"Although the US government continues to assert its condemnation of torture and ill-treatment, these statements contradict what is happening in practice," said Curt Goering, Senior Deputy Executive Director Of Amnesty International USA. "The US government is not only failing to take steps to eradicate torture it is actually creating a climate in which torture and other ill-treatment can flourish -- including by trying to narrow the definition of torture."

The Amnesty International report describes how measures taken by the US government in response to widespread torture and ill-treatment of detainees held in US military custody in the context of the "war on terror" have been far from adequate. This is despite evidence that much of the ill-treatment stemmed directly from official policy and practice.

The report reviews several cases where detainees held in US custody in Afghanistan and Iraq have died under torture. To this day, no US agent has been prosecuted for "torture" or "war crimes".

"The heaviest sentence imposed on anyone to date for a torture-related death while in US custody is five months -- the same sentence that you might receive in the US for stealing a bicycle. In this case, the five-month sentence was for assaulting a 22-year-old taxi-driver who was hooded and chained to a ceiling while being kicked and beaten until he died," said Curt Goering.

"While the government continues to try to claim that the abuse of detainees in US custody was mainly due to a few 'aberrant' soldiers, there is clear evidence to the contrary. Most of the torture and ill-treatment stemmed directly from officially sanctioned procedures and policies -- including interrogation techniques approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld," said Javier Zuniga, Amnesty International's Americas Programme Director.

The report also lists concerns surrounding violations of the Convention against Torture under US domestic law, including ill-treatment and excessive force by police, cruel use of electro-shock weapons, inhuman and degrading conditions of isolation in "super-max" security prisons and abuses against women in the prison system -- including sexual abuse by male guards and shackling while pregnant and in labour.

The US last appeared before the Committee Against Torture in May 2000. Practices criticized by the Committee six years ago -- such as the use of electro-shock weapons and excessively harsh conditions in "super-maximum" security prisons -- have in some cases been exported for use by US forces abroad -- serving as a model for the treatment of US detainees in the context of the "war on terror".

"The US has long taken a selective approach to international standards, but in recent years, the US government has taken unprecedented steps to disregard its obligations under international treaties. This threatens to undermine the whole framework of international human rights law -- including the consensus on the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," said Javier Zuniga.

Amnesty International called on the US to demonstrate its commitment to eradicating torture, by withdrawing the reservations it has entered to the Convention against Torture, including its "understanding" of Article 1 of the Convention, which could restrict the scope of the definition of torture by the US.

The organization also called on the US to clarify to the Committee in no uncertain terms that under its laws no one, including the President, has the right or authority to order the torture or ill-treatment of detainees under any circumstances whatsoever -- and that anyone who does so, including the President, will have committed a crime.

Background
The Committee Against Torture is a 10-member body of independent experts established by the Convention against Torture to monitor the compliance of states with their obligations under the treaty. It meets twice a year and, among other tasks, reviews the periodic reports of states. At its forthcoming 36th session, which will take place from 1 to 19 May 2006, it will consider reports presented by Georgia, Guatemala, Republic of Korea, Qatar, Peru, Togo and the US. Amnesty International has provided written briefings to the Committee in respect of Georgia, Guatemala, Qatar, Togo and the US.

The second and third periodic reports of the US will be considered by the Human Rights Committee, which monitors states' compliance under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, at its 87th session in July.

In total, 141 states have ratified the Convention against Torture.

For a full copy of the report, please see http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr510612006

This must end. Torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading practices should be as unthinkable as slavery. U.S. Department of Defense officials have announced that certain stress interrogation techniques will no longer be used in Iraq. But President Bush should ban all forms of abuse during interrogation in Iraq and everywhere else that the United States holds people in custody. It is wrong in itself and leads to further atrocities.

Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed told The Associated Press during a two-day visit to Stockholm that he believes Washington is supporting the warlords-turned-politicians as a way of fighting several top al-Qaida operatives who are being protected by radical clerics.

"They really think they can capture al-Qaida members in Somalia," he said. "But the Americans should tell the warlords they should support the government, and cooperate with the government ... We are the legitimate government, and we will help you fight terrorism."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he did not know "the origin of these remarks in terms of what he has in mind."

"Our interest is purely in seeing Somalia achieve a better day," McCormack said. "It's a real concern of ours, terror taking root in the Horn of Africa ... We don't want to see another safe haven for terrorists created."

Somalia has not had an effective central government since clan-based warlords overthrew the government in 1991 and then began fighting each other.

A transitional government headed by Yusuf was formed in October 2004 but its members quickly split over what the government's priorities were and where it should be located. It only controls a few cities and Yusuf spends much of his time out of the country.

The State Department said in March that the U.S. government was concerned about "al-Qaida fugitives responsible for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam (in Tanzania) and the November 2002 bombing of a tourist hotel and attack on a civilian airliner in Kenya, who are believed to be operating in and around Somalia."

Several key warlords in the new government have formed an alliance with the stated aim of capturing al-Qaida members. The Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism was formed after a fundamentalist Islamic group began asserting itself in the capital and portrayed itself as an alternative to warlords.

Fueling suspicion that the group is receiving outside aid, the alliance has become one of the most powerful militias in Somalia in a matter of months.

Residents of alliance-held areas report trucks arriving full of new weapons, and Somalis with connections to the alliance have said U.S. officials have frequently visited its leaders.

Yusuf said U.S. support for the warlords could undermine the government's efforts to bring stability to the region.

"These groups, they really do not want Somalia to become a stabilized country," he said. "They do not want the government to function."

He said his government is committed to fighting terrorism, but that it can only be effective if it first gets help from the international community "to build the country up from scratch."

The administration has privately identified to Moscow concrete steps it should take before the July meeting, such as registering civil society groups that have been harassed, as a way of deflecting criticism that Russia has no business hosting a summit of democratic nations. And administration officials have sharpened their rhetoric about Russia's backslide toward autocracy.


Vice President Cheney talks with Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, at a democracy conference in Vilnius, Lithuania.

At a European democracy conference in Lithuania yesterday, Vice President Cheney accused Russia of "unfairly and improperly" restricting the rights of its people and using oil and gas as "tools of intimidation or blackmail" against neighboring countries.

"Russia has a choice to make," Cheney said. "And there is no question that a return to democratic reform in Russia will generate further success for its people and greater respect among fellow nations."

Administration officials are increasingly concerned about President Bush's attending a meeting of the world's major democracies in a country that by most definitions is not. Bush has made expansion of freedom and democracy the central tenet of his foreign policy but has been reluctant to alienate his avowed friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as the Kremlin has rigged or canceled elections, taken over independent television, and prosecuted political enemies.

Some critics, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), have called on Bush to boycott the G-8 summit in protest of Putin's suppression of dissent, but the president has rejected such a move as counterproductive. While Cheney said yesterday that the United States supports democracy "through direct aid," Bush has cut funding for democracy groups in the former Soviet Union in half.

"We have to show some leadership," former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) said in a speech at the Hoover Institution last week. Edwards, who helped lead a Council on Foreign Relations panel on Russia, said Bush should tell Putin that "if you want to be seen as a legitimate power in the world, a force for good, and you want to look outside and not just inward, then democratic reforms matter."

Bush, though, wants Moscow's help on an array of issues, including preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Putin has joined Bush in pressuring Tehran but resists U.N. sanctions. Bush called Putin on Monday to lobby him on Iran, but during the call Putin changed the subject and pressed Bush to finish negotiations allowing Russia into the World Trade Organization. Bush vowed to do so "soon." Aides said that there was no quid pro quo but that they hope to conclude WTO talks before the summit.

The summit, set for July 15-17, has forced administration officials to rethink their approach to Russia for fear that the meeting will be consumed with questions about why the leaders of the world's leading democracies would seemingly ignore Putin's crackdown on internal opposition. Cheney has shown particular interest in the matter, summoning Russia scholars to brief him and meeting secretly with a leading Russian democrat, according to people informed about the sessions.

Administration officials concluded it is not practical to simply urge Russia to be more democratic, so they developed a list of half a dozen things Moscow can do in the next two months to signal a new direction.

Among other things, the administration is recommending that Russia register nongovernmental organizations that have been pressured, such as the New Eurasia Foundation; guarantee energy supplies to neighbors; and ensure that independent monitors are permitted to observe elections down to the local level, according to officials who were not authorized to speak on the record.

"We're not ordering them, we're not telling them," said one official. "We want a good meeting." If the Russians do too, they will take some of these actions, the officials said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley met with Putin's national security adviser, Igor Ivanov, at the White House yesterday.

Another option under consideration at the White House is to have Bush visit Ukraine before the G-8 summit to demonstrate his solidarity with former Soviet republics that feel pressured by Russia.

"There's concern in Washington that if they go to that sort of meeting the risk is they'll be seen as validating Putin," said Steven Pifer, who was deputy assistant secretary of state in Bush's first term and is now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "On the other hand, they have to balance that against how much you want to put your thumb in your host's eye."

The Kremlin has come to realize that it has an image problem in the West, and this week, for the first time, it hired a Western public relations firm, Ketchum. "They were looking for help to improve lines of communication with the world media," said Ketchum Senior Vice President Noam Gelfond.

The Russian government also agreed to include on its official list of summit-related activities a June 29 forum in Moscow on national security and human rights. Among the participants are the New Eurasia Foundation and financier George Soros's Open Society Institute, which is viewed with enormous suspicion by Russia for its role in training democracy activists who toppled governments in Ukraine and Georgia.

