What the US President Wants Us To Forget 
By Robert Fisk, Common Dreams, October 9, 2002
Each day now, someone says something even more incredible – even more unimaginable – about President Bush's obsession with war. Yesterday, George Bush was himself telling an audience in Cincinnati about "nuclear holy warriors". Forget for a moment that we still can't prove Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons. Forget that the latest Bush speech was just a re-hash of all the "ifs" and "mays" and "coulds" in Tony Blair's flimsy 16 pages of allegations in his historically dishonest "dossier". Forget that if Osama bin Laden ever acquired a nuclear weapon, he'd probably use it first on Saddam. No. We've got to fight "nuclear holy warriors". That's what we have to do to justify the whole charade through which we are being taken now by the White House, by Downing Street, by all the decaying "experts" on terrorism and, alas, far too many journalists.

NATO Used the Same Old Trick When It Made Milosevic an Offer He Could Only Refuse 
By Robert Fisk, Common Dreams, October 4, 2002
It's the same old trap. NATO used exactly the same trick to ensure that it could have a war with Slobodan Milosevic. Now the Americans are demanding the same of Saddam Hussein – buried well down in their list of demands, of course. Tell your enemy that you're going to need his roads and airspace – with your troops on the highways – and you destroy his sovereignty. That's what NATO demanded of Serbia in 1999. That's what the new UN resolution touted by Messrs Bush and Blair demands of Saddam Hussein. It's a declaration of war. It worked in 1999. The Serbs accepted most of NATO's Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-government in Kosovo, but not Appendix 8, which insisted that "NATO personnel shall enjoy ... free and unimpeded passage and unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." It was a demand that Mr Milosevic could never accept. US troops driving through Serbia would have meant, in these circumstances, the end of Yugoslav sovereignty.

Senator Leahy: Excerpts From Senate Debate on Iraq Policy
New York Times, October 10, 2002
There's no dispute that Saddam Hussein is a menace to his people and to Iraq's neighbors. He's a tyrant. The world would be far better off without him. He's made no secret of his hatred of the United States. And should he acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver it, he'd pose a grave threat to the lives of all Americans, as well as many of our closest allies. The question isn't whether he should be disarmed. It's how imminent is his threat and how do we deal with it. Do we go it alone, as some in the administration are eager to do, because they see Iraq as the first opportunity to apply the president's strategy of pre-emptive military force? Do we do that, potentially jeopardizing the support of those nations we need to combat terrorism? Do we further antagonize Muslim populations who already deeply resent our policies in the Middle East? Or do we work with other nations to disarm Saddam, using force if other options fail?

Art of Resolution Conflict: Many nations defy the UN
By Mohamad Bazzi, Newsday, October 7, 2002
"The two top violators are Israel, which has failed to comply with 32 resolutions since 1968, and Turkey, which has violated 24 resolutions since 1974, according to Zunes' list": United Nations - In making the case for military action against Iraq for its defiance of UN resolutions, President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have repeatedly argued that the credibility of the world body is at stake. Bush and Blair point out that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has violated 12 Security Council resolutions since 1990 that require Iraq to submit to UN arms inspections and destroy all of its chemical and biological weapons. "All the world now faces a test and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment," Bush told the UN General Assembly in a Sept. 12 speech. "Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?" Blair warned last week that Iraq's continued defiance threatens to "destroy" the UN's authority. However, a handful of countries, including U.S. allies, are violating scores of Security Council resolutions without facing any threat of military reprisal. Stephen Zunes, an associate professor of politics at San Francisco University, counts more than 90 resolutions being violated by Israel, Turkey, Morocco, Cyprus, Armenia, Croatia, Indonesia, Sudan, Russia, India and Pakistan.

The bit by bit destruction of Palestine
By Ali Abunimah, Jordan Times, October 10, 2002
ON SEPT. 24, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1435 making clear its demand for “the expeditious withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from Palestinian cities towards the return to the positions held prior to September 2000”, as well as its “demand for the complete cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction”. Yet even as the resolution, which passed 14-0 with the United States abstaining, was still being debated, Israeli occupation forces attacked Gaza City, killing nine people, at least six of them civilians — one a child — injuring dozens and destroying houses and shops.
Despite this Israeli aggression, the UN Security Council did absolutely nothing to enforce its will, and since the resolution was passed on Sept. 24, Palestinians, including children, have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces almost every day, their property continues to be destroyed and they continue to gasp under a suffocating siege. Despite a constant Israeli onslaught that has killed nearly one hundred Palestinians in the past six weeks, Palestinian groups have largely continued to refrain from attacks inside Israel. It is increasingly clear that the Sharon-Peres government needs such attacks in order to survive and will stop at nothing to provoke them.

The road to Baghdad
By Hassan Abu Taleb, Al-Ahram Weekly, 3 - 9 October 2002
By involving Israel in the war effort against Iraq, Washington may be setting the stage for something bigger than the removal of Saddam:  US President George W Bush wants to see the United Nations "pulling its weight" in Iraq, telling the UN General Assembly that Iraq should let the international inspectors back and prove that it has no weapons of mass destruction. Bush, however, has not ruled out the use of force against Saddam's regime, indicating that while the US president wants the international community to remain involved in the crisis, he does so only insofar as the international community will be ready to endorse a US military adventure in Iraq. Washington seems determined to attack Iraq, particularly if Saddam insists that the inspectors' return be linked to a timetable for lifting the sanctions against the country.

Khan Yunis: Before the Juggernaut
By Jennifer Loewenstein, Palestine Chronicle, October 9, 2002 
"A year later and here she is playing among the ruins; taller and longer haired but with the same knowing look. When she sees me she stops and we both flash a quick smile of recognition. She’s not dead, I think. ..": MADISON, Wisconsin (PC) - A mobile watchtower, lifted into the air by a crane, surveys Khan Yunis day and night. An ambulance from the city waits behind a nearby concrete building day after day; it waits so that the next child shot for playing too close to the wall can make it to the local hospital before dying. The wall is a vast, menacing construction stretching down the coast as far as you can see, separating Khan Yunis from the Gush Katif settlement block in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers sit poised with machine guns in the cylindrical bunker at the northern edge of the wall overlooking the ruins they’ve made of the Khan Yunis refugee camp. Over there to the south and west, in the Jewish settlements, no one worries about water shortages or electricity outages. Families don’t live in corrugated iron shacks unrecognizable as homes from the outside until someone points out what is supposed to be a door; until you see ragged clothing hanging up to dry above a parched piece of earth beside the shack. Parents in the settlements aren’t afraid that their children will be murdered for absentmindedly playing too close to a wall. Their panorama is the buoyant, sparkling Mediterranean lapping the white sands outside their windows; an occupied view: for settlers only.