Abbas Bought With a Few American Coins

January 6, 2006

by Housewife4Palestine

I must admit that Mahmoud Abbas with his Fatah henchmen can be bought at a cheap price 86.4 million dollars with two caches of arms given to them over the last few months, the last delivery just recently.

There are many recently, that are setting on the sidelines thinking Hamas when they are retaliating for several attempts on their life that they are the bad guy’s.

Abbas is what is known in Palestine as a collaborator, what makes it hard these days, he has gotten himself in a position of power and while he thinks he has sold his soul to help his people he has done just the opposite. Because you cannot side with the enemy and your own people, it does not work that way.

Usually when a person becomes a collaborator or even a better word a traitor to his own people, the penalty is death.

While I will admit if your are attempting some negotiable peace treaty that is one thing, but with the two arms deals to overthrow Hamas, this is not what appears to be going on.

Right now with Hamas, which is the legal government in Palestine, is having to butt heads with Abbas and the Fateh it would more look like what the West calls a civil war.

However, in truth, it is Abbas being a traitor and selling out his own people for a few coins and many empty promises.

Israel Lies Again in Clouded Cover Over Ramallah

January 6, 2006

With the attacks that occurred in Ramallah Thursday, as usual, Israel is trying to sweep it under the rug and showed that the invasion under the cloud of ceasefire was justified.

Israeli army spokesmen describes the massacre in Ramallah as 'self-defense'

Jerusalem - Ma'an - A spokesperson of the Israeli army, Avihay Ader'I, described the Israeli invasion of Ramallah on Thursday as, 'self-defense' aimed to apprehend Palestinian 'wanted' men who were planning to operate in Israel.

The spokesperson said the army operates every day in West Bank cities as there is no ceasefire agreement applicable there. However, he said what had happened in Ramallah was blown out of proportion by the direct transmission on TV channels and that this led to the outbreak of fierce confrontations.

In relation to the destruction of civilian Palestinian vehicles and shop fronts, he claimed this was to enable the passage of the relief forces which came to rescue the Israeli army unit that had come to arrest the 'wanted' men.

When a wave of torture and murder staggered a small U.S. ally, truth was a casualty.

Was the CIA involved? Did Washington know? Was the public deceived? Now we know: Yes, Yes and yes.

By Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson
Sun Staff
Originally published June 11, 1995

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - The search for Nelson Mackay Chavarria - family man, government lawyer, possible subversive - began one Sunday in 1982 after he devoured a pancake breakfast and stepped out to buy a newspaper.

It ended last December when his wife, Amelia, watched as forensic scientists plucked his moldering bones from a pit in rural Honduras. Spotting a scrap of the red-and-blue shirt her husband was wearing the day he disappeared, she gasped: "Oh my God, that's him!"

Along with Amelia Mackay, the nation of Honduras has begun to confront a truth it has long suspected - that hundreds of its citizens were kidnapped, tortured and killed in the 1980s by a secret army unit trained and supported by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The intelligence unit, known as Battalion 316, used shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves.

Newly declassified documents and other sources show that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy knew of numerous crimes, including murder and torture, committed by Battalion 316, yet continued to collaborate closely with its leaders.

In order to keep U.S. dollars flowing into Honduras for the war against communism in Central America, the Reagan administratio(1)n knowingly made a series of misleading statements to Congress and the public that denied or minimized the violence of Battalion 316.

These are among the findings of a 14-month investigation in which The Sun obtained formerly classified documents and interviewed U.S. and Honduran participants, many of whom - fearing for their lives or careers - have kept silent until now.

Among those interviewed were three former Battalion 316 torturers who acknowledged their crimes and detailed the battalion's close relationship with the CIA.

U.S. collaboration with Battalion 316 occurred at many levels.

* The CIA was instrumental in training and equipping Battalion 316. Members were flown to a secret location in the United States for training in surveillance and interrogation, and later were given CIA training at Honduran bases.

* Starting in 1981, the United States secretly provided funds for Argentine counterinsurgency experts to train anti-Communist forces in Honduras. By that time, Argentina was notorious for its own "Dirty War," which had left at least 10,000 dead or "disappeared" in the 1970s. Argentine and CIA instructors worked side by side training Battalion 316 members at a camp in Lepaterique, a town about 16 miles west of Tegucigalpa.

* Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, who as chief of the Honduran armed forces personally directed Battalion 316, received strong U.S. support - even after he told a U.S. ambassador that he intended to use the Argentine method of eliminating subversives.

* By 1983, when Alvarez's oppressive methods were well known to the U.S. Embassy, the Reagan administration awarded him the Legion of Merit for "encouraging the success of democratic processes in Honduras." His friendship with Donald Winters, the CIA station chief in Honduras, was so close that when Winters adopted a child, he asked Alvarez to be the girl's godfather.

* A CIA officer based in the U.S. Embassy went frequently to a secret jail known as INDUMIL, where torture was conducted, and visited the cell of kidnap victim Ines Murillo. That jail and other Battalion 316 installations were off-limits to Honduran officials, including judges trying to find kidnap victims.

The exact number of people executed by Battalion 316 remains unknown. For years, unidentified and unclaimed bodies were found dumped in rural areas, along rivers and in citrus groves.

Late in 1993, the Honduran government listed 184 people as still missing and presumed dead. They are are called "desaparecidos," Spanish for "the disappeared." Mackay is the first person on the list to be found and identified. The discovery of an identifiable body has enabled prosecutors to try to bring his killers to justice.

To this day, the events in Honduras have been little noticed, an obscure sideshow to a highly publicized struggle in the region. ,, They came about as the Reagan administration was waging war against a Marxist regime in Nicaragua and leftist insurgents in El Salvador.

Honduras, a U.S. ally, was used by Washington as the principal base for its largely clandestine effort. Keeping Honduras secure from leftists was Battalion 316's mission.

I think it is an example of the pathology of foreign policy," said Jack Binns, a Carter appointee as ambassador to Honduras who served from September 1980 through October 1981. "The desire to conduct a clandestine war against Nicaragua out of Honduras made us willing to go beyond turning a blind eye and made us willing to provide assistance to people doing these things even though we knew they were doing them."

Elliott Abrams, former assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs from December 1981 to July 1985, when he was appointed assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, vigorously defends the Reagan policy."

Disappearing people - murdering people, was not the policy of the United States. Nor was it our policy to avert our eyes," Abrams said.

Abrams and other Reagan administration officials said that while fighting communism was the primary goal, they encouraged military leaders in Central America to curtail human rights abuses. In contrast to the Carter administration, which had emphasized human rights in crafting foreign policy, they tackled the issue privately, Abrams said.