But Putin and his aides bristle when they feel they are being lectured, and it remains unclear whether they are willing to make any substantive changes. After Cheney's speech in Lithuania yesterday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov pronounced his remarks "completely incomprehensible," according to the Reuters news service.

Cheney's speech reflected a shift in the administration's tone. On Monday, Rice complained about the Kremlin concentration of power. "The jury is out about where Russia is going to end up," she said. On Wednesday, World Press Freedom Day, her spokesman lumped Russia with China, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Iran as countries that repress journalists.

Cheney's decision to go to Lithuania was itself a message to Russia. The gathering in Vilnius of democratic leaders from the region is the kind of meeting that might normally rate an assistant secretary of state. It's also the kind that typically irritates Russia, which views such gatherings as hostile.

Cheney made a point of meeting with two of Moscow's least favorite people, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who led revolutions in those post-Soviet republics. Cheney had planned to meet with opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich of Belarus, but Milinkevich was jailed by the Belarusan government last week.

"The regime should end this injustice and free Mr. Milinkevich, along with the other democracy advocates held in captivity," Cheney said. He added: "There is no place in a Europe whole and free for a regime of this kind."

Addressing Russia, Cheney said, "In many areas of civil society, from religion and the news media to advocacy groups and political parties, the government has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of her people." Referring to Russia's brief cutoff of gas to Ukraine, Cheney said, "No legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail."

Those designated as "countries of particular concern" in the annual state department international religious-freedom report could face sanctions.

Afghanistan, where the former Taliban regime was once designated as a particularly severe violator, has been added to the commission's "watch list" this year, joining Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, where the US is directly engaged in political reforms, "the universal right to religious freedom is imperiled," warned Michael Cromartie, the commission's chairperson.

In Afghanistan, the courts and scholars last month angrily demanded that a Muslim who converted to Christianity be sentenced to death under Sharia law, enraging its Western allies. President George Bush had to personally intervene in convert Abdul Rahman's case and he was spirited out of Afghanistan to asylum in Italy.

Although Rahman's case was eventually dismissed, "concerns about his personal safety meant that he could no longer stay in Afghanistan", Cromartie noted.

A few months before, an Afghan journalist, who is also a Muslim scholar, was imprisoned and threatened with death after being found guilty of blasphemy. His purported "crime" was to question the strict interpretation of some tenets of Islam, the majority religion in Afghanistan, the commission said.

It also warned that in Iraq, an escalation in the level of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims threatened to halt political reforms.

Targets of religiously motivated attacks also include secular Muslims, non-Muslim minorities, and women, it said.

"The result is that many non-Muslim minorities are leaving Iraq, an exodus that may mean the end of the presence in Iraq of ancient Christian and other communities that have lived on those same lands for 2 000 years," Cromartie said.

He also said that religious freedom conditions in Saudi Arabia had not substantially improved since it was blacklisted two years ago.

The US government, Cromartie said, "must not hesitate in taking aggressive action" against the country.

The body has called for immediate action on the part of the Iraqi government and the illegal American occupiers:

"The development of a permanent constitution and legal system that will guarantee every Iraqi citizen's right to freedom of religion or belief and other human rights in accordance with Iraq's international obligations continues to be a concern."

The status of women in Iraq is also of particular concern as the report directly implements government officials (supported, protected, endeared by the US military) of suppressing women's rights:

"In addition, there have been numerous reports of violence, including murder, particularly against women, in an effort by various militia and insurgent groups and even, in some areas, local officials, to impose an extremist version of Islamic law in parts of the country."

The 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) requires that the United States designate as CPCs those countries whose governments have engaged in or tolerated systematic and egregious violations of the universal right to freedom of religion or belief.

You can read more here ...

Chomsky is adamant and he is right to warn against the idea that foreign policy elites are more fool than knave. "Consider the actual situation, not some dream situation... If we can enter the real world we can begin to talk about it... We have to talk about it in the real world and know what the White House is thinking. They're not willing to live in a dream world."

What, then, is the "actual situation" that led the Bush administration to make the "perfectly sensible" -- if entirely imperialist -- decision to invade Iraq and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein? Here, according to Chomsky, is the real world:

"If [Iraq is] more or less democratic, it'll have a Shiite majority. They will naturally want to improve their linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran. Most of the clerics come from Iran... So you get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore, right across the border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which has been bitterly oppressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. And any moves toward independence in Iraq are surely going to stimulate them, it's already happening. That happens to be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you can just imagine the ultimate nightmare in Washington..."

Chomsky isn't making this stuff up. One can get quick confirmation of Chomsky's characterization of this "ultimate nightmare" scenario from the key "realists" of Republican foreign policy establishment -- folks like Bush Sr., former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Secretary of State James Baker, and Colin Powell. When presented with a Shiite uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991, the "realists" opted to leave Saddam in power, rather than let the nightmare become reality. In a co-authored 1998 memoir, A World Transformed, Bush Sr. and Scowcroft insist that they acted to preserve "the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf" (p.489). In his 1995 memoir The Politics of Diplomacy, James Baker recalls that he didn't want to "play into the hands of the mullahs in Iran, who could export their brand of Islamic fundamentalism with the help of Iraq's Shiites and quickly transform themselves into the dominant regional power" (p.437). Colin Powell, in his 1995 memoir My American Journey, is equally blunt. "Why didn't we finish him off?... In March, the Iraqi Shiites in the south rose up in arms... But our practical intention was to leave Baghdad enough power to survive as a threat to an Iran that remained bitterly hostile toward the United States" (pp.512, 516).

The problem is that fear of this "ultimate nightmare" provided the rationale in 1991 for not invading Iraq, or more precisely, not promoting the political ascendance of the Iraqi Shiite majority. Chomksy argues that fear of the nightmare scenario will deter realists from supporting US withdrawal from Iraq. But did the "realists" get us into Iraq? "Realists" may keep us in Iraq, but did the "realists" unleash Iraqi Shiite power by terminating Sunni Baathist political and military rule? "Realists" may, in fact, be sensible -- at least in a self-serving way -- but

Scowcroft, Baker, and Bush Sr. all publicly warned George W. Bush about the risks of unleashing the ultimate nightmare. Kissinger -- who first floated the idea of seizing the Eastern Province from the Saudis in the mid-1970s, prior to the Iranian revolution -- was explicit in a Washington Post Op-Ed. The key to any move to topple Saddam, he insisted, was the contour of "the political outcome," especially insofar as Saudi Arabia would be unlikely to cooperate in the formation of a "Shiite republic" that "would threaten the Dhahran region in Saudi Arabia, and might give Iran a new base to seek to dominate the gulf region." Chomsky is at a loss to explain -- in Realpolitik terms -- the 2003 decision by George W. Bush to invade Iraq and empower the Iraqi Shiite majority.

Gilbert Achcar, like Chomsky, is inclined to stipulate the decisive role of Realpolitik in US foreign policy. Looking at the case of Iraq, however, Achcar makes an exception. "In the case of Iraq, and in this case exclusively," writes Achcar in a 2004 CounterPunch article, "the Bush administration has acted on ideological views so contrary to the 'reality principle' that they could only lead into this major nightmare of U.S. imperial policy... History will probably record this venture as one of the most important blunders ever committed by an administration abroad from the standpoint of U.S. imperial interests."

Chomsky and Achcar both agree that the general aim of the invasion was based on "realism." As Chomsky says, the US would not have invaded Iraq "if its main product was lettuce and pickles... If you have three gray cells functioning, you know... the US invaded Iraq because it has enormous oil resources." Likewise, Achcar is "fully aware of the very oily factors" involved in US military intervention. However, Achcar insists that "many of its concrete decisions" -- chiefly the "clumsiness of de-Baathification... [and the] dissolution of the Iraqi military" -- represented "blunders" and "wild dreams" of "crackpot idealists" who allow "high-flying moral rhetoric" to help guide foreign policy "in a way that stands in blatant contradiction to pragmatic needs."

For Achcar, the crucial decisions were not the ones that simply toppled Saddam Hussein but the ones -- made in May 2003, at the start of the formal US occupation -- to actively undermine authoritarian Sunni minority rule in Iraq. "Whatever the reason," says Achcar, "the fact is that Bush Jr. and his collaborators have acted for a while in conformity with their democratic proclamations." These decisions unleashed a major "nightmare" because they "opened the way for the Iraqi people to seize control of their own destinies... to the benefit of Islamic fundamentalist forces, somewhat on the Iranian pattern." The "clumsiness" is particularly difficult to explain in the terms of Realpolitik since regime change -- without Shiite empowerment -- could have been accomplished "more effectively...had the Bush administration acted from a craftily Machiavellian perspective and managed to get hold of Iraq through an arrangement with the Iraqi army and other apparatuses of the Baathist state."

If there is room for rapprochement between Achcar and Chomsky, it is because Achcar actually agrees that the familiar "realist" crowd never would -- and never did -- jettison craftily Machiavellian perspectives on foreign policy. Achcar insists, however, that on the key questions regarding the political outcome in Iraq -- de-Baathification, military dissolution, and Shiite power -- the "administration was divided." Realists fought against all of these policies for post-invasion Iraq, favoring something more like a US-backed military coup that would result in a political outcome akin to Saddamism-without-Saddam and an "arrangement" with the Baathist state. There was, however, a rival faction within the Bush administration: the so-called neo-conservatives, vaguely defined as those who favored a "crusade for bringing democracy" to Iraq. Neo-conservatives championed comprehensive de-Baathification and dissolution of the Sunni-led military establishment -- even if it meant empowering Iraqi Shiites.

