Their first major operation was the bombing on February 22, 2006 of the Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra, also known as the Golden Mosque. The mosque was a very well thought out target that holds the tombs of two revered 9th-century imams of the Shiite branch of Islam. The attack on the Golden Mosque began at 7 a.m., when a dozen men dressed in paramilitary uniforms entered the shrine and handcuffed four guards who were sleeping in a back room. The attackers then placed a bomb in the dome and detonated it, collapsing most of the dome and heavily damaging an adjoining wall.

The covert operation against the Golden Mosque was designed to provoke Shiite groups into committing violent acts and retaliations against the Sunnis. Sunni political leaders said retaliatory attacks hit more than 20 Sunni mosques across Iraq with bombs, gunfire or arson. Authorities reported at least 18 people killed in the aftermath, including two Sunni clerics. In one incident, in Basra in southern Iraq, police said gunmen in police uniforms broke into a jail, seized 12 Sunni men and later killed them. These attacks against the Sunnis were also carried out by operatives under the Pentagon's "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group".

The Pentagon blamed the bombing of the Golden Mosque on al-Qaeda but cleric Abdul Zara Saidy had another explanation. He said the mosque attack was the work of "occupiers," or Americans, "and Zionists".

Let me stating the obvious. The U.S. did not invade Iraq to establish "democracy" and "free Iraqis". The U.S. invaded and destroyed Iraq in order to humiliate and divide Muslims - Arabs in particular -, protect Israel's Zionist expansion and control Iraq's natural wealth. So, the U.S.-imposed democracy by force is fraud. 'Democracy is like a plant; it grows from bottom up, not from top down'. The U.S. sabotage of democracy in Palestine and U.S. support for Israel's criminal destruction of Lebanon are just two current examples of U.S. love for democracy. Also the idea that the U.S. and its allies are in Iraq to stabilise the situation is a falsehood. Destabilisation was one of the aims of U.S. foreign policy. The unprovoked war of aggression and the continuing U.S. presence in Iraq, including the illegal building of U.S. military bases and the largest C.I.A. station in the world on Iraqi soil, are major destabilising factors. The U.S. objectives have always been to weaken Iraq, divide the people and control Iraq behind a façade of corrupt stooges, with poorly trained and poorly armed army and police.

Long before the invasion, the U.S. and its allies were involved in the training and arming of tens of thousands of militias and anti-Iraq collaborators....

In Let a Thousand Militias Bloom , Arun Gupta writes that 'the U.S. government is not only aware of these illegal militias but is arming, training and funding them for use in their counter-insurgency operations'. According to Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, the "special police commandos" - is being used throughout Iraq and has been conducting criminal assassinations known as the "Salvador option" with the full knowledge of U.S. forces. "Pound for pound, though, they are the toughest force we've got", Col. Dean Franklin, a senior officer in Gen. David Petraeus's command told Greg Jaffe (WSJ, February 16, 2005). The occupying forces have also succeeded in turning one militia group against the other using the civilian population as a fodder. "And it's all happening under the eyes of US commanders, who seem unwilling or unable to intervene", revealed Deborah Davies in a special Channel 4 investigation, 'Iraq's Death Squads'.

To destroy Iraq as an independent nation, the U.S. initiated the criminal campaign of "De-Ba'athification", which implied the liquidation of anyone associated with the Ba'ath Party as well as anyone with anti-Occupation nationalist views. "De-Ba'athification" is simply a murderous campaign for inciting violence and destroying the Iraqi society. Together with the Israeli Mossad, U.S. Special Forces, the pro-Occupation militias and death squads have embarked on deliberate campaign of assassinations and ethnic cleansing. Thousands of scientists, including more than 350 scientists specialized in nuclear science have been assassinated. Thousands of professors, prominent politicians, and medical doctors have been murdered in cold blood. The Ministry of Higher Education reported that at least 210 teachers have been murdered and some 3,700 have fled Iraq to neighbouring countries. According to the UN more than 3,000 Iraqis flee to Syria and Jordan every day to avoid being killed. More than 1.7 million Iraqis have fled the country.

The aim is to create a climate of terror and incite civil war among Iraqis in order to justify the ongoing Occupation of Iraq and the fraudulent "war on terror". The growing number of daily civilian massacres, rapes and torture of Iraqis by U.S. forces and their collaborators are deliberately ignored by the media, making Iraq the biggest hidden U.S. atrocity in the U.S. history of violence against defenceless people. It is also possible that the violence is created to provide a "safety net" for foreign troops' withdrawal and discredit the heroic struggle and Resistance against the Occupation and deny Iraqis victory against the most violent and powerful war machine in history....

The U.S. policy of "let them kill each other" is an integral part of U.S. foreign policy carefully executed to serve U.S. imperialist interests. Hence, the comment of Senator Carl Levin, "We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves", designed to deflect any U.S. responsibility away from war crimes and misleadingly presenting the Occupation as the saviour of Iraqis. We know that the vast majority of Iraqis disagree and want the immediate end of the Occupation. More than 61 per cent of Iraqis approve of the Resistance attacks against the occupying forces. The U.S. and its allies bear full responsibility for the destruction of Iraq and for the death of more than 700,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.

Iraqis have gone many generations without fighting each other. Iraqi (males and females) worked studies and conducted their business in a safe environment. Regardless of their religious affiliations and ethnic backgrounds, the Iraqi people were living in peaceful environment despite the horror of the West-imposed genocidal sanctions. Why have they suddenly started fighting? Why all these crimes and bloodshed did not take place under the government of Saddam Hussein, even when his government was scrutinised by Western NGOs and human rights organisations? Today, these NGOs and human rights organisations have remained silent, preferring to use the fraudulent and farcical trial of Saddam to claim credibility of "defending" human rights. In less than four years, the U.S. and U.S.-trained and armed death squads and militias have destroyed Iraq beyond comprehension.

