There's an important book at http://www.endthewartour.org called "Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal" by Anthony Arnove. The book has a Foreword and an Afterword by Howard Zinn, who in 1967 published "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal." Arnove's book is important because it refutes all the major claims against immediate withdrawal.

Arnove begins with some historical background, and then lays out an overwhelming case for the following points. I'll list them here, but you'll need to read the book (it's only 100 pages) for the arguments:

1. The U.S. military has no right to be in Iraq in the first place. It turns out the Iraq war was not a mistake at all, and so the mistake cannot be continued even for an hour. The Iraq War was and is a crime.

2. The United States is not bringing democracy to Iraq. Spreading democracy had nothing to do with why this war was launched or why it is being continued. As Arnove writes, "The U.S. government opposes genuine democracy in the Middle East for a simple reason: if ordinary people controlled the region's energy resources, they might be put toward local economic development and social needs, rather than going to fuel the profits of Western oil companies." Does that sound outrageous or paranoid or "anti-American"? Read the historical context that Arnove provides, or check the evidence at www.afterdowningstreet.org , and then explain to me how you can see it any other way.

3. The United States is not making the world a safer place by occupying Iraq. In fact, this war has made the world much less safe. We've set a precedent for other nations to attack each other. We've driven other nations to invest in weaponry to try to hold off a U.S. attack. We've heightened anti-U.S. sentiment and significantly increased the incidents of terrorism each year.

4. The United States is not preventing civil war in Iraq. This is the same myth the British spread in 1920, when they didn't want to stop occupying Iraq. Our occupation, and the constitution we've imposed on Iraq, deliberately pit ethnic groups against each other in an effort to direct violence away from the occupiers. Still, the bulk of the violence is directed at the occupying army and its collaborators. And it is getting worse, not better.

5. The United States is not confronting terrorism by staying in Iraq. Al Qaeda arrived in Iraq AFTER the invasion.

6. The United States is not honoring those who died by continuing the conflict. That thinking is a recipe for compounding the tragedy without end.

7. The United States is not rebuilding Iraq. Halliburton and Bechtel are looting, not repairing. It is a racist and imperialist frame of mind that allows us to imagine that Iraqis could not best rebuild their own country. We owe them financial support in that effort. At present we are draining their resources, not adding to them.

8. The United States is not fulfilling its obligation to the Iraqi people for the harm and suffering it has caused. We are making things ever worse for the Iraqi people. Our first obligation is to stop harming them. We should then pay reparations.

Arnove does not make his case for immediate withdrawal contingent on persuading the United Nations or any other group to take over. He argues, and argues well, that the Iraqis themselves can best handle the rebuilding - assuming we liberate them from our liberation:

"In demanding an end to the U.S. occupation, we do not need to call for some other occupying power to replace the United States. The United Nations, the most likely candidate in such a scenario, has shown through the years of the sanctions it imposed, the buildup to the war, and its endorsement of the U.S. occupation that it is not able or willing to confront U.S. power... Any outside power will not be accountable to the people of Iraq. And the United States is hardly alone in bearing responsibility for the suffering of the Iraqis. The United Nations is deeply implicated. The Arab League countries did nothing to protect the people of Iraq. Indeed, a number of its member states provided support for the invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003 while seeking to profit from the war and from the sanctions. Many countries besides the United States also supported Saddam Hussein, armed him, and protected him."

Recognizing that being right is not always enough, Arnove offers advice to the anti-war movement based on what worked during Vietnam. Among other ideas, he suggests making civil disobedience part of mass demonstrations rather than smaller efforts the next day (as was done in DC last September).

Arnove also points to electoral politics and suggests that we will never end the war as long as we support pro-war candidates. "The U.S. left made a terrible mistake," Arnove writes, "in supporting the presidential campaign of John Kerry, giving up its independence and political principles to support a prowar candidate. Kerry called for sending more troops to Iraq, insisting that 'it would be unthinkable now for us to retreat in disarray and leave behind a society deep in strife and dominated by radicals.' Kerry also asserted that he would still have voted to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq even if he knew [as of course he DID] Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, a position that he only clearly retracted after losing [that is, coming close enough to have it stolen] the election."

