Search In Iraq Finds No Banned Weapons. (Washington Post)

Bush believes the report vindicates his administration because it shows that Hussein sought components for forbidden programs, but doesn't show that he actually GOT any, contrary to the Administration's announcements prior to war. (Washington Post) It appears that the Iraqi regime had high HOPES of having forbidden programs, but didn't quite work up the skill and materials to MAKE anything.

That's not quite what we were told when this all started.

Kay's WMD report on the CIA website is fascinating. I think my favorite quote so far is this one:

Discussions with Iraqi scientists uncovered agent R&D work that paired overt work with nonpathogenic organisms serving as surrogates for prohibited investigation with pathogenic agents.

That's right, Iraqi scientists were working with benign biological substances, but were hoping to learn things they could use with really nasty biological agents! Oh, shame on them for using harmless agents and fantasizing of harmful ones!

This is another great excerpt:

We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile BW production effort. Investigation into the origin of and intended use for the two trailers found in northern Iraq in April has yielded a number of explanations, including hydrogen, missile propellant, and BW production, but technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers. That said, nothing we have discovered rules out their potential use in BW production.

Read it a few times. Doesn't it just flow over the tongue, like cold chunky peanut butter? Don't you feel a desire to rephrase it? Something more along the lines of, "you probably couldn't make any WMDs in these trailers, but we really have no clue what they were used for, so we count these as proof that they were up to SOMETHING nefarious for now."

The report is full of "could haves." They looked into making something chemical, so they someday could have figured it out! Hussein once asked how long it would take to produce a chemical weapon, and received an estimate! They produce *gasp* ESTIMATES!! And this report reveals that scientists who studied nuclear weapons prior to 1998 were allowed to keep practicing science! YES! "In some cases, these groups performed work which could help preserve the science base and core skills that would be needed for any future fissile material production or nuclear weapons development." SCIENTISTS WERE ENGAGING IN SCIENCE THAT PRESERVED THEIR CORE SKILLS! HOLY COW!

I don't mean to make light of this, but... I was expecting something more compelling, and I feel let down, somehow.

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Are they serious? Bush aides reported being surprised that the news coverage of Kay's interim report focused on the absence so far of weapons of mass destruction.. (Washington Post) Oh, I hope they're not serious. I mean, golly. Even if THEY forgot the original rationale for entering into the war, those of us who are even somewhat sober remember it.

There's a sad article I just read about the current, chaotic state of Somalia. (BBC) There is concern that the country could become a haven for terrorists. The country didn't come onto the US' press radar until unrest after the fall of a president resulted in local warfare and the death of many UN peacekeepers. The US was involved, but the operation went badly, and many US soldiers died. Before those events, you'd think the nation didn't exist, so little was it mentioned in US papers.

Most Americans, me included, were mystified at the time. It was as if Somalia sprang into existence overnight, and was somehow magically filled with high powered guns while its people lacked most of the basics. How could it be? Where did the guns come from? There was some very basic information missing.

A great essay about Americans never understanding international events straightened me out, and so now I know what to look for. If you look at the BBC's excellent timeline of Somalia's history, you'll notice some references to the influence of the Soviets during the cold war.

Can you think of any place where the Soviets alone had influence that the US didn't try to intervene? The US apparently supported and armed warlords who were engaged in a battle of resistance against the left-leaning government, the same way the US supported resistance to the USSR in Afghanistan.

It's very similar to Afghanistan in that respect.

But for those who hadn't heard this excluded tidbit, there's an odd quote from a former American ambassador: "The US now has a coherent policy of trying to get the neighbours to take some responsibility for Somalia." Not that I expected him to bring up OUR role and responsibilities. But... But....

I enjoyed this controversial piece by former UK environment minister Michael Meacher called "This war on terrorism is bogus: The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination." (Guardian UK). Meacher wants to know why the US was so interesting in starting a war so far from home against a country who, it has now been proven, did not have the resources to damage the US.

Meacher's inspiration is a report called "Rebuilding America's Defenses by the increasingly infamous Project for a New American Century, a group that has been planning US world domination (especially through military superiority) for many years, and from which many members of the Bush Administration came. Meacher is especially disturbed by a section on the required elements to shift attitudes toward it's ultra-pro-military stance:

"the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

Meacher's theory is that the September 11, 2001 attacks provided the catalyst that the PNAC folks have been seeking to follow their grandest plans -- not so much by the Bush Administration's design, but by laxity that happens to coincide with militarist interests. In response to critics who accuse him of hysterics, Meacher tries to draw attention to the source of his concern - the report:

It sets out publicly as objectives for the new Bush administration control of the Gulf region, irrespective of Saddam Hussein, regime change in China, US domination of space and cyberspace, and development of biological weapons as "a politically useful tool".