"A human rights policy is not supposed to make you feel good," he said. "It's supposed to do some good in the country you're targeting."

No one was safe

Some of the victims of Battalion 316 were subversives, involved in such crimes as bombings and robberies. Nelson Mackay, an easy-going man of Australian descent, had many friends in the military. But he was suspected of arranging gun sales to a radical student group.

Many others were kidnapped and killed for exercising the same freedoms that the United States said it was fighting for in Latin America. Victims included students demonstrating for the release of political prisoners, union leaders who organized strikes for higher wages, journalists who criticized the military regime and college professors demanding fair tuition for the poor.

Among the kidnapped were 14 who described their treatment in interviews with The Sun. Nine said members of Battalion 316 clipped wires to their genitals and sent electric currents surging through their bodies.

"They started with 110 volts," said Miguel Carias, an architectural draftsman who was held captive with Nelson Mackay for a week in 1982. "Then they went up to 220. Each time they shocked me, I could feel my body jump and my mouth filled with a metal taste."

Former members of Battalion 316, interviewed in Canada where they are living in exile, described how prisoners were nearly suffocated with a rubber mask wrapped tightly around their faces. The mask was called "la capucha," or "the hood." Women were fondled and raped, the torturers said.

The body of Mackay, who was 37 years old and the father of five, showed signs of other tortures.

Farmers who found Mackay's body in 1982 and later buried it reported that his hands and feet were tied with rope and a noose was around his neck. A black liquid spilled from his mouth. The farmers recognized the substance as "criolina," a thick, black liquid rubbed on cattle to kill ticks and mites.

Stalking the victims

Before being kidnapped and tortured, suspects were stalked by Battalion 316.

Jose Valle, a former battalion member now in Canada, describes a typical surveillance: "We would follow a person for four to six days. See their daily routes from the moment they leave the house. What kind of transportation they use. The streets they go on."

Once the battalion determined the time and place an individual was most vulnerable, the person was kidnapped, often in daylight by men in black ski masks. They ambushed their victims on busy streets, then sped off in cars with tinted windows and no license plates.

The prisoners of Battalion 316 were confined in bedrooms, closets and basements of country homes of military officers. Some were held in military clubhouses at locations such as INDUMIL, the Military Industries complex near Tegucigalpa.

They were stripped and tied hand and foot. Tape was wrapped around their eyes.

Those who survived recall interrogation sessions that lasted hours. Battalion members shouted obscenities, accused them of being terrorists, and told them they would never see their families again if they did not answer questions and confess.

Milton Jimenez, former leader of a radical leftist student group, .. endured such interrogation. He and several college housemates were kidnapped by military police on April 27, 1982. When Jimenez refused to answer questions, he said, the officers told ,, him they were going to kill him. "They said they were finishing my grave. . . . I was convinced that I was going to die."

They stood him before a firing squad. They aimed their guns at him, promising that it was his time to die. But they never fired.

Eventually, he was released.

"They never accused me of anything specific," said Jimenez in an interview in Tegucigalpa, where he is now a lawyer. "They said they knew I was a terrorist and they asked, 'Who are your friends?'"

Simple methods

There was nothing sophisticated about the torture employed by Battalion 316. In addition to la capucha - a piece of rubber cut from an inner tube that prevents a person from breathing through the mouth and nose - they used rope to hang victims from the ceiling and beat them, and extension cords with exposed wires for shock torture.

Gloria Esperanza Reyes, now 52, speaking in an interview at her home in Vienna, Va., describes how she was tortured with electric wires attached to her breasts and vagina. "The first jolt was so bad I just wanted to die," she said.

Jose Barrera, a former battalion torturer interviewed in Toronto, recalls such pleas from prisoners. "They always asked to be killed," he said. "Torture is worse than death."

Battalion 316 got its early training from Argentines, who had been invited to Honduras by General Alvarez, himself an honors graduate of the Argentine Military Academy.

"The Argentines came in first, and they taught how to disappear people. The United States made them more efficient," said Oscar Alvarez, a former Honduran special forces officer and diplomat who was the general's nephew.

"The Americans ... brought the equipment," he said. "They gave the training in the United States, and they brought agents here to provide some training in Honduras.

"They said, 'You need someone to tap phones, you need someone to transcribe the tapes, you need surveillance groups.' They brought in special cameras that were inside thermoses. They taught interrogation techniques.

"The United States did not come here and say kill people," he added. "I never saw any efforts by the United States to create death squads."

General Alvarez's chief of staff, Gen. Jose Bueso Rosa, also describes the U.S. role in developing the battalion. "It was their idea to create an intelligence unit that reported directly to the head of the armed forces," he said. "Battalion 316 was created by a need for information. We were not specialists in intelligence, in gathering information, so the United States offered to help us organize a special unit."

(In 1986, Bueso was convicted in U.S. District Court in Miami of participating in a failed drug-financed plot to kill former Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordoba.)

In the United States and in Honduras, the CIA trained members of the unit in interrogation and surveillance, former Battalion 316 members and Honduran officers said.

The training by the CIA was confirmed by Richard Stolz, then-deputy director for operations, in secret testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 1988.

In testimony declassified at The Sun's request, Stolz told the committee: "The course consisted of three weeks of classroom instruction followed by two weeks of practical exercises, which included the questioning of actual prisoners by the students.

"Physical abuse or other degrading treatment was rejected, not only because it is wrong, but because it has historically proven to be ineffective," he added.

He confirmed that a CIA officer visited the place where 24-year-old Ines Murillo was held during her captivity.

Interviews with members of Battalion 316 confirm Stolz's testimony: The CIA taught them to apply psychological pressure, but not physical torture. But former battalion members and victims say the CIA knew that torture was being used.

Florencio Caballero, a former battalion member, recalls the instruction and the reality.

"They said that torture was not the way to obtain the truth during an interrogation. But Alvarez said the quickest way to get the information was with torture," he told investigators of the Senate intelligence committee.

The Senate investigators interviewed Caballero in Canada as part of the same investigation in which Stolz testified.

In an interview with The Sun, Oscar Alvarez also recalls the reality.

"What was supposed to happen was that the intelligence unit would gather information and take it to a judge and say, 'Here, this person is a guerrilla, and here's the evidence," he said. "But the Hondurans did not do that." Slashing his finger across his neck, he said, "They took the easy way."

And, he said, "U.S. officials did not protest."

Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for the CIA, said: "As a matter of policy, we don't comment on liaison relationships." But, he added, "The notion that the CIA was involved in or sanctioned human rights abuses in Honduras is unfounded."