The immediate arrest of senior police commandos after the raid on the Higher Education Ministry annexes and the immediate release of some hostages shed light on the extent of U.S. complicity in the ongoing crimes against the Iraqi people. Therefore, the longer the U.S. forces stayed in Iraq, the more violence they generate. Only full and immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces and mercenaries will contribute to the end of violence and ongoing suffering of the Iraqi people.

The victorious Democrats' response was even more surprising, and also unreal. "Impeachment is off the table" quickly became the mantra: let us instead proceed with raising the minimum wage. Apparently the Bush Administration's record is flawless, showing nothing remotely approaching a high crime or a misdemeanor. Impeachment would be a "waste of time."

There is a good reason for these strange results: we practice a politics of surrealism, and have done so since George Bush was first put in office.

Ron Suskind of the New York Times learned how the Bush Administration works, from a "senior advisor to Bush" (Karl Rove is a suspect): "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." They have done that, incessantly, and it is the source of the surrealism. Spins, evasions, omissions, jingoisms, distortions, "perception management" (i.e., propaganda), and deliberate lying all contribute to a political discourse adrift from what is honest, true, and reliable.

The Clear Skies Act allowed more pollution, the Healthy Forests Act caused more trees to be cut down, the Patriot Act scarred the Bill of Rights, No Child Left Behind was a step toward privatizing public education, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act was a bonanza for the pharmaceutical industry and began the process of dismantling Medicare, the Military Commissions Act fostered torture and suspended habeas corpus.

But no such manufactured reality is more misleading, fraudulent, and damaging than the "global war on terror."

It took six years for a tardy and mild electoral protest of the Iraq war to surface, because the trusting American people believed the "war on terror" was the just and moral response of an innocent nation to a brutal terrorist attack. They handily reelected the President who was prosecuting it, proudly supported the troops, and accepted as necessary evils the Bush Administration excesses. But gradually that acceptance weakened, and on November 7, 2006 it was withdrawn.

The recent electoral turnaround was generated largely by the horrific conditions in Iraq today, the savage bloodletting of insurgency and civil war suffered by Americans and Iraqis alike. These conditions finally exceeded public tolerance. But the rationale for the war, its purpose, went unquestioned, because the Bush Administration obscurantism has been so successful.

We need to strip away the created reality of the "war on terror" to see the true nature of it instead, or our weird, unreal politics will continue.

The wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq were not simply justified and honorable retaliations to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. They couldn't possibly have been that, because both of them were premeditated"conceived, planned, and prepared long before September 11, 2001.

(Yes, there have been premeditated military incursions in the past"Panama, Grenada, and Kosovo come to mind"but none was of the magnitude and duration of the Afghan and Iraqi wars. Never before have we unleashed full scale combat, unprovoked, on sovereign foreign nations and then installed permanent military bases to occupy them.)

Though it has not been addressed in the mass media, the factual story of the President's premeditated wars is clearly visible, and when the story is read at one sitting, the dreamlike quality of our politics is apparent.

The story to follow will not be a great revelation to anyone who has read, perhaps a bit more than casually, about our recent political, military, and diplomatic past, and has spent some time searching the Internet for corroboration and details. On the other hand, it is far from common knowledge, because in the manufactured reality crafted by the Bush Administration, it does not exist.

Two strands of history converged in the Bush years. One led to the invasion of Afghanistan, the other to the invasion of Iraq, and the strands came together on September 11, 2001.

The opening chapter of the story reveals a photograph dating to the Reagan years of Donald Rumsfeld cordially shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. We supported Saddam in his war with Iran. But history convulses: on January 26, 1998, Mr. Rumsfeld and 17 others, members of the Project for a New American Century, wrote a letter to President Clinton, urging the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. If we fail to do so, they were candid in asserting, "a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will be put at hazard."

This could be considered the fountainhead of our surreal politics. The PNAC proposed premeditated war explicitly, in a bizarre retrogression to the centuries of unapologetic European imperialism. Since World War II and the birth of the United Nations, however, the world has been seeking to surpass imperialism, struggling to settle international difficulties peaceably"and here was an open, sad, and radical rebuff.

(In addition to Mr. Rumsfeld, 10 others of the signatories would serve in the Bush Administration: Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Perle, William Schneider, Jr., Robert Zoellick, and Paul Wolfowitz.)

When George W. Bush took office, a concern for the "significant portion of the world's oil supply" was never far from view, because the Administration's personal linkages to the oil industry were intimate, historic, and numerous. The president and vice president were just the first examples: eight cabinet secretaries and the national security advisor were recruited directly from the oil industry, and so were 32 others in the secretariats of Defense, State, Energy, Agriculture, Interior, and the Office of Management and Budget.

The Bush Administration came to power anxious, we know from published sources, to fulfill the PNAC's vision of regime change in Iraq.

In his second week in office, President Bush appointed Vice President Cheney to chair a National Energy Policy Development Group. The supersecret "Energy Task Force," as it came to known, was composed of officials from the relevant federal agencies and beyond question heavily attended by energy industry executives and lobbyists. (The full membership has yet to be revealed, but Enron's Kenneth Lay was conspicuously present.)

One brute fact had to be apparent to the Task Force: in the Caspian Basin, and beneath the Iraqi deserts there are 125 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, and the potential for 433 billion barrels more. Anyone controlling that much oil could break OPEC's stranglehold overnight.

By early March, 2001, the Task Force was poring over maps of the Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, tanker terminals, and oil exploration blocks. It studied an inventory of "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts""dozens of oil companies from 30 different countries, in various stages of exploring and developing Iraqi crude. (These documents were forced into view several years later by a citizen group, Judicial Watch, with a Freedom of Information Act proceeding. It wasn't easy--the Bush Administration appealed the lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court--but the maps and documents can now be seen and downloaded.)

