Bear Left!

Fact of the Week

**Fact of the Week**
At a recent fundraiser, George Bush tried to explain the need to depose Saddam Hussein, to wit: "there's no doubt his hatred is mainly directed at us. There's no doubt he can't stand us. After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad at one time." Ignore for the moment that an assassination attempt on President Bush the Elder does not entail antipathy for America or its people. (Does Bush the Younger, who wants Saddam Hussein dead, want Iraqis to think that he can't stand them?). Seymour Hersh reported almost nine years ago that the link between Iraq and the car bomb intended for Bush the Elder is so insubstantial that it would not hold up in an American court. Sources: White House transcripts, 26 September 2002; The New Yorker, 1 November 1993.

**This week's columns**
In the Name of the Father Paul Corrigan The Bush family's quest to remove the stain of the presidency of George H. W. Bush has diminished the American empire that it seeks to exploit.	Pax Americana Tim Francis-Wright Proclaiming preemption as the basis for a national security strategy shows an appalling lack of historical and political perspective.

Red Pepper news on Iraq.
No Rush to War: a collection of articles from The Nation.
Target: Iraq from GlobalSecurity.org.
Iraq's Nuclear Weapon Programme from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iraq WMD Dossier from the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
Iraq dossier presented to Parliament by Tony Blair.
New York Times op-ed ad signed by 33 international relations scholars (HTML version of the ad).
More, alas, likely to come.

Preemptive Posturing: The new Nuclear Posture Review is needlessly provocative in its dealings with North Korea (Hans Kristensen, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).
Unconvincing Explanations: The Israeli government is both unconvincing and contradictory in explaining its demolition of much of Yasser Arafat's compound (Ha'aretz).
Afghanistan Imperiled: A war with Iraq might further destabilize Afghanistan, even as the Pentagon finds nation-building difficult (Ahmed Rashid, The Nation).
Not Again: The demands of global capitalism are driving us to war (Arundhati Roy, The Guardian).
Ashcroft's Baghdad Connection: The attorney general and others in Washington have backed an Iranian terror group with ties to Iraq (Michael Isikoff, Newsweek).
Where's the Movement?: Corporate reformers need to think radically, not incrementally (Nick Penniman, The American Prospect).

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