A man, a mission

When Alvarez took command of the Honduran armed forces in 1982, at the age of 44, Washington had a man ideally suited to its mission to combat Communist insurgency in Central America.

"Gustavo Alvarez was very much out of national character - dynamic, firm, uncompromising," said Donald Winters, CIA station chief in Tegucigalpa from 1982 to 1984. "He knew where he wanted to go."

Alvarez was the son of a high school principal who made him recite poetry to overcome a stutter. But his preferred reading was military history. He so admired Germany's "Desert Fox" of World War II, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, that he named one of his sons Erwin and another Manfred, after Rommel's son.

General Alvarez made no secret about his belief that terror and violence were the only ways to deal with subversives. As commander of the national police force known as Fuerza de Seguridad Publica (FUSEP), he had already created an intelligence unit that would become known as Battalion 316.

On Feb. 6, 1981, while still FUSEP commander, but already selected as head of the Honduran armed forces, he told Binns of his admiration for the way the Argentine military had dealt with subversives and said that he planned to use the same methods in Honduras.

The U.S. ambassador was shocked. In an urgent cable to superiors in Washington, he described the conversation:

"Alvarez stressed theme that democracies and West are soft, perhaps too soft to resist Communist subversion. The Argentines, he said, had met the threat effectively, identifying - and taking care of - the subversives. Their method, he opined, is the only effective way of meeting the challenge.

"When it comes to subversion, [Alvarez] would opt for tough, vigorous and Extra-Legal Action," Binns warned.

Four months later, Binns was outraged to learn of the violent abduction and disappearance of Tomas Nativi, a 33-year-old university professor and alleged subversive. Nativi was dragged from his bed on June 11, 1981, by six men wearing black ski masks, according to witnesses and a 1993 Honduran government report.

He has not been seen since and is presumed dead.

In his cable on the incident to Washington, the ambassador said: "I believe we should try to nip this situation in the bud. I have already asked [CIA] chief of station to raise this problem obliquely with ... Alvarez (whose minions appear to be the principal actors and whom I suspect is the intellectual force behind this new strategy for handling subversives/criminals)."

Falling on deaf ears

Binns recommended that the U.S. government act to stop the military violence by threatening to withhold military aid. "Those suggestions drew a thunderous silence from Washington," he said in a recent interview at his home in Tucson, Ariz. "My message was not a message anyone wanted to hear.

"The Reagan administration had made it clear that it would diminish the criticism of human rights abuses by its allies in places such as Central America where it wanted to go on the offensive against the Communist threat.

Thomas O. Enders, former assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs and a chief architect of the early Reagan strategy, described the change of policy in a recent interview in New York, where he is a managing director of Salomon Brothers Inc., an investment banking firm.

"We didn't think that we could effectively sustain the resistance to the guerrillas in Central America without being willing to give significant public support to their governments," Enders said.

"We were afraid that the approach that had been adopted by the Carter administration, which was highly critical of them and would result in their demoralization, would fail to convince the Soviet Union or the Salvadorans, Hondurans and others that we really meant business."

In the Reagan strategy, Honduras, which the United States had used before to advance its objectives in Central America, was ideally located between Nicaragua and El Salvador. General Alvarez seemed an ideal partner.

"Alvarez was a darling of the Reagan administration," said Cresencio S. Arcos, U.S. Embassy press spokesman from June 1980 to July 1985 and ambassador to Honduras from December 1989 to July 1993.

While General Alvarez's star was rising, President Reagan was issuing orders for an aggressive, largely secret thrust against communism in Central America.

By March 9, 1981 - after less than two months in office - Reagan signed a presidential "finding" that ordered the expansion of covert operations authorized by the Carter administration, to "provide all forms of training, equipment, and related assistance to cooperating governments throughout Central America in order counter foreign-sponsored subversion and terrorism."

On Dec. 1, 1981, he ordered the CIA to work primarily through "non-Americans" against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and leftist insurgents in El Salvador.

The "non-Americans" were to include Argentines, paid for by the CIA, Enders said in an interview last month. He said there did not seem to be any alternative to using the Argentines, despite their poor record on human rights.

"There were not many people with counterinsurgency experience," Enders said. "How many people were there who were Spanish speakers? [Human rights] was obviously a concern, but when we got through looking at it, we didn't see that we had any clear choice."

By the end of 1981, the Reagan administration had replaced Ambassador Binns with John Dimitri Negroponte, a man viewed as committed to the administration's decision to confront communism in Latin America.

USS Honduras

The partnership with Honduras and General Alvarez expanded. Military aid to Honduras jumped from $3.9 million in 1980 to $77.4 million by 1984.

The tiny country eventually was crowded with so much U.S. military equipment and personnel that some started referring to it as "the USS Honduras."

While the U.S. government heaped money and praise on Alvarez, evidence of human rights abuses mounted.

One accusation came from Col. Leonidas Torres Arias, after he was ousted as intelligence chief for the Honduran armed forces.

In August 1982, he told a packed news conference in Mexico City about Battalion 316, "a death squad operating in Honduras that was being led by armed forces chief, General Gustavo Alvarez." He mentioned three victims by name, including Nelson Mackay.

At the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, U.S. officials were confronted with personal and written appeals for help from relatives of the disappeared.

Former Honduran Congressman Efrain Diaz Arrivillaga said he spoke several times about the military's abuses to U.S. officials in Honduras, including Negroponte.

"Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence," he said. "They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.

"Negroponte, now U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, has declined repeated requests by telephone and in writing since July for interviews about this report, including most recently in a hand-delivered letter to the embassy in Manila.

Almost every day, Honduran newspapers published stories about the military's violence and full-page ads with pictures of the missing. In 1982 alone, at least 318 stories were published about military abuses.

Some directly named Alvarez.

"General Alvarez, as a human being, I beg you to free my children," read one headline from El Tiempo on April 30, 1982.

Members of the Honduran Congress drafted resolutions calling for investigations into the disappearances.

Relatives of Battalion 316's victims marched by the hundreds through the narrow streets of Tegucigalpa demanding the return of the missing.

"Alive they were taken! Alive we want them back!" they chanted, mostly wrinkled old women with white scarves covering their heads, carrying posters with drawings of their missing sons and grandsons.

But, determined to avoid questions in Congress, U.S. officials in Honduras concealed evidence of rights abuses.

"There are no political prisoners in Honduras," asserted the State Department human rights report on Honduras for 1983.

By that time the embassy was aware of numerous kidnappings of leftists and had participated in the freeing of two prominent victims whose abduction and torture had become embarrassing.

Specific examples of brutality by the Honduran military typically never appeared in the human rights reports, prepared by the embassy under the direct supervision of Ambassador Negroponte. Those reports to Congress were required under the Foreign Assistance Act, which in most circumstances prohibits the United States from providing military aid to nations whose governments engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights.

