US Army Technical Escort Unit members demonstrate their response capabilities to chemical and biologicial operations inside the briefing room of the Pentagon. Iraq is understood to have ordered about a million doses of anti-nerve agent drugs from Turkey, raising fears that Baghdad is planning to deploy chemical weapons in the event of an attack. (AFP photo)...

If Bush invades Iraq, who can doubt that Saddam will not join forces with bin-Laden and launch an unprecedented terroristic attack on American soil the same day?

The arrogance of George Bush is incredible.  He is willing to subject thousands if not hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to Iraqi nerve gas. This will kill many soldiers but it will permanently disable many more. And George has cut back the services to veterans.  So he is going to kill a lot of young men and women so he can confiscate the Iraqi oil reserves and then he is going to deny the survivors medical services.  There will be more Gulf War syndrome like cases that the Veterans Administration will deny exists in order to cover up the reality of what has happened to our children in this insane war.

Americans seem to be behind George and his insane war.  But when the war begins and  the body bags start coming back by the thousands, then we will see how many Americans support George. 

One of the following articles considers that almost 4 million people will die if nuclear weapons are used.  It is unbelievable that this is even a consideration.  What is going to happen here?  Is it possible that Saddam will kill a thousand or so soldiers who have illegally invaded his country and then America will react with nuclear weapons?  

Will George not only turn the United States into a first strike war machine like Hitler did Germany in Europe but then follow that up with the first post war use of nuclear weapons?  

Has everyone gone insane?  This war is insane.  I am afraid that Saddam is going to kill more Americans in a shorter period of time than any other person in the history of the United States.  

George has issued Saddam an unconditional threat that he will be killed.  And of course this is going to apply to his family as well.  When you give a man like Saddam no alternatives but to fight to the death, then that person is going to fight to the death and is going to kill as many Americans as possible.  

I have a feeling that the day that George launches his war into Iraq, it is going to be a day when Americans see an incredible display of terrorism on its own soil.  

George thinks he is bullet proof.  I think that the ability of terrorist to strike in the heart of America in response to a U S strike in Iraq is about as real as it gets.  

The U S just turned over all the governing bodies to the Republicans.  After this war, they will most likely turn it all back over to the Democrats.  But it will be too late for the thousands of young men and women who died in Iraq and too late for Americans of all ages who died in their local neighborhoods.

John WorldPeace
November 13,  2002

The report says civilian deaths could range from 48,000 to 260,000. If the conflict led to civil war in Iraq, there would be a further 20,000 deaths. In the aftermath of war, 200,000 more are likely to die from hunger and disease. If nuclear weapons are used, the report says, the death toll could reach 3,900,000.

[ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2002 09:42:46 AM ]

WASHINGTON: The United States said on Tuesday any Iraqi decision to use weapons of mass destruction against US troops and their allies will trigger the "most serious" US response, repeating a warning made in the runup to the 1990-91 Gulf War. 

New tape suggests bin Laden is alive

White House says voice 'sounds like' terrorist

CAIRO, Egypt -- A tape recording attributed to Osama bin Laden, the fugitive al-Qaida leader, Tuesday night extolled the recent attacks in Moscow and Bali, Indonesia, in a bellicose statement that, if authentic, would be the clearest indication in almost a year that bin Laden is alive and determined to pursue his Islamic war on the United States.

The rambling statement, broadcast around the Arab world on al-Jazeera television, also hailed the fatal shooting of a U.S. Marine in Kuwait, the assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan and the attempt to sink a French oil tanker off Yemen, acts that it said were "undertaken by the zealous sons of Islam in defense of their religion and in response to the call of their God and prophet, peace be upon him."

The tape went on to threaten further such attacks on U.S. and other Western targets if the United States attacks Iraq.

"It is time we get even," the voice says, according to a U.S. government translation. "You will be killed just as you kill, and will be bombed just as you bomb. And expect more that will further distress you."

After an initial analysis of the audiotape using computerized voice-matching technology, a knowledgeable Bush administration official in Washington said the voice on the tape "sounds like bin Laden's voice." But he added that the CIA and other intelligence agencies are still analyzing the audiotape, scrutinizing it not only for voice tone, but also inflection patterns and word usages.

Al-Jazeera declined to say how it obtained the tape. Previous tape recordings attributed to bin Laden by the Qatar television station have proved to be authentic.

A week after more than 3,000 people were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, President Bush said he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive." But the al-Qaida leader, a Saudi national, eluded U.S. forces as they destroyed the Taliban government in Afghanistan last fall and hunted for him and his al-Qaida followers in their mountain redoubts.

U.S. officials have said they thought they heard bin Laden's voice in a monitored communication as U.S. Special Forces troops and their Afghan allies swept through eastern Afghanistan last December.

Several other tape-recorded statements have emerged since then on al-Jazeera -- the most recent in September -- but Tuesday night's was the first referring to recent events in a way that, if the voice is truly his, makes it clear bin Laden is still living and able to function.

In early October, al-Jazeera broadcast a voice recording of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-ranking al-Qaida leader, that U.S. officials also concluded was genuine. In that recording, Zawahiri threatened continued attacks on "America and its allies."

Although the speaker Tuesday night hailed the bloody attacks of recent weeks, he didn't specifically claim responsibility for them. U.S. and other officials have blamed the Indonesia, Kuwait and Yemen attacks on members of bin Laden's al-Qaida network or sympathizers, fueling speculation that the followers of the group may be shifting their attention to smaller and less protected targets without necessarily remaining in contact with bin Laden or other fugitive al-Qaida leaders.

As bin Laden often has done, the speaker criticized U.S. policy toward Israel, saying it is a key motivation for the attacks. The taped voice said the recent strikes were in response to what "Bush is doing in terms of killing our sons and what Israel, America's ally, is doing, by bombing houses on the heads of those in them, from elderly women and children, with American planes in Palestine. ... "

"For our people in Palestine are being killed and have been suffering all kinds of torture for almost a century," the speaker said. "If we defend our people in Palestine the world goes up in arms and allies itself against Muslims under the banner of combating terrorism."

In an apparent message to Arabs whose governments have close military ties with the United States -- another subject that has drawn bin Laden's ire -- the recording said: "Do your governments not know that the White House gang are the biggest butchers of the era?

"Why should your governments ally themselves with America?" he said.

The speaker also warned U.S. allies that have joined the war against terrorism, specifically Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia, saying: "If you don't like looking at your dead ... so remember our dead, including the children in Iraq."

For Western nations, the speaker said, "the road to safety starts with stopping aggression."

"We had warned Australia about its participation in Afghani-stan," he said. "It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sound of explosions in Bali."

More than 180 people, most of them Australians, were killed in the Oct. 12 Bali bombing.

The tape also referred to the taking of hundreds of hostages by Chechen guerrillas at a Moscow theater Oct. 23, in which 128 hostages died when Russian forces stormed the theater three days later. But Russian officials have not linked the action to al-Qaida.

The tape also mentioned the fatal shooting in Jordan on Oct. 28 of Laurence Foley, a senior administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Although Western diplomats believe Muslim extremists were to blame, Jordanian officials haven't linked al-Qaida to the attack.

Despite their failure to deliver bin Laden "dead or alive" as promised by Bush, U.S. officials have qualified their war on terrorism as successful because, they say, bin Laden and his organization have been crippled and forced into hiding.

Speaking in West Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, Gen. Tommy Franks, chief of the U.S. Central Command, said that he doesn't know where bin Laden is, but is sure the al-Qaida leader is "having a bad year."