* * * * * totaltruthsciences * * * * *

Click here for the very sad song and pictures about the Bush War Crimes http://nobravery.cf.huffingtonpost.com/ produced by GlobalFreePress.com Music by James Blunt

http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/content/articles/2005/05/18/music_feature_james_blunt_interview_200505_feature.shtml

James Blunt interview on BBC: James Blunt, whose parents own Cley Mill on the north Norfolk coast, has scooped two Brit Awards for best pop act and best British male. Read our interview with the chart-topper before he released You're Beautiful, which propelled him to stardom.

Lyrics to 'No Bravery’ http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/James-Blunt/No-Bravery.html James Blunt - No Bravery Lyrics

There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
Tears drying on their face.
He has been here.
Brothers lie in shallow graves.
Fathers lost without a trace.
A nation blind to their disgrace,
Since he's been here.
And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.
Houses burnt beyond repair.
The smell of death is in the air.
A woman weeping in despair says,
He has been here.
Tracer lighting up the sky.
It's another families' turn to die.
A child afraid to even cry out says,
He has been here.
And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.
There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
But no one asks the question why,
He has been here.
Old men kneel and accept their fate.
Wives and daughters cut and raped.
A generation drenched in hate.
Yes, he has been here.
And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.

From Graham Jukes: When you think on our level, in understanding what is really happening in this World, it's very easy to be sucked into arguments
with those who still trust their Gov/Media. Their inability to see thru their Politicians' deceptions puts them at a great disadvantage, long-term wise.

The Story of Blake Miller, Iraq War Veteran <http://www.tomjoad.org/marlboroman.htm> (aka: Marlboro Man)
Iraq Coalition Casualties <http://icasualties.org/oif/>
The Patriot Project <http://www.patriotproject.com/>
The images Bush doesn't want you to see <http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/photos-us-doesnt-want-seen/2006/02/14/1139890737099.html>
http://www.marchforjustice.com/index.php
http://thememoryhole.org/war/thisiswar/

The Anti-Empire Report, Some things you need to know by William Blum
June 21, 2006

Great Moments in the History of Imperialism

National Public Radio foreign correspondent Loren Jenkins, serving in NPR's Baghdad bureau, met earlier this month with a senior
Shiite cleric, a man who was described in the NPR report as "a moderate" and as a person trying to lead his Shiite followers into
practicing peace and reconciliation. He had been jailed by Saddam Hussein and forced into exile. Jenkins asked him: "What would you
think if you had to go back to Saddam Hussein?" The cleric replied that he'd "rather see Iraq under Saddam Hussein than the way it
is now."[1]

When one considers what the people of Iraq have experienced as a result of the American bombings, invasion, regime change, and
occupation since 2003, should this attitude be surprising, even from such an individual? I was moved to compile a list of the many
kinds of misfortune which have fallen upon the heads of the Iraqi people as a result of the American liberation of their homeland.
It's depressing reading, and you may not want to read it all, but I think it's important to have it summarized in one place.

Loss of a functioning educational system. A 2005 UN study revealed that 84% of the higher education establishments have been
"destroyed, damaged and robbed".

The intellectual stock has been further depleted as many thousands of academics and other professionals have fled abroad or have
been mysteriously kidnapped or assassinated in Iraq; hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, other Iraqis, most of them from the
vital, educated middle class, have left for Jordan, Syria or Egypt, many after receiving death threats. "Now I am isolated," said a
middle-class Sunni Arab, who decided to leave. "I have no government. I have no protection from the government. Anyone can come to
my house, take me, kill me and throw me in the trash."[2]

Loss of a functioning health care system. And loss of the public's health. Deadly infections including typhoid and tuberculosis are
rampaging through the country. Iraq's network of hospitals and health centers, once admired throughout the Middle East, has been
severely damaged by the war and looting.

The UN's World Food Program reported that 400,000 Iraqi children were suffering from "dangerous deficiencies of protein". Deaths
from malnutrition and preventable diseases, particularly amongst children, already a problem because of the 12 years of US-imposed
sanctions, have increased as poverty and disorder have made access to a proper diet and medicines ever more difficult.

Thousands of Iraqis have lost an arm or a leg, frequently from unexploded US cluster bombs, which became land mines; cluster bombs
are a class of weapons denounced by human rights groups as a cruelly random scourge on civilians, particularly children.

Depleted uranium particles, from exploded US ordnance, float in the Iraqi air, to be breathed into human bodies and to radiate
forever, and infect the water, the soil, the blood, the genes, producing malformed babies. During the few weeks of war in spring
2003, A10 "tankbuster" planes, which use munitions containing depleted uranium, fired 300,000 rounds.

And the use of napalm as well. And white phosphorous. The American military has attacked hospitals to prevent them from giving out
casualty figures of US attacks that contradicted official US figures, which the hospitals had been in the habit of doing.

Numerous homes have been broken into by US forces, the men taken away, the women humiliated, the children traumatized; on many
occasions, the family has said that the American soldiers helped themselves to some of the family's money. Iraq has had to submit to
a degrading national strip search.