Arnove believes, and I agree, that we will not turn the anti-war movement into a powerful enough force to end the war unless we oppose the war for the right reasons, the reasons that compel us to demand immediate withdrawal and to sacrifice until we've achieved it:

"Some liberals have staked their opposition to the war in Iraq on the idea that Iraq is a 'distraction.' The problem with this line of argument is that it accepts that Bush is now waging an otherwise legitimate war.... The stronger the consciously anti-imperialist current in the anti-war movement, the stronger the movement to end the war will be, and the greater the chance we will have to bring about the fundamental change needed to stop future wars."

The decision culminates a lengthy debate within the Defense Department but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military's decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, the Defense Department officials acknowledged.

For more than a year, the Pentagon has been redrawing its policies on detainees, and intends to issue a new Army Field Manual on interrogation, which, along with accompanying directives, represents core instructions to U.S. soldiers worldwide.

The process has been beset by debate and controversy, and the decision to omit Geneva protections from a principal directive comes at a time of growing worldwide criticism of U.S. detention practices and the conduct of American forces in Iraq.

The directive on interrogation, a senior defense official said, is being rewritten to create safeguards so that all detainees are treated humanely but can still be questioned effectively.

President Bush's critics and supporters have debated whether it is possible to prove a direct link between administration declarations that it will not be bound by Geneva and events such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the killings of Iraqi civilians last year in Haditha, allegedly by Marines.

But the exclusion of the Geneva provisions may make it more difficult for the administration to portray such incidents as aberrations. And it undercuts contentions that U.S. forces follow the strictest, most broadly accepted standards when fighting wars.

"The rest of the world is completely convinced that we are busy torturing people," said Oona A. Hathaway, an expert in international law at Yale Law School. "Whether that is true or not, the fact we keep refusing to provide these protections in our formal directives puts a lot of fuel on the fire."

The detainee directive was due to be released in late April along with the Army Field Manual on interrogation. But objections from several senators on other Field Manual issues forced a delay. The senators objected to provisions allowing harsher interrogation techniques for those considered unlawful combatants, such as suspected terrorists, as opposed to traditional prisoners of war.

The lawmakers say that differing standards of treatment allowed by the Field Manual would violate a broadly supported anti-torture measure advanced by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). McCain last year pushed Congress to ban torture and cruel treatment and to establish the Army Field Manual as the standard for treatment of all detainees. Despite administration opposition, the measure passed and became law.

For decades, it had been the official policy of the U.S. military to follow the minimum standards for treating all detainees as laid out in the Geneva Convention. But, in 2002, Bush suspended portions of the Geneva Convention for captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Bush's order superseded military policy at the time, touching off a wide debate over U.S. obligations under the Geneva accord, a debate that intensified after reports of detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Among the directives being rewritten following Bush's 2002 order is one governing U.S. detention operations. Military lawyers and other defense officials wanted the redrawn version of the document known as DoD Directive 2310, to again embrace Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

That provision - known as a "common" article because it is part of each of the four Geneva pacts approved in 1949 - bans torture and cruel treatment. Unlike other Geneva provisions, Article 3 covers all detainees - whether they are held as unlawful combatants or traditional prisoners of war. The protections for detainees in Article 3 go beyond the McCain amendment by specifically prohibiting humiliation, treatment that falls short of cruelty or torture.

The move to restore U.S. adherence to Article 3 was opposed by officials from Vice President Dick Cheney's office and by the Pentagon's intelligence arm, government sources said. David S. Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, and Stephen A. Cambone, Defense undersecretary for intelligence, said it would restrict the United States' ability to question detainees.

The Pentagon tried to satisfy some of the military lawyers' concerns by including some protections of Article 3 in the new policy, most notably a ban on inhumane treatment, but refused to embrace the actual Geneva standard in the directive it planned to issue.

