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“The reason I am strident in my criticism of the president of the United States is because ... by invading Iraq, the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism.”
- Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief in the Bush and Clinton White Houses

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“Why, of course the people don't want war. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing their country to danger.”
- Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trial for Nazi crimes

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Iraq: A conversation with a concerned soldier
by Art Gish

Saddam Hussein's infamous prison just west of Baghdad is still full, except now the U.S. military is running the prison. The prison contains more than 10,000 detainees and is being expanded. The U.S. authorities allow few visits; the detained have no right to due process, and only recently have families been able to visit their loved ones.

Cliff Kindy and I had just walked through the razor wire around the prison with an Iraqi man who wanted to make an appointment to visit his brother.”He is not allowed any visits,“ a guard told us.

We told the Iraqi guards we wanted to talk with an American official. That is when we met “Tony,“ an American soldier, about 22 years old, short, and good-looking. He likes to work out in the gym, but most days he is too tired after standing guard in front of the prison for 12 hours every day.”Most days,“ he said, “I have no energy left after my shift to even think.” When we asked him where his home was, he said, “I am homeless.”

He told us he had no authority and there was nothing he or we could do to arrange a visit. He apologized for not being able to help us. He then opened up to us. He said, “The situation is a mess in Iraq, and the American military is making it worse. I can understand that the Iraqi people would be angry. Under Saddam,“ he said, “families could visit their loved ones once a week.”

Tony is eager to leave Iraq and the military, but said he could be killed any day. He was wearing a ragged piece of cloth as an armband in remembrance of a buddy who was killed a few days earlier.

Tony said, “If you try to do what is right, you get kicked. I tried to do what is right, and I got knocked down into the cellar.” He didn't explain what he meant.

He was fighting back tears as we expressed our concern for him. We told him we wanted him to be safe, that we cared about him. Here was a good person, caught in a force he could not control, trying to preserve his integrity, doing his best to keep his heart from becoming hard and cold.

Art Gish is serving in Baghdad with Christian Peacemaker Teams, an initiative of the historic peace churches (Mennonites, Church of the Brethren, and Quakers) with support and membership from a range of Catholic and Protestant denominations, promoting violence-reduction efforts around the world. http://www.cpt.org

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Hart Viges: 'You can't wash your hands when they're covered in blood'
Independent Online Edition, 24 September 2005

My name is Hart Viges. September 11 happened. Next day I was in the recruiting office. I thought that was the way I could make a difference in the world for the better.

So I went to infantry school and jump school and I arrived with my unit of the 82nd Airborne Division. I was deployed to Kuwait in February 2003. We drove into Iraq because Third Infantry Division was ahead of schedule, and so I didn't need to jump into Baghdad airport.

As we drove into Samawa to secure their supplies my mortar platoon dropped numerous rounds on this town. I watched Kiowa attack helicopters fire Hellfire missile after Hellfire missile. I saw a C130 Spectre gunship ... it will level a town. It had belt-fed artillery rounds pounding with these super-Gatling guns.

I don't know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds. I have my imagination to pick at for that one. But I clearly remember the call-out over the radio saying “Green light on all taxi-cabs. The enemy is using them for transportation“.

One of our snipers called back on the radio saying “Excuse me but did I hear that order correctly? Green light on all taxi cabs?“ “Roger that soldier. You'd better start buckling up.” All of a sudden the city just blew up. Didn't matter if there was an innocent in the taxi-cab - we laid a mortar round on it, snipers opened up.

Next was Fallujah. We went in without a shot. But Charlie Company decided they were going to take over a school for the area of operations. Protesters would come saying “Please get out of our school. Our children need this school. We need education“.

They turned them down. They came back, about 40 to 50 people. Some have the bright idea of shooting AK-47s up in the air. Well a couple of rounds fell into the school ... They laid waste to that group of people.

Then we went to Baghdad. And I had days that I don't want to remember. I try to forget. Days where we'd take contractors out to a water treatment plant outside of Baghdad.