Not a single U.S. oil company, however, was among the "suitors," and that was intolerable. Mr. Cheney's task force concluded, "By any estimation, Middle East oil producers will remain central to world security. The Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy."

Condoleezza Rice's National Security Council, meanwhile, was directed by a top secret memo to "cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered melding two seemingly unrelated areas of policy." The NSC was ordered to support "the review of operational policies towards rogue states such as Iraq and actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields."

The Bush Administration seemed clearly to be drawing a bead on Iraqi oil"long before the "global war on terror" was envisioned and marketed. But how could the "capture of new and existing oil fields" be made to seem less aggressive, less baldly in violation of international law?

At the State Department, a policy-development initiative called "The Future of Iraq" was undertaken which would accomplish this. The date was April, 2002, almost a full year before the invasion. The "Oil and Energy Working Group" provided the cover. Iraq, it said in its final report:, "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the warthe country should establish a conducive business environment to attract investment in oil and gas resources."

"Capture" would take the form of "investment," and the vehicle for doing so would be the "production sharing agreement." In exchange for investing in development costs, oil companies would "share" in the subsequent production. What would happen, though, if the companies' investments were only minimal, but their shares of the production were disproportionately, obscenely large?

That's the way it will work out. Production sharing agreements (PSA's) are in place covering 75% of the undeveloped Iraqi fields, and the oil companies, soon to sign the contracts, will earn as much 162% on their "investments." The "foreign suitors" are not quite so foreign now: the players on the inside tracks are Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell.

The use of PSA's, instead of alternative methods of financing infrastructure, however, will cost the Iraqi people hundreds of billions of dollars in just the first few years of the "investment" program.

PSA's are favored by the oil companies because the term "production sharing agreement" is a euphemism for legalized theft. PSA's were not adopted voluntarily by the Iraqis, however: their use was specified by the U.S. State Department and institutionalized by Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority.

So a line of dots begins to point at Iraq, though nothing illegal or unconstitutional has yet taken place. We are still in the policy-formulation stage, but two "seemingly unrelated areas of policy""national security policy and international energy policy"have become indistinguishable.

Another line of dots begins with the Carter Administration encouraging and arming the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden, in Afghanistan, to fend off the Russian invasion there.

And so the next chapter in the story of George Bush's wars is underway.

The strategic location of Afghanistan can scarcely be overstated. The Caspian Basin contains some $16 trillion worth of oil and gas resources, and the most direct pipeline route to the richest markets is through Afghanistan.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the first western oil company to express interest and take action in the Basin was the Bridas Corporation of Argentina. It acquired production leases and exploration contracts in the region, and by November of 1997 had signed an agreement with General Dostum of the Northern Alliance and with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan.

Not to be outdone, the American company Unocal fought Bridas at every turn, even spurning an invitation from Bridas to join an international consortium in the Basin. Unocal wanted exclusive control of the trans-Afghan pipeline, and hired a number of consultants in its conflict with Bridas: Henry Kissinger, Richard Armitage (now Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Administration), Zalmay Khalilzad (a signer of the PNAC letter to President Clinton) and Hamid Karzai. (Eventually Bridas sued Unocal in the U.S. courts, and won.)

Unocal stayed on the attack until 1999, frequently wooing Taliban leaders at its headquarters in Texas, and hosting them in meetings with federal officials in Washington, D.C.

Unocal and the Clinton Administration hoped to have the Taliban cancel the Bridas contract, but were getting nowhere. Mr. John J. Maresca, a Unocal Vice President, testified to a House Committee of International Relations on February 12, 1998, asking politely to have the Taliban removed and a stable government inserted. His discomfort was well placed.

Six months later terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and two weeks after that President Clinton launched a cruise missile attack into Afghanistan. Clinton issued an executive order on July 4, 1999, freezing the US held assets and prohibiting further trade transactions with the Taliban.

Mr. Maresca could count that as progress. More would follow.

Immediately on taking office, the new Bush Administration actively took up negotiating with the Taliban once more, seeking still to have the Bridas contract vacated in favor of Unocal. The parties met three times, in Washington, Berlin, and Islamablad, but the Taliban wouldn't budge.

Behind the negotiations, however, planning was underway to take military action against the Taliban. The State Department sought and gained concurrence from both India and Pakistan to do so, and in July of 2001 three American officials met with Pakistani and Russian intelligence people to inform them of planned military strikes against Afghanistan the following October.

State Department official Christina Rocca told the Taliban, at their last pipeline negotiation in August of 2001, just five weeks before 9/11, "Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."

Common to both the Afghan and Iraqi lines of dots are energy resources, both oil and gas. It is true our country depends on oil and gas, but it is not the American people who need to corner Mid East oil and gas by force. Dozens of oil companies around the world"the "foreign suitors," for example"can supply us with Iraqi oil or Caspian Basin gas, and would be pleased to do so. There is no reason not to rely on them: we are buying more and more Toyotas and Volvos, and fewer Chevrolets and Fords, with no apparent damage to our national security. Why not do the same with gasoline, diesel, and LNG, and avoid armed conflict?

Why not? Because the bottom lines of Exxon-Mobil, Unocal and other domestic oil companies, in the eyes of the Bush Administration, are sacrosanct. It is not the American consumers, then, but only the American oil companies who benefit from George Bush's premeditated wars.

Also common to both lines of dots, and integral to the overall story, is the historic, intimate, and profitable relationship across several generations between the Bush family and the royal family of Saudi Arabia. It can be seen today in the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based investment company focused primarily in the arms, security, and energy industries. Both George H.W. and George W. Bush have been deeply involved in Carlyle, and so have a number of the Saudi royalty. (And so, incidentally, has the family of Osama Bin Laden.)

