posted October 26, 2006 11:01 PM            

You might pass this message on to your communist friends.

Make your last will and testament first. There's only one way their little American Bolshevik revolution is going to end...badly, very badly.

Not in Our Name
Maoist anti-war group
Founded by Revolutionary Communist Party member C. Clark Kissinger
Has condemned U.S. foreign and domestic policies after 9/11

The Not In Our Name (NION) project -- a self-described "peace movement" -- was initiated on March 23, 2002 by the longtime Maoist activist C. Clark Kissinger, who is a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist group calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government and its replacement with a Communist dictatorship. In 1987 Kissinger founded the radical "Refuse and Resist!", which is a member organization of NION.

The NION project has produced, most notably, two documents publicly denouncing America's post-9/11 policies, both foreign and domestic. One of these documents, the NION "Pledge of Resistance," condemns "the injustices done by our government" in its pursuit of "endless war"; its greed-driven "transfusions of blood for oil"; its determination to "erode [our] freedoms"; and its eagerness to "invade countries, bomb civilians, kill more children, [and annihilate] families on foreign soil." A separate document, the NION "Statement of Conscience," condemns not only the Bush administration's "stark new measures of repression," but also its "unjust, immoral, illegitimate, [and] openly imperial policy towards the world." According to NION, it is the American government -- and not that of any other nation -- that poses the most "grave dangers to the people of the world."

These documents received a groundswell of support from many prominent artists, academicians, and leftist activists. Among the tens of thousands to publicly endorse NION's objectives were Ed Asner, Tom Hayden, Oliver Stone, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Deepak Chopra, Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, Tyne Daly, Martin Sheen, Alice Walker, Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III, Gloria Steinem, Michael Albert, Michael Avery, Amiri Baraka, Phyllis Bennis, Michael Berg, Angela Davis, Michael Eric Dyson, Carl Dix, Bernardine Dohrn, Jane Fonda, Eve Ensler, Laura Flanders, Jim McDermott, Robert Meeropol, Frances Fox Piven, Michael Ratner, Pete Seeger, Leonard Weinglass, Peter Weiss, Cornel West, Howard Zinn, Ramsey Clark, Medea Benjamin, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Mumia Abu Jamal, Matef Harmachis (of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party), Barbara Ehrenreich, bell hooks, Jesse Jackson, Tony Kushner, Spike Lee, Cynthia McKinney, Bonnie Raitt, Edward Said, and Gore Vidal. A number of signers, such as NION national organizer Mary Lou Greenberg, are RCP members. NION's Advisory Board includes several of the aforementioned individuals.

NION is a member organization of the United for Peace and Justice and After Downing Street anti-war coalitions. It also maintains a close alliance with the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), which is a member of International ANSWER's steering committee. IFCO, which has federal tax-exempt status, serves as NION's fiscal sponsor, thereby allowing donations to NION to be tax-exempt. NION also has strong ties to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, which shares NION's same New York City address. WILPF chairperson Molly Klopot is a NION organizer, and WILPF Executive Eirector Marilyn Clement is IFCO's Treasurer.

At an October 6, 2002 NION rally, two of the specially invited guest speakers were former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, who is intimately involved with the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who was convicted of illegally passing messages on behalf of her incarcerated client Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman -- the terrorist mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

posted October 26, 2006 11:17 PM              

i'm not familiar with the organisations that you mention. though i do agree that the 'war on terrorism' is fraudulent and was designed to further specific agendas. this point of veiew seems to disturb you. i know that many people stand to profit enormously from this unending pseudo war. i'm not one of them. the damage and loss of freedom and life caused by this massacre is overwhelming and almost incomprehensible. of course those who profit most will protest criticsim of the fraudulent 'anti-terror' war the loudest.

quote:

---

"This 'new development' in the 'war on terrorism' does not change the fact that this war is immoral, unjust, and illegitimate. It does not change the violations of international law, the lies used to justify the war ... or the tens of thousands of Iraqi lives stolen, or the hundreds of U.S. lives lost.