We'd catched word that this is a kind of a scary place but when I arrive there's grass and palm trees, a river. It's the first beautiful place that seemed untouched by the war in Iraq. As we leave, RPGs come flying at us. Two men with RPGs ran up in front of us from across the road.

“Drop your weapons“.”Irmie salahak.” They're grabbing on to women and kids so [we] don't fire. I can't take any more and swing my [gun] over. My sight's on his chest, my finger's on the trigger. And I'm trained to kill but this is no bogey man, this is no enemy. This is a human being. With the same fears and doubts and worries. The same messed-up situation.
I don't pull the trigger this time ... it throws me off. It's like they didn't tell me about this emotional attachment to killing. They tried to numb me, they tried to strip my humanity. They tried to tell me that's not a human being - that's a soft target.

So now, my imagination is running ... What if he pulled his trigger? How many American soldiers or Iraqi police, how many families destroyed because I didn't pull my trigger. After we leave this little village we get attack helicopters, Apaches, two Bradley fighting vehicles, and we go back. And we start asking questions. Where are they? Eventually they lead us to this hut where this family is living, and myself and [another soldier] started searching for AK-47s, for explosives, for RPGs, you know ... evidence. And all I can find is a tiny little pistol, probably to scare off thieves

Well because of that pistol we took their two young men ... Their mother is at my feet trying to kiss my feet like I deserve my feet to be kissed. Screaming, pleading. I don't need to speak Arabic to know love and concern and fear. I had my attack helicopter behind me, my Bradley fighting vehicle, my armour, my M4 [semi-automatic] with laser sight. I'm an 82nd Airborne killer. But I was powerless ... to ease this woman's pain.

After I came home I applied for conscientious objector [status]. I'm a Christian, what was I doing holding a gun to another human being? Love thy neighbour. Pray for those who persecute you, don't shoot them.

I get my conscientious objector packet approved. I'm free. It's all gone now, right? No! I still swerve at trash bags ... fireworks ... I can't express anything. All my relationships are falling apart because they can't fucking understand me. How do they know the pain I've gone through or the sights I've seen? The innocence gone, stripped, dead? I couldn't stand the pain. People were leaving me.

I couldn't cut my wrists. So I called the police. They come stomping through my door. I have my knife in my hand.”Shoot me.” All of a sudden I was the man with the RPG, with all the guns pointed at him, thinking “Yes, we can solve the world's problems by killing each other“. How insane is that? Lucky I lived through that episode. See, you can't wash your hands when they're covered in blood. The wounds carry on. This is what war does to your soul, to your humanity, to your family.

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MORE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS TO THE WAR IN IRAQ

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Why Iraq?
excerpted (with minor edits) from
NO TO WAR AGAINST IRAQ! by L. Craig Schoonmaker
Chairman of the Expansionist Party of the United States
September 23, 2002

This document examines the question, why did the U.S. choose to make war on Iraq, when there are other areas of the world which pose a greater potential or real threat to the United States than Iraq? L. Craig Schoonmaker has some interesting insights, presented below.


OTHER AREAS OF GREATER MILITARY THREAT TO THE U.S.

1. North Korea

The Bush Administration, which has labeled North Korea part of an “Axis of evil“ moved to cozy up to Pyongyang at the exact same time as it was pressuring Congress for authority to attack Iraq, conveniently ignoring the fact that the North Korean government refused to seek international assistance in fighting off a famine that is believed to have killed A MILLION of “their own people“.

The New York Times reported September 26, 2002:

In 2001, Bush “rebuffed [South Korean] President Kim['s urging to approach North Korea], saying he did not trust the North Korean leader . . . an early victory for hawks in the administration, who argued that North Korea would never fulfill its commitments.

Mr. Bush can use the Korea diplomacy, even if it fails, as evidence of willingness to negotiate with governments he detests— excepting Iraq.

[But] with its economy in a shambles, the North's ability to wipe out Seoul with a devastating attack is about the only card it still has to play.

[Ari] Fleischer [White House press secretary] suggested today that North Korea could expect some discussion of the need to change its way of governance— not a subject its leaders have entertained so far.”Their current system is a failure, and it has failed its own people more than anybody else,“ he said.