Carlyle has profited immensely from the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars. Its legal matters are handled by Baker, Botts"James Baker's law firm in Texas. Mr. Baker also has a personal interest in Carlyle, amounting to some $180 million. (Baker, Botts defended Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Defense Minister of Saudi Arabia, who was sued by the families of Trade Tower victims for alleged complicity in the attacks.) Another client of Baker, Botts is Exxon-Mobil.

In September of 2000, with the Presidential election approaching, the Project for a New American Century published a report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses." The PNAC once more advocated pre-emptive war, i.e., premeditated war, something unprecedented in the U.S. history, but it realized what a radical departure that would represent. Moving to such a mindset would be long and difficult, in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."

When President Bush assumed office three other members of the Project for a New American Century joined his administration: Richard Cheney, Douglas Feith, and Lewis Libby. Pre-emptive, premeditated war was formally adopted when the President signed the National Security Strategy early in his tenure.

So the twists and turns, convulsions, and complexity of people and ideas continued, and so did the jockeying for the world's oil wealth, but still nothing illegal or unconstitutional had been done.

The rationale, the urge, and the planning, however, for attacking both Afghanistan and Iraq were in place. But to attack a sovereign nation unprovoked would enrage the American people"and much of the world, as well. The Bush Administration bided its time.

The preparations had all been done secretly, wholly within the executive branch. The Congress was not informed until the endgame of the premeditation, when President Bush, making his dishonest case for the "war on terror" asked for and was granted the discretion to use military force. The American people were equally denied information of critical public importance. Probably never before in our history was such a drastic and momentous action undertaken with so little knowledge or oversight: the dispatch of America's armed forces into five years of violence.

The story of George Bush's premeditated wars now enters its final chapter.

The catastrophic event takes place. A hijacked airliner probably en route to the White House crashes in Pennsylvania, the Pentagon is afire, and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center are rubble.

In the first hours of frenetic response, fully aware of al Qaeda's culpability, both President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld seek frantically to link Saddam Hussein to the attacks, we know from on site-witnesses. They are anxious to proceed with their planned invasion. And less than a week later, at a meeting of the National Security Council, President Bush ordered the Defense Department to be ready to handle Iraq, "possibly occupying Iraqi oil fields."

The controversies rage on yet today about the events of September 11, 2001. No steel building has ever collapsed from fire alone. Buildings falling precisely into their footprints are the marks of deliberate (and expert) demolition. The faulty construction/foreshortened lifespan/insurance angle. The collapse of a third building that was not hit at all. The short-selling of airline stock in previous days. The Pentagon hit by a missile, not a civilian airliner. Michael Rupert's book "Crossing the Rubicon" lays the blame for 9/11 directly at Dick Cheney's feet. Senator Robert Dole's former chief of staff, Mr. Stanley Hilton, claims he can prove George Bush signed an order authorizing the attacks. Half the people polled in New York city believed the Bush Administration had prior knowledge of the attack, and "consciously failed" to act. Et cetera.

(Conspiracy is forever easier to see than to find, but that does not obviate the need to seek thoroughly the whole truth about 9/11, and that has yet to be done.)

Involving the Bush Administration in the execution of 9/11, or even accommodating their informed inaction, is almost too appalling to contemplate. But if they needed a reason to proceed with their planned invasions, they could not have been handed a more fortuitous and spectacular excuse.

9/11 was a criminal act of terrorism, not a violation of our entire nation's security. Comparing it, as the Bush Administration immediately did, to Pearl Harbor was ludicrous: the hijacked airliners were not the vanguard of a formidable naval armada, an air force, and a standing army ready to engage in all out war, as the Japanese were prepared to do and did in 1941. 9/11 was a shocking event of unprecedented scale, but to characterize it as an invasion of national security was criminal. It was creating reality. It was also, and in the extreme, surreal, because the Bush Administration chose consciously to frighten the American people beyond any conceivable necessity. It adopted fear mongering as a mode of governance.

As not a few disinterested observers noted at the time, international criminal terrorism is best countered by international police action, which Israel and other nations have proven many times over to be effective.

Then why was a "war" declared on "terrorists and states that harbor terrorists?"

The pre-planned attack on Afghanistan, as we have seen, was meant to nullify the contract between the Taliban and the Bridas Corporation, to assure access to the Caspian Basin riches for American oil companies. It was a pure play of international energy policy. It had nothing to do, as designed, with apprehending Osama bin Laden"a pure play of security policy.

But the two "seemingly unrelated areas of policy" had been "melded," so here was an epic opportunity to bait-and-switch--and the opportunity was not missed for a moment. Conjoining the terrorist and the state that harbored him made a "war" plausible: it would be necessary to overthrow the Taliban as well as to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. (As it turned out, of course, the Taliban was overthrown instead of bringing Osama bin Laden to justice, but the energy policy goal was achieved, at least. And years later President Bush was astonishing in his candor, when he admitted "Osama bin Laden isn't important.")

The first monstrous and intentional deception"the declaration of a "war on terror""took place. There was no talk of contracts, pipelines, or Argentinian oil companies. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban were cleverly, ingeniously conflated, and there was only talk of war.

On October 7, 2001 the carpet of bombs is unleashed over Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai, the former Unocal consultant, is installed as head of an interim government. Subsequently he is elected President of Afghanistan, and welcomes the first U.S. envoy"Mr. John J. Maresca, Vice President for International Relations of the Unocal Corporation, who had implored Congress three years previously to have the Taliban overthrown. Mr. Maresca was succeeded by Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad"also a former Unocal consultant. (Mr. Khalilzad has since become Ambassador to Iraq.)