Chomsky, however, seems not to have taken note of neo-conservatives or any factional battles within the Bush administration. In his many interviews on the war in Iraq, he rarely if ever says anything about neo-conservatives (a peculiar asymmetry in light of neo-conservative vilification of Chomsky). His analysis posits not only Realpolitik, but a unified actor. One of the great merits of Achcar's analysis, by contrast, is his attention to the crucial split between neo-conservatives and realists in Washington.

Machiavelli for Zionists

Do neo-conservatives represent the antithesis of Realpolitik? Are neo-conservatives bumbling crackpot idealists who unwittingly opened Pandora's box in Iraq by substituting idealistic dreams of democracy ahead of realist Machiavellian statecraft? Indeed, Achcar suggests that the neo-conservative agenda for Iraq represents "a typical case of self-deception." Perhaps. Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan, in a typical attack on the neo-conservatives, published an October 2003 Realpolitik manifesto -- This Is Not a Time for Boy Scouts -- in which he condemned neo-conservative zeal as "almost indistinguishable from that of the liberal imperialists" who think foreign policy should be guided by morality. Another defender of Realpolitik, John J. Mearsheimer, dismisses neo-conservative theory as "essentially Wilsonianism with teeth."

Some neo-conservatives welcome that depiction, if not the accompanying criticism. William Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan, two prominent neo-conservatives, insist that their book, The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission, "wears its heart on its sleeve" (p.ix). They present a relentless critique of "a narrow realpolitik that defined America's vital interests in terms of oil wells, strategic chokepoints and regional stability" (p.viii). Even as they celebrate "creating democracy in a land that for decades has known only dictatorship" (p.ix), they make no mention of -- and seem utterly oblivious to -- the prospect of Iraqi democracy emboldening Shiites in Iraq, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.

Kristol and Kaplan may be "Boy Scouts," as suggested by Brittan; or maybe they simply find it convenient to appear good-hearted and bumbling, as Chomsky warned. Either way, not all neo-conservatives wear their merit badges or their heart on their sleeve. The neo-conservative movement is hardly monolithic; there have been many fissures and splits along the way. The crucial point, however, is that some key neo-conservatives are as committed to cold-hearted Machiavellian Realpolitik as any so-called "realist." The battle dividing the Bush administration in Iraq is between two factions of Realpolitik strategists.

Indeed, as Achcar has recently noted, "in some neo-con circles" there is actually support for the same scenario feared most by Chomsky's realists: "some kind of Shia state controlling the bulk of Iraq's oil" that would align itself with Iranian Shiites and "unleash" Shiite power in the whole area, "including the Saudi Kingdom where the main oil producing area is inhabited by a Shia majority." To assume that evidence of neo-conservative support for de-Baathification in Iraq represents a simple blunder by naïve and incompetent Wilsonian idealists is, at best, a misunderstanding -- at worst, a serious underestimation -- of neo-conservative visions for US foreign policy.

Consider, for example, David Wurmser's book, Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein (hereafter, TA). Wurmser published Tyranny's Ally while serving as a Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think tank long identified with neo-conservative foreign policy analysis. After his time at AEI, Wurmser moved on to service within the Bush administration, most recently serving as Middle East expert in the office of Vice President Richard Cheney. Published in 1999, the book is a Machiavellian tour de force -- and a blueprint for US policy in the Middle East. There are striking parallels between the policies endorsed in Wurmser's book and those enacted by the Bush administration at the start of the US war in Iraq.

Wurmser directly confronts so-called "realist" fears regarding Shiite power in Iraq.

"The ensuing chaos of any policy that generates upheaval in Iraq would offer the oppressed, majority Shi'ites of that country an opportunity to enhance their power and prestige. Fear that this would in turn enable Iran to extend its influence through its coreligionists has led Britain and the United States, along with our Middle Eastern allies, to regard a continued Sunni control of Iraq as the cornerstone for stability in the Levant. Saudi Arabia in particular fears that any Shi'ite autonomy or control in Iraq will undermine its own precarious stability, because an emboldened Shi'ite populace in Iraq could spread its fervor into Saudi Arabia's predominantly Shi'ite northeastern provinces. The Saudi government also fears that this upheaval could spread to predominantly Shi'ite Bahrain, or to other gulf states with large Shi'ite minorities." (TA, p.73)

Wurmser's book is animated by a persistent focus on "balance of power" realist politics. "Iran and Iraq... are serious threats to the United States. How can we vanquish one without helping the other? Similarly, how can we deal either with a radical, secular, pan-Arabic nationalism or with fundamentalist pan-Islamism without allowing one to benefit from the other's defeat? (TA, p.72). For Bush and Scowcroft -- and for the Clinton foreign policy team -- the only plausible response was a balance of power based on the "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran. Wurmser, however, proposes a Realpolitik basis for moving US policy from dual containment toward a "Dual Rollback of Iran and Iraq" (TA, p.72).

Wurmser offers a direct challenge to the underlying factual premise of balance-of-power policies in the Gulf, even as he embraces the Machiavellian principles of balance-of-power politics. "U.S. policy makers have long presumed that the majority Shi'ite population of Iraq would serve as Iran's fifth column there; but would it?" (TA, p.72). Wurmser thinks not. Instead, he argues that "Iraqi Shi'ites, if liberated from [Saddam's] tyranny, can be expected to present a challenge to Iran's influence and revolution" (TA, p.74). More specifically, Wurmser claims that "Shi'ite Islam is plagued by fissures, none of which has been carefully examined, let alone exploited, by the opponents of Iran's Islamic republic" (TA, p.74, emphasis added). The idea of exploiting fissures is entirely consistent with realist theories of power balancing.

Wurmser argues that at the theological core of the Iranian revolution is "a concept promoted by Ayatollah Khomeini, the wilayat al-faqih -- the rule of the jurisprudent" that served as "the bulldozer with which Khomeini razed the barrier between the clerics and the politicians" (TA, p.74). For Wurmser, the central strategic fissure within Shiite Islam is between those who favor Khomeini's vision and those who reject the rule of the jurisprudent. "The concept of wilayat al-faqih is rejected by most Shi'ite clerics outside Iran (and probably many of those within Iran, too)... The current leading ayatollah of Iraq, Ayatollah Sayyid 'Ali Sistani, has reaffirmed [this rejection], much to the chagrin of the Iranian government" (TA, p.75).

Wurmser suggests that the US could and should exploit this fissure to its own advantage. The "liberation" of the Iraqi Shia can be used to achieve a "Regional Rollback of Shi'ite Fundamentalism."

"[A] shift of the Shi'ite center of gravity toward Iraq has larger, regional implications. Through intermarriage, history, and social relations, the Shi'ites of Lebanon have traditionally maintained close ties with the Shi'ites of Iraq. The Lebanese Shi'ite clerical establishment has customarily been politically quiescent, like the Iraqi Shi'ites. The Lebanese looked to Najaf's clerics for spiritual models [until it was transformed into a regional outpost for Iranian influence]. Prying the Lebanese Shi'ites away from a defunct Iranian revolution and reacquainting them with the Iraqi Shi'ite community could significantly help to shift the region's balance and to whittle away at Syria's power" (TA, p.107, 110).

The core of the Regional Rollback, however, is Iran. For Wurmser, so-called "realists" have always been correct to emphasize the link between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites, but they have misunderstood the potential nature of the link. If realists have traditionally feared Iranian influence in Iraq, Wurmser argues that the more likely scenario is Iraqi influence in Iran. The demise of traditional Sunni rule over the Iraqi Shiites "could potentially trigger a reversal" of fortune for the Iranian regime.

"Liberating the Shi'ite centers in Najaf and Karbala, with their clerics who reject the wilayat al-faqih, could allow Iraqi Shi'ites to challenge and perhaps fatally derail the Iranian revolution. For the first time in half a century, Iraq has the chance to replace Iran as the center of Shi'ite thought, thus resuming its historic place, with its tradition of clerical quiescence and of challenge to Sunni absolutism... A free Iraqi Shi'ite community would be a nightmare for the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran" (TA, p.78-79).

For Wurmser, the liberation of Najaf and Karbala would promote and empower potential US allies in Iraq and Iran. Wurmser's strategy foresees US military intervention against the Sunni minority in Iraq, not primarily as a springboard for further military intervention in Iran, but as the Iraqi detonator for a populist, Shiite-led rebellion against rival clerics in Iran. Neo-conservative support for the political ascendance of Shiite Iraq is not about the principle of democracy. Nor are neo-conservatives blind to the ways in which regime change in Iraq might transform the relationship between Iraq and Iran. Neo-conservatives who favor de-Baathification in Iraq might seem like blundering fools who would unwittingly hand Iraq to Iranian clerics. Wumser's scheme, however, is to hand Iran to Iraqi clerics, especially the followers of Ayatollah Sayyid 'Ali Sistani. For Wurmser, the road to Tehran begins in Najaf.

Wurmser is hardly alone in his strategic vision for the Middle East. His successor at AEI, Reuel Marc Gerecht -- formerly a CIA agent in Iran -- enthusiastically embraces the same vision for dual rollback in Iraq and Iran. In a May 2001 article entitled "Liberate Iraq," Gerecht dismisses "fear of an Iraqi-Iranian Shi'ite collusion upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East. This kind of fraternity between Iraqi and Iranian Shi'ites simply does not exist -- except in the minds of Republican 'realists' who tragically used this argument a decade ago." An August 2002 article entitled "Regime Change in Iran?" makes the case for dual rollback and argues that the ascendance of the Iraqi Shia "will be brutal for the mullahs." Similarly, a March 2003 article by Michael Ledeen -- another prominent neo-conservative at AEI -- predicts, "If we understand this war correctly, the Iraqi Shi'ites will fight alongside us against the Iranian terrorists."