So, there is to be “some discussion“ of North Korea's “way of governance“, is there? That's a very far cry from the Bush Administration's militant insistence on a “regime change“ in Iraq, isn't it?

Kim Jong Il runs a far more brutal regime than Saddam's, which has killed over a million of “its own people“. It has more advanced weaponry, in larger quantities, than Iraq. It has refused UN inspections and has acquired the means to create nuclear weapons and launch them against targets hundreds or even thousands of miles distant. Moreover, North Korea demonstrated in the 1950s its willingness to produce vast carnage even among fellow Koreans to advance its 'revolution' (and was even more willing to kill Americans, Britons, and other nationalities involved in the UN coalition that opposed its invasion of the South). The Korean “War“ (our first undeclared war/UN “police action“) killed at least 37,000 Americans (and I have seen higher statistics offered in connection with the creation of a war memorial to the fallen). The Gulf “War“ killed a scant 299.

Moreover, the North Koreans committed hideous crimes against U.S. prisoners of war, including “brainwashing“ of a particularly vicious sort that left many Americans permanently traumatized.

Under George W. Bush, by contrast, North Korea proclaimed its intent to reopen that facility, then warned the United Nations to remove surveillance cameras from that facility or it would remove them itself. The UN didn't act; North Korea DID remove those surveillance cameras, and it is now in the process of reopening that nuclear-weapons-development facility. Bush has done NOTHING to stop it.

On December 27, 2002, CNN reported:

All the while it has defied both the United Nations and the United States, the North Korean government has arrogantly and without fear of punishment, very publicly boasted that if the United States even TRIED to stop it from pursuing nuclear weapons, it would 'rain death and humiliation' upon the United States!

The Associated Press reports...that other countries, in this case North Korea, assert the exact same right of pre-emptive war against the United States that the U.S. asserts against Iraq:

Even as it presses toward war with Iraq, the United States has insisted it wants a peaceful solution in the standoff with North Korea.

President Bush “keeps all of his options open,“ National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a television interview.”But he happens to believe that this is a situation with North Korea that can be resolved diplomatically.”

Hmm. North Korea, a country many observers believe actually HAS nuclear weapons, and has 37,000 Americans within easy range of its million-man army, threatens pre-emptive war against the United States, but Iraq is the greatest danger we face? Something’s not right here.
Iraq is a danger to Israel, not to the United States. That is no reason whatsoever for us to make war upon a country that has never attacked us— nor even THREATENED to attack us, as North Korea has Why is Bush insistent on attacking a country that does NOT threaten us but refuses to attack a country that DOES, openly and arrogantly, threaten us with nuclear attack?!?

What exactly does a pre-emptive strike from North Korea imply? Well, Pyongyang is known to have, already, ballistic missiles that can reach beyond Japan. How FAR beyond Japan can they reach— today? The answer to the extremely important question of how far North Korea's present missiles can reach was given February 12, 2003. As reported by Reuters:

Moreover, Kim Jong-Il's government has openly talked about launching a pre-emptive strike against the United States AND revoking the armistice that ended the Korean War!

This combination of SHOCKING news and threats from Kim Jong-Il's LUNATIC regime, which has killed over a MILLION of its “own people“ and now threatens our people, should have ended all talk of war against Iraq to instead, and instantly, produce massive redeployment to surround and destroy North Korea. Did it? No. Why not?

Saddam has NO intercontinental ballistic missiles and has never expressed the desire to acquire them. North Korea HAS intercontinental ballistic missiles, but the Bush Administration worries about Saddam, not Kim Jong-Il.

2. Communist China

Let's look at China— Communist China, that is. Oh, you don't hear the term “Communist China“ much anymore, do you? No, it's just-China now, or at worst “mainland China“. But make no mistake, “China“ IS Communist China, and its leadership still clings to totalitarian ideals. Is the U.S. eager to go to war against this criminal regime, consistent with our indignation over Saddam's high-handedness? It is not. Quite the contrary, the U.S. Government is committed to “engagement“ of the Chinese regime, in hopes of achieving reform over time.