---

an excellent statement.

posted October 26, 2006 11:20 PM              

They say its some terrorist,
some barbaric
A Rab,
in Afghanistan
It wasn't our American terrorists
It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn't Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring

It wasn't
The gonorrhea in costume
The white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases

They say (who say?)
Who do the saying
Who is them paying
Who tell the lies
Who in disguise
Who had the slaves
Who got the bux out the Bucks

Who got fat from plantations
Who genocided Indians
Tried to waste the Black nation

Who live on Wall Street
The first plantation
Who cut your nuts off
Who rape your ma
Who lynched your pa

Who got the tar, who got the feathers
Who had the match, who set the fires
Who killed and hired
Who say they God & still be the Devil

Who the biggest only
Who the most goodest
Who do Jesus resemble

Who created everything
Who the smartest
Who the greatest
Who the richest
Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest

Who define art
Who define science

Who made the bombs
Who made the guns

Who bought the slaves, who sold them

Who called you them names
Who say Dahmer wasn't insane

Who? Who? Who?

Who stole Puerto Rico
Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan
Australia & The Hebrides
Who forced opium on the Chinese

Who own them buildings
Who got the money
Who think you funny
Who locked you up
Who own the papers

Who owned the slave ship
Who run the army

Who the fake president
Who the ruler
Who the banker

Who? Who? Who?

Who own the mine
Who twist your mind
Who got bread
Who need peace
Who you think need war

Who own the oil
Who do no toil
Who own the soil
Who is not a nigger
Who is so great ain't nobody bigger

Who own this city

Who own the air
Who own the water

Who own your crib
Who rob and steal and cheat and murder
and make lies the truth
Who call you uncouth

Who live in the biggest house
Who do the biggest crime
Who go on vacation anytime

Who killed the most niggers
Who killed the most Jews
Who killed the most Italians
Who killed the most Irish
Who killed the most Africans
Who killed the most Japanese
Who killed the most Latinos

Who? Who? Who?

Who own the ocean

Who own the airplanes
Who own the malls
Who own television
Who own radio

Who own what ain't even known to be owned
Who own the owners that ain't the real owners

Who own the suburbs
Who suck the cities
Who make the laws

Who made Bush president
Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying
Who talk about democracy and be lying

Who the Beast in Revelations
Who 666
Who know who decide
Jesus get crucified

Who the Devil on the real side
Who got rich from Armenian genocide

Who the biggest terrorist
Who change the bible
Who killed the most people
Who do the most evil
Who don't worry about survival

Who have the colonies
Who stole the most land
Who rule the world
Who say they good but only do evil
Who the biggest executioner

Who? Who? Who?

Who own the oil
Who want more oil
Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie

Who? Who? Who?

Who found Bin Laden, maybe they Satan
Who pay the CIA,
Who knew the bomb was gonna blow
Who know why the terrorists
Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego

Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion
And cracking they sides at the notion

Who need fossil fuel when the sun ain't goin' nowhere

Who make the credit cards
Who get the biggest tax cut
Who walked out of the Conference
Against Racism
Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother
Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing?
Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?

Who invaded Grenada
Who made money from apartheid
Who keep the Irish a colony
Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later

Who killed David Sibeko, Chris Hani,
the same ones who killed Biko, Cabral,
Neruda, Allende, Che Guevara, Sandino,

Who killed Kabila, the ones who wasted Lumumba, Mondlane,
Betty Shabazz, Die, Princess Di, Ralph Featherstone,
Little Bobby

Who locked up Mandela, Dhoruba, Geronimo,
Assata, Mumia, Garvey, Dashiell Hammett, Alphaeus Hutton

Who killed Huey Newton, Fred Hampton,
Medgar Evers, Mikey Smith, Walter Rodney,
Was it the ones who tried to poison Fidel
Who tried to keep the Vietnamese Oppressed

Who put a price on Lenin's head

Who put the Jews in ovens,
and who helped them do it
Who said "America First"
and ok'd the yellow stars

Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt
Who murdered the Rosenbergs
And all the good people iced,
tortured, assassinated, vanished

Who got rich from Algeria, Libya, Haiti,
Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon,
Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine,

Who cut off peoples hands in the Congo
Who invented Aids
Who put the germs
In the Indians' blankets
Who thought up "The Trail of Tears"

Who blew up the Maine
& started the Spanish American War
Who got Sharon back in Power
Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo,
Chiang kai Chek

Who decided Affirmative Action had to go
Reconstruction, The New Deal,
The New Frontier, The Great Society,

Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for
Who doo doo come out the Colon's mouth
Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza
Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro
Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus
Subsidere

Who overthrew Nkrumah, Bishop,
Who poison Robeson,
who try to put DuBois in Jail
Who frame Rap Jamil al Amin, Who frame the Rosenbergs,
Garvey,
The Scottsboro Boys,
The Hollywood Ten

Who set the Reichstag Fire

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?

