arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

The outcome of Bush’s war and occupation of Iraq will have a significance that will span the globe and last a generation. Bush and Cheney know that their “vision” of endless war – aimed at destroying any government anywhere on the planet that refuses to obey the dictates of Washington – turns on the increasingly bloody battle being waged against the Iraqi resistance. From occupied Haiti to occupied Palestine and everywhere else, people recognize the global importance of the confrontation in Iraq.

The eyes of the world have been focused in recent weeks on the Pentagon siege of Fallujah. More than 600 Iraqis have been killed in that city of 200,000 just since mid-April. Thousands more were wounded. The Pentagon command ordered troops to fire on ambulances trying to take wounded people to hospitals. In the month of April alone, 130 U.S. soldiers have been killed with an unknown number of wounded - a large number of whom are suffering from severe brain injuries or missing limbs.

Iraqi civilians who have been corralled into the infamous Abu Ghraib prison are being tortured and interrogated by the U.S. military and Central Intelligence Agency operatives, as well as by so-called civilian contractors. Pictures of Iraqis, stripped naked, forced to lie in piles of human bodies, forced to perform or simulate sexual acts with each other, and made to stand on a box, hooded with electrodes attached with the threat of electrocution, have shocked the people of the Middle East and the world. These are not the acts of a few "rogue" soldiers, but instead were carried out under instruction from higher officials at the prison in "military intelligence" who then further torture and interrogate their terrified and brutalized prisoners. The U.S. military has raided many villages and towns in Iraq, separating families and taking away all men and boys, and is now holding 10,000 Iraqis civilians hostage, without any charge or POW status. This is nothing other than a sick replay of the U.S. "pacification" program in Vietnamese villages more than thirty years ago.

June 5 - March from the White House to the Pentagon

On June 5, people from around the United States are converging at the White House and marching to the Pentagon to demand Bring the Troops Home Now! There will also be large antiwar protests that day in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities on June 5th. While Bush is slipping in the polls and the people increasingly turn against the war, it is critical that the antiwar movement act now to turn the up the pressure. Waiting for the November election or the possible election of John Kerry would be a colossal mistake. Kerry only promises to send more troops to Iraq rather than end this debacle. The people of the U.S. must take action -- as they did during Vietnam -- to stop this criminal war.