The fact that U.S. manufacturers can make tens of thousands of consumer items dirt-cheap over there and not have to pay Americans a living wage here is, we are to believe, irrelevant. The media reported in late December 2002 that a number of major American and transnational manufacturing companies want to close down their operations in Mexico, where workers make only about $6 a DAY, in order to move their operations to Communist China, where workers make only perhaps 60 CENTS a day. That is, NAFTA empowered American business to shaft American workers and move their operations to Mexico. Now, however, these same heartless scumbags want to take jobs away from Mexicans who live at the edge of starvation in shantytowns, in order to move what once were U.S. jobs 6,000 miles away, to COMMUNIST China.

China's trade surplus with the United States last year was over 60 billion dollars. To put that another way, the U.S. Government gladly sends [China] over 60 billion dollars per year with which to continue to tyrannize the Chinese people— and to build up China's military for an eventual war against us. China, beyond doubt, has nuclear weapons, which the U.S. says it is terrified that Saddam might get, but we sent Beijing $60 billion last year that very powerfully assisted its program to build intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach every part of the United States.

Canada's National Post said October 19, 2002 that “the U.S. Commerce Department yesterday [reported that] the U.S. trade deficit reached a record US$10.9-billion with China in August“. Let's be clear: that is $10.9 billion for ONE MONTH. Annualized, that would mean that the U.S. is shipping $131 BILLION A YEAR to China.

Communist China is geographically larger than the U.S. and has over 1.2 billion people. Key figures in the Pentagon believe that the government of Communist China is planning war against the United States within 20 years or so. Perhaps you haven't heard about such Pentagon concerns. Consider this passage from a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal of July 11, 2001:

Let's remember why the leaders of Communist China are called the “Butchers of Beijing“. In 1989, some 100,000 Chinese young people filled Beijing's Tienanmen Square in demonstrations for democracy. After a month of wavering that saw unrest spread into the provinces, the Communist leadership sent tanks and armored personnel carriers into the Square, literally squashing protestors who thought that “People Power“ à la the Philippines might stop the tanks. The assault is believed to have killed a bedrock minimum of 5,000 of China's “own people“. Followup prosecutions and persecutions nationwide may also have killed half again that many nationwide after the demonstrations, along with the bodies of beautiful, idealistic young people, were safely crushed.

This is the government that George W. Bush is glad to see U.S. consumers send $131 billion to this year.


IRAQ IS NOT UNIQUE

The U.S. pretended that Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was unique in recent history and required an extraordinary response. Never mind that India marched into Goa, Diu, Pondicherry, and Sikkim and took them over whole. Never mind that Indonesia invaded East Timor and inflicted horrendous criminal casualties upon the local populace. And we won't even mention the Soviet Union's takeover of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. No, those invasions did not require a massive international response. Nor did Cuba's intrusion into civil wars in Ethiopia, Somalia, Angola, and Mozambique, nor its role in setting up a Communist government in Nicaragua and promoting civil war in El Salvador. Forget about Communist China's takeover of Tibet. Even forget about Iraq's initial invasion of an area it disputed with Iran. No, only Iraq's invasion of Kuwait mattered to U.S. Government policymakers. What do you call it when one act is specially singled out, and other acts of the same type, and perhaps worse actual violence, are silently permitted to go without notice? Answer: “Hypocrisy.”

And so we are asked to go to war again against Iraq, uniquely on this planet now that we have partially undone the chaos we caused in Afghanistan. North Korea is much further along in developing both “weapons of mass destruction“ and the means to deliver them to the territory of the United States. China is preparing for war against us within 20 years, but we are gladly sending it $60-$131 billion a year for their war machine. None of that matters. Iraq, uniquely, endangers us. No other country does...

Saddam is only one of thousands of presently or potentially powerful men, and Iraq only one of many countries all around this violent and benighted planet, that harbor resentments against the United States in particular and the West in general.