All this is highly relevant to the debate currently raging in Britain as to whether the war in Iraq was justified. Ostensibly Britain was taken into a war to support US goals of combating global terror. But in reality, the evidence shows that the war on terror is largely a cover for wider US geopolitical objectives set out in the neo-conservative manifesto. This is what we should be focusing on.

Ideologically based criticisms aside, I am surprised that his suggestions that the open-ended war on terror are serving some people are so shocking (we have always had war profiteers), and that they distract his critics from the document upon which they are based. The PNAC report itself, and the appropriateness of the Bush Administration's members being blatant militarists who have not distanced themselves from a document which advocates US world domination through military action raise questions on their own.

Shouldn't there be a few more concerns over comments in the PNAC document such as this:

The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

In a world of global cooperation, is it appropriate for the US to want to maintain a military presence around the world, especially in areas where it is notoriously unwanted and unwelcome? Does any nation have the right to impede the sovereignty of other nations for the sake of its financial interests in taking other nation's natural resources in order to have global dominance? Historically, the answer has always been no. Shouldn't the policies that the US is following, as outlined in this document, generate greater concern than implications that the Bush Administration has a conflict of interest with regard to security?

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A detailed analysis of the PNAC document and its operations by MoveOn, currently published at Indymedia (Idaho Indymedia) provides additional background information on the organization and funding behind this dubious conservate effort to build an empire.

I've been home ill for several days, so I missed yesterday's Bring the Troops Home demonstration here in SF. (SF Gate) Bringing the Troops home is a laudable sentiment, but I think we peace-loving people should demand more.

The costly war on Iraq relieved the Iraqi people of a despotic ruler whom the US previously helped keep in power, a belated correction to some very serious and immoral US foreign policy actions, which came at the expense of countless Iraqi lives. But the occupation is not going well, and neither the soldiers nor Iraqis are happy with it. It's time to admit that. Considering the social strife raging through lawless occupied Iraq (Washington Post) that the power vacuum has created, pulling out and abandoning the people after having created chaos is not enough.

The US finds itself in this situation because of ego and greed. The US' attempts to maintain a business monopoly over Iraqi resources and military positions while demanding money from the UN is self-serving and bound to fail. The US does not have a history of successful nation building, having intervened in dozens of nations but still only pointing to the same two examples from my parents' childhoods to prove it can be done well.

Bringing the troops home must be part of a broader plan to help the Iraqis. It's time to surrender the assets of Iraq that the US has seized to an international trustee; involve international peacekeepers and participate with and support them with US forces; set a timetable for Iraqi self-rule; and use UN resources to set up a method for Iraqis to express what it is they believe they need and their developmental priorities in a way that will result in the most needed and beneficial action. The sooner, the better.

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Yes, such a proposal may involve surrendering some of the lucrative development contracts that Bush has been granting to his donors and friends. The most important thing is that the Iraqis are getting what they need. It's bizarre to read about mobile phone contracts being let when people there don't have water or security. There are nations much closer to Iraq who can surely supply many of the people and equipment needed to give people the basics they need to live. What is best for US business isn't necessarily best for the Iraqis, and if we're still claiming this war was for Iraqi liberation, we need to get on the ball and make sure they're getting what's truly best for them.

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This goes for Afghanistan, too, which we've largely abandoned.

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The Washington Post Iraq Post-War photo galleries (Macromedia Flash) are up and full of informative photos about the way Iraqis of all stripes are living (and dying) in the post-war breakdown of order.

An interesting bit within the 'hunt for WMDs' gallery: a photo of a piece of lined paper, showing a drawing of a flask and some text which was found accompanied by a flask of powder. This discovery generated excitement among the WMD hunters. It turned out to be... a student's science homework.

(This implies the folks looking for WMDs don't have translators with them. Which seems unwise, for many reasons.)

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Cheney is refusing to drop a discredited story about hijacker Atta and an Iraqi meeting in Prague, which has been abandoned by the rest of the Bush Administration. (Washington Post)

U.S. records showed Atta living in Virginia Beach in April 2001, and they could find no indication he had left Virginia or traveled outside the United States.

Even so, on March 24, 2002, Cheney again told NBC, "We discovered . . . the allegation that one of the lead hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had, in fact, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague."

The FBI and CIA have both confirmed that there is no evidence that Atta left the country at the time the alleged meeting took place, and the lone informer's testimony to the Czech government lost its credibility: "Havel quietly informed the White House in 2002 there was no evidence to confirm the meeting." And yet Cheney is STILL bringing it up.

Is Cheney trying to make it easy for me to say that facts are no obstacle to certain members of this Administration? This surely is the sort of attitude which resulted in members of the House Intelligence Committee accusing the administration of using information that was at least 5 years old (Washington Post).

The ongoing lawlessness in Iraq is taking tolls on Iraq's most vulnerable: especially young female children. A horrific July article called "Rape (and Silence About It) Haunts Baghdad" (New York Times, $) details an attack on a 9-year old which threatens her life -- not because of the violence of the act, but because it means her male relatives wish to kill her to cleanse their family's honor. She's only 9!