The reports from Honduras were carefully crafted to leave the impression that the Honduran military respected human rights.

The end of Alvarez

By 1984, other Honduran officers began to worry that Alvarez had dragged the country too far into violence against their own people.

Col. Eric Sanchez, now retired from the armed forces, thought Alvarez was "obsessed."

Recalling a conversation with Alvarez about Battalion 316, Sanchez said the armed forces chief told him: "One had to fight Communists with all weapons and in every arena, and not all of them are fair."

Gen. Walter Lopez, currently one of Honduras' three vice presidents, recalled in an interview: "(Alvarez)was dangerous. He was pushing our country to do something we did not want to do. We were willing to be trained professionally, but only to defend our country. Not for so-called undercover operations."

On March 31, 1984, Alvarez's military career came to a sudden and unexpected end.

Accused of misappropriation of funds, he was ousted by his own officers. One junior officer held a gun to the general's head and handcuffed him. He was put on a military plane for Costa Rica.

Later the same year, Alvarez and his wife and five children landed in Miami, where they lived for five years. He joined an evangelical church in Miami and embraced religion with as much passion as he had embraced the fight against communism.

In 1988, Alvarez said he had been urged in a dream to go back to Honduras and preach the gospel. Shunning offers of protection from friends in the military, he preached on street corners, saying, "My Bible is my protection."

On Jan. 25, 1989, five men dressed in blue and wearing hard hats surrounded his car and riddled it with bullets from machine guns. Moments before he died, bleeding from 18 wounds, Alvarez asked: "Why are they doing this to me?"

The assassins have never been found, but a group called the Popular Liberation Movement claimed responsibility.

In a statement, the group referred to Alvarez as a psychopath who tried "to escape popular justice by disguising himself as a harmless and repentant Christian."

A widow's defense

Lilia Alvarez, the general's widow, defends his memory.

"He knew they would criticize him for what he did. ... There were some illegal detentions, and maybe the army executed some people, but think about how many lives were saved. Thousands of people were saved because my husband prevented a civil war."

The Honduran government has taken several steps forward in the pursuit of the truth about the disappearances of the 1980s.

In a 1993 report, "The Facts Speak for Themselves," the government lists the name of each of the disappeared and admits that it did not protect its citizens from the abuses of the military.

"Extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and the lack of due process ... characterized these years of intolerance," stated the report of the National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights in Honduras. "Perhaps more troublesome than the violations themselves was the authorities' tolerance of these crimes and the impunity with which they were committed."

The report represents the first time that the Honduran government has admitted that the disappearances occurred and that it shares responsibility.

Within a year after he became president of Honduras in 1994, Carlos Roberto Reina took further steps to identify those responsible.

"Those of us who lived in that time are committed not to relive it," said Honduran Attorney General Edmundo Orellana. "We are committed to building a society that says, 'Never again.' "

One of the most important developments in that task was the discovery of an identifiable body of a "desaparecido" - Nelson Mackay. With an identified body, a murder investigation could be undertaken. The case has been helped by the willingness of Miguel Carias, his alleged co-conspirator, to testify.

In an interview, Carias described their last encounter.

They were together in a brown brick house on the northern edge of Tegucigalpa that Battalion 316 used as a secret jail. Mackay was held in a bedroom, his hands and feet tied with rope. Carias, locked in the closet, heard Mackay praying.

"Hail, Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women ...

"Mackay's voice grew louder as he recited the prayer over and over."

I told him, 'Mackay please shut up. I am going crazy with all your prayers,'" Carias said.

Mackay kept on. "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death ..."

"I never heard or saw Nelson again," Carias said.

More than a decade after the execution of Mackay and others, forces in Honduras still seek to thwart the investigation into the crimes of the Honduran military.

Carias is kept under round-the-clock guard. Two other Honduran witnesses in previous inquiries have been killed.

The Honduran human rights commissioner, Leo Valladares, has received so many threats that, in April, he moved three of his children out of Honduras. The move was hurriedly arranged after one of Valladares' bodyguards was gunned down on a bus. No arrest has been made in the slaying.

Despite this sort of intimidation, the relatives of the disappeared remain determined. Once a month, they meet in front of the Honduran Congress, in the center of Tegucigalpa, and pass out fliers with the names and faces of the missing.

Fidelina Borjas Perez, 66, has been searching for her son, Samuel, since he disappeared in January 1982 from a bus traveling to Honduras from Nicaragua."

One day I hope God lets me find my son, even if it is only his cadaver," she said.

Not one of the relatives believes that the disappeared are alive. But they want to know how their relatives died and who is responsible.

"We are never going to stop looking," says Maria Concepcion Gomez, whose common-law husband, a union leader, disappeared in August 1982. Sitting in her living room beneath a picture of The Last Supper, she said: "We are never going to get tired. If the army is hoping that we will forget or that we will give up, they are wrong."

Nelson Mackay's widow, Amelia, shared that determination.

A few weeks after her husband disappeared, she stopped her public search for him because of telephone threats against her children. Instead, she worked long hours to keep them enrolled in private schools.

During the day she worked as an administrative assistant at the Honduran Foreign Ministry. At night, she baked cakes and sold them to friends to supplement her income.

She stashed beneath her bed a box containing her husband's dental records, his identification card listing his height and weight, and a photograph of him wearing the red-and-blue checked shirt he wore the day he disappeared.

"I could not sleep at night," she remembered. "I would walk around the dark house thinking maybe he would come home. Maybe he would appear."

The first 'banana republic'

Honduras is the original "banana republic," a term coined to describe the country's political and economic dependency on U.S. fruit companies during the early 1900s.

The north coast of Honduras, the country's richest farm region, was controlled by U.S. fruit companies at the turn of the century. By 1914, they owned nearly a million acres of Honduras' most fertile territory.

The fruit companies built Honduras' only rail lines to transport produce, installed their own banking systems, and bribed politicians and union leaders to do their bidding.Almost none of the wealth stayed in Honduras, the poorest country in Central America.

Population: 5.2 million

Average per capita income: $540 per year

Education: Nearly half of the people have not finished sixth-grade. 40 percent are illiterate.

Home life: 55 percent live in rural areas or slums that surround Tegucigalpa, the capital, or San Pedro Sula, the nation's second-largest city.

Religion: Roman Catholic Honduras is not the only place in Latin America where the Central Intelligence Agency has collaborated with repressive regimes.

It was disclosed this year that a Guatemalan army officer linked to two high-profile killings was a paid CIA agent. One of the victims was an American innkeeper in Guatemala, the other a leftist guerrilla married to a Baltimore-born lawyer.

