the budget cuts. They are also targeted by military recruiters, who exploit economic hardship with false promises of opportunity. As a result, the children of these communities are dying disproportionately in Iraq, paying the ultimate price for a policy of greed and empire.


Next Step: May Day

On May 1 the Troops Out Now Coalition and the NYC Million Worker March are calling for a Jobs, Not War! - Bring the Troops Home Now! rally in Union Square, NYC.

May Day grew out of the struggle of working people in this country more than 100 years ago for an 8-hour workday with a full day's pay. All over the world, working and poor people march on May Day to send the message that workers are united and have the right to a job, a living wage, health care, housing and education. Workers have a right to pensions and social security. Immigrant workers and the unemployed should have the same rights. On May Day 2005, let's bring back that fighting spirit.

This is an important opportunity to link the struggle against the war with the struggle for jobs, healthcare, and education here at home.

Now, more than ever, the antiwar movement needs to be in the streets to oppose the Bush Administration's agenda of endless war. Two years ago, George W. Bush took the U.S. into war under the pretense that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Now, his Administration is claiming that Iran and North Korea possess weapons of mass destruction. It is important that we expose any talk of removing the threat of nuclear weapons as just another justification for a pre-emptive war against the people of Iran and Korea.

As the Bush Administration gears up for new military adventures, working people at home are under attack, as budgets for education, housing, and healthcare are slashed, the cost of living rises, and jobs are disappearing.

For more than 100 years, May Day has been a day for working people to be in the streets, united in the struggle for jobs, healthcare, and housing. Join us in the streets, May 1 in Union Square!


What you can do:

1) Endorse the May 1 Rally: http://www.troopsoutnow.org/may1endorse.html

2) Help get the word out. Download flyers at
http://troopsoutnow.org/literature.html

3) Donate: http://www.troopsoutnow.org/donate.html

4) Organize transportation from your area:
http://www.troopsoutnow.org/volunteer.html

Sitting in Saddam Hussein's palace they can stare over the parapets but that is as much as most will ever see of Iraq

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article8448.htm

One of the biggest private security firms in Iraq has created outrage after a memo to staff claimed it is 'fun' to shoot people.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article8449.htm

An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq. According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article8456.htm

04/02/05

It is simply not true that the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq was the result of 'bad intelligence.' In the most significant sense, that decision had nothing at all to do with the quality of the intelligence they were getting. The decision was one of policy -- a decision that depended 'not upon available facts but upon judgment.' As the Star-Tribune editorial points out, the Clinton administration had virtually the same intelligence -- yet came to a different conclusion altogether with regard to the proper course of action. But this tactic serves an important purpose: it passes blame off to another party, and in effect lets the administration off the hook. The administration thus hopes to insulate itself from examination, criticism and accountability. It's as if the administration is saying: 'The intelligence made us do it.'"


http://coldfury.com/reason/?p=322

from The Light of Reason, by Arthur Silber


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

"Soldados Mexicanos Muertos en Irak" (Xenophobes of the Minuteman Project want to play soldiers on the Arizona-Mexico border, hunting down "illegal aliens." Meanwhile, Mexicans are dying in Iraq for the US government) -- FULL TEXT:
http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/04/soldados-mexicanos-muertos-en-irak.html

-- Yoshie

From ufpj-news