With the Taliban banished and the Bridas contract moot, Presidents Karzai of Afghanistan and Musharraf of Pakistan meet on February 8, 2002, sign an agreement for a new pipeline, and the way forward is open for Unocal once more.

The Bridas contract was breached by US military force, but behind the combat was Unocal. Bridas sued Unocal in the US courts for contract interference, and in 2004 it won, overcoming Richard Ben Veniste's law firm. That firm had multibillion dollar interests in the Caspian Basin, and shared an office in Uzbekistan with the Enron Corporation. In 2004, Mr. Ben Veniste was serving as a 9/11 Commissioner.

About a year after the Karzai/Musharraf agreement was signed, an article appeared in "Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections," an obscure trade publication. It described the readiness of three US federal agencies to finance the prospective pipeline, and how "the United States was willing to police the pipeline infrastructure through permanent stationing of it troops in the region." The article appeared on February 23, 2003.

The objective of the first premeditated war was now achieved. The Bush Administration stood ready with financing to build the pipeline across Afghanistan, and with a permanent military presence to protect it.

Within two months President Bush sent the military might of America sweeping into Iraq.

The second round of deliberate deception was more egregious by far.

Alleging a relationship between bin Laden's al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan had at least some basis in fact. Alleging a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein simply did not. And the weapons-of-mass-destruction argument was equally fraudulent, we know now. But the bait-and-switch "war on terrorism" would continue. "Cakewalk." The staging of the Jessica Lynch rescue. The toppling of the statue in Baghdad. Mission accomplished. The orchestrated capture of Saddam Hussein. And the barrage of managed perception continues to this day.

The smokescreen includes the coverup of the 9/11 attacks on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon. Initially and fiercely resisting any inquiry at all, President Bush finally appoints a 10-person "9/11 Commission." Its report places the blame on "faulty intelligence." President Bush and Vice President Cheney are accorded breathtaking courtesies in the inquiry: they are not required to testify under oath, and they need not even testify separately. At the insistence of the White House, they are "interviewed" together in the Oval Office, with no transcription permitted.

The apparent manipulation of pre-war intelligence is not addressed by the 9/11 Commission, the veracity President Bush's many statements is assumed without question, and the troubling incongruities of 9/11 are ignored.

Many of the 10 commissioners, however, were burdened with stunning conflicts of interest--Mr. Ben Veniste, for example--mostly by their connections to the oil and defense industries, both of which were benefited beyond measure (and doubt) by the Mid East conflicts.

Then the Abu Ghraib horrors came to the surface. Then the spectacular cronyism of the no-bid contracts, with Mr. Cheney and his former company, Halliburton, becoming the icons of corruption. Then the domestic spying issue. Torrents of exposés were published, while Iraq descended into the hellish quagmire of insurgency and civil war"with Afghanistan belatedly following suit.

On November 7, 2006 the American people said, "Enough!" By any measure--by public acclaim--the last six years have been a national tragedy and a national disgrace.

In spite of the Democrats' united message rejecting it, many citizens are calling actively for the impeachment of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and perhaps others. (Secretary Rumsfeld has left the Administration, but faces prosecution under German law.)

The story told here has to be considered "circumstantial." None of it results from testimony under oath, none of it has been admitted as legal evidence in a jurisprudential undertaking, and the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven remains axiomatic. And we might well reiterate the humane and civil plea, heard frequently after 9/11: what we need is justice, not vengeance.

We should not proceed directly to impeachment. At the very least, however, the story of George Bush's premeditated wars raises questions of presidential dereliction as grave as any in our history.

We need to know the truth and all the truth. The time has come, as well as the opportunity, for formal, Congressional investigations, based on subpoenas, sworn testimony, and direct evidence about 9/11 and about the created reality of the "war on terror."

The new Congress has no greater Constitutional duty than to find this truth and display it, if our nightmarish politics is to end. If such inquiries clearly exonerate the Bush Administration, the nation can breathe deeply and go on. If they do not, then but only then should impeachment be undertaken.

To fail in this responsibility is to condone the surreal political discourse the Bush Administration has imposed. That could render it the permanent condition of American governance.

Richard W. Behan's last book was Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics, and the Fate of the Federal Lands (Island Press, 2001). Behan is currently working on a more broadly rendered critique, 'To Provide Against Invasions: Corporate Dominion and America's Derelict Democracy.' He can be reached by email at rwbehan@rockisland.com.

But while the authors hope their report will invigorate and create cross-cultural dialogue, its tone implies that it is unlikely to be well received by the United States and Israel, focusing as it does on allegations of double standards by those two nations while giving less time to the faults of the Palestinians or specific Muslim governments.

Criticism of US policies, though at times oblique, is a major feature of the document and hits on themes that have angered representatives of the Bush administration in the past. For instance, in a discussion of Al Qaeda's attack on the US on Sept. 11, the report states: "Later, these attacks were presented as one of the justifications for the invasion of Iraq, whose link with them has never been demonstrated, feeding a perception among Muslim societies of unjust aggression stemming from the West."

While that is indeed a common view in Muslim countries, it is unlikely to gain the favor of the current US administration, whose representative to the United Nations, John Bolton, is an ardent supporter of the invasion of Iraq and a frequent critic of the world body. Earlier this year, Mr. Bolton characterized the UN Human Rights Commission as packed with officials from "some of the world's most notorious human rights abusers."

The report is the result of a UN-sanctioned "High Level Group" meeting of some twenty "eminent personalities" that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed last year. The group, which was cosponsored by the Prime Ministers of Turkey and Spain and included among its authors Nobel Peace Prize-winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami, issued the final report on Nov. 13 at its final meeting in Istanbul.

To be sure, the report is also framed as a direct challenge to the notion that a "Clash of Civilizations" is imminent - a concept first popularized by Samuel Huntington's 1996 book of the same name.