She isn't the only one: the article describes other victims, women lying about what has happened to their daughters to protect family honor, refusals by the police to act on reports, bureaucratic obstacles... I'm citing this older article, because I haven't seen this come up again recently, although families locking their girls indoors and male relatives standing guard outside of girl's schools all day are likely things that have continued along with the disorder.

This bodes badly for the country: as pointed out in a short MS Magazine interview with Jordan's Queen Noor, cultures with women participating in public life tend to moderate extremists. When women are eliminated from the public world, extreme views toward their treatment and protection flourish, including more extreme forms of fundamentalism. Which make the world less hospitable for all of us.

This is still apparent in Afghanistan, where women are still wearing the Burqa outside of Kabul, where journalists generally won't tread.

At least the US military is consistent: troops who killed eight Iraqi policemen have been cleared of wrongdoing (BBC), as have US troops who killed Reuters camerman Mazen Dana (BBC).

Dana's death has had a big impact on the press: a BBC video feature notes that his killing was 'not a one off' (BBC), but part of a pattern of US soldiers killing innocents, including civilians, under the 'rules of engagement.' The civilian deaths have been reported without comment elsewhere, but suggesting that the pattern of civilian deaths (BBC) is actually (a) bad and (b) a pattern is somewhat unique in the non-partisan press.

The US government's battle to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people could have a new obstacle: US plans to privatize and sell off Iraq's various non-oil assetts. (BBC) Selling off the oil assetts would make all those allegations about the US really being after the oil look... a bit true.

Mr Allawi said: "this point always comes up". But he doesn't believe it himself.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is now under bipartisan criticism for favoring companies with close financial ties to it for Iraq's rebuilding contracts. (BBC)

"The Iraqi contract process looks like Dodge City before the Marshals showed up," Oregon Democrat Wyden told a news conference.

"It just doesn't pass the smell test to have companies not be part of the competitive bidding process."

I'm back from a short vacation in the Sierras, only some of which are on fire. Pesky misplaced lighting!

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Highlights from immediately prior to my departure: Bush says "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11" attacks (Yahoo!). Also from this article: Condi Rice is quoted as saying "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9-11."

This Modern World has more on this topic.

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In other news, the Condi Rice notes that the long awaited report on Iraq's alleged WMDs may not be released to the public (whitehouse.gov). After talking about how thourough the report is expected to me, and how important, and how it will compile intelligence information about what was really known about Iraq's capabilities, there is this exchange:

Q When will Kaye's report will be public?

DR. RICE: David Kaye is not going to be done with this for quite some time. And I would not count on reports. I suppose there may be interim reports. I don't know when those will be, and I don't know what the public nature of them will be.

It's funnier (and sadder) in context to see the report built up and then shut down like this.

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Did he really mean expectation, or was the word he was searching for "hope?"

"Our clear expectation is that this interim report will not reach firm conclusions about Iraq's possession of WMD."
- Blair spokeman

This comes from a Guardian UK article on the advance word circulating in Washington that the long-awaited WMD report will emphasize Iraq's intent to have a WMD program, someday. (Guardian UK) The article is full of quotes from folks who claim to know what's in the report, and claim that it demonstrates that the WMD claims were all false. Interim or no, the report should be a good read, should it be allowed to see the full light of day.

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A Democratic Congressman from Georgia is blaming the media for troop deaths in Iraq (talkingpoints.com). I'm not sure grasping at straws can even cover that one. The original op ed piece (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) penned by the congressman contains such zingers as "The falsely bleak picture weakens our national resolve, discourages Iraqi cooperation and emboldens our enemy." And then he skips the news about how our troops keep killing civilians, and mentions that our school renovation projects are going to make a big, positive impact on the Iraqis. And says that all the Iraqis HE saw smiled and waved.

Golly. It may be out of line here, but I think the best way to get good press that 'strengthens our national resolve' would be to make good things happen in Iraq. Is that such a stretch?

Have you heard of any progress on the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq? No. No. No. Still no. So Colin Powell has come up with a very sad workaround: refer to WMDs that Hussein had back when he was a U.S. ally!! (Washington Post) No, really! I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't read it myself:

"If you want evidence of the existence and the use of weapons of mass destruction, come here now to Halabja today and see it. What happened over the intervening 15 years? Did [Hussein] suddenly lose the motivation? Did he suddenly decide that such weapons would not be useful? The international community did not believe so."

This may be the most pathetic effort I've seen yet.

SADDAM HUSSEIN WAS OUR ALLY AT THE TIME OF THE ATTACKS! And Powell would know -- he was working for the Reagan Administration at the time.

Asked today about the U.S. response, Powell, who was Reagan's national security adviser, told reporters that "there was no effort on the part of the Reagan administration to either ignore it or not take note of it." But when speaking to about 250 relatives of victims, Powell said there should have been a more aggressive response.

