Real Cost of War

What war does to people and nations. 'Cost' is much more than a monetary valuation. War really costs most of us our Humanity!

Thursday, May 26, 2005
On this day:

Depleted Uranium Victims...

This is not just some 'mistake' that was made by those in power who authorized the use of this 'Weapon of Mass Destruction', but a calculated, ruthless and totally uncaring decision to use these weapons becasue they DO cause massive casualties, both with their initial effect and the delayed effects of the radiation.

It would certainly be 'bad enough' to use these weapons on enemy troop formations, but they are actually being used in civilian neighborhoods in a completely indiscriminate way. They are not only affecting the local populations, but our own service men and women - and their families and offspring! This would in itself be a horrific result if this were a war which had to be fought to save ourselves from a ruthless nation which was attacking us 'for real' and we had not choice but to fight for our lives. The reverse is actually true in that there was no real reason for this war in Iraq as the 'Downing Street Memo' clearly indicates.

This article lays it out plain as day:

From 'Duty, Honor, Country' To Depleted Uranium Cancer

An Open Letter To Every American Serviceman
By Douglas Westerman
5-21-5

Dear U.S. Soldier:

Did you know that:

* You've helped deposit over 1 million lbs. Of Depleted Uranium (DU) dust in Iraq?

* You're told to stay away from DU as it could cause cancer?

* Numerous families in Iraq have multiple cancer victims?

* Many of these individuals have multiple cancers, a very rare occurrence in Iraq prior to the use of DU weapons?

* Hideous birth defects, once virtually unknown in Iraq are now commonplace?

* 600 children per day were being treated for radiation sickness at one hospital in 2003?

* Many of these kids will get cancer, leukemia, and die within the next 5-10 years?

* Former Army Colonel & expert in nuclear medicine, Dr. Asaf Duracovic says the V.A. told him to lie about the effects of DU?

* Dr. Durakcovic also says we have "committed war crimes by using weapons that kill indiscriminately, which are banned under international law."

* The Uranium Medical Research Centre says we have "poisoned a significant portion of the civilian population" in many areas of Afghanistan?

* In one returning unit, 40%, or eight out of twenty U.S. soldiers have cancer?

* In one 100 clean-up crew, 30 were dead within 10 years, with many others being sick, although the crew leader said, "We were all really healthy before going over."

* An Italian Newspaper reported 109 deaths among its troops from DU, saying this figure "exceeded deaths from all other causes?"

* The civilian population of Iraq is at a much greater risk than the Italian soldiers?

* The children of Iraq are at a greater risk than the adults?

* An international court of justice found your Commander-in-Chief guilty of war crimes?

* This Court's legitimacy had been ratified by every major Western Democracy?

* In one group of returning U.S. Soldiers, 67% fathered children with severe birth defects, even though all had fathered healthy children?

* The U.S. D.O.D. has a small army of spokespeople to convince you and the American Public that the above information is not true?

* You can verify the truth of the above information in a few hours with a good Internet Search Engine?

When a child is born in Iraq, the question is no longer "Is it a boy or a girl?" but rather, "Doctor, is the child normal?"

Sincerely,
Douglas Westerman
aspendougy@yahoo.com

For Further Information: http://journalhome.com/aspendouglas/

Sunday, May 22, 2005
On this day:

Press Censorship becomes endemic...

Most people think we have a completely free press, and if one contradicts that assumption they will invariably be told they are some sort of flake for even suggesting such a thing here in the 'Land of the Free and Home of the Brave".

The following article explains fairly well just how and why these things come about.

From: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8895.htm

"Not a Pretty Picture:

Looking this war in the face proves difficult when the press itself won't even put in an appearance

by Sydney H. Schanberg
"History," Hegel said, "is a slaughterhouse." And war is how the slaughter is carried out.

05/17/05 "Village Voice" - - If we believe that the present war in Iraq is just and necessary, why do we shrink from looking at the damage it wreaks? Why does the government that ordered the war and hails it as an instrument of good then ask us to respect those who died in the cause by not describing and depicting how they died? And why, in response, have newspapers gone along with Washington and grown timid about showing photos of the killing and maiming? What kind of honor does this bestow on those who are sent to fight in the nation's name?