Who? Who? Who?

Explosion of Owl the newspaper say
The devil face cd be seen

Who make money from war
Who make dough from fear and lies
Who want the world like it is
Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and national
oppression and terror violence, and hunger and poverty.

Who is the ruler of Hell?
Who is the most powerful

Who you know ever
Seen God?

But everybody seen
The Devil

Like an Owl exploding
In your life in your brain in your self
Like an Owl who know the devil
All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl
Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise
In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog

Like the acid vomit of the fire of Hell
Who and Who and WHO who who
Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo!

Copyright 2002. Amiri Baraka.

great poet

*originally posted here ~

http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum16/HTML/002683.html

posted October 26, 2006 11:30 PM              

Al Amiria bomb shelter, Baghdad.
Bombed by US forces in 1991.
408 Womyn and children hiding from the war. They were all killed.

these were people who were hiding their children from the bombing....thinking their children were safe...urging them to watch cartoons to keep them from being afraid.

they were deliberately bombed and massacred in the most devastating way. it took hours for the children to die, trapped in the cement and metal underground.

posted October 27, 2006 12:16 AM            

quote:

---

i'm not familiar with the organisations that you mention

---

The video you linked in your first post on this thread is directly from...Not In Our Name...which just happens to be the same exact organization..I mentioned and about which I posted information.

In the past, you've also posted a communist produced screed linked to the Revolutionary Communist Party USA....about which I also posted information.

How quickly they forget, eh.

Lastly, you do not know that those images were actually from Al Amiria bomb shelter in Baghdad or any other bomb shelter.

Perhaps you'd like to produce some newpaper reports of the US bombing a bomb shelter in Iraq in the current war. Oh, and trust me, if it happened, there would be lots and lots or newspaper articles reporting it in minute detail ...as there were when the US was accused by Saddam of bombing a shelter in the 1991 Gulf War.

posted October 27, 2006 12:45 AM              

quote:

---

Lastly, you do not know that those images were actually from Al Amiria bomb shelter in Baghdad or any other bomb shelter.--jwhop

---

good grief........

posted October 27, 2006 01:35 AM              

as for the names of people who don't endorse the fake war on terrorism...

Ed Asner, Tom Hayden, Oliver Stone, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Deepak Chopra, Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, Tyne Daly, Martin Sheen, Alice Walker, Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III, Gloria Steinem, Michael Albert, Michael Avery, Amiri Baraka, Phyllis Bennis, Michael Berg, Angela Davis, Michael Eric Dyson, Carl Dix, Bernardine Dohrn, Jane Fonda, Eve Ensler, Laura Flanders, Jim McDermott, Robert Meeropol, Frances Fox Piven, Michael Ratner, Pete Seeger, Leonard Weinglass, Peter Weiss, Cornel West, Howard Zinn, Ramsey Clark, Medea Benjamin, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Mumia Abu Jamal, Matef Harmachis (of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party), Barbara Ehrenreich, bell hooks, Jesse Jackson, Tony Kushner, Spike Lee, Cynthia McKinney, Bonnie Raitt, Edward Said, and Gore Vidal.

i'm quite certain that many people both here and in real life enjoy the work of lots of the figures in the above group. in fact lots of people here like Deepak Chopra. i don't think that makes them communists, nor do i think their work is invalid or flawed because they don't support a fake war.

a large number of people believe the moon landing was fake too, lol...it's good to question everything.

now go light a candle on your altar to good ole joe....i'm sure he's in need of more of your supplication.

posted October 27, 2006 01:49 AM              

thank you for keeping my thread at the top of the forum. more people will be able to see it now.

posted October 27, 2006 02:41 PM            

Previously unseen tape shows bin Laden's declaration of war
August 20, 2002 Posted: 3:30 PM EDT (1930 GMT)
From Nic Robertson
CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A never-before-seen al Qaeda video obtained by CNN shows Osama bin Laden declaring war against the United States and the West.