SO WHY IRAQ?

Theory 1: Oil

Iraq: The Real Agenda, An Interview with Noam Chomsky by Michael Albert

Theory 2: Imperialism

Theory 3: Ties with Israel

The following are excerpts from an incredibly detailed history paper by Stephen J. Sniegoski, “The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel“. His full paper provides much more documented evidence for U.S. government officials' ties to Israel and their long-standing goal to remove Saddam from power than is excerpted here. He also gives his reasons why he does not believe oil or imperialism to be main motivations for the war in Iraq.

The footnote references have been removed from this excerpt. I highly recommend that the full paper be read and not just this excerpt.

So why such strong support for Israel?

Americans have been told that Israel is a wonderful, decent, democratic, Western country that deserves our support. That we must defend Israel from all dangers, no matter the cost in American treasure and, now, lives. But what really goes on in Israel? [Mr. Schoonmaker, the writer of the following, is part Jewish.]

Israeli Mistreatment of Palestinians	Is the U.S. Government permitted to do this to our own minorities?
Israel forbids Arabs to serve in the military.	No. Not only can members of all minorities serve in the U.S. military but since the Truman Administration they can't even be separated out into segregated units.
Israel shoots children dead for the “crime“ of throwing stones.	No. When Los Angeles police merely beat one black man (Rodney King) without even killing him, the Nation was aghast, and when the officers were acquitted of criminal wrongdoing, L.A. exploded in riots.
When Palestinians demonstrate in the streets, Israel treats them as rioters and the army regularly shoots into the crowd with live ammunition, killing ordinary demonstrators with depraved indifference to human life. It is commonplace for Israel to kill 5 Palestinians a day. When Jews riot in Israeli streets, the authorities respond with riot police carrying plexiglas shields and truncheons, backed by water cannon. No Jewish demonstrator has ever been killed by Israeli police or the military.	No. The last demonstration I can recall in which the U.S. killed anyone was at Kent State University, in 1970! In that notorious incident, four students were killed when nervous Ohio National Guardsmen, acting without orders and contrary to standard policy, fired into the crowd. The U.S. went NUTS with self-recrimination over four deaths in an incident that had no precedent and was never repeated. Israel kills more than that every day and Israelis don't reproach themselves, call for the fall of the government, or react as though there is anything wrong with shooting demonstrators dead. Even in the many riots that have occurred in the U.S. since 1970, I can't think of a single rioter killed by police or National Guard, not in Miami, or Los Angeles, or anywhere else. Not one. By contrast, Israel kills an average of perhaps three Palestinians a day, day after day without end. Given that the population of Israel is about 1/55th that of the U.S., that equates with the U.S. Government killing 165 demonstrators A DAY. Would we rest easy in our conscience if the Government killed 165 demonstrators a day? No, we would think ourselves the most evil people in the world. Israelis don't think themselves evil at all. That's the difference between us, and it is a huge difference that should make plain to all Americans that we must end all support for Israel.
Israel closes down Palestinian schools and colleges on the merest pretext, and keeps them closed for days, weeks, even months at a time, deliberately to deny Palestinians the education that would enable them to compete not just in the modern world generally but against Jews in the Holy Land specifically.	No. We can't even segregate schools, which Israel does as a matter of course. American Jews long ago understood the value of education and insistently push their children to get as much education as they can, but they smile upon a government that deliberately withholds education from Palestinians.
Israel arrests people without warrant and holds them for months at a time without trial.	No. Except when a person is caught in the commission of a crime, a warrant must issue before anyone is arrested, and formal charges must be laid against him or her very soon or s/he must be released from detention, no matter the suspected crime or intent to commit future crime. Recent moves by the U.S. Government to treat suspected “terrorists“ as Israel treats Palestinians have been met with outrage and court challenge, and every attempt to treat non-“terrorists“ in that way were long ago ruled unconstitutional. Any police officer who defies such restrictions is subject to prosecution and imprisonment for civil rights abuses.