The military lawyers, known as judge advocates general, or JAGs, have concluded that they will have to wait for a new administration before mounting another push to link Pentagon policy to the standards of Geneva.

"The JAGs came to the conclusion that this was the best they can get," said one participant familiar with the Defense Department debate who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the protracted controversy. "But it was a massive mistake to have withdrawn from Geneva. By backing away, you weaken the proposition that this is the baseline provision that is binding to all nations."

Derek P. Jinks, an assistant professor at the University of Texas School of Law and the author of a forthcoming book on Geneva called "The Rules of War," said the decision to remove the Geneva reference from the directive showed the administration still intended to push the envelope on interrogation.

"We are walking the line on the prohibition on cruel treatment," Jinks said. "But are we really in search of the boundary between the cruel and the acceptable?"

The military has long applied Article 3 to conflicts - including civil wars - using it as a minimum standard of conduct, even during peacekeeping operations. The old version of the U.S. directive on detainees says the military will "comply with the principles, spirit and intent" of the Geneva Convention.

But top Pentagon officials now believe common Article 3 creates an "unintentional sanctuary" that could allow Al Qaeda members to keep information from interrogators.

"As much as possible, the foundation is Common Article 3. That is the foundation," the senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the new policies had not been made public. "But there are certain things unlawful combatants are not entitled to."

Another defense official said that Article 3 prohibitions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" could be interpreted as banning well-honed interrogation techniques.

Many intelligence soldiers consider questioning the manhood of male prisoners to be an effective and humane technique. Suggesting to a suspected insurgent that he is "not man enough" to have set an improvised explosive device sometimes elicits a full description of how they emplaced the bomb, soldiers say.

The Pentagon worries that if Article 3 were incorporated in the directive, detainees could use it to argue in U.S. courts that such techniques violate their personal dignity. "Who is to say what is humiliating for Sheikh Abdullah or Sheikh Muhammad?" the second official asked. "If you punch the buttons of a Muslim male, are you at odds with the Geneva Convention?"

Military officials also worry that following Article 3 could force them to end the practice of segregating prisoners. The military says that there is nothing inhumane about putting detainees in solitary confinement, and that it allows inmates to be questioned without coordinating their stories with others.

Human rights organizations have their doubts, saying that isolating people for months at a time leads to mental breakdowns.

"Sometimes these things sound benign, but there is a reason they have been prohibited," said Jumana Musa, an advocacy director for Amnesty International. "When you talk about putting people in isolation for eight months, 14 months, it leads to mental degradation."

Jinks, of the University of Texas, contends that Article 3 does not prohibit some of the things the military says it wants to do. "If the practice is humane, there is nothing to worry about," he said.

Defense officials said the State Department and other agencies had argued that adopting Article 3 would put the U.S. government on more solid "moral footing," and make U.S. policies easier to defend abroad.

Some State Department officials have told the Pentagon that incorporating Geneva into the new directive would show American allies that the American military is following "common standards" rather than making up its own rules. Department officials declined to comment for this article about the directive or their discussions with the Pentagon.

Common Article 3 was originally written to cover civil wars, when one side of the conflict was not a state and therefore could not have signed the Geneva Convention.

In his February 2002 order, Bush wrote that he determined that "Common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either Al Qaeda or Taliban detainees, because, among other reasons, the relevant conflicts are international in scope and Common Article 3 applies only to 'armed conflict not of an international character.' "

Some legal scholars say Bush's interpretation is far too narrow. Article 3 was intended to apply to all wars as a sort of minimum set of standards, and that is how Geneva is customarily interpreted, they say.

But top administration officials contend that after the Sept. 11 attacks, old customs do not apply, especially to a fight against terrorists or insurgents who never play by the rules.

"The overall thinking," said the participant familiar with the defense debate, "is that they need the flexibility to apply cruel techniques if military necessity requires it."

Our troops have been trained on core values throughout their training, but obviously there was an incident that took place in Iraq ...

Bush also said this following a meeting of his cabinet: The world will see a "full and complete" investigation.