Read that to yourself aloud. They weren't trying to "ignore it or not take note of it" -- it being a major atrocity?!? Powell was there -- he didn't have to review the National Security Archive for documents showing that Rumsfeld didn't bring the gassings up at the time, and that the US followed Iraqi preferences to be gentle to Iraq when the UN wanted to pass a resolution condemning the gassing??? (www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/) And the Administration he was a part of decided to take the strong steps of accommodating Iraq on the resolution and avoiding to "ignore it or not take note of it."

Holy cow.

I hope this is part of a continuing trend: resistance is increasing against the stomping of civil liberties as represented by the so-called Patriot Act (SF Gate). One thing I like about this article especially is it shows that hardcore conservative groups are finally speaking out to defend the freedoms that they also happen to hold dear. When the American Conservative Union and a bunch of right-wing think tanks are up in arms over a law with as much passion as the ACLU, something grandly democratic should happen! Well, I can hope.

Here's something I never thought I'd hear an Administration official say:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he had no reason to believe that Iraq's former leader, Saddam Hussein, had a hand in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld was asked about a poll that indicated nearly 70 percent of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved.

"I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that," Rumsfeld said.

It's amazing, what a great paper the Washington Post is. Though it's interesting to note that this amazing and belated admission ran waaaay back on page A28.

Here's an interesting and frightening guess by the author of Talkingpoints.com about what he thinks the future holds for the desperate Bush Administration's ever-expanding quest for scapegoats to carry the weight of the ever-expanding list of failures in Iraq:

It would go something like this: To the extent that we're facing reverses in Iraq, we're not facing them because the plan was flawed or incompetently executed. We're facing them because the plan was sabotaged - by its enemies at home.

The saboteurs were the folks at the State Department and the CIA who stymied effective collaboration with the pre-war Iraqi opposition and members of the defeatist press who have a) demoralized Americans by exaggerating the problems with the occupation of Iraq and b)encouraged the mix of jihadists and Baathists, by creating that demoralization, to keep up their resistance and bombing by giving them the hope that America can be run out of the country.

Oh, how I hope the author isn't right. But... But... The colleague who forwarded this item out to me had pointed out some statements by members of the Bush Administration casually blaming anti-war protesters in this country for their failures in Iraq, so it's already begun.

Well, I suspect I won't be excerpting any more of my exchange with my office colleague, since we have come to an impasse. Her position is that everyone in the peace movement has to go out of their way to avoid confrontation or obstruction of anyone's path, no matter how peacefully, under a modified 'you catch more flies with honey than vinegar' position, subject to a variety of exceptions that are uniquely her own.

The catch is, I don't think there is any historical support for 'niceness' alone solving the world's problems.

Women were rather nice for thousands of years without being granted voting or property rights. Even the most obedient and humble slaves weren't rewarded with freedom for themselves or others. The 13 colonies didn't win their freedom through being extra polite to George III. I recently read Nelson Mandela's autobiography, and I can tell you right now that niceness got the majority of South African peoples NOWHERE fast in their struggle against the unjust Apartheid system. Farmworkers in California, darned nice, but that didn't get them improved conditions.

So I don't think our exchange will continue, having proposed we agree to disagree on whether or not it's worth leaving the house or causing disruption to save lives. Ah, well.

I'll excerpt a bit more from my e-mail exchange with a colleague about solutions to warmongering.

If you read the earlier installment, you know I was mystified by objections to ALL protesters being violent. My correspondent didn't mean that, but it turns out she doesn't believe in some kinds of civil disobedience (blocking doors), but does believe in others (Rosa Parks' refusal to change seats, leading to her arrest). So now I've got a new topic to be mystified over, but at least I'm learning more about an alternative point of view. So, to continue, here is her response to my long answer (we'll call this installment 2):

The protesters did not stop the war. It seems to me that more peaceful protests would have fostered a climate in which more people might be encouraged to resist the use of force. All the protesters did was indicate that the use of force is OK if it's in a good cause. That's an easy and risky path to go down. By rejecting the use of force to resolve disputes we can hope to increase peace in the world, encourage others to do the same, and create a climate in which we may hope to reduce violence. Violence in a good cause is still violence.

Longer answer to follow next week.

This is tricky. On the one hand, she had suggested that we should all recycle and be nice to each other, which didn't stop the war, but then points out that protesting didn't stop the war, which means we shouldn't to it, so it is a flaw that is worse for peaceful protesting, somehow. She'll elaborate on this in the next installment. First, my part of installment 2:

I look forward to your longer answer!

The protesters elsewhere in the world stopped their countries from participating in the Iraq war. If you're asking why ours didn't, it's a VERY good question, and merits much more discussion. But it doesn't mean that civil disobedience and all the teachings that you and I both respect about civil disobedience are dead.