 

That is a very big "if" at the heart of neo-conservative thinking about Iraq and Iran. Richard Perle, doyen of neo-conservatives at AEI, writes in his 2003 book with David Frum, An End to Evil (hereafter, EE), that "President Bush took an enormous risk in Iraq. The risk could well have gone wrong -- and it could still go wrong" (p.36). Similarly, Gerecht warns that "the mullahs" -- once they saw signs of Iraqi Shiite rule in Iraq -- would fight back. Gerecht's August 2002 Weekly Standard article acknowledges that "the Bush administration should prepare itself for Iranian mischief in Iraq's politics."

In advance of the war, however, neo-conservatives found comfort in some "area studies" research -- which they published and promoted -- that found reason to believe Iraqi Shiites might ultimately prevail in any intra-Shiite competition between clerics in Iraq and Iran. In an April 2000 book Who Rules Iran?, published by the Washington Institute, Wilfred Buchta argues that Ayatollah 'Ali Khamene'i, successor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has "a theological Achilles' heel" -- unlike Khomeini before him, and unlike Sistani in Iraq, Khamene'i is not a Grand Ayatollah. In his review of clerical opposition to the Iranian regime, Buchta describes Sistani as "Khamene'i's most serious competitor for the religious leadership of Shi'is throughout the world" (p.89).

Whatever the particular merits or deficiencies of Wurmser's analysis of fissures within Shiite Islam, these do not fully explain the intensity of "realist" opposition to Bush administration policies in Iraq. Neither realists nor neoconservatives shed tears for Saddam Hussein, nor would either grieve the fall of the incumbent Iranian regime. Realists, however, fear that the end of Sunni Arab control in Iraq and the rise of the Shia will tip the balance of power in the Persian Gulf away from a key US ally: the Sunni Arab regime in Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, neo-conservatives agree with realists that the Saudi regime fears Shiite regional power. Echoing the "nightmare" scenario articulated by Chomsky and the "realists," neo-conservatives like Richard Perle agree that the House of Saud has good reason to fear a Shia Gulf.

"[W]hile the royal family, the government, and the moneyed elite all live on the western, Red Sea side of the country, the oil is located on the eastern, Persian Gulf side. And while the people in the west are almost uniformly Sunni, one-third of the people in the Eastern Province... are Shiites.... Independence for the Eastern Province would obviously be a catastrophic outcome for the Saudi state" (EE, p.141).

Sounds just like the realists -- but with a crucial twist. Unlike Chomsky's realists, Perle and Frum think that Shiite control of Arabian Peninsula oil would be catastrophic for the Saudi state, but think it "might be a very good outcome for the United States" (EE, p. 141). This is the great neo-conservative heresy. If realists make little or no distinction between what is good for the Saudis and what is good for the United States, neo-conservatives regard Saudi Arabia as an unreliable, if not downright hostile, regime. Wurmser describes the "Saudi Wahhabi state" as "particularly menacing" (TA, p.68).

Varieties of American Imperialism

Disagreement over the strategic value of the US-Saudi alliance goes to the heart of the venomous battle that has long raged between neo-conservatives and "realists." Indeed, the "Saudi" question is, in many respects, the constitutive difference that cuts through the fog that otherwise surrounds the civil war in Washington over the political outcome of regime change in Iraq.

The earliest evidence of a split between neo-conservatives and "realists" -- the decision by Ronald Reagan to sell Saudi Arabia an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) -- is also the most illuminating for making sense of the division. The most useful expression of neo-conservative hope for Reagan administration foreign policy and of subsequent "anguish" comes from a May 1982 New York Times Magazine essay penned by self-proclaimed neo-conservative, Norman Podhoretz, long-serving editor of Commentary, the official publication of the American Jewish Committee. After the fall of the Shah in Iran, Podhoretz explains, neo-conservatives looked forward with great enthusiasm to Reagan's plan for "shoring up the American position" in the Persian Gulf in order "to secure the oilfields against either a direct or an indirect Soviet move." This would be accomplished by stationing "American ground forces somewhere in the region," perhaps on the Israeli-occupied Sinai peninsula.

Neo-conservative hopes were dashed, however, when "this new idea was dropped" after "Saudis...voiced their opposition." For fear that the oil-rich "Saudis might have done something to damage" the US economy, explains Podhoretz, Reagan fell into the "habit of appeasing Saudi Arabia." Having lost the Shah, the US would now "supply the Saudis with advanced weaponry, including the Awacs planes... depending upon them to police the region" on behalf of the US.

Podhoretz argues that the decision to substitute the fallen Iranian regime with a Saudi surrogate was "bad... on its own terms," that is, for the immediate strategic interests of the United States. If Iran under the Shah proved to be an unreliable "pillar of sand" for the US, "what could we expect of Saudi Arabia?" But the tilt toward Saudi Arabia was "all the more disturbing in its implications for the American connection with Israel" because "the Saudis refused to join" a "de facto alliance" that would "unite the moderate Arab states and Israel."

Podhoretz rejects as false the "general impression" that all neo-conservatives are Jewish, and in no way claims that all supporters of Israel are neo-conservatives. Indeed, the vast majority of Jewish voters and not a few Zionists remain loyal to the Democratic Party. Podhoretz acknowledges, however, "it is certainly true that all neo-conservatives are strong supporters of Israel" who "would all agree that at a minimum the United States has a vital interest in the survival" of Israel as an "outpost" of "the free world." That is, if forced by Arab-Israeli conflict to choose between a strategic alliance with the Saudis and one with the Israelis, neo-conservatives support the latter, rather than the former.

Neo-conservatives lost the battle to prevent the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia, but that fight serves as an extremely useful proxy for distinguishing between "neo" conservatives -- who believe that US interests are best served by reliance on Israel, if only that relationship were not regularly jeopardized by the American habit of appeasing the Saudis -- and "realist" conservatives -- who believe that US interests are best served by reliance on Saudi Arabia, if only that were not jeopardized by the American habit of appeasing the Israelis.

The AWACS battle reveals the misleading and potentially self-serving function of labels like "realist" and "neo-conservative," then and now. Whatever the historical salience of the "neo-conservative" label, the term is neither adequate nor helpful in clarifying the defining qualities of the faction. The "neo" in neo-conservatives initially described liberals and anti-Stalinist Leftists who made common cause -- on a number of different political fronts -- with various factions of the traditional Right. Notwithstanding the diversity of neo-conservatives on a host of issues, however, the AWACS issue did a great deal to reveal a crucial division on the Right. As Podhoretz argued, the AWACS affair indicated that -- in matters of foreign policy -- "neo-conservatives" are united in support of Israel. More specifically, neo-conservatives are Right "Zionists" who believe US supremacy in the Persian Gulf is best protected by the US-Israeli alliance. As Podhoretz indicated, not all neo-conservatives are Jewish; so, too, not all are "new" to the Right.

The label "realist" may provide an implicit contrast with allegedly "unrealistic" or "idealistic" neo-conservatives, but it obscures more than it reveals about "realist" commitments in the Middle East. To judge from the Reagan administration AWACS affair, the so-called "realists" are Right "Arabists" who believe that US supremacy in the Persian Gulf is best protected by the US-Saudi alliance. Very few are Arab; some are Jewish.

Each side of this split regularly accuses the other of bad faith -- of trying to serve two flags at once. Right Zionists insist that US recognition of Israel as a strategic asset is compromised by the influence of "big oil" money. Richard Perle and David Frum, for example, insist that the Saudis distort the prevailing US assessment of its strategic interests in the Persian Gulf.

"The reason our policy toward Saudi Arabia has been so abject for so long is not mere error. Our policy has been abject because so many of those who make the policy have been bought and paid for by the Saudis... [T]oo many of our recent ambassadors to Saudi Arabia have served as shills for Saudi Arabia the instant they returned home" (EE, p.141-142).

Similarly, critics of the US-Israeli alliance portray Israel as a strategic burden, rather than an asset. Most recently, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published an article in the London Review of Books entitled, "The Israel Lobby."

"Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of [Israel]... One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests... [but] the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby.'"

Each side questions the strategic wisdom of appeasing the other side and searches for extra-strategic explanations for a strategic disagreement. The central strategic question, however, is unavoidable for any empire: which proxy state can most reliably "police" imperial interests?

Right Zionists and Right Arabists tend to agree that recurring battles in the US over policy toward Iraq and Iran are often "proxies" for larger strategic questions about the wisdom of the US alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia. Right Arabists like Caspar Weinberger, in his 1990 memoir, Fighting for Peace (hereafter, FP) argue that Israel survives, in part, through classic balance-of-power strategies. In explaining the basis for long-standing ties between Israel and the Shah of Iran, for example, Weinberger describes "a natural affinity of all religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East to unite (when at all they unite) against the vast majority -- the Arab population. Hence some Jews, Christians, Turks, and Persians have long linkages... Israel had close ties to Iran under the Shah" (FP, p.365).

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion allegedly referred to this strategy as the "Doctrine of the Periphery." Gary Sick, a former Carter administration NSC staffer and a critic of Right Zionist activities with the US, describes the "Doctrine" -- which he calls "a touchstone for Israeli foreign policy -- in his 1991 book October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan.

"This doctrine was predicated on the belief that while Israel was destined to be surrounded permanently by a ring of hostile Arab states, just outside this hostile ring there were non-Arab states such as Turkey, Ethiopia and Iran that were themselves frequently at odds with the Arabs and therefore potential allies of Israel. It was a classic case of the old maxim, 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend,' raised to the level of international policy" (p.60).