Another false piece of propaganda that we are fed is that we need to support the president, especially when we are "at war." I say, "No, way!" Our kids know the difference between right and wrong before they are sucked into a military system that dehumanizes our soldiers and forces them to dehumanize the "enemy" to the point where it is apparently acceptable behavior to kill children and to cover up the murders. Can we all assume that little Georgie was never told that cold-blooded murder is wrong, seeing that his family has supported wars and their inherent crimes for at least three generations?

The double standard that our leaders have set for themselves and the troops is amoral and corrupt. I have not seen - anywhere in the discussion of this topic - acknowledgement that not only is Haditha not the worst war crime committed by American or coalition troops but that the entire war is a war crime.

The following list of illegal, immoral, and atrocious behavior is obvious and not all inclusive by any means:

* 12 years of devastating sanctions that were responsible for killing over 500,000 Iraqi children.

* Destroying antiquities and culture is a war crime and prohibited under Geneva Conventions.

* The invasion of Iraq is a preventive war of aggression against a country that was no threat to the USA or the world and was expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

* The invasion was not sanctioned or approved of by the United Nations.

* "Shock and Awe" targeted civilian centers and killed many innocent people.

* Abu Ghraib.

* Guantanamo.

* "Extreme rendition.

* Use of chemical weapons, especially white phosphorous enhanced with napalm, particularly in the second siege of Fallujah.

* Targeting hospitals, clinics, and threatening medical doctors with execution if they treat "insurgents" (which can apparently include babies and pregnant women).

* Using highly compensated mercenaries to carry out executions and torture.

* Forcing a style of government on the citizens and manipulating the outcome of the elections.

* Dishonoring the Constitution of the United States by invading Iraq without a declaration of war by Congress and by breaking our treaties with the United Nations and the ratified Geneva Conventions.

George Bush is correct. A "full and complete" investigation needs to be made into the crimes against humanity in Iraq, and if justice prevails, this would in turn lead to the trial and conviction of George and the rest of the neo-con purveyors of torture and murder, for which the maximum penalties should be applied.

The level of accountability needs to rise higher than Specialist or Private and should reach up and down the very blackest bowels of an administration that lied through its teeth to get our country into a war of aggression and occupation. The commander in chief needs to be prosecuted: NOW!

The most difficult part of this writing is in trying to reconcile the fact that our soldiers, for one example, in Haditha, could not show conscience and restraint, qualities which may have prevented a murderous rampage. When one sees the pictures of bodies burned beyond human recognition, hears of 2 year old children being killed out of revenge, women being shot for failing to stop at a checkpoint that is in the middle of THEIR country, prisoners being tortured in despicably inhumane ways, ad immoral infinitum, one should be appalled and ashamed to call oneself an American. That some of our soldiers would stoop to the level of their leaders to commit such atrocities is unspeakable. Bush says our troops have been trained in "core values," when he as a so-called born again Christian can claim that God told him to invade Iraq and it's okay to spy on American citizens like he is some kind of sick voyeur with a penchant for death and destruction.

War, under any circumstance, is not a "core value" of humanity; in fact, it is the ultimate failure of humanity. War turns our mostly normal American youth into wanton murderers who have lost their own humanity and love of others. Haditha in this war and My Lai in another disgusting war were unfortunately not aberrations. War is the abominable aberration.

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, our troops are forbidden from obeying unlawful orders, and Iraq was unlawful before it ever began. Our soldiers need to start disobeying the unlawful order to even be deployed to Iraq, and not raise their weapons in appeasement to the Bush Regime, and say: "This war is the criminal, I am not. Threaten me if you will, but I am not going to be an accomplice in your crimes against humanity."

We as people working for peace have long held that the people of Iraq did not deserve the treatment that they are getting from BushCo, but it is our troops who are pulling the triggers and pushing the buttons or flushing the Koran or sexually abusing prisoners, and we know about it, so that makes us accessories to the crimes, unless we are actively trying to end the severe breach of compassion and mercy that is being carried out in the Middle East.