The tape of a May 26, 1998, news conference is among 64 obtained in Afghanistan from a source, who said the tapes were found in an Afghan house where bin Laden had stayed. Experts say the collection of tapes sheds new light on al Qaeda's training, capabilities and mindset.

"By God's grace," bin Laden says on the tape, "we have formed with many other Islamic groups and organizations in the Islamic world a front called the International Islamic Front to do jihad against the crusaders and Jews."

"And by God's grace," he says at another point in the tape, "the men ... are going to have a successful result in killing Americans and getting rid of them."
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/08/19/terror.tape.main/

The bombing of the WTC in 1993 was an act of war.

The bombing of 2 US embassies in Africa were acts of war.

The bombing of the barracks in the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia was an act of war.

The bombing of the USS Cole was an act of war.

The ball-less Commander Corruption, AKA Bill Clinton ignored each and every act of war.

When the WTC was again attacked on 9/11, Bush didn't ignore it. The US went to war against terrorists and those who support, train, shelter and fund them.

Now, there's a pool of terrorist appeasers and supporters who don't like that. Indeed, the terrorists and terrorist supporting nations don't like it when their terrorist brothers get their as$es shot off or blown off by US bullets, missiles and bombs. TS babies.

That video you claim you don't know anything about...except that it appeared on myspace is very clearly identified as coming from..
Not In Our Name, which is exactly what I posted and the exact group I identified as a communist group of revolutionary communists.

Now salome, I don't mind keeping your thread at the top of this forum. It gives me the opportunity to identify revolutionary communist groups, post information about those groups, including their aims and goals and puncture their communist propaganda which is being passed off as love and light.

Chief among those aims and goals is the overthrow of the United States government and Constitution in order to establish a communist dictatorship in the United States.

I'm sure they appreciate your assistance in spreading their bullsh*t propaganda.

posted October 27, 2006 04:58 PM              

i didnt say i dont know anything about the video. i said i'm not familiar with the organisation you mentioned.

which cia look alike do you think that osama is, hmmmmm?

puppets, propaganda, lies....

all in an effort to distract from the reality of for-profit genocide. bellow on all you want about communist ghosts and meaningless invective construed for the purpose of obfuscating the truth. you live in a country that once guaranteed that as one of your basic rights. those you support however are working very hard to take that away from all of us.

posted October 27, 2006 05:00 PM              

Al Amiria bomb shelter, Baghdad

Al Amiria bomb shelter, Baghdad.
Bombed by US forces in 1991.
408 Womyn and children hiding from the war. They were all killed.

these were people who were hiding their children from the bombing....thinking their children were safe...urging them to watch cartoons to keep them from being afraid.

they were deliberately bombed and massacred in the most devastating way. it took hours for the children to die, trapped in the cement and metal underground.

posted October 27, 2006 09:37 PM              

Kissinger prepared a depopulation manifesto for President Jimmy Carter called 'Global 2000' which detailed using food as a weapon to depopulate the third world.

The Haig-Kissinger Depopulation Policy

Investigations by EIR have uncovered a planning apparatus operating outside the control of the White House whose sole purpose is to reduce the world's population by 2 billion people through war, famine, disease and any other means necessary. This apparatus, which includes various levels of the government is determining US foreign policy. In every political hotspot - El Salvador, the so-called arc of crisis in the Persian Gulf, Latin America, Southeast Asia and in Africa - the goal of US foreign policy is population reduction. The targeting agency for the operation is the National Security Council's Ad Hoc Group on Population Policy. Its policy-planning group is in the US State Department's Office of Population Affairs, established in 1975 by Henry Kissinger. This group drafted the Carter administration's Global 2000 document, which calls for global population reduction, and the same apparatus is conducting the civil war in El Salvador as a conscious depopulation project.

"There is a single theme behind all our work - we must reduce population levels," said Thomas Ferguson, the Latin American case officer for the State Department's Office of Population Affairs. "Either they (governments) do it our way, through nice clean methods or they will get the kind of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran, or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it "The professionals," said Ferguson, "aren't interested in lowering population for humanitarian reasons. That sounds nice. We look at resources and environmental constraints. We look at our strategic needs, and we say that this country must lower its population or else we will have trouble.

So steps are taken. El Salvador is an example where our failure to lower population by simple means has created the basis for a national security crisis. The government of El Salvador failed to use our programs to lower their population. Now they get a civil war because of it.... There will be dislocation and food shortages. They still have too many people there."

