AfterDowningStreet.org

http://www.theglobeandmail.com

U.S. military criminal investigators are trying to determine whether marines deliberately targeted civilians and covered it up after they shot dead 23 Iraqis shortly after one of their own was killed by a roadside bomb near Haditha in western Iraq.

If proven true, the incident -- first reported in the current edition of Time magazine -- would rank as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians since the war began. It would also be reminiscent of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, in which the slaughter of Vietnamese civilians at the hands of U.S. soldiers was covered up.

By Council for a Livable World

President George W. Bush – March 21, 2006: “We're making progress because we've got a strategy for victory.”

President’s press conference, LINK

President Lyndon Johnson - November 17, 1967: "We are inflicting greater losses than we're taking... We are making progress."

By Monica Davey and Eric Schmitt, New York Times

San Jose, Calif. - Patrick K. Tillman stood outside his law office here, staring intently at a yellow house across the street, just over 70 yards away. That, he recalled, is how far away his eldest son, Pat, who gave up a successful N.F.L. career to become an Army Ranger, was standing from his fellow Rangers when they shot him dead in Afghanistan almost two years ago.

Reuters

Washington - Dozens of U.S. anti-war protesters were arrested on Monday in demonstrations marking the third anniversary of the Iraq war, while others denounced President George W. Bush during an appearance in Cleveland.

Pentagon Force Protection Agency police arrested 51 people on misdemeanor charges of failure to obey a lawful order during a demonstration outside the Pentagon, Defense Department spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin said.

By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | www.truthout.org

He is referred to as "official one" and he is the mysterious senior Bush administration official who unmasked the identity of an undercover CIA operative to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003 and conservative columnist Robert Novak a month later.

The identity of this official is shrouded in secrecy. In fact, his name, government status, and the substance of his conversation with Woodward about the undercover officer are under a protective seal in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

From the Congressional Record:

AMENDMENT OFFERED BY MS. LEE
Ms. LEE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Acting CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
The text of the amendment is as follows:
Amendment offered by Ms. Lee:
At the end of the bill (before the short title), insert the following:
SEC. ----. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used

PHOTO GALLERY

By Susan Oehler, Western North Carolina Peace Coalition

On March 19, 2006, the Western North Carolina Peace Coalition held a Rally for Peace. This was the third annual rally to mark the start of the Iraq war, and this followed large pre-war rallies in 2002 and 2003. Our theme for this Rally for Peace was "the wages of peace".

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/032106.html

Err, how about if I come this close to telling the truth?

Bush this morning: "I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong ... with all due respect," he told a reporter. "No president wants war." To those who say otherwise, "it's simply not true," Bush said.

Every time Bush is asked about the false claims that he and his staff used to promote this war, he avoids the subject of WMDs and repeats yet again one of his more ludicrous false claims, namely that he tried to avoid war and was forced into it by Saddam Hussein. Yet, we know from numerous sources that Bush and others planned this war before he even moved to Washington. We know from the 2002 Downing Street Documents, the January 2003 White House Memo, and many other sources that Bush was intent on going to war and devoting his efforts not to avoiding it, but to selling it to the public. Bush tried to persuade the United Nations to give Iraq an ultimatum on inspections, in hopes that it would be rejected, thus justifying war. He proposed flying planes painted with UN colors where Iraqis might shoot them, in hopes of justifying war. Bush made no fewer than 55 knowingly misleading statements in public and misled Congress in his report three years ago this past Saturday about an imaginary threat to the United States from Iraq. The UN never did authorize a war. Inspections were moving ahead when Bush pulled the inspectors out in order to bomb the nation in an aggressive and fraudulent crime that has killed hundreds of thousands and left the rest of us in every way worse off. Here is documentation of Bush's dishonesty.

FOX's Carl Cameron asked Bush about impeachment: "At a time of war, what kind of a message does it send the terrorists for Democrats to talk about impeachment?"

Bush called such talk purely political, which is odd since Democratic political startegists are misguidedly advising against it, and it is only the few Democrats with spines (and political sense) who are talking about the need to do it for the good of the country.

Bush also dared Democrats to debate him on whether we should cancel the "terrorist surveillance program." As Bob Fertik points out on www.Democrats.com , "this is another outrageous lie, because there isn't a single Democrat - not one! - who has called for an end to terrorist surveillance as defined under the FISA law, which was written specifically to permit terrorist surveillance. The whole problem is that Bush is deliberately and openly breaking the FISA law to go beyond terrorist surveillance in order to spy on innocent American citizens!"

This is how scared the Republicans are of Cheney and Bush. What explains the Democrats' fear of opposing them?

DEMOCRACY NOW!

* Videotape Forces Pentagon to Investigate Claims U.S. Marines Shot Dead 15
Iraqi Civilians in Apparent Revenge Killings *

The U.S. military is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations
that marines shot and killed 15 civilians, including seven women and three
children, in the Iraqi town of Haditha last November in an apparent act of
revenge for the death of a U.S. soldier by a roadside bomb. A videotape

By Michael J. Sniffen, Associated Press

Alexandria, Va. - The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 testified Monday he spent almost four weeks trying to warn U.S. officials about the radical Islamic student pilot but "criminal negligence" by superiors in Washington thwarted a chance to stop the 9/11 attacks.

FBI agent Harry Samit of Minneapolis originally testified as a government witness, on March 9, but his daylong cross examination by defense attorney Edward MacMahon was the strongest moment so far for the court-appointed lawyers defending Moussaoui. The 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent is the only person charged in this country in connection with al-Qaida's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

By Norman Solomon

The third anniversary of the Iraq invasion is bound to attract a lot
of media coverage, but scant recognition will go to the pundits who
helped to make it all possible.

Continuing with long service to the Bush administration's
agenda-setting for war, prominent media commentators were very busy
in the weeks before the invasion. At the Washington Post, the op-ed

By David Swanson

If you have not yet seen the film "Occupation Dreamland," I highly recommend it. Co-Director Garrett Scott died on March 2, but he truly accomplished something before he left.
http://www.occupationdreamland.com

Those who oppose the Iraq War often struggle with the fact that so many U.S. soldiers are willing to participate in it, are willing to attack someone else's country, raid their houses, shoot at their cars, melt the skin off their children with white phosphorous. Why, it's easy to wonder, don't more soldiers do what a brave few have and refuse to fight?

www.unitedforpeace.org

Support HRes543
Introduced by Rep. Abercrombie (D-HI)

America has been at war for 3 years, with no end in sight, and Congress has refused to debate the war since the initial authorization to use military force was debated in 2002
.
Since Congress last allowed a discussion of Iraq on the floor of the House:
 Congress has appropriated over $300 billion of taxpayer money on Iraq.

By Jay Shaft- Editor of Coalition For Free Thought In Media

Video Hosted at San Francisco Bay (INDYBAY) Indy Media
LINK

By John Ward Anderson, Washington Post

Locals say several Iraqi women, children among dead.

Baghdad - At least four and perhaps as many as 13 people were killed, including a number of women and at least one child, in a U.S. military operation Wednesday against a house where insurgent collaborators were believed to have taken refuge, local officials and the U.S. military said.

According to the military, the incident occurred as U.S. forces were attempting to apprehend a "foreign fighter facilitator" for al-Qaeda in Iraq at a house near the town of Ishaqi, about 55 miles north of Baghdad. As troops advanced on the house, the statement said, they came under fire and "coalition forces returned fire utilizing both air and ground assets."