I also ask that you consider the priests and monks who were arrested that day, and consider what the "violence" was that they were doing by blocking streets and the entrance to the Federal Building. If stopping immoral commerce is violence, if sitting peacefully in the street is violence, if holding a group prayer is violence, than we have a very long route to tread!! There is much documentary evidence that most protesters where acting in the spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., however unnewsworthy their peaceful actions may have been.

I added more references to non-violent protest here to make sure she wasn't wildly generalizing, and would give me a conditional response like either 'I didn't mean THOSE people' or clarify that her position is 'all people are violent.'

On to installment 3, in which the comments in quotation marks are mine (from my installment 1 message):

" If stopping immoral commerce is violence, if sitting peacefully in the street is violence, if holding a group prayer is violence, than we have a very long route to tread!!"

People have been killing people in wars and other violent situations for some considerable time. Protests can sometimes deter specific acts of war or other violence but have never eradicated them. While eradication of war and violence are goals we must work towards, we need to deal with the probability that most of us won't live long enough to see the entire human race experience the metanoia that could bring about universal and lasting peace on earth. We have to be prepared to endure frustration and failure along the way and history suggests that the way will be very long. All the more reason, therefore, to practice peace along the way.

Should we therefore not work for peace? NO -- we must work for peace in ways that will remove the causes of war and violence and will increase peace along the way. We must practice peace in the situations in which we find ourselves (crowded laundromats and buses, long lines at the produce market, etc) and attempt to build consensus for peaceful resolution of conflicts at any and all levels. YES, write to senators, representatives and government officials. (By the by, you might enjoy Colm McCarty's "I'd Rather Teach Peace.") YES, hold peaceful demonstrations that respect the rights of others. And any efforts along the lines of recycling, buying fair trade coffee, using mugs instead of styrofoam or paper cups, turning the heat down or off, eschewing (as opposed to chewing) meat and practicing courtesy for others at all times couldn't hurt. (Barbara Kingsolver's "Small Wonder" has some good ideas about conserving fuel by not buying products that have to be shipped a long way.)

The protesters I observed on my way from the metro to work that morning (and saw photos of in the newspaper the next day ) were not behaving in ways that promoted or demonstrated a commitment to peace; they demonstrated instead a belief in their right to coerce and pester other people. Blocked traffic seldom increases peace as anyone who's been in traffic jams will testify. It increases tension and irritation, even when it is accidental. When the blocking is deliberate, tempers rise and the potential for physical violence increases. Leaping up and down in an intersection, beating on drums, blowing horns and howling does not increase peace; it is quite unnerving to have to cross the street in the vicinity of such antics, while wondering if these poor confused people might be confused enough to expand their tactics to physical attacks. The impression I received was of people who had not got their way and were throwing tantrums. They were not building consensus for peaceful solutions, they were attempting to disrupt.

" I also ask that you consider the priests and monks who were arrested that day, and consider what the "violence" was that they were doing by blocking streets and the entrance to the Federal Building."

I did not observe these protests but would suggest that if the priests and monks were blocking traffic, they were not choosing the most effective means of practicing peace. People have a right to enter the Federal Building -- or, for that matter, a hospital or clinic where abortions are performed -- on legitimate business. If the clergy and religious were blocking access, then they were violating that right. What could they have done instead? Courteously hand out leaflets, try to engage people entering the building in respectful dialog about the purpose of the protest, picket peacefully, hold pray-ins, as long as they respect the legitimate rights of their fellow human beings. The Dominican tradition of disputatio is a form of debate in which both sides try to increase the common ground between them. There's probably a way to apply that method to protests.

As long as they respect the freedom and rights of others, it is possible for people to practice civil disobedience in a way that can increase peace and promote consensus. Rosa Parks sat down in a part of the bus that the law said was off limits to her. She did not block the door to the bus and prevent her fellow human beings from boarding. Fr. Vitale at St. Boniface's was in a Federal prison camp not that long ago for trespassing at the School of the Americas. Numerous elderly lay and religious women and men have spent time in prison for the same cause. I would be honored to shine their shoes; I couldn't fill them. As long as they respect the rights of others while engaging in their protests, their examples will increase peace, even if they do not succeed in their short term objective.

The protesters elsewhere in the world stopped their countries from participating in the Iraq war.

Did the French government intend to go to war and was it dissuaded by protests that did not respect the rights of others? Sadly, I don't know enough about the intentions of either the French government or the nature of the protests to judge. There were protests. France did not go to war. Was there a causal relationship? I don't know.

Were there protests in the U.K.? There were British troops in Iraq.

Her message raises a variety of interesting questions, which I alluded to earlier. Why is Rosa Parks right but a bunch of priests outside the SF Federal Building wrong? In inquire about these in my very long response. Forgive how long it is: this was very early in the morning.

Thank you for your excellent, well-reasoned response! It's very enjoyable to read.