The Doctrine of the Periphery is simply Realpolitik for Right Zionists. For Israel and Right Zionists, however, the 1979 Iranian Revolution created complex new risks and opportunities for the Doctrine of the Periphery. On the one hand, there was the immediate crisis of anti-Zionist and anti-American zeal within the Revolution. On the other hand, the Shiite Revolution seemed likely to embolden Shia insurgents in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Gulf Emirates and aggravate hostilities between Arab and Shiite populations. For Right Zionists, the risk of Shiite anti-Zionism was partially offset by the opportunity for a strengthened alliance of the periphery forged on the basis of aggravated rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

For Right Arabists, Iranian hostility toward the US, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia pointed in one direction and one direction only: support for incumbent Arab regimes. At the start of the Iran-Iraq war, the US remained officially neutral. But Caspar Weinberger (Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration) acknowledges that he found it "difficult... to remain neutral... we 'tilted' toward Iraq" (FP, p.358).

This tilt toward Iraq -- in the service of the US-Saudi Alliance -- was a grave concern for Right Zionists. Notwithstanding the anti-Zionist and anti-American fervor of the Iranian regime, Right Zionists like Michael Ledeen -- a key player in the Iran-Contra affair -- viewed the Iran-Iraq war very differently from those like Weinberger who tilted toward Iraq. In his 1988 memoir, Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's Account of the Iran-Contra Affair (herafter, PS), Ledeen explains, "Israel was far more concerned about Iraq than about Iran, since Iraq had participated in the Arab wars against Israel... Iran, at least in the short run, posed no comparable threat to Israel" (PS, p.100). Even as Saudi Arabia -- and Right Zionists like Weinberger -- became pivotal supporters of Iraq in the 1980s Gulf War, Israel -- along with Right Zionists like Ledeen -- championed Iran in its battle against Iraq. As for the Iranians, Ledeen is quick to point out that their "hatred of Judaism did not prevent them from buying weapons from the Jewish state" (PS, p.97).

The AWACS battle lines held in the Iran-Contra affair. Weinberger refers to Iran-Contra as an "Israeli-Iranian plot." For Right Zionists like Wurmser, Weinberger's unofficial tilt toward Saddam Hussein -- akin to a Saudi-Iraqi plot -- helped the US become tyranny's ally. So, too, Weinberger's great fear was that any outreach to Iran "would adversely affect our newly emerging relationship with Iraq" (FP, p.364-366). Right Zionists feared the exact opposite -- that the "newly emerging relationship" between the US and Iraq would adversely affect the US-Israeli alliance.

In many respects, Right Zionist war plans for Iraq represents an audacious attempt to reverse the pro-Saudi tilt in US policy that developed in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution and deepened with the movement of US forces onto Saudi soil following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Make no mistake: the US invaded Iraq, but it went to war with the Saudis. The Iraqi political tilt toward Iran is not an accident -- the unintended consequence of bumbling naiveté -- so much as the heart of a future geo-strategic alliance with Iranian Shiites, if not the incumbent clerical regime.

Right Arabists understand the stakes quite well and this -- more than any dovish conversion on the road to Baghdad -- explains the vehemence of their "anti-war" opposition. Although they have attacked the war on a variety of fronts -- for its aggressive unilateralism, its abuse of intelligence, its abuse of prisoners, etc. -- the heart of the critique has always been the political outcome -- symbolized by de-Baathification and the disbanding of the Sunni-led Iraqi Army.

The most famous Right Arabist attack on the Iraq war -- celebrated by much of the Left--remains Richard Clarke's 2004 book, Against All Enemies -- an "insider" account that ostensibly confirmed the senselessness of the US invasion of Iraq and highlighted -- in the person of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (p.30) -- Right Zionist attempts to use 9/11 as a springboard for promoting their agenda for Iraq. "Instead of addressing [the al Qaeda] with all the necessary attention it required, we went off on a tangent, off after Iraq," Clarke complains (p.286-287). The war in Iraq is a "mistaken and costly" attack on "an oil-rich Arab country that posed no threat to us" (p.264-266). Beyond the headline-grabbing charge that the invasion of Iraq was a "tangent" that sidetracked the war on terror, however, Clarke also offers an entirely different -- if less publicized -- "insider" analysis of the Realpolitik rationale for war.

Clarke asserts that al Qaeda inaugurated "a war intended to replace the House of Saud" (p.282). According to Clarke, it was "concern with the long-term stability of the House of Saud" (p.265) in light of the challenge from al Qaeda that led "some in the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney" (p.283) to favor war with Iraq. "With Saddam gone, they believed, the U.S. could reduce its dependence on Saudi Arabia, could pull forces out of the Kingdom, and could open up an alternative source of oil" (p.283). The war on Iraq was, in effect, an indirect attack on the House of Saud.

Clarke is not persuaded. "The risk that the United States runs is of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy" that will undermine the House of Saud "without a plan or any influence about what would happen next... The future and stability of Saudi Arabia is of paramount importance to the United States; our policy cannot just be one of reducing our dependence upon it" (p.283). Just for good measure, Clarke criticizes "firing of the army and de-Baathification" in Iraq (p.272). The Right Arabist critique, in a nutshell.

What's Left?

The vilification of the "neo-conservative" Right Zionists may be well deserved. According to the worst accusations, they are agents of Israel who serve a foreign flag. At best, they represent one imperialist faction within the US foreign policy establishment -- the faction that believes Israel is able to police the Middle East and secure US access to the region's strategic oil resources and the Suez Canal. Anti-imperialists on the Left have good reason to oppose this as an imperialist war and rightly assert that no more US troops should die in order to make the Middle East safe for US empire.

In doing so, however, the Left sometimes runs the risk of becoming unwitting partners in an intra-imperialist battle between Right Zionists and Right Arabists. Right Arabists -- like Brent Scowcroft and General Anthony Zinni--posing as the equivalent of Republican "anti-war activists" do not demand immediate withdrawal of US troops; they attack the "incompetence" of those who have executed this war. Right Arabists are not opposed to the US micro-managing the political outcome in Iraq; they oppose the particular outcome that empowers Iraqi Shiites and Kurds at the expense of Sunni Arab power in Iraq and beyond.

The anti-imperialist Left has no business aligning itself with Right Arabists, and yet the dangerous consequences of this alliance have only grown as Right Arabists have begun to regain control of the US ship of state. Nowhere is the risk for the Left more evident than in the writing of Robert Dreyfuss, a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.

Dreyfuss is a good reporter and, to his credit, he understands the Right Zionist and Right Arabist battle lines within the Bush administration. However, because all of his political firepower is directed at the "neocon-dominated" United States, his critique is completely neutralized in those instances where Right Arabists have managed to regain some influence over Iraq policy. Dreyfuss pins everything on the idea that Right Zionists are dominating US policy. It legitimizes his uncritical embrace of Right Arabist perspectives on Iraq.

In a December 2004 comment, for example, Dreyfuss finds evidence of considerable Right Zionist panic, expressed by "leading neocon strategist" Max Singer, that Right Arabists were winning greater influence over Iraq policy. "What world is Singer living in?" asks Dreyfuss. "The United States is supporting the Sunnis and Baathists? Course not."

More recently, Dreyfuss has acknowledged that the balance in US policy might have shifted back toward the Right Arabists. In an article sub-titled "Bring Back the Baath," Dreyfuss reports on "U.S.-Baath Talks."

"What the United States ought to have done two years ago -- namely, make a deal with the resistance and its core Baathist leadership -- might, after all, be happening. It is unclear how far up the food chain in the Bush administration this effort goes, but it appears that a desperate Ambassador Khalilzad has realized the importance of forging ties to the Baath party... That's all good...."

If Dreyfuss feels awkward about declaring the increasingly Right Arabist inclinations of a Republican administration "all good," he certainly hides it well. Give Dreyfuss the benefit of the doubt and assume that his pro-Baathist perspective is derived not from his love of Sunni Arab authoritarianism but the fact that the "resistance and its core Baathist leadership" offer the best chances for driving the US out of Iraq. That remains to be seen. If the US makes its peace with the Baathists, it is Sistani and the Iraqi Shiites who may ultimately drive the US out of Iraq.

Whatever his intentions, however, Dreyfuss has become a pawn of Right Arabists. Not surprisingly, they have embraced him openly. Charles Freeman, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a prominent Right Arabist, provides a glowing blurb on the back cover of the book. Moreover, key chapters on Right Zionists draw on interviews with Freeman, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James Atkins, and other prominent Right Arabists whom Dreyfuss quotes approvingly.

The Left would do well to remember that there are at least two imperialist camps in Washington -- one Right Arabist and one Right Zionist. Both are "sensible," within the framework of imperialist statecraft. Neither deserves our embrace. Will Sistani -- like the Shah before him -- collaborate with Israel and police US interests in the Middle East? Or will the Baathists and Saudis patrol the region for the US? These are urgent questions for US imperialism. Not so for the anti-imperialist Left. Our demand is simple: Bring the troops home. Now. 

Jonathan Cutler teaches sociology at Wesleyan University. For more Iraq analysis and commentary, go to his blog,  www.profcutler.com.

But judging failure and holding those responsible to account has been complicated by a lack of clarity about what exactly that mission was. So many justifications for war have been offered that its supporters have found it relatively easy to respond to the collapse of one by seeking refuge in another. It is only comparatively recently that they have run out of places to hide. The WMD case was beginning to unravel even before Bush declared victory. As the most recent US state department report demonstrates, terrorism is a greater threat than ever. There has been no "democratic domino effect" sweeping across the Middle East. And even the claim to have liberated Iraqis from a cruel and despotic regime now seems increasingly forlorn.