Baghdad E.R. doctors examine a child who was fatally wounded in an aerial bombing attack.
photo: David Leeson/The Dallas Morning News

The Iraq war inspires these questions.
The government has blocked the press from soldiers' funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. The government has prevented the press from taking pictures of the caskets that arrive day after day at the Dover Air Force Base military mortuary in Delaware, the world's largest funeral home. And the government, by inferring that citizens who question its justifications for this war are disloyal Americans, has intimidated a compliant press from making full use of pictures of the dead and wounded. Also worth noting: President Bush's latest rationale for the war is that he is trying to "spread democracy" through the world. He says these new democracies must have a "free press." Yet he says all this while continuing to restrict and limit the American press. There's a huge disconnect here.


An Iraqi comforts a wounded fellow civilian who was shot in the arm and chest by U.S. troops after not heeding warning shots.
photo: David Leeson/The Dallas Morning News

More than 1,600 American soldiers have died in this war that began a little over two years ago. Wounded Americans number about 12,000. No formal count is kept of the Iraqi civilian dead and wounded, but it is far greater than the military toll. But can you recall the last time your hometown newspaper ran a picture spread of these human beings lying crumpled at the scene of the slaughter? And when was the last time you saw a picture of a single fallen American soldier at such a scene?

Yes, some photos of such bloodshed have been published at times over the span of this war. But they have become sparser and sparser, while the casualty rate has stayed the same or, frequently, shot higher. At the moment, five GIs die every two days.

Some readers may object to my use of the word slaughter. I do respect other points of view. But I served in the military, and as a reporter I covered several wars—in India, Vietnam, and Cambodia. I came away persuaded that whether one considers a particular war necessary or misguided, the military goal in armed combat is always to kill and thus render helpless those on the other side. That being the case, what is a government's basis for depriving the public of candid press coverage of what war is all about? How else can voters make informed decisions about a war their government has led them into? The true reason why a government—in this case, the Bush administration—tries to censor and sanitize coverage is to prevent a public outcry against the war, an outcry that might bring down the administration.

The photographs that accompany this piece are not gratuitously violent. They are merely real. All but one were taken by David Leeson, a highly regarded photographer at The Dallas Morning News. He and his Morning News colleague Cheryl Diaz Meyer were awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in breaking-news photography "for their eloquent photographs depicting both the violence and poignancy of the war with Iraq."
realize there are other sides to the story. One is the government's side. President Bush says that none of the government's actions can be characterized as censorship or intimidation of the press. He says he is merely honoring the fallen by protecting the privacy of their families in their time of grief. A New York Times columnist—his name is not needed; the issue is what's important—offered another slant a week ago. He called for less coverage of the war's violence because the press was "frantically competing to get gruesome pictures and details for broadcasts and front pages" at a time when there is "really nothing new to say." He seemed to think the use of these "gruesome pictures" was on the rise—though others in the media-watching industry, such as Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, have been recording a decline. The Times columnist said the press was, wittingly or not, assisting the "media strategy" of the suicide bombers and their leaders.


Zahraa Ali, four years old, lies in the burn unit of a Baghdad hospital. Her family was hit by an aerial bombing attack while driving. Her parents, 24-year-old brother, and nine-year-old sister died. Zahraa eventually died. Only her three-month-old sister survived.
photo: David Leeson/The Dallas Morning News

A columnist, of course, is permitted to offer up pretty much any opinion he or she chooses, but still it's very odd to see a journalist—since we historically have always pressed for transparency—recommending that information be left out of stories. He insisted he was "not advocating official censorship" but simply asking the media for "a little restraint." Also, he cited the press controls used by former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani as a model for achieving "restraint." Giuliani, the column said, had told his police department "to stop giving out details of daily crime in time for reporters' deadlines," in order to keep "the day's most grisly crime" off the 11 o'clock television news.
I don't hold much esteem for the usual crime-and-catastrophe formula on most late-news shows, but I have even less for contentions that withholding information from the public is good for them. Because we are a country of diverse culture groupings, there will always be differences of view, about war photographs and stories, over matters of taste and "shock" issues. But, while the reporter or photographer must consider these impact and shock issues his primary mission has to be one of getting the story right. And getting it right means not omitting anything important out of timidity or squeamishness. When I would return from a war scene, I always felt I had to write the story first for myself and then for the reader. The goal was to come as close as possible to make the reader smell, feel, see, and touch what I had witnessed that day. "Pay attention," was my mental message to the reader. "People are dying. This is important."