Israel builds walls and fences down the middle of towns to keep Arabs away from Jews.	No. Governmental segregation of any kind is illegal, but even at the worst of U.S. segregation, Mississippi and the rest of the Deep South NEVER built “Berlin Walls“ all over the South to keep blacks 'in their place'. Any suggestion that the U.S. should erect walls down the middle of cities to keep blacks away from whites would be met with outrage, court challenges, even riots in the streets - likely led by progressive American Jews.
Israel keeps hundreds or even thousands of prisoners in tents in the desert.	No. The overcrowding and inhuman conditions of Israel's tent prisons would produce orders from federal courts to house prisoners properly (meaning, nowadays, in comfortable prisons with air conditioning in summer) or release them.
Israel shuts off water to Palestinian communities for days at a time - in the desert.	No. Any attempt by the U.S. Government to do that to any minority community would lead to literal riots in the streets, not to mention lawsuits and criminal indictments for violation of civil rights.
Israel plants deadly booby-traps for “terrorists“ in residential neighborhoods. If they go off and kill the wrong people - e.g., children - that's tough. Israel never so much as apologizes, and certainly never offers compensation of any kind.	No. It is inconceivable that the U.S. Government would be permitted to leave booby-traps ANYWHERE on U.S. soil that might even remotely kill the wrong people. Indeed, the U.S. Government is not authorized to kill presumed criminals without trial. Presumption of guilt is illegal under our legal and ethical system.
Israel blows up and bulldozes the houses of the families of “terrorists“, with all their possessions in them.	No. It is contrary to a basic constitutional principle to punish an entire family for a crime committed by one family member. Collective punishment is illegal in the United States.
Israel deports Palestinians without trial, to countries not their own, and such deportations, which are illegal under the United Nations, have been upheld by Israel's Supreme Court. Indeed, Israel wants to exile Yasser Arafat, one of the most admired Arabs on Earth, out of the idiotically naive belief that that (illegal) exile would somehow advance the cause of “peace“!	No. No one born in the United States or who has been granted the right of permanent residence may be deported save upon conviction of a crime or other due process, and then can be sent only to his country of origin.
In ostensible action against “terrorists“, Israel fires machineguns and missiles into residential neighborhoods, killing innocent Palestinian civilians.	No. Neither the federal government nor the government of any geographic subdivision is authorized to be reckless with the lives of innocent bystanders. No firefight with gunmen is permitted if that firefight would endanger innocents.
Israel uses missiles and machineguns fired from helicopter gunships to attack cars operating on the streets of Palestinian neighborhoods, without even being certain of the identity of the people in the car. In a recent incident, a woman and four small children were killed when their car was misidentified.	No. The U.S. military would never be permitted to, say, hover over Harlem and fire upon the limo of a suspected drug dealer. First, because no peremptory presumption of guilt is legal in the United States but every criminal who can be apprehended must be duly arrested and tried; second, because to do so would put innocent civilians at risk.
Israel has attacked every single one of its neighbors with warplanes, artillery, missiles, and full-scale invasion. It has even launched strikes against Iraq, with which it has no border, and Tunisia, many hundreds of miles distant. The Israeli public has always praised such attacks and backed them by overwhelming margins.	No. Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, and other neighboring countries do not fear periodic air attacks from the United States. This is one area in which the U.S. record is, however, besmirched. We did have wars with two of our neighbors in the nineteenth century, but the MORE RECENT of them ended in 1850, in a very different era. Every time the U.S. has intervened militarily in its neighbors' affairs (e.g., Haiti, the Dominican Republic), it has met with huge internal criticism and opposition. Quick strikes to restore order and undo a military coup in Grenada, and to oust Manuel Noriega from Panama (he had stupidly uttered a rhetorical declaration of war against the U.S. Government in a reckless public speech) do come close to Israeli arrogance. But such interventions and military strikes are few and far between, numbering a handful in the last 60 years.