CIA officials allegedly knew that the Guatemalan, Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, was involved in the killings, but concealed the -- information.

Created in 1947, the CIA has conducted covert operations in Latin America since its inception. In 1954, the CIA engineered a coup launched from neighboring Honduras that overthrew Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman and installed a military regime.

The CIA supported the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973, then launched a covert program to enhance the reputation of Chilean strongman Gen. Augusto Pinochet. U.S. officials have admitted that the CIA paid former Panamanian military ruler Manuel Antonio Noriega more than $160,000 as an intelligence source.

In the 1980s, the CIA expanded its activities in Latin America. The agency trained and funded a clandestine paramilitary force known as the "contras" to attack the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

In El Salvador, Col. Nicolas Carranza, then-Treasury police chief, reportedly was on the CIA payroll during the 1980s as an informant. Carranza and the Treasury police have been linked to right-wing Salvadoran death squads.

In one of its most controversial Cold War actions, the CIA orchestrated the failed invasion of Cuba by a force of Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.

With the end of the Cold War, questions are being raised about the role of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. The intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, are undergoing an intense re-evaluation by a presidential commission that is expected to report its findings early next year.


Note:

(1) Ronald Reagan was one of the men when he was in Hollywood that turned people in whether they were Communist or not during the McCarthy hearings.

The Philosophy of Zionism and Israel

A Documentary Film Based on the Books of Harun Yahya

The real motive of the Zionists & Israel.

(Some of the opinion’s in this video, are not those of the blog administrator.)

Before the world was shocked by the news telling us that Muslims are terrorists, there were indeed the real terrorist a few centuries ago that you didn't know and the media didn't reveal.

Heaven-Where True Love Goes

Have they not pondered over the Word (of Allah, what was sent down to the prophet), or has there come to them what had not come to their father’s of old?

Or is they did not recognize their Messenger (Mohammad [PBUH]) so they deny him?

Or say they: There is madness in him? Nay, but he brought them the truth but most of them (the disbelievers) are adverse to the truth.

Surah 23:68-70

True Flag of Israel...

Not hidden with lies!

"Sorry, Kid! I Can't Hear you...."

The Curse of Saddam Hussein

U.S. Government is in Israel

Our Real Government Is in Israel

Sun Apr 13 2003

by Annie Oakley




I watched Colin Powell speaking to AIPAC (the Israeli lobby) on a morning C-Span show. I almost threw up. He announced that the U.S. is immediately giving Israel $1 Billion to assist their economy which this war has impacted. The Jews stood and applauded loudly. With a big smile, he said, "And that's not all. The president has asked for an additional $9 Billion in loan guarantees" (which means a non-repayable grant since the Cramden bill -passed some years back- guarantees adequate U.S. grants to pay any Israeli debt. Israel pays us back not one cent -- ever). Cheering and loud applause ensued from the audience.

Then Powell in effect threatened war on Iran. He said they were gaining strength as a threat to Israel. The Jews jumped up and cheered, applauding with the greatest enthusiasm. Powell's speech left the impression the US is taking on the entire Middle East and handing it over to Israeli rule.

Anyone who doesn't see that our real government is in Israel isn't paying attention or is too timid to face the truth.

In contrast to Colin Powell, who has apparently sold his soul for a high political appointment, there is a much more credible military expert, General Barry McCaffrey. When asked, at the start of this "Operation Iraqi Freedom," what he would do if ordered to go in with only the military forces which Rumsfeld determined were "very adequate," he answered, "If I had the nerve, I'd just refuse." An article in USA Today (Ref. 1) stated "One of the TV pundits, retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, made clear Tuesday that he has no intention of submitting to a Pentagon gag order." The gag order of course is not intended for military secrecy, but rather to avoid embarassment for the incompetent military planning of Rumsfeld.

The same article noted "The combative McCaffrey, on the Today show on Tuesday, bristled when host (die hard liberal) Katie Couric referred to 'armchair generals.' Remember, Katie, I'm not an armchair general,' he said. 'I've had three combat tours and been wounded three times.' Of course Bush, Fleischer, Perle and Wolfowitz are never criticized by Katie as possibly... chickenhawks, who never saw combat, but who won't hesitate to send American soldiers into an ill-advised war and dangerous occupation purely for the benefit of Israel.

When I see the control the Jews hold over our nation today, the way they control our wealth, publishing, media, entertainment, news and even our law and courts, I can see why Germany wanted the Jews out. The descriptions of the Jews and their antics, as expressed by Goebbels, are just as accurate today as they were then in Germany. The only difference is that Americans let the Jews get away with everything.

Our young troops are fighting in terrible circumstances, and some are dying, in Iraq, all for the sake of the most brutal, self-serving, parasitic and illegal nation on earth. The only excuse for this war was that George Bush thought Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction. Since when is a war "justified" by what weapons a nation has? This is the first time a war based on this insane premise has taken place. Israel has hundreds of H-bombs and is working on a bio-weapon with the goal of killing only Arabs. (Ref. 2) Did we demand that Israel dismantle this excessive arsenal or stop work on their genocide bomb? No. We picked a fight with a nation, that has -at most- only chemical weapons --and no way to launch them at the U.S. It boils my blood that Zionist criminals and their puppets have pushed my country into an unjust war.

Palestinian Disagreements?

A Political Wall

Surrounded by pressure from Israeli/American backhandness, with Abbas signing a devils pact bent on destruction or another Puppet government.

With Palestinian citizens caught in the middle.

Will the outcome be an attempt of complete annulations or is Mahmoud Abbas this naive?

Ellison Uses Qur’an in Swearing-In Ceremony

Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

WASHINGTON, 5 January 2007 — Congressman Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to Congress, used a Qur’an once owned by President Thomas Jefferson, and now housed in the Library of Congress, at his ceremonial swearing-in yesterday.

The third US president, serving from 1801 to 1809, Jefferson was a collector with wide-ranging interests. His 6,000-volume library, the largest in North America at the time, became the basis for the Library of Congress.

It was acquired in 1815 as part of a 6,400-volume collection Jefferson sold for $24,000, to replace the congressional library that had been burned by British troops the year before, during the War of 1812.

The English translation of the Arabic, the library’s Qur’an was published in 1764 in London, a later printing of one originally published in 1734.

Ellison’s spokesman said Jefferson’s Qur’an dates religious tolerance to the founders of the country, and to make the point that “religious differences are nothing to be afraid of.”