An Iraqi civilian, struck in the head by shrapnel from an aerial bombing, collapses, and an army medic rushes over to help.
photo: David Leeson/The Dallas Morning News

A generation later, the photographer David Leeson, whom I talked with on the phone, has similar passions.

He said: "I understand the criticisms about blood and gore. I don't seek that. When I approach a body on the ground after a battle, I'm determined to give dignity to that person's life and photograph him with respect. But sometimes, as with my pictures of child victims, the greatest dignity and respect you can give them is to show the horror they have suffered, the absolutely gruesome horror." Leeson went on: "War is madness. Often when I was in it, I would think of my work as dedicated to stopping it. But I know that's unrealistic. When I considered the readers who would see my photos, I felt I was saying to them: 'If I hurt inside, I want you to hurt too. If something brings me to tears, I want to bring you to tears too.' "

I don't see any place for "restraint" in this picture.

Copyright © Information Clearing House. All rights reserved. You may republish under the following conditions: An active link to the original publication must be provided. You must not alter, edit or remove any text within the article, including this copyright notice."

Not a Pretty Picture:

Looking this war in the face proves difficult when the press itself won't even put in an appearance

by Sydney H. Schanberg
"History," Hegel said, "is a slaughterhouse." And war is how the slaughter is carried out.

05/17/05 "Village Voice" - - If we believe that the present war in Iraq is just and necessary, why do we shrink from looking at the damage it wreaks? Why does the government that ordered the war and hails it as an instrument of good then ask us to respect those who died in the cause by not describing and depicting how they died? And why, in response, have newspapers gone along with Washington and grown timid about showing photos of the killing and maiming? What kind of honor does this bestow on those who are sent to fight in the nation's name?



Baghdad E.R. doctors examine a child who was fatally wounded in an aerial bombing attack.
photo: David Leeson/The Dallas Morning News

The Iraq war inspires these questions.
The government has blocked the press from soldiers' funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. The government has prevented the press from taking pictures of the caskets that arrive day after day at the Dover Air Force Base military mortuary in Delaware, the world's largest funeral home. And the government, by inferring that citizens who question its justifications for this war are disloyal Americans, has intimidated a compliant press from making full use of pictures of the dead and wounded. Also worth noting: President Bush's latest rationale for the war is that he is trying to "spread democracy" through the world. He says these new democracies must have a "free press." Yet he says all this while continuing to restrict and limit the American press. There's a huge disconnect here.


An Iraqi comforts a wounded fellow civilian who was shot in the arm and chest by U.S. troops after not heeding warning shots.
photo: David Leeson/The Dallas Morning News

More than 1,600 American soldiers have died in this war that began a little over two years ago. Wounded Americans number about 12,000. No formal count is kept of the Iraqi civilian dead and wounded, but it is far greater than the military toll. But can you recall the last time your hometown newspaper ran a picture spread of these human beings lying crumpled at the scene of the slaughter? And when was the last time you saw a picture of a single fallen American soldier at such a scene?

Yes, some photos of such bloodshed have been published at times over the span of this war. But they have become sparser and sparser, while the casualty rate has stayed the same or, frequently, shot higher. At the moment, five GIs die every two days.

Some readers may object to my use of the word slaughter. I do respect other points of view. But I served in the military, and as a reporter I covered several wars—in India, Vietnam, and Cambodia. I came away persuaded that whether one considers a particular war necessary or misguided, the military goal in armed combat is always to kill and thus render helpless those on the other side. That being the case, what is a government's basis for depriving the public of candid press coverage of what war is all about? How else can voters make informed decisions about a war their government has led them into? The true reason why a government—in this case, the Bush administration—tries to censor and sanitize coverage is to prevent a public outcry against the war, an outcry that might bring down the administration.