There appears to be a fuzzy line about civil disobedience in your approval of Rosa Parks which I'm not sure I understand. She did not block the door to the bus, but her refusal to move meant that the bus driver had to stop the route, delay all the passengers, and have her removed by the police. You approve of that, but had she laid on the ground in front of the bus to exactly the same effect, she would fall under your disapproval with others who disrupted traffic and caused aggravation. I don't see how the effect -- the annoyance and increase in hostility that the bus driver and riders experienced -- is any different whether she is seated indoors or standing/lying outdoors. She stubbornly held everyone up and disrupted the mornings of dozens of people! She had to be removed by police! She angered her fellow riders! So why don't you lump her into the same category of people coercing and disrupting others without respect for their rights?

Some clarification on this would help me understand your position. To me, metaphorically, all peaceful protesters were 'on the bus' whether sitting upright on lying before it, whether shouting slogans or quiet.

(My question applies to the trespassing at the School of the Americas, too, which is disruptive and keeps people from being able to go about their (evil) tasks as much as blocking a door would -- a security breach drags such places to a halt. It almost sounds as if the folks blocking our own Federal Building had entered and gone to the counter and refused to move, you would have approved of them, but something about the door itself is forbidden.)

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It's interesting to me that it's the protesters, and not the warmongers, who merit most of the criticism from you. Why is that?

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I have too much respect for the civil rights movement, which achieved many of its goals, to say that occupying a legally racist lunch counter is coercive and negative. Or that a peace march that ties up traffic makes too many enemies. If such actions are enemies of peace to you, then I will agree to disagree with your position. I think they are important, moral, peaceful tools. I also believe they achieved goals that obedience and acceptance of immoral laws had not, and never would.

I think you are, in some ways, arguing for civil obedience, rather than the civil dis obedience that leaders we both admire have advocated. I don't think you can take the "dis" out and have the principle remain the same.

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You didn't see peaceful protests on the news because the corporate media has no interest in promoting peace. They believe sex and violence sell, and their main business is to make money, not to inform. They won't report on your good works, but you'll certainly make the paper if you kill someone. Media reform is an area that the peace movement will be well served by participating in. Making information on peaceful solutions available to everyone will allow them to be implemented, and will publicize alternatives to much glorified war. (This is already effective in the non-corporate press, but does not reach enough people) Publicizing and glorifying violence does not serve us.

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I was under the impression that disputatio involved two parties willing to have a dialogue. When a violent power has the upper hand and refuses to participate in a dialogue, it is useless. There are similar Buddhist traditions which I have much respect for, but which are ineffective when one party sees no advantage in participating. To support such a system, we need a COMMUNITY to support and require it of its members. If you have a way of making our government leaders part of a moral community of nations, I would encourage you to share those suggestions widely. If our government is choosing to be part of a community of arms merchants and bombers, or only willing to see the world as a community when it wants some concession from others, as the current situation appears to be, all of our hopes for peace will be set back. In fact, they have been set back by just such anti-community behavior on the part of our government. The international community was ready to prevent war, and the US had to leave the community to start war.

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Yes, England had massive anti-war protests, and the government didn't listen, and now is crumbling: a lead weapons expert killed himself, senior officials are being forced to step down, and Blair's resignation is being openly demanded by members of his own party. Germany and France had protests, and their governments listened are now more popular and influential. I'm sure there are lessons to be learned there. People better informed than I have discussed the causation issues you raise, and have found positive influence, but I cannot improve upon their original work here.

I completely agree that public assembly-style protests are not enough. I think we are agreeing that there is no one complete solution. Quakers' illegal aid to escaped slaves didn't end slavery; protests didn't end slavery; and even the Emancipation Proclamation didn't end slavery. In my mind, American slavery didn't end until 1964 when additional rights were legally put in place, but even so racism and the aftermath of slavery exist. None of the individual positive steps leading to the end of slavery were a complete solution on their own.

But I differ from your position in that I think being a peaceful person is sufficient . We're back to recycling (or safe soap, or any other small, personal decision at home). Recycling is not sufficient to stop war and injustice. It saves resources, it saves money, it saves energy, and it makes us feel self-satisfied. In those ways, it's nice . But it is not changing the culture of war. It is not limiting the profitability of warmongers. It is not in any way challenging the Bush Administration's might-makes-right doctrine.

I believe many people throughout history have lived peaceful, pious, non-disruptive, environmentally friendly lives, and did so through holocausts, conquests, disasters, and wars. But their personal peace bubbles did not extend to the people in the death camps, or the aboriginal peoples, or the slaves down the street. Making the world .00001% more peaceful is worthy. It is needed. Every incremental step helps. But it doesn't help ENOUGH.

It's time for a bad analogy! Recycling to make the water cleaner is nice, but when someone is drowning in that water, more must be done. You may be satisfied with the water's clarity. The drowning person needs more. Under many belief systems, it is a moral crime to allow someone to drown if you could have intervened to save their lives. Ensuring that the water they drown in is a tiny percentage cleaner than it would have been (thanks to recycling and other eco-conscious domestic decisions) does not meet the moral standard.