In a statement, Mr. Kofi Annan said it was clear that religion is not at the root of current tensions.

"The problem is not the Koran or the Torah or the Bible,'' Mr. Annan said. "The problem is never the faith, it is the faithful and how they behave towards each other."

That sentiment was echoed in an editorial published in the Houston Chronicle on Sunday by three of the report's authors, who also said that political repression in the Muslim world contributes to extremism.

"Denying peaceful opposition movements the freedom to express their views and jailing their supporters generate anger and resentment, encouraging some to join violent groups,'' wrote Mr. Tutu, former Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas, and Andri Azoulay, an advisor to Morocco's King Muhammed VI.

"When Western governments lend their support - tacitly or overtly - to authoritarian regimes, they become part of the problem," the authors wrote.

The overall objective of the paper is to set out problems between the Muslim and the West as a matter of politics, and not of culture, and tends to see anger and misunderstanding as largely a problem of inadequate education.

For instance, the authors point to a recent Gallup poll that found 57 percent of Americans either responded "nothing" or "I don't know" when asked what they most admired about Muslim societies, as evidence for a need for education systems in both the West and Muslim countries to provide a "basic understanding of religious traditions other than their own."

The authors also point to another recent survey that found 30 percent of US government money for cultural exchanges go to programs with Europe - the societies with which the US has the most in common - while just 6 percent go to programs with the Middle East, arguably the place where such efforts could do the most good.
How to build an alliance of civilizations

The UN's High Level Group report includes a set of concrete recommendations for the international community. Among the recommendations:

- The international community should draft a white paper to analyze the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

- An international conference should be convened to reinvigorate the Middle East peace process.

- Ruling parties in the Muslim world should provide space for the participation of peaceful political groups.

- Leaders and shapers of public opinion should behave responsibly and work to promote understanding among cultures.

- The UN should appoint a high representative to assist in defusing cross-cultural tensions.

- The UN should establish a forum for the alliance of civilizations under its auspices.

- Journalists should receive improved training in intercultural understanding.

- Media content should aim to promote intercultural dialogue.

- Educational materials and media literacy programs in schools should face a critical review.

- Governments should increase the number of international youth exchanges and youth-oriented websites.

- The international community should create media campaigns to combat discrimination.

Source: United Nations Fourth High Level Group, www.unaoc.org

If the sectarian strife spreads, the Iraq Study Group cautioned on Wednesday, neighbouring countries face instability as the two Muslim sects vie to protect their spheres of influence. "Ambassadors from neighbouring countries told us that they fear the distinct possibility of Sunni-Shia clashes across the Islamic world," the Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, wrote.

Their alert may have been buried deep within the 100-page report. But it is page one, paragraph one of neighbouring regimes' concerns, as the report recognised: "Such a broader sectarian conflict could open a Pandora's box of problems - including the radicalisation of problems, mass movements of populations and regime changes - that could take decades to play out."

For Ahmad Mahmoud, it did not take decades. The 20-year-old's face now stares impassively from mourning posters plastered on his two-storey home in Beirut. A Shia, he lived in the mainly Sunni neighbourhood of Tarek Jdeide. Mahmoud was shot dead on Sunday during street clashes between Sunnis and Shias.

It was the first fatality of Lebanon's worsening political crisis, which has soured the already tense relations between the two communities. His death sparked further clashes in Beirut, where for the first time the Sunni-Shia split was overshadowing the more traditional divide between Christians and Muslims.

The sectarian tensions behind Mahmoud's death are being played out across the Middle East, where broader suspicions and hostilities have led to a riot in Damascus suburbs, a knife fight between pupils and cruel barbs in Amman schools. In Syria and Jordan - both Sunni countries - there is rising domestic anger at the daily slaughter of their brethren in Iraq, which is beamed into their homes by satellite television. Many blame Shia Iran for stoking the conflict there.

Many regimes also fear that al-Qaeda's brand of Sunni militancy will spread after thousands of young Arabs who fought with the insurgents in Iraq return home, emboldened to take on their leaders. King Abdullah II of Jordan has talked, separately, of a "Shia Crescent" from Iran to Lebanon, and last week cautioned that the region could end up with three civil wars: in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

"Iran is now connected to all the ongoing conflicts in the region in Iraq, in Lebanon, and in Palestine, and is now the main address you have to go through for solving all these conflicts," a senior Jordanian official said.

"[Iran] is operating through its local allies, in Iraq, and through Hezbollah and Hamas. It is engaging with the marginalised Shia communities in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and in Kuwait to turn them into arrows that can challenge their Government's legitimacy and authority."

The growing regional influence of Iran was certainly a dark undercurrent beneath last week's Amman mini-summit between Mr Bush and Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister. There are fears among Sunni regimes that Tehran is distracting US efforts to curb its nuclear ambitions by using its oil wealth and regional proxies to foster trouble across the region.

Another potential cause for instability is the more than one million Iraqis who have fled into Syria and Jordan. In June, a fatal quarrel between a Syrian and an Iraqi refugee triggered rioting in Geramana, an Iraqi-majority suburb south of Damascus. Witnesses said that scores of Syrians took to the streets, burning Iraqi cars and shops and three Iraqi-run real estate offices before they were dispersed by police.

Since the Iraqi exodus began, Geramana's population has nearly doubled, driving up rents, prices and hostility. Maher Mohammad, 42, a Geramana resident, said: "The Syrian citizen is bearing the burden. I like the Iraqi people and I know they are suffering a lot from the war and terrorist attacks, but these are not the Syrian citizens' problems."

Iranian influence is increasingly being felt across Syria. Its first car-making plant is Iranian; a new fleet of buses for Damascus is coming from Iran and Syria's first private-sector power plant is being built by Iran.