The photographs that accompany this piece are not gratuitously violent. They are merely real. All but one were taken by David Leeson, a highly regarded photographer at The Dallas Morning News. He and his Morning News colleague Cheryl Diaz Meyer were awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in breaking-news photography "for their eloquent photographs depicting both the violence and poignancy of the war with Iraq."
realize there are other sides to the story. One is the government's side. President Bush says that none of the government's actions can be characterized as censorship or intimidation of the press. He says he is merely honoring the fallen by protecting the privacy of their families in their time of grief. A New York Times columnist—his name is not needed; the issue is what's important—offered another slant a week ago. He called for less coverage of the war's violence because the press was "frantically competing to get gruesome pictures and details for broadcasts and front pages" at a time when there is "really nothing new to say." He seemed to think the use of these "gruesome pictures" was on the rise—though others in the media-watching industry, such as Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, have been recording a decline. The Times columnist said the press was, wittingly or not, assisting the "media strategy" of the suicide bombers and their leaders.


Zahraa Ali, four years old, lies in the burn unit of a Baghdad hospital. Her family was hit by an aerial bombing attack while driving. Her parents, 24-year-old brother, and nine-year-old sister died. Zahraa eventually died. Only her three-month-old sister survived.
photo: David Leeson/The Dallas Morning News

A columnist, of course, is permitted to offer up pretty much any opinion he or she chooses, but still it's very odd to see a journalist—since we historically have always pressed for transparency—recommending that information be left out of stories. He insisted he was "not advocating official censorship" but simply asking the media for "a little restraint." Also, he cited the press controls used by former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani as a model for achieving "restraint." Giuliani, the column said, had told his police department "to stop giving out details of daily crime in time for reporters' deadlines," in order to keep "the day's most grisly crime" off the 11 o'clock television news.
I don't hold much esteem for the usual crime-and-catastrophe formula on most late-news shows, but I have even less for contentions that withholding information from the public is good for them. Because we are a country of diverse culture groupings, there will always be differences of view, about war photographs and stories, over matters of taste and "shock" issues. But, while the reporter or photographer must consider these impact and shock issues his primary mission has to be one of getting the story right. And getting it right means not omitting anything important out of timidity or squeamishness. When I would return from a war scene, I always felt I had to write the story first for myself and then for the reader. The goal was to come as close as possible to make the reader smell, feel, see, and touch what I had witnessed that day. "Pay attention," was my mental message to the reader. "People are dying. This is important."


An Iraqi civilian, struck in the head by shrapnel from an aerial bombing, collapses, and an army medic rushes over to help.
photo: David Leeson/The Dallas Morning News

A generation later, the photographer David Leeson, whom I talked with on the phone, has similar passions.

He said: "I understand the criticisms about blood and gore. I don't seek that. When I approach a body on the ground after a battle, I'm determined to give dignity to that person's life and photograph him with respect. But sometimes, as with my pictures of child victims, the greatest dignity and respect you can give them is to show the horror they have suffered, the absolutely gruesome horror." Leeson went on: "War is madness. Often when I was in it, I would think of my work as dedicated to stopping it. But I know that's unrealistic. When I considered the readers who would see my photos, I felt I was saying to them: 'If I hurt inside, I want you to hurt too. If something brings me to tears, I want to bring you to tears too.' "

I don't see any place for "restraint" in this picture. Posted by Hello

Wednesday, May 04, 2005
On this day:

Who's war this really Is

We have all heard lots of different explanations of why we have had to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and probably pretty soon a few other countries. This does not mean we have heard anything approximating the truth about this.

Funny thing I have noticed though, the 'people' are never the ones to start any war, and if left to their own devices would hardly ever want to do any such thing?

That leaves only a 'few' suspects left who are the real Warmongers. The reasons they give to the populace are also hardly ever the reasons why they do what they do.

