[Peace] March 15 - Stop the Countdown: The Politics of Deceit, Diplomacy, Oil and War (fwd)

[patton paul]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: SUN, 9 MAR 2003 08:27:59 -0500
From: VoteNoWar at InternationalAnswer.org
Reply-To: info at votenowar.org
To: ppatton at uiuc.edu
Subject: March 15 - Stop the Countdown: The Politics of Deceit, Diplomacy,
     Oil and War

Emergency Convergence March 15 to Stop the Countdown; Tens
of Thousands to March on the White House Against the War
Deadline
The Politics of Deceit, Diplomacy, Oil and War

Dear VoteNoWar Member,

We are writing to urge you to join and support the tens of
thousands of people who are holding an Emergency March on
the White House Saturday, March 15 and conducting solidarity
Stop the War actions all around the world. On March 15,
workers in Italy are staging an anti-war General Strike. In
Spain, Greece, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the UK, and in
Los Angeles, San Francisco and cities around the world
people are coming together in Emergency Mass Action on March
15 to stop the U.S./UK war against the people of Iraq.

Bush and Blair have announced a March 17 deadline for war
and demanded the international community's ratification.
They are paving the path to war by racing to convince the
world that war is inevitable and that they answer to no one
except George W. Bush and his warmongering associates. They
want to demoralize and immobilize the opposition at the most
critical moment.

But the warmakers can still be stopped, and they know it.
If it hadn't been for the worldwide uprising against the war
the carnage would have started months ago. We can and must
intensify the mobilization for March 15.

While there are multiple plans for activities in the event
of war or after war has begun, all people of conscience
recognize that there are no planned actions more important
than those called to prevent a war before it starts, and for
people in the United States at this time that is
particularly true. We must do everything in our power now to
prevent the government of the U.S. from its planned killing
in the Middle East. That is what makes the March 15
Emergency Convergence so crucial. It's time to Take it to
the White House.

Confronted with the revelation of their own lies and
concealment, Bush and Blair are rushing to begin the
slaughter lest the growing global antiwar opposition
overwhelm their plans. One day after his national television
"war speech," the U.N. weapons inspectors and others exposed
Bush's pretext for war as a lie in their March 7 report.
According to the U.N. weapons inspectors, the U.S. and the U.
K. provided "faked evidence" to the U.N. to support the
claim that Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons, a series of
forged letters. ("Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake, U.N.
Nuclear Inspector Says Document on Purchases Were Forged,"
Washington Post, March 8, 2003, A1) As claims made by Bush
and Powell are dismissed and discredited day by day, they
are desperate to have the headlines focus on the coming war
rather than the crumbling fa=E7ade that they have asserted
justifies the war.

The underlying premise of the White House propaganda for
months can be summed up into one single message: This war
will happen because no one can stop us. Bush and company
know that they don't have the truth on their side, nor the
law, nor world public opinion, nor the governments of the
world, nor the UN.

Their strategy is based on the myth of invincible military
superiority: a supremacy in arms and equipment that can
always crush those that it targets and always succeed in
intimidating and bullying those who attempt political
opposition. It is this same arrogance of power that dragged
the country into twelve years of war in Vietnam killing more
than a million Vietnamese and 58,000 GI's before the madness
was brought to an end. It seems that the only lesson taken
by the Bush Administration from the Vietnam War is that the
administration should launch massive and obliterating
destruction and killing with the belief that this will
eliminate protracted battle for the U.S. This is a dangerous
fallacy. A war launched by the U.S. government in the Middle
East will have catastrophic consequences in the region and
in the U.S. for years to come.

---The Bush Administration's Justifications for War: Frauds
and Forgeries

*UN Chief Nuclear Inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei's March 7
report to the UN exposed as a fraud the main U.S. argument
about Iraq's supposed nuclear activities. For months, U.S.
officials have cited Iraq's importing of aluminum tubes, and
the purported effort by Iraq to purchase uranium from Niger
as proof that Iraq posed a "grave and imminent danger."
ElBaradei told the UN "there is no indication that Iraq has
attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge
enrichment" of uranium into weapons-grade material. Powell
was briefed on the falseness of the aluminum tube claim
prior to his testimony before the U.N. on the subject last
month, and made misrepresentations to the Security Council
with this knowledge. ElBaradei also revealed that the
documents cited by U.S. officials about the purchase of
uranium by Iraq from Niger "are in fact not authentic" and
were forgeries.