Civil wars are somewhat drawn-out ways to reduce population, the OPA official added. "The quickest way to reduce population is through famine, like in Africa or through disease like the Black Death," all of which might occur in El Salvador. Ferguson's OPA monitors populations in the Third World and maps strategies to reduce them. Its budget for in 1980 was $190 million, and in 198l it will be $220 million. The Global 2000 report calls for doubling that figure. The sphere of Kissinger In 1975, OPA was brought under a reorganized State Department Bureau of Oceans, International Environmental, and Scientific Affairs - a body created by Henry Kissinger.

http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum16/HTML/002682.html

Military Men Are Just Dumb,
Stupid, Animals To Be Used
As Pawns In Foreign Policy
-Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger

American diplomat, Nobel laureate and statesman.

He served as National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State in the Nixon administration, continuing in the latter position after Gerald Ford became President in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.

Kissinger owns a consulting firm, Kissinger and Associates, and is a partner in Kissinger McLarty Associates with Mack McLarty, former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton. He also serves on various boards of directors including Gulfstream Aerospace[11] and Hollinger International, a Chicago-based newspaper group

In 2002, President George W. Bush appointed Kissinger to chair a committee to investigate the events of the September 11 attacks. This led to criticism from Congressional Democrats who accused Kissinger of being secretive and not supportive of the public's right to know. Leading Democrats insisted that Kissinger file financial disclosures to reveal any conflicts of interest. Both Bush and Kissinger claimed that Kissinger did not need to file such forms, since he would not be receiving a salary. However, following continual Democratic pressure, Kissinger cited conflicts of interest with his clients and stepped down as chairman on December 13, 2002.

posted October 27, 2006 10:51 PM              

What Are We Becoming?

posted October 27, 2006 11:30 PM              

quote:

---

Military Men Are Just Dumb,
Stupid Animals To Be Used
As Pawns In Foreign Policy

---

posted October 29, 2006 01:32 PM              

Amiri Baraka

posted December 02, 2006 11:57 AM            

Based on what he has done in the past, if conflict with Iraq should occur, Saddam is almost certain to lay a trap for the world’s media. He apparently believes that dead Iraqi civilians are his most powerful weapon in trying to create revulsion against any military action that might occur against Iraq.

During Operation Desert Storm, the coalition chose its targets carefully and had strict rules of engagement intended to avoid bombing innocent civilians. Even with careful targeting, fire discipline, and the well-known use of precision munitions in the campaign, some civilian casualties occurred. Saddam Hussein used deaths of innocent civilians to try to undermine international and domestic support for the American-led coalition, and the Iraqi regime made many claims that civilian targets had been hit by coalition air forces, with loss of innocent civilian lives.


The Iraqi regime's propaganda campaign went far beyond normally-expected protests over civilian casualties. The Iraqis quickly realized that placing military assets – including tanks, missiles, and command-and-control facilities – close to civilians and civilian infrastructure could yield substantial benefits. By shielding military assets with civilians and civilian infrastructure, Saddam understood that coalition forces would either avoid attacking targets close to civilians or risk severe political damage from unintended civilian deaths at what would have appeared to be a purely military site.

The co-location strategy has three objectives:

To conceal military assets;
To deter coalition attacks on military assets that could not be concealed; and
Failing the first two objectives, to capitalize on attacks by generating civilian casualties and destruction of cultural sites.

Some of the regime's co-locations were clearly detectable through overhead imagery. Those that were not yielded tragic results – and a rich vein of propaganda. This is a long-standing practice: Throughout the country, the Iraqi government continues to locate military assets close to or together with civilian facilities and cultural sites, and it continues to build new mosques and other civilian facilities in or near military areas.

Iraqi Co-Locations of Military and Civilians. Then...
CNN reporter Peter Arnett wrote that one night during the Gulf War a SCUD missile and launcher appeared on the front lawn of the Al-Rashid Hotel, where he and other journalists were staying.2

In 1990, the international press widely reported that Iraq had held more than 1,000 Western and Japanese men, women, and children as human shields at about 70 sites in Iraq, including air force bases, military garrisons, weapons factories, and power plants before eventually releasing them under international pressure.