“It demonstrates that from the very beginning of our country, we had people who were visionary, who were religiously tolerant, who believed that knowledge and wisdom could be gleaned from any number of sources, including the Qur’an,” Ellison told reporters on Wednesday. Ellison was born in Detroit and converted to Islam in college.

“A visionary like Thomas Jefferson was not afraid of a different belief system,” Ellison said. “This just shows that religious tolerance is the bedrock of our country, and religious differences are nothing to be afraid of.”

Some critics have argued that only a Bible should be used for the swearing-in. Members are sworn in to the US House of Representatives as a group with no Bibles or other books involved. But in a country where three out of every four people consider themselves Christians, the Bible has traditionally been used in ensuing unofficial ceremonies which, among other things provide each member with a photo opportunity for themselves and their constituents.

Ellison said an anonymous person wrote him about the Qur’an, and he arranged with the Library of Congress to use it. The chief of the Library of Congress’ rare book and special collections division, Mark Dimunation, walked the Quran across the street to the Capitol and brought it back after the ceremony.

“This is considered the text that shaped Europe’s understanding of the Qur’an,” Dimunation said.

"Once Upon a Time Their Was a Beautiful Little Girl..."

She was murdered by the Israeli's at Beit Hanoun, November 2006.

"...She will never play or laugh anymore!"

Interview with Ruhal Ahmed

"All the time I was kneeling with a guy standing on the backs of my legs and another holding a gun to my head."
Ruhal Ahmed

Ruhal Ahmed is a British citizen. He was detained for over two years by the United States, first in Afghanistan, and then in Camp Delta, the American prison for suspects in the War on Terror, at its naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

His detainee ID number is 110.

Ahmed was released in March 2004. In August 2004 Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, all from Tipton, compiled a report on their alleged abuse and humiliation while in U.S. custody. The 2006 film, The Road to Guantánamo is a docu-drama depicting their version of the story of their detention.

The Children in Guantánamo

Original article published November 23, 2006

Yousef Mohammed Mubarak al-Shehri

Age: 21

"…they disrespected us and our religion, they threw the Koran on the floor and stripped us naked." Yousef al-Shehri

Yousef al-Shehri was 16 years old when he was detained in Afghanistan on 30 November 2001 following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. He is believed to have been captured somewhere between Kunduz and Mazar-e-Sherif, along with a group of 120 others, by the Northern Alliance forces of General Abdul Rashid Dostum.

After his capture, Yousef al-Shehri was transported to Shiberghan prison in Afghanistan where he was held for one and a half months. He was subsequently handed over to US custody and flown to the detention centre at the US military base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba on 16 January 2002.

Like the other Guantánamo detainees, Yousef al-Shehri was clothed in an orange jumpsuit, shackled, bound and blindfolded during the flight and then held in the wire cages of Guantánamo’s original holding facility ‘Camp X-Ray’, exposed to harsh sunlight during the day and cold temperatures at night. Little is known about Yousef al-Shehri’s current conditions of detention.

Yousef al-Shehri was detained with his cousin Abdul Salam al-Shehri, who is believed to have been 17 at the time of his capture. Abdul Salam al-Shehri was released from Guantánamo in June 2006 and transferred to Saudi Arabia.

Children in Guantánamo

"Yusuf and Adbusalaam left when they were young boys…they only lived their childhood years with the family…the memory of them remained that of their childhood years" a relative of Yousef al-Shehri

Some estimates suggest that as many as 17 detainees were taken to Guantánamo when they were under 18 years old. At least four of these, possibly more, remain held. They are Mohammed al-Gharani, a Chadian national detained in Pakistan when he was 15, Omar Khadr, a Canadian national, aged 15 when captured in Afghanistan, Hassan bin Attash, a Yemeni national, 17 when he was captured in Pakistan and Yousef al-Shehri. Another detainee, Yassar Talal ‘Abdullah Yahia al-Zahrani, from Saudi Arabia, was reportedly 17 when he was detained. He died in Guantánamo in June 2006, apparently as a result of suicide.Releasing three Afghan children from Guantánamo in January 2004, the Department of Defense stated that "as with all detainees, these juveniles were considered enemy combatants that posed a threat to US security… Age is not a determining factor in detention." The three children who were released were between the ages of 13 and 15 at the time of their detention. In their release from the base the USA was acting in terms of government policy rather than in compliance with its international legal obligations. The US determined that the "juvenile detainees no longer posed a threat to our nation, that they have no further intelligence value and that they are not going to be tried by the US government for any crimes."

Apart from the three children released in 2004, who were transferred to a separate section of the camp when details of their young age emerged, the others have been held in the same harsh conditions as adults, including prolonged solitary confinement in Camp V.

The detention and interrogation of children in Guantánamo contravened principles reflecting a broad international consensus that the vulnerabilities of under-18-year-olds require special protection. Child detainees should be kept separate from adults unless it is their best interests not to be and detention should only be used as a last resort. When detention is resorted to, Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) states that "every child deprived of his or her liberty shall have the right to prompt access to legal and other appropriate assistance, as well as the right to challenge the legality of the deprivation of his or her liberty before a court or other competent, independent and impartial authority, and to a prompt decision on any such action." Under Article 40, if the child is alleged to have violated the law, they should be "treated in a manner consistent with the promotion of the child’s sense of dignity and worth, which reinforces the child’s respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others and which takes into account the child’s age and the desirability of promoting the child’s reintegration and the child’s assuming a constructive role in society". The USA has signed the CRC and is therefore obliged under international law not to do anything that would undermine the object and purpose of the treaty pending its decision on whether to ratify it.

The USA has ratified the Optional Protocol to the CRC on the involvement of children in armed conflict. Under Article 6(3), in the case of children held because they participated in the international or non-international armed conflict in Afghanistan, the USA has an obligation to provide them with "all appropriate assistance for their physical and psychological recovery and their social reintegration". Detaining children in indefinite military custody in Guantánamo Bay cannot meet this obligation.

In 2004, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the only organization with access to the detainees said: "The ICRC does not consider Guantánamo an appropriate place to detain juveniles. It is especially concerned about the fact that they are held away from their families and it worries about the possible psychological impact this experience could have at such an important stage in their development".

All those who were taken into custody when still children and transferred to Guantánamo are now over 18 years old. This does not alter the fact that their earlier treatment violated international principles on the treatment of children. Amnesty International believes that no one detained in Guantánamo who is charged with a crime committed when they were a child should be tried by a military tribunal.

Hunger strike

"after the first strike, they gave us promises. They said we will respect you and your religion and we will give you your rights. They promised me I would be freed…We waited but they did not deliver…" Yousef al-Shehri

During 2005 Yousef al-Shehri participated in a hunger strike at Guantánamo along with up to 200 other detainees to protest conditions of detention at the camp and their long-term indefinite detention without trial.