The failure to achieve these war aims would be bad enough in view of the enormous cost in blood and treasure, but there is now considerable evidence to suggest that in most respects the invasion has made a bad situation worse. That there was no Iraqi WMD threat, or even the prospect of one, is less of a problem than that the risks of proliferation have increased. The Blair-Bush-Gadafy axis of desperation may have delivered Libya's paltry WMD programme in exchange for international rehabilitation, but in the far more serious case of Iran, the Iraq quagmire means that Washington has few good options for preventing the mullahs going nuclear.

More broadly, Iraq has served to dramatically weaken the deterrence effect of American military power. Post-cold war American military planning had been based on a two-war standard: the ability to fight two medium-sized wars in separate theatres simultaneously. Iraq has revealed America's inability to contain even a single low-intensity insurgency without absorbing a large proportion of its available strength. Tied down, Gulliver-like, America today gives potential rogue states little reason to fear its wrath.

The argument that the invasion of Iraq was a natural extension of the war on terror was always weak. In fact, Iraq is a much bigger terrorist threat now that Saddam has gone. Claims of a link between Ba'athism and al-Qaida have become self-fulfilling as Islamists have been able to position themselves in the vanguard of opposition to the occupation. Furthermore, Iraq provides an ideal laboratory for perfecting the kind of terrorism al-Qaida wants to export to the west. Unlike Afghanistan, which was little more than a jihadi playground, Iraq supplies an urban setting, an active theatre of operations and a steady supply of western targets.

In a report last autumn, a leading expert on counter-terrorism, Anthony Cordesman, identified 39 "major adaptations" in the tactics and capabilities of the insurgency. Many of these skills and the people who have perfected them could easily be used to bring violence to our own streets. It is a horrifying thought, but it is perhaps only a matter of time before suicide bombers carrying backpacks are replaced by Baghdad-style car bombs that are much harder to detect and are capable of killing hundreds instead of dozens.

The idea that the removal of Saddam's regime would unleash a wave of democratic sentiment across Iraq and the wider Arab world had its brief, heady moment of apparent realisation last year with elections in Egypt, Palestine and Iraq. How different things look in 2006. With the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and the theocratic Shia parties the main beneficiaries of the vote, the triumphalist "end of history" assumption that democracy will always replicate pro-western outcomes has been exposed for the wishful thinking it always was.

Meanwhile, the pro-democracy movement in Iran - the Middle Eastern country where it stood probably the greatest chance of indigenous success - has been suppressed as part of an authoritarian backlash against the perceived threat of American influence on its borders. The politics of national security always favour the demagogue, and President Ahmadinejad should be counted as one of the main beneficiaries of the Iraq war.

In many parts of Iraq real political power has passed to the street, where militias aligned to the ruling parties enforce their own laws, using violence against opponents of the regime, women who refuse to wear the veil and shopkeepers who sell alcohol. Much has been made of the suggestion that the supposedly moderate prime minister designate, Jawad al-Maliki, intends to disband the militias. Yet Maliki, deputy leader of the Islamist Dawa party, has promised to do no such thing. His plan is to merge the militias into the security forces, giving official sanction to their already widespread penetration of police and army. Whether it is in the ministries of Baghdad or on the streets of Basra, Iraq is now ruled by people who in any other context would be denounced by liberal hawks as Islamofacists.

The argument of last resort for those who supported regime change has always been that at least Saddam has gone and the torture chambers have been closed. Even that has turned out to be an illusion, with the news that the director of the Baghdad morgue has had to flee Iraq under threat of death for revealing that thousands of Iraqis are being killed by death squads, many of them linked to the interior ministry. Some of the victims have apparently been tortured to death with electric drills. The build up to war was full of contested claims about Saddam's secret police feeding his opponents into industrial shredders. Is our success to be measured in the transition from shredders to electric drills?

The final line of defence is to question the priorities of those who continue to raise Iraq, and dismiss the issue as a bore. Most of us would gladly move on from Iraq, be we should not do so on the self-interested terms demanded by those who led us to this disaster. Not while the people of Iraq continue to suffer the consequences. Not while those responsible remain in power. Not while there is the remotest chance that it might happen again.

Sounds worse than Dr. Jawad Al-Ali (55), director of the Oncology Center at the largest hospital in Basra, Iraq stated, at a recent ( 2003) conference in Japan:

"Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before. The first is double and triple cancers in one patient. For example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with 2 cancers - one in his stomach and kidney. Months later, primary cancer was developing in his other kidney--he had three different cancer types. The second is the clustering of cancer in families. We have 58 families here with more than one person affected by cancer. Dr Yasin, a general Surgeon here has two uncles, a sister and cousin affected with cancer. Dr Mazen, another specialist, has six family members suffering from cancer. My wife has nine members of her family with cancer".

"Children in particular are susceptible to DU poisoning. They have a much higher absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bones and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be diseases affecting them the most, however, cancer of the lymph system which can develop anywhere on the body, and has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is now also common.",

"We were accused of spreading propaganda for Saddam before the war. When I have gone to do talks I have had people accuse me of being pro-Saddam. Sometimes I feel afraid to even talk. Regime people have been stealing my data and calling it their own, and using it for their own agendas. The Kuwaitis banned me from entering Kuwait - we were accused of being Saddam supporters."

John Hanchette, a journalism professor at St. Bonaventure University, and one of the founding editors of USA TODAY related the following to DU researcher Leuren Moret. He stated that he had prepared news breaking stories about the effects of DU on Gulf War soldiers and Iraqi citizens, but that each time he was ready to publish, he received a phone call from the Pentagon asking him not to print the story. He has since been replaced as editor of USA TODAY.

Dr. Keith Baverstock, The World Health Organization's chief expert on radiation and health for 11 years and author of an unpublished study has charged that his report " on the cancer risk to civilians in Iraq from breathing uranium contaminated dust " was also deliberately suppressed.

The information released by the U.S. Dept. of Defense is not reliable, according to some sources even within the military.

In 1997, while citing experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as saying,

"The [US government's] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body."


At that time Dr. Durakovic was a colonel in the U.S. Army. He has since left the military, to found the Uranium Medical Research Center, a privately funded organization with headquarters in Canada.

PFC Stuart Grainger of 23 Army Division, 34th Platoon. (Names and numbers have been changed) was diagnosed with cancer several after returning from Iraq. Seven other men in the Platoon also have malignancies.

Doug Rokke, U.S. Army contractor who headed a clean-up of depleted uranium after the first Gulf War states:,

"Depleted uranium is a crime against God and humanity."

Rokke's own crew, a hundred employees, was devastated by exposure to the fine dust. He stated:

"When we went to the Gulf, we were all really healthy,"

After performing clean-up operations in the desert (mistakenly without protective gear), 30 members of his staff died, and most others"including Rokke himself"developed serious health problems. Rokke now has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts, and kidney problems.

"We warned the Department of Defense in 1991 after the Gulf War. Their arrogance is beyond comprehension.


Yet the D.O.D still insists such ingestion is "not sufficient to make troops seriously ill in most cases."

Then why did it make the clean up crew seriously or terminally ill in nearly all cases?

Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore Lab, was asked if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb.

"That's exactly what they are. They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way."

According to Falk, more than 30 percent of the DU fired from the cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles one-tenth of a micron (one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on impact. "The larger the bang" the greater the amount of DU that is dispersed into the atmosphere, Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs, nearly 100 percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the "micron size" or smaller, he said.

When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Falk was more specific:

"I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people."


When a DU round or bomb strikes a hard target, most of its kinetic energy is converted to heat " sufficient heat to ignite the DU. From 40% to 70% of the DU is converted to extremely fine dust particles of ceramic uranium oxide (primarily dioxide, though other formulations also occur). Over 60% of these particles are smaller than 5 microns in diameter, about the same size as the cigarette ash particles in cigarette smoke and therefore respirable.

Because conditions are so chaotic in Iraq, the medical infrastructure has been greatly compromised. In terms of both cancer and birth defects due to DU, only a small fraction of the cases are being reported.

Doctors in southern Iraq are making comparisons to the birth defects that followed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII. They have numerous photos of infants born without brains, with their internal organs outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without spines, and the list of deformities goes on an on. Such birth defects were extremely rare in Iraq prior to the large scale use of DU. Weapons. Now they are commonplace. In hospitals across Iraq, the mothers are no longer asking, "Doctor, is it a boy or girl?" but rather, "Doctor, is it normal?" The photos are horrendous, they can be viewed on the following website

Ross B. Mirkarimi, a spokesman at The Arms Control Research Centre stated:

"Unborn children of the region are being asked to pay the highest price, the integrity of their DNA."

Prior to her death from leukemia in Sept. 2004, Nuha Al Radi , an accomplished Iraqi artist and author of the "Baghdad Diaries" wrote:

"Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or friend of a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not know? Apparently, over thirty percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukemia."

"The depleted uranium left by the U.S. bombing campaign has turned Iraq into a cancer-infested country. For hundreds of years to come, the effects of the uranium will continue to wreak havoc on Iraq and its surrounding areas."

This excerpt in her diary was written in 1993, after Gulf War I (Approximately 300 tons of DU ordinance, mostly in desert areas) but before Operation Iraqi Freedom, (Est. 1,700 tons with much more near major population centers). So, it's 5-6 times worse now than it was when she wrote than diary entry!! Estimates of the percentage of D.U. which was 'aerosolized' into fine uranium oxide dust are approximately 30-40%. That works out to over one million pounds of dust scattered throughout Iraq.