There is also growing tension in Jordan, where Mustafa Hamid, a 15-year-old Iraqi asylum-seeker, was attacked with a knife in Amman in October. "I was going to school when ten boys came up to me and said 'Come here Iraqi Shia, you helped the Americans capture Saddam Hussein'," he told The Times. "The largest boy held me down and they slashed my face. I'm sure things are going to get worse."

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq, his parents don't go to the mosque because their distinctive Shia rituals set them apart.

A few streets away, their friend Umm Mohammed's two sons - the only Shias in their class - came home from school last week in tears. "Our religion teacher came the classroom and said 'You are Shia, and it is halal (religiously permitted) to kill Shia in Islam. You are not good Muslims like us'," Haidar, 14, told The Times. "My classmates said nothing. They used to be my friends, but now nobody talks to me."

Nasser Joudeh, a Jordanian government spokesman, insisted that Jordan did not exclude Iraqis except on security grounds, saying: "We don't have a Sunni-Shia problem."

Yet the Middle East's so-called "miderate" states such as Jordan are alarmed by the rising prominence of the anti-Western alliance that has emerged in recent months, grouping Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and various other players. Some fear that it is a bid by a resurgent Shia community inspired by Iran to alter the sectarian balance of power at the expense of Sunnis. They are irritated at apparent overturnes by the US toward Damascus and Tehran, fearing that it will be at the expense of Washington's traditional regional allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

But on the ground, there are bonds of nationality that cross the Sunni-Shia divide. At a near-deserted Jordanian taxi rank late one night this week, The Times watched as a misguided Iraqi Shia tried to persuade a cab to take him back to Iraq.

He was desperate to see his family. But the drivers, all Sunni Iraqis, spurned a lucrative fare by convincing him not to run the gauntlet of Sunni insurgents along the 400-mile route. His suicidal would-be fare was sent back to Amman. One driver said that he did not want to see a fellow Iraqi die: "He is a Shia. I am a Sunni, but we know they will kill him on that road. They will drag him from our car and kill him and we won't be able to do anything."

The 2006 election was a referendum on America's war in Iraq. The results displayed widespread mistrust of the Bush administration. Some of the most pro-war Republican hawks in the Senate and the Congress have been replaced by Democratic candidates that appeared to be anti-war or less pro-war. As a face saving measure, President Bush had to find the fall-guy, and so his 'trusted' Defense Secretary, the 74-year old neocon idealist, Donald Rumsfeld, had to be replaced with a realist - Robert Gates, former CIA Director.

The decision to ask Rumsfeld to resign was easy for the White House. After all, Rumsfeld's resignation had been sought, since America's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, by many groups, including military officers within his own Pentagon, for not developing a 'winning' strategy. His policies have been dubbed variedly as being authoritarian, failed, insane, unrealistic, stupid, criminal, businesslike, quagmire and fiasco.

Always defensive and combative, Rumsfeld was tunnel-visioned in his approach to the neocon-orchestrated war against the Muslim world (which he liked to package as Islamofascism); behaving more like an old dog that did not like to learn new tricks. In spite of mounting pressure from the Congress to sack him, Bush had kept him in his job, hoping for miracles in Iraq and thus, the 2006 election. But with the humiliating defeats in both the houses, the honeymoon was over. So, the man who was the architect of the first war of the 21st century became its first big casualty.

As one of the primary architects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rumsfeld will always be remembered alongside Bush and Cheney for the scandals of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo that epitomized inhumanity, savagery, bigotry, perversion and sadism. He authorized the use of torture and brutal, evil and shameful treatment that violated the Geneva Conventions, and thus constitute war crimes. He refused to treat his Muslim prisoners as POWs. He put them in cage and moved them around naked. He approved interrogation techniques that included the use of dogs, removal of clothing, hooding, stress positions, isolation for up to 30 days, 20-hour per day interrogations, forcing to wear women's underwear on head, denying bathroom access and deprivation of food, sleep and rest. He approved the use of physical coercion and sexual humiliation to extract information from prisoners. He also authorized water-boarding (which constitutes torture), where the interrogator induces the sensation of imminent death by drowning.

In the Muslim world, Rumsfeld (alongside Bush & Cheney) will long be remembered as another Hulagu Khan that killed, plundered and looted Baghdad, destroying the very city that was once the citadel of Muslim learning.

Like Robert McNamara of the Vietnam era, Rumsfeld is equally remorseless for the deaths of 655,000 Iraqis. He describes the Iraq war as a "little-understood, unfamiliar war".

As has been pointed out lately by Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President of National Lawyers Guild, prosecuting a war of aggression isn't Rumsfeld's only crime. He also participated in the highest levels of decision-making that allowed the extrajudicial execution of several people. [Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour Hersh] Willful killing is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, which constitutes a war crime. To elaborate further, Marjorie Cohn writes, "Even though Rumsfeld didn't personally carry out the torture and mistreatment of prisoners, he authorized it. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, a commander can be liable for war crimes committed by his inferiors if he knew or should have known they would be committed and did nothing to stop of prevent them. The U.S. War Crimes Act provides for prosecution of a person who commits war crimes and prescribes life imprisonment, or even the death penalty if the victim dies." [Jurist - Forum: Donald Rumsfeld: The War Crimes Case, Nov. '06]

War crime is a serious matter. Many legal experts and human rights activists are of the opinion that the warlords of our world need to be tried for their crimes against humanity. A few years ago, therefore, there were cases filed in the European courts against some war criminals, including Ariel Sharon of Israel for the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Lebanon, and Jenine in the Occupied Palestine. Fearing their imminent arrest if they had stepped onto European soil, some of the Israeli generals did not disembark from their planes and returned to Israel.