Yes, we have to work to end the war and to hold everyone who commits atrocities accountable, from private to president, but we also have to support our soldiers who do not want to kill. It is a tragic dichotomy in this society that one can be executed for killing someone, but also be executed or imprisoned for disobeying an order to go and take the life of another human being in war.

There are several ways that our young men and women can be supported in resisting the evil of BushCo and Iraq. The GI Rights Hotline is there to help soldiers get out of going to an illegal and immoral war, and the War Resister's League in Canada needs support to help our soldiers find sanctuary and safety. Counter-recruitmentis also a powerful tool to use to prevent our children from being sucked into the evil war machine and being used as cannon fodder/weapons of mass destruction for profit.

Where can the people of Iraq go to find sanctuary and safety? They have no place to run to and they have no voice to end this war of terror that is being waged on them by the USA.

It is up to us to be the voice of the babies of Iraq and of the other people whose only crime was to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time with the additional bad luck of living on top of rich oil reserves.

Support the troops? I support only those who are NOT supporting the exploitation of the Iraqi people, and those who do not allow the war profiteers to carry on with their death and destruction all for the sake of an opulent lifestyle. I do not support those who are supporting a criminally insane and treacherous foreign policy. However I, as the mother of a slain soldier, will do anything I can to support all of them by working to shorten their stay in an unwelcoming country, and bring them home from the quagmire that their so-called commander in chief forced them into.

Also, when our troops do come home from the war, they need all of the counseling, job training and help they require to transition back to a life where most people don't even recognize that there is a war being waged.

BushCo and the war machine killed my baby. They have killed tens of thousands more.

BushCo need to be prosecuted and punished like the common criminals that they are.

We owe this to the people of Iraq, the world, and our own soldiers.

We owe it to ourselves.

One needn't be a math major to recognize that even a passing knowledge of American military history would produce enough war crimes and atrocities to surpass Rumseld's .1% solution...but, in classic corporate style, perhaps we should outsource such inventory work. We could hire residents of Southeast Asia to tell us what percentage of U.S. troops commit Haditha-like atrocities. Even better, let's really go multi-culti and include some Koreans, Iraqis, Afghanis, Somalis, Filipinos, Japanese, and Panamanians (to name but a few options). That might raise Rumseld's ratio a wee bit, huh?

However, for the sake of broadening the scope here, let's assume that Rummy's got it right. Let's take him at face value that 99.9 percent of American military personnel "conduct themselves in an exemplary manner." This begs the question: If only one-tenth of one percent make things happen that shouldn't happen, what is everyone else doing to make us stand and sing "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch at Yankee Stadium? How exactly does one define "exemplary manner"?

By Rumfeld's reckoning (and the standard company line of most every politician, pundit, and peon) "exemplary" includes the use of Daisy Cutters, cluster bombs, and B-52s dropping payloads from 15,000 feet. One-tenth of one percent bad apples slaughter non-combatants without orders...but the other 99.9% are the heroes deploying depleted uranium, napalm, and white phosphorus. "Exemplary" warriors with "core American values" launch cruise missiles into crowded cities, blow up dams to deliberately flood rice paddies and starve civilians, and destroy villages in order to save them.

"Things that shouldn't happen do happen," Rumsfeld explains. But what about all the stuff that this society accepts "should" happen? What should happen are the assassinations of Operation Phoenix, the illegal invasion of Operation Just Cause, and the collaborating with Nazis in Operation Paper Clip. What should happen is shock and awe. What should happen is the United States unselfconsciously using "Apache" helicopters to quell "ethnic cleansing." What should happen is dropping atomic bombs on the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and perpetrating the near-extermination of the Native American population.

The repugnant recent events throughout Iraq, of course, must be investigated and the guilty parties brought to justice. But the greater work lies in examining a culture so blind to its violent nature as to spend time unashamedly splitting hairs between what transpired at Haditha and what passes for "exemplary."

Two men were killed and seven wounded as insurgents fired three mortars which crashed near the interior ministry building, security officials and medics said.