The detainees called a halt to their hunger strike in July 2005 after the authorities reportedly made a number of promises to the detainees to improve their conditions of detention. Yousef al-Shehri was reportedly told that he would be released in three weeks if he were to end his hunger strike.

Yousef al-Shehri was not released, and conditions at the camp did not improve. In August 2005, Yousef al-Shehri, along with many other detainees, resumed their hunger strike to protest the broken promises and, by the time his lawyers were able to visit him on 1 October, they said he was "emaciated and had lost a disturbing amount of weight…[he] was visibly weak and frail…He had difficulty speaking because of lesions in his throat that were a result of the involuntary force-feeding…"

Yousef al-Shehri told his lawyers that during this second hunger strike, after approximately seven days without food, he and four other detainees had been taken to the hospital at Guantánamo where they were verbally abused and insulted and placed in shackles or other restraints on their arms, legs, waist, chest, knees and head. After this he said they were given intravenous medicine and described how, if they moved, they were hit in the chest area. They were later force-fed. His lawyers have described how Yousef al-Shehri was forcefully administered a nasal tube for feeding, with no anaesthesia or sedative.

After two or three days he was given liquid supplement through the tube. He said that he and other prisoners were,"vomiting up substantial amounts of blood. When they vomited up blood, the soldiers mocked and cursed them, and taunted them with statements like ‘look what your religion has brought you.’"

After two weeks of force-feeding, Yousef al-Shehri and the other four men said that they were transferred from the hospital and placed in solitary cells where guards taunted them by rattling the doors of their cells, interrupting their prayers and disrupting their sleep. After five days they described being taken to a different area with foam walls and a hole in the floor for a toilet.

Here they allege that guards began inserting larger tubes into their noses, again with no anaesthesia or sedative. According to Yousef al-Shehri, when the tube was removed, blood came gushing out of him and the detainees were told by the guards that "we did this on purpose to make you stop the hunger strike."

Family

"The information in the letters was very distressing. The women and mothers cried a lot because of this. The situation was seriously mournful." A relative of Yousef al-Shehri

Yousef al-Shehri’s family thought that both he and Abdul Salam al-Shehri had died until Saudi Arabian authorities released pictures of them, confirming their detention in Guantánamo. They didn’t receive any letters from them until a year later.

In 2005, Yousef al-Shehri’s mother sent an audio tape to Guantánamo via his lawyer with her messages for him, encouraging him not to lose hope. However, authorities at Guantánamo refused to allow him to listen to the tape, stating that the message may contain hidden messages or other material.

A relative of Yousef al-Shehri told Amnesty International,

"I would like to address this message to the whole world because this prison, this place affects all human beings because it violates human rights, it does not carry out a fair trial, and there was no lawyer present during the course of arrest and interrogation. They had no visitation rights and no contact with their families through phone or otherwise…I appeal to every person, that human rights are essential regardless of what religion you practise. I appeal to the honest Americans to act now to close this place down…"

To Take Action

U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Training film

(with edits)

What hath we wrought?

Depleted Uranium, affectionately known as DU is a carcinogenic heavy metal material that also emits alpha and gamma radiation.

Outside the body it's not too serious but inside the body it caused cancer and genetic birth defects in offspring.

The symptoms of DU poisoning vary depending on what internal organ is affected. It can never be cured and DU will last in the environment for eternity.

It is a waste material of the Nuke industry and in the battlefield it becomes aerosolized and thus its deadly dust particles become a permanent part of the world's environment. It cannot be cleaned from the environment--ever!

Its use is unconscious able and a crime against all humanity.

The U.S. is currently producing it by the railcar load everyday and shipping throughout the world.

Iraq Veterans Arrested at the Pentagon

For Leaving a Depleted Uranium Pamphlet?

On Sep. 9, 2006, four Iraq veterans and one of their supporters from Camp Democracy were arrested at the Pentagon for posting materials on depleted uranium inside the Pentagon during a tour of the 9/11 memorial site.

US congress to be sworn in

Incoming members of the 110th US congress [AP]

"We hope that when the president says compromise, it means more than 'Do it my way,' which is what he's meant in the past"
Charles Schumer, New York Democratic senator

January 4, 2007

The Democratic party is to take control of the US congress from the president's Republican party as a new session starts in Washington.

The party is expected to seek a phased withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and domestic spending reforms.

While both sides promised to try to work together, major battles seemed certain - such as on Democratic efforts to build pressure to change George Bush's war strategy and overturn his restrictions on embryonic stem-cell.

Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, is set to be the first woman to head the 218-year-old House of Representatives as its speaker on Thursday. The speaker of the house is second in line to the presidency, after the vice-president.

Pelosi says she will clean up congress, which has seen multiple scandals in the past two years.

One of the first house votes will be to impose new restrictions on the relationship between lawmakers and lobbyists.

Marty Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat who helped craft the ethics package, said: "No more taking gifts from lobbyists. No more lobbyists planning golf trips."

Quran controversy

Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the US congress, has generated controversy for his insistence on being sworn into office using a Quran instead of a Bible.

Critics argued that only a Bible should be used for the ceremonial swearing-in. And last month, Virgil Goode, a Republican representative, said that unless immigration is tightened, "many more Muslims" will be elected and follow Ellison's lead.

Ellison, a Muslim convert born in the US, will be sworn in as a Minnesota representative using a Quran from the Library of Congress. The Quran, published in London in 1764, was once owned by Thomas Jefferson, the third president and a founder of the country.

Compromise needed

Bush tried to set a positive tone for dealing with the new 110th Congress, set to convene at noon EST (17:00 GMT) on Thursday. He called for spending cuts, a balanced budget and a consensus on Iraq.

"It's time to set aside politics and focus on the future," Bush said, who has two years remaining on his term.

Democrats were cautious.

Charles Schumer, a New York Democratic senator, said: "We hope that when the president says compromise, it means more than 'Do it my way,' which is what he's meant in the past."

Democrats won control of the House and Senate in elections on November 7, largely because of public discontent with the Iraq war and what critics called the "do-nothing" Republican Congress.

The Democrats' stated agenda includes: raising the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade; cutting interest rates on federal student loans; ending some tax breaks for big oil companies and bolstering homeland security.

While Israeli Stocks Slip, American Ecomony Still Weaking?

Israel stocks slip; tech lower but Nice ahead

By Robert Daniel, MarketWatch
Last Update: 10:19 AM ET Jan 4, 2007

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- Israel shares slipped in late trading on Thursday, with the TA-100 index off its record, but Makhteshim-Agan received its second buy recommendation in as many days and two analysts recommended the shares of Nice Systems.