Read an interesting article at Signs of the Times. This is what it had to say:

"
A Zionist War
By Kristoffer Larsson

Some weeks ago I happened to watch Oliver Stone’s great production Born the Fourth of July for the second time. In the movie, Ron Kovic (played by the handsome as always Tom Cruise) signs up for the army. He wants to go to Vietnam to fight Communism. “Better dead then red” is his motto. He leaves for Vietnam as a well-trained, young, brave American standing up for democracy fully prepared to die in order to fight the Communist threat wherever it arises. When he comes back from Vietnam, he is paralyzed from the waist and down. But he’s not meet by his fellow citizens as a hero. Instead he is met by demonstrators in his own age setting American flags on fire. He doesn’t understand why. Expressing his hatred for the demonstrators when at the Bronx Veteran Hospital, he soon comes to realize the black nurses have quite another view of the war. As a male nurse explains to him, “Vietnam is the White man’s war, the rich man’s war.” Later, as many other Americans in Vietnam, Kovic came to realize that war was not about democracy at all. Young Americans like himself were sent there to oppress a people fighting for their own freedom.

Some decades later, the world’s biggest war-machine is now under way with genocide once again, this time in Iraq. The mass slaughtering is implemented by young boys who aren’t really sure why they’re there, but it’s ordered by the White House on behalf of a ruthless, powerful elite. It was no surprise that Iraq didn’t possess any weapons of mass destruction. After all the U.S. is not stupid enough to attack a state that actually so does – it could be dangerous! But although we for sure know that this war indeed was not a “preemptive war” or about “liberating” Iraq, the “war for oil”-theory - adopted by the greater majority in the anti-war movement - loses ground by the day. One ought to at least question if oil was the main reason for going to war. Oil tastes good, but the Americans want cheap oil, not expensive. The occupation of Iraq cost the American tax payers more then 5.8 Billion dollars a month. [1] Thus, it would have been cheaper to support dictators in the region instead of overthrowing them – with the result of almost no oil at all. But this is not a White man’s war. Nor is it the oil companies’ war. No, this is a Zionist war.

In his outstanding essay The Shadow of Zog, Israeli author Israel Shamir writes about what was probably the real reason for invading Iraq:

“As the head of the Occupation Administration, Jay Garner's task is to create a new Iraq, friendly to Israel. The Jerusalem Post, a hard-line Zionist daily published by Conrad Black, friend of Pinochet and Sharon, carried an interview with one of his wannabe Quislings, Ahmad Chalabi's right hand man, Musawi.

'Musawi talks enthusiastically of his hopes for the closest possible ties with Israel. There will be no place for Palestinians in the new Iraq, for the large Palestinian community is regarded by INC leaders (and presumably by their Zionist instructors) as a loathsome fifth column. Instead, an 'arc of peace'; would run from Turkey, through Iraq and Jordan to Israel, creating a new fulcrum in the Middle East.'

The Occupation Regime in Iraq was installed by the US army in the interests of Zionists, and it may be rightly called ZOG, Zionist Occupation Government if anything.”[2]

The war on Iraq – just like the U.S.-threats against Iran – can be traced to Israel’s interests in the region. Israel and its powerful lobby has for long been after the U.S. to deal with the Iraqi regime. The destabilization of the region is more favorable to Israel than it is to the U.S. After discussing “what is possibly the unacknowledged real reason and motive behind the policy” of going to war on Iraq, historian Paul W. Schroeder, in a footnote, wrote that if this is accurate

it would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state.”[3]

The Jews constitute no more then between 2% and 2.5% of the American population, a fact which seems hard to believe for most Americans. According to a pull, published in October 2002, the average non-Jewish American believed that no less then 18% of the population were Jews.