As a special advisor to the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Dr. Ahmad Hardan has documented the effects of DU in Iraq between 1991 and 2002.

"American forces admit to using over 300 tons of DU weapons in 1991. The actual figure is closer to 800. This has caused a health crisis that has affected almost a third of a million people. As if that was not enough, America went on and used 200 tons more in Bagdad alone during the recent invasion.

I don"t know about other parts of Iraq, it will take me years to document that.

"In Basra, it took us two years to obtain conclusive proof of what DU does, but we now know what to look for and the results are terrifying."

By far the most devastating effect is on unborn children. Nothing can prepare anyone for the sight of hundreds of preserved fetuses " scarcely human in appearance. Iraq is now seeing babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors where their eyes should be, or with a single eye-like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific.



Dr. Hardan also states:

"I arranged for a delegation from Japan's Hiroshima Hospital to come and share their expertise in the radiological diseases we

Are likely to face over time. The delegation told me the Americans had objected and they decided not to come. Similarly, a world famous German cancer specialist agreed to come, only to be told later that he would not be given permission to enter Iraq."

Not only are we poisoning the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, but we are making a concerted effort to keep out specialists from other countries who can help. The U.S. Military doesn"t want the rest of the world to find out what we have done.

Such relatively swift development of cancers has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the US military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure.
Just 467 US personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served in the first Gulf War now have medical problems.

Although not reported in the mainstream American press, a recent Tokyo tribunal, guided by the principles of International Criminal Law and International Humanitarian Law, found President George W. Bush guilty of war crimes. On March 14, 2004, Nao Shimoyachi, reported in The Japan Times that President Bush was found guilty "for attacking civilians with indiscriminate weapons and other arms,"and the "tribunal also issued recommendations for banning Depleted Uranium shells and other weapons that indiscriminately harm people." Although this was a "Citizen's Court" having no legal authority, the participants were sincere in their determination that international laws have been violated and a war crimes conviction is warranted.

Troops involved in actual combat are not the only servicemen reporting symptoms. Four soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company serving in Iraq are among several members of the same company, the 442nd Military Police, who say they have been battling persistent physical ailments that began last summer in the Iraqi town of Samawah.

"I got sick instantly in June," said Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, a Brooklyn housing cop. "My health kept going downhill with daily headaches, constant numbness in my hands and rashes on my stomach."

Dr. Asaf Durakovic, UMRC founder, and nuclear medicine expert examined and tested nine soldiers from the company says that four "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells manufactured with depleted uranium. Laboratory tests revealed traces of two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the soldiers.

If so, the men - Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone - are the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.

The 442nd, made up for the most part of New York cops, firefighters and correction officers, is based in Orangeburg, Rockland County. Dispatched to Iraq in Easter of 2003, the unit's members had been providing guard duty for convoys, running jails and training Iraqi police. The entire company is due to return home later this month.

"These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle," said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the G.I.s and performed the testing.

In a group of eight U.S. led Coalition servicemen whose babies were born without eyes, seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust. In a much group (250 soldiers) exposed during the first Gulf war, 67% of the children conceived after the war had birth defects.

Dr. Durakovic's UMRC research team also conducted a three-week field trip to Iraq in October of 2003. It collected about 100 samples of substances such as soil, civilian urine and the tissue from the corpses of Iraqi soldiers in 10 cities, including Baghdad, Basra and Najaf. Durakovic said preliminary tests show that the air, soil and water samples contained "hundreds to thousands of times" the normal levels of radiation.

"This high level of contamination is because much more depleted uranium was used this year than in (the Gulf War of) 1991," Durakovic told The Japan Times.

"They are hampering efforts to prove the connection between Depleted Uranium and the illness," Durakovic said

"They do not want to admit that they committed war crimes" by using weapons that kill indiscriminately, which are banned under international law."

(NOTE ABOUT DR. DURAKOVIC; First, he was warned to stop his work, then he was fired from his position, then his house was ransacked, and he has also reported receiving death threats. Evidently the U.S. D.O.D is very keen on censoring DU whistle-blowers!)

Dr. Durakovic, UMRC research associates Patricia Horan and Leonard Dietz, published a unique study in the August 2002 issue of Military Medicine Medical Journal. The study is believed to be the first to look at inhaled DU among Gulf War veterans, using the ultrasensitive technique of thermal ionization mass spectrometry, which enabled them to easily distinguish between natural uranium and DU. The study, which examined British, Canadian and U.S. veterans, all suffering typical Gulf War Syndrome ailments, found that, nine years after the war, 14 of 27 veterans studied had DU in their urine. DU also was found in the lung and bone of a deceased Gulf War veteran. That no governmental study has been done on inhaled DU "amounts to a massive malpractice," Dietz said in an interview.

The Japanese began studying DU effects in the southern Iraq in the summer of 2003. They had a Geiger counter which they watched go off the scale on many occasions. During their visit,a local hospital was treating upwards of 600 children per day, many of which suffered symptoms of internal poisoning by radiation. 600 children per day? How many of these children will get cancer and suffer and early and painful death?

"Ingested DU particles can cause up to 1,000 times the damage of an X-ray", said Mary Olson, a nuclear waste specialist and biologist at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington D.C.

It is this difference in particle size as well as the dust's crystalline structure that make the presence of DU dust in the environment such an extreme hazard, and which differentiates its properties from that of the natural uranium dust that is ubiquitous and to which we all are exposed every day, which seldom reaches such a small size. This point is being stressed, as comparing DU particles to much larger natural ones is misleading.

The U.S. Military and its supporters regularly quote a Rand Corp. Study which uses the natural uranium inhaled by miners.

Particles smaller than 10 microns can access the innermost recesses of lung tissue where they become permanently lodged. Furthermore, if the substance is relatively insoluble, such as the ceramic DU-oxide dust produced from burning DU, it will remain in place for decades, dissolving very slowly into the bloodstream and lymphatic fluids through the course of time. Studies have identified DU in the urine of Gulf War veterans nine years after that conflict, testifying to the permanence of ceramic DU-oxide in the lungs. Thus the effects are far different from natural uranium dust, whose coarse particles are almost entirely excreted by the body within 24 hours.

The military is aware of DU's harmful effects on the human genetic code. A 2001 study of DU's effect on DNA done by Dr. Alexandra C. Miller for the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., indicates that DU's chemical instability causes 1 million times more genetic damage than would be expected from its radiation effect alone.

Studies have shown that inhaled nano-particles are far more toxic than micro-sized particles of the same basic chemical composition. British toxicopathologist Vyvyan Howard has reported that the increased toxicity of the nano-particle is due to its size.

For example, when mice were exposed to virus-size particles of Teflon (0.13 microns) in a University of Rochester study, there were no ill effects. But when mice were exposed to nano-particles of Teflon for 15 minutes, nearly all the mice died within 4 hours.

"Exposure pathways for depleted uranium can be through the skin, by inhalation, and ingestion," writes Lauren Moret, another DU researcher. "Nano-particles have high mobility and can easily enter the body. Inhalation of nano-particles of depleted uranium is the most hazardous exposure, because the particles pass through the lung-blood barrier directly into the blood.

"When inhaled through the nose, nano-particles can cross the olfactory bulb directly into the brain through the blood brain barrier, where they migrate all through the brain," she wrote. "Many Gulf era soldiers exposed to depleted uranium have been diagnosed with brain tumors, brain damage and impaired thought processes. Uranium can interfere with the mitochondria, which provide energy for the nerve processes, and transmittal of the nerve signal across synapses in the brain.

Based on dissolution and excretion rate data, it is possible to approximate the amount of DU initially inhaled by these veterans. For the handful of veterans studied, this amount averaged 0.34 milligrams. Knowing the specific activity (radiation rate) for DU allows one to determine that the total radiation (alpha, beta and gamma) occurring from DU and its radioactive decay products within their bodies comes to about 26 radiation events every second, or 800 million events each year. At .34 milligrams per dose, there are over 10 trillion doses floating around Iraq and Afghanistan.

How many additional deaths are we talking about? In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the UK Atomic Energy Authority came up with estimates for the potential effects of the DU contamination left by the conflict. It calculated that "this could cause "500,000 potential deaths". This was "a theoretical figure", it stressed, that indicated "a significant problem".

The AEA's calculation was made in a confidential memo to the privatized munitions company, Royal Ordnance, dated 30 April 1991. The high number of potential deaths was dismissed as "very far from realistic" by a British defense minister, Lord Gilbert. "Since the rounds were fired in the desert, many miles from the nearest village, it is highly unlikely that the local population would have been exposed to any significant amount of respirable oxide," he said. These remarks were made prior to the more recent invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, where DU munitions were used on a larger scale in and near many of the most populated areas. If the amount of DU ordinance used in the first Gulf War was sufficient to cause 500,000 potential deaths, (had it been used near the populated areas), then what of the nearly six times that amount used in operation Iraqi Freedom, which was used in and near the major towns and cities? Extrapolating the U.K. AEA estimate with this amount gives a figure of potentially 3 million extra deaths from inhaling DU dust in Iraq alone, not including Afghanistan. This is about 11% of Iraq's total population of 27 million. Dan Bishop, Ph.d chemist for IDUST feels that this estimate may be low, if the long life of DU dust is considered. In Afghanistan, the concentration in some areas is greater than Iraq.