Last Tuesday (11/14/06), emboldened by Rumsfeld's resignation last week, German and American lawyers asked a German prosecutor to investigate Rumsfeld on allegations of war crimes, stemming from the treatment of prisoners held in military jails in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 220-page lawsuit, filed with the German federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe, names 11 other current and former American officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whom it claims either ordered the torture of prisoners or drafted laws that legitimated its use. The suit, filed by civil-rights legal groups on behalf of 12 detainees - 11 Iraqis and a Saudi - asserts that they were subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation, withholding of food, and sexual humiliation. [See: War Crimes Suit Prepared against Rumsfeld, and HERE for details.]

These legal experts who filed the case believe that there is a fair chance of succeeding in bringing Rumsfeld and other Pentagon brasses to justice. The problem, however, is even if Rumsfeld and Co. are to be found guilty and condemned, the USA may not allow their extradition for hearing and subsequent imprisonment. Among western countries, interestingly, the USA is the only country that has not accepted the full jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to try its own war criminals, although, rather hypocritically, she had no problem having other monsters like the late Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia or Hutu leaders of Rwanda tried under the auspices of the ICJ.

With U.S. laws protecting its government officials that are at variance with international laws, Rumsfeld's war crimes case may eventually go to the UNSC. But there, the USA will veto such resolutions further isolating herself from the rest of the civilized world. Nonetheless, for billions of conscientious people in our planet, the suit is a much welcome event. It should be a matter of warning and deterrence for war criminals of today and tomorrow. "Even if we never put Rumsfeld on trial in a German court, he will be harassed and publicly stamped as a torturer," said Wolfgang Kaleck, a Berlin attorney who filed the complaint against Rumsfeld, together with the Center for Constitutional Rights, an American group, and other legal organizations.

During the resignation event in the White House, President Bush said in tribute: "Donald Rumsfeld has been a superb leader during a time of change. Yet he also appreciates the value of bringing in a fresh perspective during a critical period in this war." In his farewell speech, Rumsfeld was equally gracious to his boss. Addressing the president, he said: "It is not well-known, it was not well understood, it is complex for people to comprehend and I know with certainty that over time the contributions you've made will be recorded by history." Only time will tell whether his euphoria is rightly placed!

Though Israel is widely assumed to have a nuclear weapons arsenal, it has stuck to its policy of ambiguity on the subject, insisting against all the evidence that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. A retired Israeli general said Thursday Israel is no longer trying to convince anyone that it has no nuclear arsenal.

Israeli officials traditionally do not respond to statements like the one Gates made, and true to form, government spokeswoman Miri Eisin told The Associated Press, "there is no direct Israeli comment."

Experts played down the importance of Gates' "outing" of the Israeli nuclear weapons program. Defense analyst Shlomo Brom, a retired Israel Defense Forces general who was once in charge of strategic planning for the military, said similar statements came out of Washington during the first Gulf War in 1991 and did not lead to a change in Israeli policy. "This is nothing really new," he said. "It doesn't change anything."

What has changed over the years is the perception of Israel's nuclear capabilities. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Israel's main nuclear reactor, gave pictures and documents to the London Sunday Times that led experts to conclude that Israel has a sizable nuclear weapons arsenal, ranking it sixth in the world. Vanunu served an 18-year prison term for his disclosures.

The pictures and other evidence put Israel's official policy in a new light. "The fact is that for a long time, Israel's policy of ambiguity has been not a matter of people thinking we don't have any [nuclear weapons], just that Israel doesn't admit it," Brom said.

Even so, Israel has consistently maintained its policy of ambiguity. Analyst Yossi Alpher said it allows Israel's neighbors "to assume that even if Israel had nuclear weapons, this was not a threat to them," and therefore it should not be changed. However, Alpher added, "it's very possible that if and when Iran goes nuclear in the military sense, Israel will have to consider ending its policy of ambiguity. Then it won't be the first."

At a news conference in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert responded to Gates' explanation of Iranian motives for acquiring nuclear weapons.

"I don't think anyone in the U.S. thinks there is justification for Iran's achieving nuclear [weapons] capability," he said, without referring to Gates' reference to Israel's nuclear potential.

Olmert added, "We are not indifferent, cannot be indifferent, and won't be indifferent to efforts that appear serious to us, to develop capabilities that could be used as a springboard to build a [nuclear] bomb."

Gates told the Senate committee that the U.S. could not guarantee that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, it would not attack Israel with it. "I don't think that anybody can provide that assurance," he said.

The education foundation is a nonprofit arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- AIPAC, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. A 2005 National Journal survey of congressional insiders ranked AIPAC second most influential lobbying group among Democratic lawmakers and fourth among Republicans.

The pro-Israel organization made headlines in August when two of its former lobbyists were charged with conspiring to pass on national defense information to the Israeli government.

AIPAC's education foundation is the third largest private sponsor of congressional travel, having spent more than $1.5 million sending lawmakers and their staffers on trips since Jan. 1, 2000, according to a Medill News Service analysis of travel disclosure forms from 2000 through mid-August 2006. Most of the trips -- worth nearly $1.4 million -- were to Israel.

"Being on the ground in Israel, seeing the terrain, being there in person provides the perspective that one can't get from being in classrooms and reading media coverage," AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said.

Block declined to provide a full itinerary for any trip, saying AIPAC does not customarily release such agendas to the public. But he said a typical trip would include meetings with Israeli and Palestinian elected officials, academicians and journalists.

A trip three years ago included an afternoon at a Holocaust Memorial and visits with then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, then-Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, according to Block.

Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., who went on the trip, said that new members of Congress who accompanied him were shocked by Israel's small size.

"Many realized for the first time that their districts were bigger" than Israel, he said. "Why would Israel [ever] want to give up land? They could never see that unless they went."

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee urges lawmakers to go see what life is like for Palestinians, but generally can't afford to pay for the congressional trips, said spokesman Tony Kutayli.