I put to you that none of the excellent suggestions you've made are life preservers. And while you may take issue with the lifesaving efforts of others, your criticism saves no lives. The world needs a life preserver right now.

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Because you are full of good ideas, I hope that you can come up with some new approaches for the larger problems at hand.

Approving seated indoor protesters and criticizing standing outdoor protesters won't solve our problems.

Many protesters, whether they met with your approval or not, have already tried the leafleting, the praying, and friendly overtures, and were dissatisfied with the results. What do you propose next? They see someone drowning, and while you're telling them not to throw particular sorts of life preservers or harass the people who threw the victim in, they don't see you offering anything they haven't already thrown. So what will you tell them? Please, please, please, not that recycling will make drowning more comfortable!

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[If you want specific questions: how can we make selling weapons less profitable? How can we make occupation less beneficial for warmongers and scaremongers? How can we keep Bush campaign donors from benefiting from Bush's wars? How can we get our government to promote actual democracy, rather than forbidding Iraq to have elections that might be unfavorable to our interests? It isn't enough to criticize blocking the streets for newspaper coverage. It isn't enough to recycle. Specific solutions are needed for these specific problems. Please consider putting your talents to work in a manner focused on these problems. A solution that is specific enough will allow it to be easily and briefly explained: "We can make weapons sales less profitable by _______ because it eliminates profits through _________." The more direct the solution, the clearer and shorter the explanation.]

What I'm looking for are effective and specific alternatives to protesting, which only works when you have a civil government, or non-specific good deeds, which don't effect the situation at all.

I'm hoping her response is truly applicable.

Our nation is at a very strange place historically, where the 'cold war superpower era' has ended, and 'the lone superpower with cowboy and defense contracting corporations in charge' era has begun. And I don't think the solution to every problem lies in recycling. I'm viewing it as if I'm in a study group working on a quiz, and the completely hypothetical quiz question is:

Your wonderfully sweet Pakistani neighbor has been 'disappeared' by the FBI, leaving her family terribly worried for her condition. The appropriate response is:
(1) recycling,
(2) using environmentally sound dish soap,
(3) marching with a sign,
(4) other____________.

And I know with absolute certainty that 4 is the right answer, and that we should concentrate our energies on working up a list of actions for 4, but another member of the study group is already on to the next question, convinced that 1 or 2 are the best answer in all situations, and unwilling to discuss what goes in that blank.

There's got to be more to this! The Quakers who smuggled escaped slaves out of the South weren't concerned about dish soap. People who went to jail in the non-violent battle against Apartheid in South Africa weren't using all of their energies to focus on being nicer to people in the laundromat. I may not be able to persuade my colleague, but perhaps this discussion can help me focus on what I think the right answer to 4 is.

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Yes, I do have some ideas as to what potential answers to hypothetical situation (4) are. Express sympathy and support to the family (this would include plying them with food, of course); publicize the event to all local newspapers and TV organizations; organize to get legal help for my neighbor; try to network with others in a similar plight; work with organizations who are tracking this sort of abduction by the government, and add this information to their database; start a support action (like a letter writing or representative phone call campaign) to demand justice for my neighbor...

And yes, I have been pondering what peaceful activities I can do to stop warmongers. I'm working up a list, and will work with the discussion group that's forming to see where we can take it.

Something to contemplate: columnist Mark Morford's reflections on the second anniversary of the September 11th tragedy.

Do you remember? The days immediately after 9/11? That rich feeling of global sympathy and sincere concern and this powerful, overarching sense that maybe, just maybe, if we work together and reach out to each other without snide bias or prejudice, we can re-make the world in an entirely new, politically purified, blazingly conscious, peace-seeking vision? No? It's OK. Neither does anyone else.

The article is a reflection (as irreverent as all of his columns) on the choice that was given to us, whether we knew it or not, to respond to tragedy with a headlong rush to peace, or a headlong rush to war, not just nationally but also in our hearts.

Something beautiful: a lovely collection of September 11th, 2001 tributes and memorials from around the world days after that tragedy. It has been reposted to remind us of the love the US received in the aftermath of our loss.

Today is the second anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, and there are several very cynical comments about how that event has become obscenely politicized. My favorite cynical comments are Mark Fiore's "A Nation Remembers II" (markfiore.com) and John Carroll's 'A Special Speech to the Nation' (SF Gate).

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Today's World Views Column (SF Gate) is even more excellent than usual. The first portion points out that the US isn't the only country that ever suffered on a September 11th, discussing the US-backed overthrow of Allende in Chile. There is then a compilation of both sympathy and concern around the world for the US, which now seems bent on using the terrorist attacks as a pretext for expanding its control by force around the world.

The latest World Opinion Roundup (Washington Post) may be even better. It has more translations from the foreign press, including comments like:

"In the last two years, has the U.S. found more opponents or sympathizers, more friends or enemies, more stability or insecurity? . . . This is what needs to be evaluated by the people of the United States."