During the Gulf War, the Iraqi regime placed two military aircraft next to the ancient Ur ziggurat near Tallil, Iraq. A coalition strike on the aircraft could well have caused extensive damage to this ancient Mesopotamian cultural treasure.

When coalition leaders publicly stated that religious sites would not be targeted, Saddam began using these sites to shield military equipment and units. In other cases, dual use facilities were exploited for propaganda value.

posted December 02, 2006 11:59 AM            

As U.S. officials pointed out at the time, the Iraqi regime was defending the site as it would a military facility. After the Gulf War, UNSCOM inspectors discovered that three scientists from the Iraqi regime's main biological weapons facility had been assigned to the "baby milk" factory.

Journalists who were taken to the "baby milk" factory in 1991 saw this hand-lettered sign in English and Arabic.

...And Now.
Since the Gulf War, the Iraqis regularly have placed Air Defense missile systems and associated equipment in and around numerous civilian areas including parks, mosques, hospitals, hotels, crowded shopping districts, ancient cultural and religious sites, and even cemeteries. They have placed rocket launchers next to soccer stadiums that were in active use, parked operational SAM systems in civilian industrial centers.

In late 1997, the Iraqi regime made sure the world media filmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, at military and industrial sites. The U.S. government later learned that it then secretly replaced the civilians with prisoners, who were mostly opposition figures but also included some criminals. If the sites had been attacked, the Iraqi regime was poised to claim that any prisoners killed were the Iraqi civilians who had previously been there.

In April 2002, commercial satellite imagery showed that the Iraqis had constructed 15 military revetments near a school in Saribadi, a town 31 miles southeast of Baghdad. Some of the revetments, essentially holes in which military vehicles are parked as protective measures against air strikes, are less than 11 yards from the wall surrounding the school.

Military revetments (arrows) in civilian area of Saribadi, April 2002.

In 2002, the United States government learned that the Iraqi government had ordered taxis and buses to be repainted with military colors in order to look like military vehicles.

On January 8, 2003, the Associated Press and others reported that Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz welcomed foreign volunteers to come to Iraq and serve as human shields around civilian facilities in the event of armed conflict, thereby planting the idea that civilian facilities would be subject to attack. Iraq issued similar calls for volunteers in 1990. In the event of conflict, such human shields would most likely be deployed around military targets – either to deter strikes against the targets or to create casualties in the event of their being struck.

Case Study

The Amiriyah Bunker-Shelter

In the early morning hours of February 13, 1991, coalition precision-guided bombs hit the Amiriyah bunker in Baghdad. Television networks broadcast gruesome footage of charred bodies being removed from the building. Iraq reported over 300 deaths, mostly women and children.

The bunker was originally constructed as an air raid shelter during the Iran-Iraq War, and later converted into a military command-and-control center. In 1991, it was used as a military communications center, complete with barbed wire, camouflage, and armed guards. Intelligence sources reported senior Iraqi military officials were using it for military communications.3

Iraq claimed it was a civilian air raid shelter that had been deliberately bombed. Unknown to the coalition was that selected civilians had been admitted to the top floor at night, while the Iraqi military continued to use the lower level as a command-and-control center. In an article in the February 14, 1991, edition of Finland's Helsingin Sanomat, a Finnish expert confirmed that structures in Iraq like the Amiriyah had two stories and space for a total of 1,500 people. The Finnish firm Perusyhtyma and the Swedish company ABV had built 30 of these structures in Baghdad.

Khidir Hamza, former director general of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, stated in his book, Saddam's Bombmaker, that during the Gulf War:

"We sought refuge several times at the [Amiriyah] shelter.... But it was always filled.... The shelter had television sets, drinking fountains, its own electrical generator, and looked sturdy enough to withstand a hit from conventional weapons. But I stopped trying to get in one night after noticing some long black limousines slithering in and out of an underground gate in the back. I asked around and was told that it was a command center. After considering it more closely, I decided it was probably Saddam's own operational base."4

posted December 02, 2006 12:15 PM            

The Iraqi regime is skilled at seizing – and creating – opportunities to undermine the international community's resolve to maintain UN sanctions. And one of its most effective tools for accomplishing this goal is the systematic creation of hardship and suffering for the Iraqi people. While devoting massive resources to opulent palaces and huge weapons programs, the Iraqi government makes food and medicine scarce for average citizens. It then shifts the blame for the suffering of the Iraqi people from Saddam's policies to the United Nations, which established the sanctions. The real reasons for the suffering are quickly overwhelmed by the emotional weight of crying or emaciated children, doctors lamenting the lack of medicines and supplies, and parents pleading for relief.