What can an otherwise healthy person expect when inhaling the deadly dust? Captain Terry Riordon was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces serving in Gulf War I. He passed away in April 1999 at age 45. Terry left Canada a very fit man who did cross-country skiing and ran in marathons. On his return only two months later he could barely walk.

He returned to Canada in February 1991 with documented loss of motor control, chronic fatigue, respiratory difficulties, chest pain, difficulty breathing, sleep problems, short-term memory loss, testicle pain, body pains, aching bones, diarrhea, and depression. After his death, depleted uranium contamination was discovered in his lungs and bones. For eight years he suffered his innumerable ailments and struggled with the military bureaucracy and the system to get proper diagnosis and treatment. He had arranged, upon his death, to bequeath his body to the UMRC. Through his gift, the UMRC was able to obtain conclusive evidence that inhaling fine particles of depleted uranium dust completely destroyed his heath. How many Terry Riordans are out there among the troops being exposed, not to mention Iraqi and Afghan civilians?

Inhaling the dust will not kill large numbers of Iraqi and Afghan civilians right away, any more than it did Captain Riordan. Rather, what we will see is vast numbers of people who are chronically and severely ill, having their life spans drastically shortened, many with multiple cancers.

Melissa Sterry, another sick veteran, served for six months at a supply base in Kuwait during the winter of 1991-92. Part of her job with the National Guard's Combat Equipment Company "A" was to clean out tanks and other armored vehicles that had been used during the war, preparing them for storage.

She said she swept out the armored vehicles, cleaning up dust, sand and debris, sometimes being ordered to help bury contaminated parts. In a telephone interview, she stated that after researching depleted uranium she chose not to take the military's test because she could not trust the results. It is alarming that Melissa was stationed in Kuwait, not Iraq. Cleaning out tanks with DU dust was enough to make her ill.

In, 2003, the Christian Science Monitor sent reporters to Iraq to investigate long-term effects of depleted uranium. Staff writer Scott Peterson saw children playing on top of a burnt-out tank near a vegetable stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, a tank that had been destroyed by armor-piercing shells coated with depleted uranium. Wearing his mask and protective clothing, he pointed his Geiger counter toward the tank. It registered 1,000 times the normal background radiation. If the troops were on a mission of mercy to bring democracy to Iraq, wouldn"t keeping children away from such dangers be the top priority?

The laws of war prohibit the use of weapons that have deadly and inhumane effects beyond the field of battle. Nor can weapons be legally deployed in war when they are known to remain active, or cause harm after the war concludes. It is no surprise that the Japanese Court found President Bush guilty of war crimes.

Dr. Alim Yacoub of Basra University conducted an epidemiological study into incidences of malignancies in children under fifteen years old, in the Basra area (an area bombed with DU during the first Gulf War). They found over the 1990 to 1999 period, there was a 242% rise. That was before the recent invasion.
In Kosovo, similar spikes in cancer and birth defects were noticed by numerous international experts, although the quantity of DU weapons used was only a small fraction of what was used in Iraq.


FIELD STUDY RESULTS FROM AFGHANISTAN

Verifiable statistics for Iraq will remain elusive for some time, but widespread field studies in Afghanistan point to the existence of a large scale public health disaster. In May of 2002, the UMRC (Uranium Medical Research Center) sent a field team to interview and examine residents and internally displaced people in Afghanistan. The UMRC field team began by first identifying several hundred people suffering from illnesses and medical conditions displaying clinical symptoms which are considered to be characteristic of radiation exposure. To investigate the possibility that the symptoms were due to radiation sickness, the UMRC team collected urine specimens and soil samples, transporting them to an independent research lab in England.

UMRC's Field Team found Afghan civilians with acute symptoms of radiation poisoning, along with chronic symptoms of internal uranium contamination, including congenital problems in newborns. Local civilians reported large, dense dust clouds and smoke plumes rising from the point of impact, an acrid smell, followed by burning of the nasal passages, throat and upper respiratory tract. Subjects in all locations presented identical symptom profiles and chronologies. The victims reported symptoms including pain in the cervical column, upper shoulders and basal area of the skull, lower back/kidney pain, joint and muscle weakness, sleeping difficulties, headaches, memory problems and disorientation.

Two additional scientific study teams were sent to Afghanistan. The first arrived in June 2002, concentrating on the Jalalabad region. The second arrived four months later, broadening the study to include the capital Kabul, which has a population of nearly 3.5 million people. The city itself contains the highest recorded number of fixed targets during Operation Enduring Freedom. For the study's purposes, the vicinity of three major bomb sites were examined. It was predicted that signatures of depleted or enriched uranium would be found in the urine and soil samples taken during the research. The team was unprepared for the shock of its findings, which indicated in both Jalalabad and Kabul, DU was causing the high levels of illness. Tests taken from a number of Jalalabad subjects showed concentrations 400% to 2000% above that for normal populations, amounts which have not been recorded in civilian studies before.

Those in Kabul who were directly exposed to US-British precision bombing showed extreme signs of contamination, consistent with uranium exposure. These included pains in joints, back/kidney pain, muscle weakness, memory problems and confusion and disorientation. Those exposed to the bombing report symptoms of flu-type illnesses, bleeding, runny noses and blood-stained mucous. How many of these people will suffer a painful and early death from cancer? Even the study team itself complained of similar symptoms during their stay. Most of these symptoms last for days or months.

In August of 2002, UMRC completed its preliminary analysis of the results from Nangarhar. Without exception, every person donating urine specimens tested positive for uranium contamination. The specific results indicated an astoundingly high level of contamination; concentrations were 100 to 400 times greater than those of the Gulf War Veterans tested in 1999. A researcher reported. "We took both soil and biological samples, and found considerable presence in urine samples of radioactivity; the heavy concentration astonished us. They were beyond our wildest imagination."

In the fall of 2002, the UMRC field team went back to Afghanistan for a broader survey, and revealed a potentially larger exposure than initially anticipated. Approximately 30% of those interviewed in the affected areas displayed symptoms of radiation sickness. New born babies were among those displaying symptoms, with village elders reporting that over 25% of the infants were inexplicably ill.

How widespread and extensive is the exposure? A quote from the UMRC field report reads:

"The UMRC field team was shocked by the breadth of public health impacts coincident with the bombing. Without exception, at every bombsite investigated, people are ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium."

In Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, UMRC lab results indicated high concentrations of NON-DEPLETED URANIUM, with the concentrations being much higher than in DU victims from Iraq. Afghanistan was used as a testing ground for a new generation of "bunker buster" bombs containing high concentrations of other uranium alloys.

"A significant portion of the civilian population"? It appears that by going after a handful of terrorists in Afghanistan we have poisoned a huge number of innocent civilians, with a disproportionate number of them being children.

The military has found depleted uranium in the urine of some soldiers but contends it was not enough to make them seriously ill in most cases. Critics have asked for more sensitive, more expensive testing.

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According to an October 2004 Dispatch from the Italian Military Health Observatory, a total of 109 Italian soldiers have died thus far due to exposure to depleted uranium. A spokesman at the Military Health Observatory, Domenico Leggiero, states "The total of 109 casualties exceeds the total number of persons dying as a consequence of road accidents. Anyone denying the significance of such data is purely acting out of ill faith, and the truth is that our soldiers are dying out there due to a lack of adequate protection against depleted uranium". Members of the Observatory have petitioned for an urgent hearing "in order to study effective prevention and safeguard measures aimed at reducing the death-toll amongst our serving soldiers".

There were only 3,000 Italian soldiers sent to Iraq, and they were there for a short time. The number of 109 represents about 3.6% of the total. If the same percentage of Iraqis get a similar exposure, that would amount to 936,000. As Iraqis are permanently living in the same contaminated environment, their percentage will be higher.

The Pentagon/DoD have interfered with UMRC's ability to have its studies published by managing, a progressive and persistent misinformation program in the press against UMRC, and through the use of its control of science research grants to refute UMRC's scientific findings and destroy the reputation of UMRC's scientific staff, physicians and laboratories. UMRC is the first independent research organization to find Depleted Uranium in the bodies of US, UK and Canadian Gulf War I veterans and has subsequently, following Operation Iraqi Freedom, found Depleted Uranium in the water, soils and atmosphere of Iraq as well as biological samples donated by Iraqi civilians. Yet the first thing that comes up on Internet searches are these supposed "studies repeatedly showing DU to be harmless." The technique is to approach the story as a debate between government and independent experts in which public interest is stimulated by polarizing the issues rather than telling the scientific and medical truth. The issues are systematically confused and misinformed by government, UN regulatory agencies (WHO, UNEP, IAEA, CDC, DOE, etc) and defense sector (military and the weapons developers and manufacturers).

Dr. Yuko Fujita, an assistant professor at Keio University, Japan who examined the effects of radioactivity in Iraq from May to June, 2003, said : "I doubt that Iraq is fabricating data because in fact there are many children suffering from leukemia in hospitals," Fujita said. "As a result of the Iraq war, the situation will be desperate in some five to 10 years."

The March 14, 2004 Tokyo Citizen's Tribunal that "convicted" President Bush gave the following summation regarding DU weapons: (This court was a citizen's court with no binding legal authority)

1. Their use has indiscriminate effects;

2. Their use is out of proportion with the pursuit of military objectives;

3. Their use adversely affects the environment in a widespread, long term and severe manner;

4. Their use causes superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering.

Two years ago, President Bush withdrew the United States as a signatory to the International Criminal Court's statute, which has been ratified by all other Western democracies. The White House actually seeks to immunize U.S. leaders from war crimes prosecutions entirely. It has also demanded express immunity from ICC prosecution for American nationals.