Israel kidnapped Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann from Argentina, a country that just didn't happen to have an extradition treaty that would have permitted his quick extradition, subjected him to a show-trial, and executed him despite pretending not to have capital punishment in general (altho it makes an exception for special enemies of the Jews—so much for equal treatment under law, yet again).	No. The U.S. Government would not DARE kidnap anyone from a friendly country. It might send agents to arrest someone with the permission of local authorities, but would then apply to the duly constituted legal authority of that jurisdiction for extradition. If there is no extradition treaty, we would ask for ad-hoc deportation by the relevant government or simply accept that the rule of law requires that duly constituted legal authorities obey the law, then work for an extradition regime. Moreover, the U.S. doesn't pretend not to have capital punishment but then kill people every day without so much as an indictment, much less a trial. We execute heinous criminals only after fair trial, during which they are accorded representation by a lawyer of their choice, Fifth Amendment protection, and full access to all the rights of anyone else presumed innocent until proved guilty.
Israel kidnapped Mordechai Vanunu (a CHRISTIAN convert from Judaism who left Israel to live in Australia, a Christian country) from Italy, a friendly Christian country, subjected him to SECRET trial, and sentenced him to 18 years in prison for the 'crime' of revealing to the world that Israel has an ILLEGAL nuclear weapons program! That Christian man was subjected to SOLITARY CONFINEMENT for 11 years, and is still not free.	No. The U.S. does not kidnap people from friendly countries but applies for extradition of criminals. Nor does the U.S. ever subject anyone to solitary confinement for 11 years. Any U.S. court would find such confinement a flagrant violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights' prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment“. Many people would be driven completely out of their minds by being deprived of human companionship for so horrendously long a period. That doesn't concern a cruel and unusual society, however, and no “Free Vanunu“ movement of any consequence has sprung up in Israel, a supposed “democracy“, even tho there are several such movements in REAL democracies in the West. Nor can trials EVER be secret in the U.S. but must always be held in public view, to keep government honest and prevent “Star Chamber“ atrocities. Once again, Israel is completely out of step with the standards of civilized societies throughout the West, not just the U.S. Nor is Israel entitled to possess nuclear weapons!, so prosecuting someone for “blowing the whistle“ on Israel's illegal activities is itself a crime, and U.S.”whistleblower“ statutes would have protected Vanunu from prosecution for such an act had he revealed a similarly illegal activity by our own Government, and, indeed, likely have resulted in criminal prosecutions of the people who attempted to silence him on so grave an issue.
Israel regularly attacks Palestinian police stations and other government offices, all the while claiming that the Palestinian Authority isn't doing enuf to fight “terrorism“.	No. The U.S. Government does not blow up police stations in crime-ridden neighborhoods on the pretense that they are not doing enuf to fight crime. Any such policy would be met not just with furious opposition and court challenges but also by derision: you cannot both blow up police stations and complain that the police aren't doing enuf! How are police you kill supposed to enforce the law? And how is a police department deprived of its stations and equipment supposed to work effectively against terrorists?
Israel invaded Lebanon in a particularly brutal, imperial war and imposed a “Security Zone“ in southern Lebanon for 18 years, asserting that it had the right to occupy part of an adjoining sovereign state for its own “defense“.	No. The U.S. has no military forces in buffer areas beyond its borders, and despite concerns about massive illegal migration across the Mexican frontier would not DARE to create a “security zone“ in northern Mexico, nor even a no-man's land on our own territory guarded by minefields and machinegun towers.
Israeli forces stood by and at least implicitly gave Lebanese militias permission to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and slaughter hundreds of unarmed civilians while the Israeli army stood by, doing nothing.	No. The U.S. Government could not and would not authorize any such mass murder of refugees nor stand by passively while paramilitary organizations slaughtered men, women and children.
Israeli immigration law actively discriminates in favor of Jews and against non-Jews. Jews born thousands of miles from Palestine and who may descend from converts to Judaism whose ancestors were never resident in Palestine have a “right of return“ to a country they have never been to, but Palestinians who can easily prove they were born in what is now Israel OR the Occupied West Bank are barred from returning to a place they really have been.	No. U.S. immigration law may not consider religion in determining who is or is not to be allowed in.