The first mortar fell close to a hospital but without causing casualties, an interior ministry official said. "The other two fell in an industrial area close to the ministry and killed the two men and wounded seven others."

An Iraqi woman was killed in an explosion at central Baghdad's Al-Alawi bus and taxi station, the official said. A man was also wounded in the attack.

Three people, including a policeman and a woman, were shot dead in separate incidents in and around the restive town of Baquba, northeast of the capital, police said.

Also in Baquba, police found nine heads wrapped in black plastic bags and shoved in a cardboard box used to carry fruit on the highway outside the city.

Some of the heads were blindfolded and already decomposing, indicating the killings had taken place a few days back, police said. On Saturday, a similarly grisly discovery of heads was made in Baquba.

Gunmen also shot dead Shaaban Abdel Kadhim, a local municipal representative for southern Baghdad's Al-Furat neighborhood, along with his two bodyguards Tuesday. The three were killed while travelling in the car.

The police found the body of a 25-year-old woman, wearing an Islamic headscarf, who had been shot in the head. The corpse was discovered in southern Baghdad's Al-Bayaa neighborhood.

A man's body was also found in the Kadhimiyah district.

Elsewhere in the capital, four civilians were wounded in a roadside bombing which targeted a police patrol behind the university of technology in eastern Baghdad, the interior ministry official added.

Insurgent violence has surged across Iraq in past weeks, with dozens killed each day as the key security porfolios within the government remain vacant because of political wrangling.

Meanwhile, a British military patrol early Tuesday escaped an apparent attack in Salekh, outside Basra, the main city in southern Iraq, a military spokesman said.

"Some sort of explosion went off near one of our patrol vehicles at 4 am (0000 GMT) today, but there were no casualties among coalition forces," Major Sebastian Muntz said.

Iraq's main morgue had never received that huge number of corpses on a daily basis - not since modern Iraq was established in 1920s.

According to statistics by Iraq's morgues institute, 6,002 corpses were found in the past five months: 1,068 in January, 1,110 in February, 1,294 in March, 1,155 in April and 1,375 in May.

Most of the corpses had gunshot wounds, while others showed marks of burns or electrocution.

Morgues institute officials said that since the institute was established in 1927, it had never received such a huge number of corpses as currently, with the daily average now 35 to 50 per day.

Before the US-led coalition invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the institute used to receive only seven to 10 corpses per day.

In occupied and conflict-ridden Iraq, the morgues have become the daily destination for at least 100 Iraqis looking for their relatives who were kidnapped by militiamen or who were killed in explosions.

'I came from al-Mada'en in search of my son Saad who was lost 12 days ago and we could not identify him in the photos that we saw inside the hall,' said Ahmed Ibrahim, 62.

'For two months, I have been visiting here in search of my husband whom I don't know anything about since he left for work in al-Shorja marketplace in Baghdad,' said 41-year-old Elham Khalil.

An official at the morgues institute said that unclaimed corpses are buried in the state cemetery, Karbala cemetery, Najaf cemetery and Mohammed Sakran cemetery in Baghdad.

He said that the burial procedures take place following judicial authorization that requires maps for locating the burial sites in the event that the bodies need to be located later on.

'Most of the corpses we receive are brought in by police patrols who usually find the corpses in far-off and waste areas and at the gates of the cities, handcuffed, some with gunshot wounds and torture marks,' the employer said.

Spokesman for the Iraqi Health Ministry said that the ministry has required health officials in Baghdad not to receive any unidentified corpses and that unidentified corpses should only be received by the morgues institute.

'This will make it easier for citizens seeking their lost relatives,' he said, adding that the institute keeps information and pictures of the corpses. He said most of the corpses were males.

Sectarian-based violence has mounted in Iraq since the bombing of al-Askary mosque in Samarra last February. The formation of a new government with 37 ministers last month had raised hopes that the violence might end.

But the key posts of interior, defense and national security ministers who are expected to play a key role in tackling sectarian violence, have not yet been agreed on and their duties are currently only being performed by interim ministers.