Every fourth American asked answered that between 10% and 19% of the Americans were Jewish, while almost every fifth guessed that the Jews constitute between 20% and 29%. Some 12% thought the number was between 30 and 49%! “Pretty wild?” Lenni Brenner comments, and continues:

“But why should gentile Americans know better? Their guesses are based on what they see. Turn on the TV, go to the movies, pick up a newspaper, follow an election, and in every case Jewish involvement is far above 2.5%. (...) Twelve percent of our Jews think they are 2% of Americans, 13% think Jews are 3%, and 11% say they don't know, which is also a 'proper' answer. But 7 % of America's Jews think they are 1% of Americans. Five percent of the Jews thought Jews are 4%. Ten percent of the Jews said they are 5%. Eighteen percent believed Jews are 6-10%. Six percent estimated our Jews to be 11-15%, and 18% of America's Jews projected themselves as over 15% of the population, a whopping margin of error of over 600%.”[4]

However, being a Jew does not make one a Zionist (although, unfortunately, almost all organized Jews are Zionists). In fact, the majority of the (non-organized) American Jews opposed the Iraqi War. But the way too powerful Israel lobby did support it. Its strong support for the war was definitely a major factor that shouldn’t be overseen. Still today Zionist Jews stands for a big share of the contributions to the two big parties in America. As the Swedish daily Aftonbladet pointed out,

“The Jews pump enormous amounts of money into American politics, 30 times more then the Arab Americans. They have power. They rule by the motto 'money talks'.”[5]

As a matter of fact, close to half the American billionaires are Jews (This phenomenon is however not limited to the United States. Six of the seven Russian Oligarchs are Jews![6]). In his foreword to late Professor Israel Shahak’s great book Jewish history, Jewish religion, the American dissident and author, Gore Vidal reveals a story which has affected the Middle East in a crucial way during the last sixty years:

“Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack nor I was an antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics. (...)

I shall not rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the USA, Israel's unlikely patron.

Unlikely, because no other minority in American history has ever hijacked so much money from the American taxpayers in order to invest in a 'homeland'. It is as if the American taxpayer had been obliged to support the Pope in his reconquest of the Papal States simply because one third of our people are Roman Catholic. Had this been attempted, there would have been a great uproar and Congress would have said no. But a religious minority of less than two per cent has bought or intimidated seventy senators (the necessary two thirds to overcome an unlikely presidential veto) while enjoying support of the media.”

Shahak himself translated an article which appeared in hebrew in Kivunim, the journal of The World Zionist Organization, in February 1982, and has become known as the Kivunim-plan. The article, written by a Oded Yinon, had the title A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties and its idea for the Middle East was “based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states,” as Shahak summarized it. Although he considered it way too optimistic, or in fact “pure fantasy,” Shahak added that

The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the "best" that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: "The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part" (Ha'aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old.”[7]

As happens, in the New York Times in November 2003, an article appeared by former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former editor of the Times, Leslie H. Gelb, with the headline The three-state solution. The idea presented was that the U.S. should consider dividing Iraq into three different states with “Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.” Gelb writes that “This three-state solution has been unthinkable in Washington for decades... But times have changed.”[8] Thus, the plan conceived by Zionists is everything but dead.

While almost the whole world denounces Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinian people, the Zionists demonstrate their control over Washington. Not only do they finance a great deal of the presidential campaigns, they also have mainstream media in their control. “For the media is the nerve system of a modern state,” writes Shamir.

“Modern democracy in practice in a very complicated society can be compared to a sophisticated computer. Its machinery can function successfully on one condition: there is a free flow of information across the system. While every input is instinctively checked and sieved on one criterion, whether it is good for Jews, it is not odd that the machine produces such freak output as “revenge on Babylon for its destruction of Jerusalem in BC 586”. Indeed, in long-gone 1948 the first ruler of Israel, David Ben Gurion, promised: "We shall mete historic vengeance to Assyria, Aram and Egypt". Now it comes to pass, as Iraq, Syria and Egypt are targeted by Zog.”[9]

Three decades after the death of Ben Gurion, the Guardian reports that “troops from the US-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon.”[10] It took some time, but the prophecy has come true. But the late Ben Gurion did not just have dreams of meting revenge. He had dreams of creating a Greater Israel, too. In a speech in Knesset, on the third day of the Suez War, as then Prime Minister he recognized that the real purpose of fighting the war was “the restoration of the Kingdom of David and Salomon” to its biblical borders.[11] His successor Ariel Sharon has the same dream, and is fully prepared to fulfil it when given the opportunity. When the time is right, the mass slaughter and expulsion of the remaining Palestinians in the region will take place, no doubt.