Added by Amy:

Harpers.org has recently published an interview with Israeli soldiers (identified by pseudonyms) conducted by Israeli journalist Uri Blau for Kol Ha'Ir, a Jerusalem weekly, in September 2001. If what these soldiers say doesn't chill your blood, nothing will. Some excerpts:

Read the full interview at: http://www.harpers.org/NoExit.html

Israel does terrible things, things the U.S. Government would never be allowed to do - by American Jews, not least - yet Americans are expected to back everything Israel does and forgive every outrage.

Any criticism of Israeli behavior is condemned as “anti-Semitism“ - the most preposterous charge ever leveled inasmuch as (a) the overwhelming preponderance of actual “Semites“ (speakers of a Semitic language) are Arabs and (b) Zionism is a political movement, not a people.

Do Christians have a religious and moral obligation to Jews because of a common belief in the God of the bible?

There are many Christian Palestinians, and the Palestine National Authority accords them full citizenship and equal treatment under law. Not so either Christians or Moslems in Israel. Yet we call Israel our friend, and Palestine our enemy.

Zionists are the faction of Judaism which pushes for an Israeli homeland with only 'true Jews' living in it. Most Jews are not Zionists, and in fact Zionists don't consider any Jews to be accepted by God who aren't Zionists.

Zionists want Americans to believe that Islam is a permanent, intractable enemy of Christianity, whereas Judaism is a permanent friend of Christianity— which is exactly the opposite of the truth.

Zionists rely upon American theological immaturity and ignorance of Islam to carry off the fraud that Christians are Jews and therefore Zionists. They are delighted at sermons and hymns that call upon Christians to see themselves as “Israelites“, because “Israelites“ is so close to “Israeli“ as to be, for the simple-minded, the same.

The reality is that in Islam, Jesus is regarded as, and honored as, a prophet. Indeed, on a recent broadcast on PBS of a program on Sufism, the subtitles to one chant said that Jesus was the spirit of God brought to Earth! Islam also honors Moses (who in the same PBS program was honored on a par with the Prophet Muhammed, but below Jesus!).

Islam is the third of three religions that derive from the same monotheistic tradition, which may ultimately derive from the cult of Aton in Egypt, the land of the Pharaohs in which the Jews spent many years. Moslems know this history and the relationship of Islam to both Christianity and Judaism, and honor the origins of Islam.

Christians, by and large, do not know that history or that intimate relationship, so do not understand that Christianity is at least as close to Islam as to Judaism, and arguably closer, inasmuch as Islam honors Jesus but Judaism slew him. Indeed, the Jews tried to kill Jesus twice, once at his birth (when his family had to take him into Egypt to be safe), and once in his thirties, when they succeeded. The Christian Bible is utterly unambiguous that the Jewish religious authorities slew not only Jesus but as many other early Christians as they could get their hands on. Saul of Tarsus (“Saint Paul“) admitted that he persecuted Christians “unto the death“ until his religious experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus. (Acts 22:4-9) Jesus was condemned to death for blasphemy against Judaism— so much, again, for the notion promoted by Zionists today that Christians are really Jews.

...The U.S. consistently gives Israel an appallingly disproportionate share of all foreign aid it grants to the entire planet. In a world of starvation, in which some 15 million people, mostly children, die each year of the effects of malnutrition, the U.S. Government consistently gives a quarter to a third of all aid for the entire world to just one, tiny country, Israel, which is not starving. Israel has a space program and nuclear weapons. How is it entitled to so much as a dime of U.S. aid? Any country that can afford a space program, a gross luxury, can take care of its own economic needs. And U.S. law on nonproliferation forbids aid to countries that have a nuclear-weapons program, so Israel is legally ineligible for U.S. aid. But year after year, Christian American taxpayers have money stolen from their pockets to be sent to Israel, even if they'd rather their money go to starving children in the Third World.

CONCLUSION

There is only one alternative to imposing a police state upon ourselves, and that is to do justice in the world so that fanatics who hate us will be seen as insane and thus be unable to recruit soldiers for war against us.