Destruction and looting of the country's ancient heritage, perhaps the world's greatest archive of the human past, left unprotected
by the US military, busy protecting oil facilities.

A nearly lawless society: Iraq's legal system, outside of the political sphere, was once one of the most impressive and secular in
the Middle East; it is now a shambles; religious law more and more prevails.

Women's rights previously enjoyed are now in great and growing danger under harsh Islamic law, to one extent or another in various
areas. Sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent previously, has become a serious issue.

Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims have lost much of the security they had enjoyed in Saddam's secular society; many have
emigrated.

A gulag of prisons run by the US and the new Iraqi government feature a wide variety of torture and abuse -- physical,
psychological, emotional; painful, degrading, humiliating; leading to mental breakdown, death, suicide; a human-rights disaster
area.

Over 50,000 Iraqis have been imprisoned by US forces since the invasion, but only a very tiny portion of them have been convicted of
any crime.

US authorities have recruited members of Saddam Hussein's feared security service to expand intelligence gathering and root out the
resistance.

Unemployment is estimated to be around fifty percent. Massive layoffs of hundreds of thousands of Baathist government workers and
soldiers by the American occupation authority set the process in motion early on. Later, many, desperate for work, took positions
tainted by a connection to the occupation, placing themselves in grave danger of being kidnapped or murdered.

The cost of living has skyrocketed. Income levels have plummeted.

The Kurds of Northern Iraq evict Arabs from their homes. Arabs evict Kurds in other parts of the country.

Many people were evicted from their homes because they were Baathist. US troops took part in some of the evictions. They have also
demolished homes in fits of rage over the killing of one of their buddies.

When US troops don't find who they're looking for, they take who's there; wives have been held until the husband turns himself in, a
practice which Hollywood films stamped in the American mind as being a particular evil of the Nazis; it's also collective punishment
of civilians and is forbidden under the Geneva Convention.

Continual bombing assaults on neighborhoods has left an uncountable number of destroyed homes, workplaces, mosques, bridges, roads,
and everything else that goes into the making of modern civilized life.

Hafitha, Fallujah, Samarra, Ramadi ... names that will live in infamy for the wanton destruction, murder, and assaults upon human
beings and human rights carried out in those places by US forces.

The supply of safe drinking water, effective sewage disposal, and reliable electricity have all generally been below pre-invasion
levels, producing constant hardship for the public, in temperatures reaching 115 degrees. To add to the misery, people wait all day
in the heat to purchase gasoline, due in part to oil production, the country's chief source of revenue, being less than half its
previous level.

The water and sewage system and other elements of the infrastructure had been purposely (sic) destroyed by US bombing in the first
Gulf War of 1991. By 2003, the Iraqis had made great strides in repairing the most essential parts of it. Then came Washington's
renewed bombing.

Civil war, death squads, kidnapping, car bombs, rape, each and every day ... Iraq has become the most dangerous place on earth.
American soldiers and private security companies regularly kill people and leave the bodies lying in the street; US-trained Iraqi
military and police forces kill even more, as does the insurgency. An entire new generation is growing up on violence and sectarian
ethics; this will poison the Iraqi psyche for many years to come.

US intelligence and military police officers often free dangerous criminals in return for a promise to spy on insurgents.
Protesters of various kinds have been shot by US forces on several occasions.

At various times, the US has killed, wounded and jailed reporters from Al Jazeera television, closed the station's office, and
banned it from certain areas because occupation officials didn't like the news the station was reporting. Newspapers have been
closed for what they have printed. The Pentagon has planted paid-for news articles in the Iraqi press to serve propaganda purposes.
But freedom has indeed reigned -- for the great multinationals to extract everything they can from Iraq's resources and labor
without the hindrance of public interest laws, environmental regulations or worker protections. The orders of the day have been
privatization, deregulation, and laissez faire for Halliburton and other Western corporations. Iraqi businesses have been almost
entirely shut out though they are not without abilities, as reflected in the infrastructure rebuilding effort following the US
bombing of 1991.

Yet, despite the fact that it would be difficult to name a single area of Iraqi life which has improved as a result of the American
actions, when the subject is Iraq and the person I'm having a discussion with has no other argument left to defend US policy there,
at least at the moment, I may be asked: "Just tell me one thing, are you glad that Saddam Hussein is out of power?"
And I say: "No". And the person says: "No?" And I say: "No. Tell me, if you went into surgery to correct a knee problem and the surgeon mistakenly amputated your entire leg, what would you think if someone then asked you: Are you glad that you no longer have a knee problem? The people of Iraq no longer
have a Saddam problem." And many Iraqis actually supported him.

"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; moderation in principle is always a vice." Thomas Paine

NOTES

[1] NPR, "Day to Day", June 6, 2006
[2] New York Times, May 19, 2006
[3] Washington Post, June 16, 2006, p.2
[4] November 27, 1965, copy of Oglesby's speech in my possession


William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
http://www.killinghope.org
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.