*To the dismay of the Bush administration, Hans Blix
reported that Iraq was cooperating with the inspectors and
that the inspections could be fully completed and "will not
take years, nor weeks, but months." Iraq originally agreed
to accept the weapons inspections in 1991 with the promise
that economic sanctions would be lifted when it was
confirmed that it was "disarmed" of non-conventional weapons.
Thus Iraq could be finally free of the economic sanctions
that have killed more than one million Iraqis in the last
decade. That the inspections process was constructed solely
as a pretext for war is demonstrated by the fact that when
the inspections failed to serve as a trigger for war, the
administration had no further use for them.

---The Economic and Social Consequences of this Planned Oil
War -- Who Wins, Who Loses?

The very day that Bush and Blair set a March 17 deadline
for war, the Labor Department issued its surprise report
that more than 300,000 people were put out of work just in
the last month as corporations slashed jobs. The Jobs Report
was expected to show an increase of 20,000 jobs. The
Pentagon's military campaign of "Shock and Awe" may help
kill tens of thousands of Iraqis in the next weeks but it
won't help even one of these laid-off workers get their jobs
back. But Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell's real
constituents are not unemployed workers but the oil, banking,
and military corporations who stand to profit handsomely
from gaining control over Iraq's vast oil reserves (the
second largest in the world).

While the danger of war and world instability sends
unemployment and gas prices sky high, not all are suffering.

The San Francisco Chronicle of March 8 reported that
Halliburton Co., of which Dick Cheney was chairman until his
"selection" in 2000, has won a Pentagon contract for the
rebuilding of Iraq's oil field after the war.

"There are lots of business opportunities embedded in this
war. It represents the larger oil and energy issues at stake,
" the Chronicle quotes Michael Renner of WorldWatch
Institute. "Regime change in Baghdad would reshuffle the
cards and give U.S. (and British) companies a good shot at
direct access to Iraq's oil fields for the first time in 30
years a windfall worth hundreds of billions of dollars," he
said.

Iraq's proven oil reserves of 112 billion barrels are the
world's second largest behind only Saudi Arabia. The
majority of Iraq's potential oil fields though remain
unexplored. Daily oil output capacity is about 2 million
barrels. Oil industry analysts believe that if western oil
and engineering companies take over Iraqi oil production, it
could surge to 10-12 million barrels a day within a decade.
(San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 2003) The prize of Iraq
and the other oil riches of the region could constitute the
single biggest boon for Bush's corporate clients in decades.
As one oil executive stated, "For any oil company, being in
Iraq is like being a kid in F.A.O. Schwarz." ("Iraq Is a
Strategic Issue for Oil Giants, Too," The New York Times,
February 22, 2003)

The U.S. government initially placed Iraq on the "terrorist
nations list" in 1972 after the Iraqi government
nationalized its oil fields, which had been in the hands of
U.S., British and other western companies.

On March 15, people in the United States will take to the
streets again. It is unacceptable to let a government
representing the corporate few, send the sons and daughters
of this country to kill and be killed, in a war for Big Oil
and corporate profits.

In these last few days before the March 17 "deadline"
please help the movement for peace and social justice stop
the countdown and build the March 15 Emergency Convergence
at the White House. Please make a tax deductible
contribution online, or by check, by visiting http://www.
votenowar.org/donate.html .

The plan for the Emergency Convergence on the White House
is to gather at 12 noon at the Washington Monument (just
south of the White House, Constitution Ave. between 15th and
17th Sts. NW) for a rally and march.

Contact information for BUSES, VANS AND CAR CARAVANS
traveling to DC -- and an easy-to-use form to sign up to
list the transportation options from your city -- is
available at http://www.internationalanswer.
org/campaigns/m15/m15transp.html .

A FLYER for the March 15 Emergency National Convergence on
the White House is available at VoteNoWar.org. You can
easily download a PDF of the national flyer for the
Washington DC demonstration, as well as a version for those
in New York City planning to travel to DC. Flyers for West
Coast events in Los Angeles and San Francisco are available,
as well.

If you cannot download and print the flyers, you can pick
up stacks at A.N.S.W.E.R. offices around the country, or you
can call 202-544-3389 and request a packet of flyers.

For logistical information -- such as a map of the rally
area, directions, public transportation in DC, disability
access, housing and more -- go to http://internationalanswer.
org/campaigns/m15/logistics.html .

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