Saddam Hussein's government uses tragic images to influence world opinion, and particularly to support the false allegation that the United Nations is killing Iraqis. These images include:

Exploiting sick and malnourished children for international television cameras;
Staging mass funerals;
Providing selective tours of empty markets and dilapidated hospitals;
Showing Iraqis with obvious diseases and blaming the sicknesses on the absence of modern medical tools, due to sanctions; and
Censoring television footage and restricting movement of journalists and television crews.

In a particularly shocking practice, the regime is known to collect the bodies of dead babies and store them for months at a time, so that they can stage mass funeral processions and create the impression that UN sanctions are killing small children.

The Iraqi regime has diverted to its weapons program or to luxuries for the regime's elites many millions of dollars that were intended for food, medicines, and other necessities. Under the UN sanctions exceptions, Iraq is explicitly allowed to import food and a wide range of medicines and other necessities, and the UN Security Council has expanded the list of allowable items several times in response to humanitarian and infrastructure needs. The regime either deliberately caused medical scarcity and malnutrition or simply saw that the suffering of the Iraqi people caused by its policies could be exploited for its propaganda value.

In either case, weapons for the armed forces and luxuries for ruling elites took priority over food and medicines for the people, and the regime found it more useful to continue the hardships and blame them on the sanctions than to meet its obligations and end the suffering. In 2000, Forbes magazine estimated Saddam Hussein's personal wealth at $7 billion, acquired primarily from oil and smuggling.

Blaming Sanctions for Regime Failure
In a total of 29 separate resolutions,6 the UN Security Council has stated clearly its reason for imposing sanctions: to force Iraq to comply with previous UN resolutions. But Saddam Hussein refuses to comply. In 1990, under UN Security Council Resolution 661, the UN permitted food and medicine imports. Beginning in 1991, the Security Council attempted to create an Oil-for-Food Program that would allow Iraqi oil to be sold, with proceeds deposited in an UN-controlled account and used to purchase food, medicine, and humanitarian goods for the Iraqi people.7 The Iraqi government rejected this proposal.

In 1995, over Iraq's protests, the Security Council adopted another oil-for-food resolution.8 It was only in 1996, after another year and a half of Iraqi delays and international pressure, that the Iraqi regime finally agreed to accept oil-for-food, allowing the first imports to arrive in 1997. Even after the program was in place, the regime continued to deprive its citizens of the food and medical commodities that the international community wanted to supply. In 22 subsequent resolutions the Security Council extended, revised, adjusted, or expanded the Oil-for-Food Program out of concern for the people of Iraq, consistently broadening the range of goods permitted for importation.9

Iraq claims that 1.7 million children, including 700,000 under the age of five, out of a total national population of 22 million people, have died because of sanctions. According to an Iraqi government website, after the Oil-for-Food Program was instituted the number of children who died before the age of five jumped 50 percent from 1996 to 2001. The facts tell a different story:

Under the Oil-for-Food Program, the Iraqi regime exported food to earn hard currency it could use for its own purposes. Infant formula sold to Iraq under the Oil-for-Food Program has been found in markets throughout the Gulf, presumably exported by the regime to circumvent the sanctions.10
According to the UN, under the Oil-for-Food Program the daily food ration in Iraq rose from about 1,200 kilocalories per day in 1996 to over 2,200 kilocalories per day in August 2002.11
Iraq therefore implausibly claims that child mortality soared while the average caloric intake for Iraqis increased by 80 percent, and while medical supplies were becoming more plentiful.
High-ranking regime loyalists receive the most expensive medical care, including heart bypass surgery and neurosurgery using an ultra-modern, $6 million gamma knife, while basic medicines are in short supply for the Iraqi people.12
Since the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein has spent more than $2 billion building 48 new palaces, some complete with gold-plated faucets and artificial waterfalls on their grounds.13
How much food does $2 billion buy for hungry people? In 2001, the World Food Program spent $1.74 billion to deliver 660,000 metric tons of food to 77 million people worldwide.14