February 28, 2006 - There is an argument which suggests that the “war on terror” is NOT terror. If that argument is not insane, then it has to be motivated by variables palpably more sinister. Murder of innocent people is murder regardless who commits it.

    I give no consideration whatsoever to the argument that because Saddam killed people the US was thereby provided with justification to kill people also. Those who forward that profanity are in effect saying that the US leadership need NOT maintain the civilized standards which they profess to uphold, but that they can conduct themselves at the killer-standards of Saddam …. the lowest common denominator.

    I have just read about a spy who was employed by a foreign power and who was also a madman. And yes, the Bush regime used his lies as reason and excuse to go to war in Iraq.

    I commend this book to your buying and reading: “STATE OF WAR… The Secret History Of The CIA And The Bush Administration” by James Risen; Published this year, 2006, by Free Press, New York, London, Toronto and Sydney. His coverage and reporting of 9/11 and terrorism was excellent enough to make him co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2002. I shall be back with Risen shortly.

    ABC reported this evening, February 28, 2006, on US troops returning home from Iraq: 35% of them received some kind of psychological counseling. 12% of them are diagnosed with MENTAL DISORDER. This strengthens the point that this column has recently been making: when Presidents and Prime Ministers betray young people and send them to war, societies pay an incalculable price of which death is only the ultimate. Creators of war never send their sons or their twin daughters. They send other people’s children.

    Last week the media reported that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez insulted Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice: He sent her a public message saying, “Girl, don’t mess with me.” Chavez should stop such distractions; but consider this:

    When she was National Security Advisor, her staff members described Ms. Rice as “very, very weak.” The powers of her office were wielded by Cheney and Rumsfeld. James Risen (page 64) quotes one of her staff members: “Rumsfeld was subject to no adult supervision by the national security advisor.” The only inference that can be drawn is that the staffer saw Condi Rice supervising her own portfolio more as a child than as an adult.

    Ineffective as she may have been in her job, Ms. Rice manifested herself as the most loyal Bushite, consumed by her insanity to push war. It was as if all her learning and her reputation as a child prodigy had made her mad. If that is the paramount difference that a black person can make when she assumes high office, forget it. Perhaps it would be more appropriate for South Dakota and other states to make birth control retroactive.

    At page 100, James Risen described how the Americans (early 1991) destroyed the Iraqi nuclear program almost by accident. Furthermore, searches by UN experts including Americans such as David Kay found no WMDs, but the Bush administration kept saying that there were.

    An Iraqi exile, defector, fabricator and liar (code named Curveball) told tall tales to German Intelligence, who told US military intelligence, who told the American CIA, who told advisors to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Most deadly was the lie that Saddam’s regime had developed mobile biological laboratories that enabled Iraqi scientists to keep their bioweapons out of sight of UN inspectors (James Risen pages 115 to 119).

    In the fall of 2002, the Germans told a leading CIA chief (Tyler Drumheller) that “Curveball was crazy,” that Germany was not sure Curveball was telling the truth, “and worse, that there were questions about his mental stability and reliability, particularly since he had suffered a nervous breakdown. The message was painfully clear: the Americans shouldn’t use Curveball’s information.”

    Drumheller informed and warned top CIA managers. But he was shocked to learn, in January 2003, that Curveball’s fatally poisonous lies were going to be included in Colin Powell’s UN presentation, scheduled for early February (page 117).

    Drumheller moved fast to get that flawed material out of Powell’s draft speech: he summoned a meeting with the Deputy CIA Director (McLaughlin). “Just to make sure, Drumheller’s European Division sent a copy of Powell’s draft speech back to top CIA managers with the Curveball material scratched out.”

    Nonetheless, the world watched and listened as Mr. Powell made his most forceful case at the UN that there existed a biological weapons program in Iraq. His case for war was based on the same insane reports that originated with Curveball – reports of mobile weapons labs.

    Let some smartman answer me that: Who must take responsibility for that insanity, for the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died, for the many more who die and shall continue to die in the civil war and for the 2,279 Americans who have died to date?

    A crowd once sought ratification from Christ to kill a woman. His immortal response? “Let him who is without sin…” There will be less sorrow and hatred in the world if man leaves the killing to God… From Roseau to Mahaut…From Trinidad to Baghdad…… From America to Africa.