Jeff Blankfort refers to Washington as the "the Zionists' Most Important Occupied Territory". He is right. Zionist Jews are more powerful then ever before. With the devoted support from Zionist Christians, Israel’s interests are secured. The Zionist grip over American foreign policy on the Middle East has become impossible to deny. It is not in the interest of America to always do what’s best for Israel. The U.S. is not ruled by the Americans, but by an elite and lobbies that finances (and threatens) politicians into obedience. Fighting wars in countries most Americans can’t find on maps are of course not in the interest of the people. Despite greedy capitalists, there is one major factor that has to be taken into consideration when finding the motives for war. Far too many underestimate the strong importance Zionism plays in American foreign (and, to a lesser extent, domestic) affairs.

The U.S. is a “lobbyocracy” – a state ruled by powerful lobbies. Politicians are dependent of financial support from them to even stand a chance in electoral races. So is the case with the contemporary regime in Washington. President Bush and colleague war criminals in the White house have stocks in the war industry and are financed by it. They personally gain from the war. However, the American foreign policy on the Middle East and the unreserved U.S. support to Israel cannot be explained simply by this fact. Control over the Iraqi oil supplies alone are not reason enough for sending 150 000 American Soldiers to Iraq, at a so high cost. It is important to acknowledge that there is devoted Zionists in leading positions fully prepared to do whatever necessary as long as it’s good for Israel. I’m speaking of the neoconservatives, shortly refered to as the neocons. Actually, Israel was the main issue for the neocons to leave the Democratic Party, where they once were to be found. Back in 1993, Professor of Political Science, Benyamin Ginsburg wrote:

“One major factor that drew them inexorably to the right was their attachment to Israel and their growing frustration during the 1960s with a Democratic party that was becoming increasingly opposed to American military preparedness and increasingly enamored of Third World causes. In the Reaganite right's hard-line anti-communism, commitment to American military strength, and willingness to intervene politically and militarily in the affairs of other nations to promote democratic values (and American interests), neocons found a political movement that would guarantee Israel's security.”[12]

The neocons’ commitment to Israel, the great influence of the Jewish lobby and the captivation of the Christian Communities by Zionism, is indeed the explanation for the constant U.S. support to Israel. It might seem foreign to some, but today it would be wrong referring to Israel as the client state of U.S. Nowadays it’s more correct to say it’s the other way around if anything. This was well put by Israeli born musician Gilad Atzmon, when interwieved:

“I think that originally Israel was there to support western colonialism (Balfour Declaration, etc.). It didn't stop there. American administrations realised in the late '70s and '80s that the only real danger to western globalization is Arab opposition and Islamic resistance. Israel was there to maintain a continuous conflict in the region. The Americans got involved in the peace process, not in order to push for peace, but rather to maintain the conflict forever. So, in a sense, at least historically, you are right. Israel was there to serve American interests, but things have changed. In the last ten years we face a shift in the balance of power. The new bond between Zionists, Republican, and right-wing Christian groups introduced a completely new phase in the American-Israeli relationship. I think that American people would do themselves a great favour if they start to scrutinise the acts of their government. Americans should ask themselves whether it is American interests that are looked after or rather Israeli ones. The war in Iraq is a good place to start such an intellectual exercise.”[13]

In the case of the war on Iraq, the interests of greedy politicians selling themselves to the highest bidder (or keeping their mouth shut if they disagree), and the interests of the devoted Zionists as the neocons are, goes hand in hand. Peace will not come to the Middle East until the Americans have liberated themselves from the Zionist’s grip over Washington and some peoples´ conviction of always doing what’s best for Israel over what’s best for America. Conservative Pat Buchanan well summarized what the neocons´ ideology is all about:

“What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel. They want the peace of the sword imposed on Islam and American soldiers to die if necessary to impose it.”[14]

Truer words have never been written. In the end the Americans, just like Kovic, will have to ask themselves the one crucial question: What is it all good for us?"