The world is no safer than it was three years ago, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Wednesday, countering President Bush's claims he had made the world a safer place...

http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/416368|top|07-21-2004::14:51|reuters.html


From Information Clearing House

by William Greider

The Nation

07/21/04

George W. Bush has confided to Bob Woodward that in shaping his plans for invading Iraq he relied on advice from a 'higher father,' not on Poppy Bush in Texas, the former President. Now we learn from advance news leaks that the 9/11 Commission has concluded from its investigation that it was Iran, not Iraq, that collaborated with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorists before their attack on America. Oops. Have we gone to war against the wrong country? One assumes it was not the Almighty who confused the two nations. Maybe Bush suffered from a fuzzy connection in his prayer circuitry. So close to God, yet so distant from the truth. His mistake is not a joking matter, of course. It may be the most egregious example of how Bush's pious self-assurance led the United States into an ill-fated war with colossal misrepresentation of the facts...

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040802&s=greiderweb


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Whatever motive the Bush administration had for attacking Iraq, the safety of the American people was certainly not the reason. Attacking and occupying an Arab country has done exactly what experts about the area said it would do:

http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040721/index.php


From Information Clearing House

by Jim Lobe

A bipartisan group of 41 mainly neoconservative foreign-policy hawks has launched the third Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) whose previous two incarnations mobilized public support for rolling back Soviet-led communism but whose new enemy will be "global terrorism." The new group, announced at a Capitol Hill press conference Tuesday, said its "single mission" will be to "advocate policies intended to win the war on global terrorism – terrorism carried out by radical Islamists opposed to freedom and democracy."....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Lobe0721.htm

by Ivan Eland

Oops, They Invaded the Wrong Country?

A potentially major news story—that Iran had more connections with al Qaeda than Iraq ever did, according to the 9/11 Commission’s interim report—has been relegated to the back pages of national newspapers and underplayed by the electronic media. The commission found that as many as 10 of the September 11 hijackers were given safe passage by the Iranians during the year before the attacks. Has the U.S. media already become so cynical about the Bush administration’s motives for invading Iraq that this does not even rate a front page news story?

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Eland0721.htm

If Bush Has Plans For Another Preemptive War, He Should Forget It

The president's comment also stands as further evidence of the administration's dishonest -- and continuing -- propaganda program aimed at merging the war on terrorism with the war on Iraq...

http://www.thelouisvillechannel.com/helenthomas/3539227/detail.html


From Information Clearing House

by Gary Leupp

CounterPunch

07/18/04

Rev. Jerry Falwell calls the Prophet Muhammed a 'terrorist.' Rev. Franklin Graham calls Islam 'a wicked, evil religion' and says its God is not the Christians' God. These reverends' followers are very useful supporters of the war on the human mind that is the 'war on terrorism,' the focus of which shifted so swiftly from al-Qaeda to Iraq (alike in little save their Muslimness), and could shift to Syria or Iran or Pakistan suddenly tomorrow. When you mix the anti-Islam pronouncements with Bush policy decisions and millenarian faith, you have an explosive combination...

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp07172004.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

"If a terrorist attack occurs between now and Nov. 2, the administration would be much more likely to postpone the election if the Republican ticket is behind in the polls. That kind of unprecedented manipulation of the U.S. presidential election system should be strictly off-limits."...

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/8236/

The President Thinks The World Is Safer Than It Was Three Years Ago. Which World Is He Living In?...

http://slate.msn.com/id/2103989/


From Information Clearing House