"Somehow when Asians or Arabs commit terrorism, that is a crime against humanity. When Americans, Europeans and Israelis bomb, burn and brutalize the colored people, that is a war against terrorism or (as in Iraq) a war of liberation. Such hypocrisy and racism must be condemned."

It is a terrible burden for Americans to be so completely convinced that we are always on the side of GOOD that anything our forces or government does, not matter how bad an atrocity, must be justified and rationalized, no matter how implausibly.

The overthrow of Allende; the training of death squads; the arming of dictators, including providing chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein; - so many sad examples come to mind...

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Speaking of arming dictators, the Project Censored folks have released their latest collection of important news that was ignored or mishandled by the mainstream, corporate media. A great summary is available as The San Francisco Bay Guardian's latest cover story. There's a lot that's important and worth knowing about, but one bit that especially ticked my fancy:

...the U.S. government covertly removed 8,000 of the 11,800 pages of the weapons declaration the Iraqi government had submitted to the United Nations Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

But the Iraqis released copies of the full report to key media outlets in Europe. It turns out that the missing pages may have contained damning details on 24 U.S.-based corporations, various federal departments and nuclear weapons labs, and several high-ranking members of the Reagan and Bush administrations that, from 1983 until 1990, helped supply Hussein with botulinum toxins, anthrax, gas gangrene bacteria, the makings for nuclear weapons, and associated instruction. Among those implicated: Eastman Kodak, Dupont, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Bechtel, the U.S. Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture, the Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia nuclear weapons labs, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield.

Yes, a lot of it is that good. Yes, you should read the article. If you like it, you should probably also buy the book, which contains additional details on their top stories, plus great essays about media control, fake celebrity news that dominates your local outlets instead of information that's relevant to your life, and more.

I'm going to try really hard to make this the last item of the evening, but there's just too much good stuff out there: this is This Modern World on the false linkages between September 11th attacks and Iraq, plus actual linkages between terrorism suspects and the Saudi government. It's a fascinating and worthwhile compilation. I'll restrain myself to print just one excerpt, from a great article at the Christian Science Monitor

In his prime-time press conference last week, which focused almost solely on Iraq, President Bush mentioned Sept. 11 eight times. He referred to Saddam Hussein many more times than that, often in the same breath with Sept. 11....Polling data show that right after Sept. 11, 2001, when Americans were asked open-ended questions about who was behind the attacks, only 3 percent mentioned Iraq or Hussein. But by January of this year, attitudes had been transformed. In a Knight Ridder poll, 44 percent of Americans reported that either "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. The answer is zero.

Truthout and the Independent present a new article dated today on the US and UK backing down on their WMD claims.

The "current and serious" threat of Iraq's WMD was the reason Tony Blair gave for going to war, but last week the Prime Minister delivered a justification which did not mention the weapons at all. On the same day John Bolton, US Under-Secretary of State for arms control, said that whether Saddam Hussein's regime actually possessed WMD "isn't really the issue".

I'm glad I don't take heart medication, because the threat of popping over this about face would be high. Also on the same page: a revelation that the unaccounted for weapons may be mere bookkeeping glitches.

Ex-inspectors now say, five months after the U.S. invasion, that the notorious "unaccountables" may have been no more than paperwork glitches left behind when Iraq destroyed banned chemical and biological weapons years ago.

Elsewhere on truthout you'll find a Newsweek poll shows a drop of support of Bush's policies in Iraq, and a great speech by Senator Byrd, which I feel compelled to quote a tiny bit from here:

Does it really come as a surprise to anyone that many of our allies are reluctant to commit their own troops to the aftermath of a pre-emptive war, considering how the Administration tried to bully them during our headlong rush to war against Iraq? While the White House was furiously trying to twist arms in Berlin, Paris, Ankara, and Moscow to gain acquiescence to a war in Iraq, millions took to the streets to protest the President's policy toward Iraq.

According to polls released by the Pew Research Center on March 18, 2003, the day before the war began, opposition to a war in Iraq was at 69 percent in Germany, 75 percent in France, 86 percent in Turkey, and 87 percent in Russia. Yet the White House scoffed at this opposition and belittled the need to unify the world in confronting Saddam Hussein. Could it be that our troops are now paying the price for the Administration's bullheaded rush to war without the broad and active support of the international community?

[Feel free to act out raising your hand and desperately trying to get the teacher's attention to answer that one.]

A friend has been forwarding me excerpts from the blog Cal Pundit. Entry I like best so far: Democratic Foreign Policy, a very short list of very big policies that Democrats suggested, Bush rejected, and now Bush is attempting to use.
He has many other good entries in the September archive.

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Another item from the reading of the same friend: a subscriber's only Salon.com article amusingly entitled "Would you like some freedom fries with your crow, Mr. President?" about Bush's belated attempts to drag the UN into Iraq now that things aren't going well.