Details

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U.S. stocks lower amid weak retail sales
Sell off in commodities, energy shares also weighs on broad market

By Nick Godt, MarketWatch
Last Update: 10:43 AM ET Jan 4, 2007

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks were lower in morning trade on Thursday, as weaker-than-expected retail sales during the key holiday season and dim forecasts from the likes of Gap Inc, Federated Department Stores Inc. and Limited Brands Inc. stirred concerns about the resilience of consumers in a slowing economy.

Details

"Leave Now or You Will Die Like a Dog"

Wrapped Around a Bullet

January 3, 2007

By KATHY KELLY

Amman, Jordan.

An Iraqi friend whom I've known for ten years looked worn and very weary yesterday when he came to visit me in my apartment here in Amman, Jordan. He hadn't slept the night before because he'd been on the phone with his wife who, throughout the night, was terrified by cross fire taking place over the Iraqi village where she stays with their four small children. My friend longs to soothe and protect his wife and kids. But now he lives apart from them, in another country.

His life was completely changed when a piece of paper was tossed into his kitchen in Baghdad. It read: "Leave now or you will die like a dog." Many Iraqis have been receiving notes like this. This piece of paper was sent to him with a bit of extra emphasis. It was wrapped around a bullet.

Weeks later, assailants killed his younger brother who was returning home from University studies. My friend moved his family to a village outside Baghdad and then ran for his life.

Here in Amman, where the U.N. cites a figure of 700,000 Iraqis who've fled their country, he feels trapped. Like other Iraqis, he lives without legal protections: he is not allowed to work, he is unable to obtain proper documentation to settle here, and each Embassy to which he has applied for resettlement has given him the cold shoulder. He may walk the sunburst streets of Amman, ride in taxis, eat in kabob shops, but he lives a shadowy, underground existence. Everyday, Iraqis in Jordan are arrested (for working, for overstaying their visas, etc.) and deported. This, too, is a death threat of sorts. Meanwhile, in Iraq, his family lives in a battlefield, and who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Still, my friend's case is hardly unique. Relative to other stories we've heard, he is somewhat fortunate. He was not captured and tortured before fleeing Iraq. His wife has not been raped. His children are still alive.

Anyone listening to my friend's experience of loss and tragedy would surely understand his feelings of cynicism, even bitterness, when he thinks about how the Bush Administration has sold this ongoing war. Turn the page back to May of 2006, when sectarian violence had already begun to consume Iraq, and here is how President Bush depicted what the U.S. had done for Iraq, following Iraqi elections:

"For the people across the broader Middle East, a free Iraq will be an inspiration.(Iraqis) have proved that the desire for liberty in the heart of the Middle East is for real. They have shown diverse people can come together and work out their differencesYears from now, people will look back on the formation of a unity government in Iraq as a decisive moment in the story of liberty, a moment when freedom gained a firm foothold in the Middle East and the forces of terror began their long retreat."

The speechwriter who equipped President Bush with these lines should be burning with shame. President Bush indulged in a fantasy at a time when thousands of Iraqi civilians were fleeing abroad, every month, to escape worsening violence and tens of thousands more were being displaced internally ­ nearly half a million in the last ten months, according to UNHCR.

In reality, there were no encouraging signs of the U.S. troop presence stabilizing the situation in Iraq. Today, even President Bush acknowledges that news from Iraq is "unsettling," as daily headlines report battles, kidnappings, torture, and murder.

Nevertheless, the President will likely ask the Congress to approve 97.7 billion dollars in supplemental spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which will be in addition to the Pentagon's $560 billion dollar budget. According to some estimates, U.S. taxpayers will pay close to 2 trillion dollars for a doomed war in Iraq.

A New York Times article called "Heady Days for Makers of Weapons" notes that military contractors are profiting more than ever as Pentagon spending has reached record levels. Nobody expects the Democrats, now in charge of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, to interfere with the lucrative deal making. With an eye toward 2008 elections, Democrats want to establish their cooperation with the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill, the "defense" lobby. "I think the Democrats will be on good behavior," commented an analyst with JSA Securities in Newport, R.I... "as long as the war continues and we have 150,000 troops in Iraq." (NYT, December 26, 2006).

Ultimately, this means that U.S. taxpayers will have to be "on good behavior" and pouring billions more dollars into weapons making giants like Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. No one asks us to behave accountably on behalf of the 100,000 Iraqi refugees who, every month, according to U.N. estimates, flee from Iraq. We have yet to see a proposal for a generous package of reparations intended to help rebuild Iraq's shattered infrastructure.

The U.S. should never cut and run away from our responsibility to pay very generously for reparations in Iraq. We should be committed to finding the most viable, practical means to help Iraqis rebuild their shattered infrastructure. We should seek negotiations with Iraq's neighbors, not for purposes of being the "kingmaker" and deciding which country will emerge as the strongest, but rather for purposes of seeking an end to any foreign support for armed struggle within Iraq.

There are no simple solutions. Problems with corruption within Iraqi governing structures, retaliatory violence fueling a civil war, and the lack of protection for any non-governmental involvement in distributing support for reconstruction seem nearly insurmountable. But this doesn't lessen the U.S. responsibility to direct U.S. wealth, ingenuity, and productivity toward just reparations for the enormous suffering our invasion and occupation has caused. Every effort should be made, within the U.S., to build public support for a U.S. financial commitment to help rebuild Iraq. Equivalent effort should be made to stop stuffing the portfolios of major weapons manufacturers.

Lawmakers should have at least enough integrity to acknowledge that current plans to support ongoing troop presence in Iraq at a cost of billions of dollars show very little promise for lessening the violence, displacement and signs of civil war that afflict Iraqis today.

Beginning in February 2007, when lawmakers will discuss the Administration's proposed supplemental budget, Voices for Creative Nonviolence will launch "the Occupation Project." (see www.vcnv.org)

Although we have paltry financial means compared to the weapons makers who wield so much influence on Capitol Hill, we do have resources. We have our bodies. We have our determination. We have our compassion for Iraqi people and for U.S. soldiers. We have our concern for future generations who will not only have to live with the consequences of this violence, but who will also live on a planet spoiled by global warming, in no small part because we spent our resources on war instead of on developing clean energy sources. These are the grains of sand that will stop the cogs of war from turning.

Now is the time for seriously strategizing about the best ways, in our hometowns, to engage in sustained civil disobedience at the offices of elected representatives, demanding that they vote against the supplemental spending bill.

A polite refusal to leave an elected representative's office may entail some hours spent in jail. Some will receive minor misdemeanor charges from federal or local police, for "disorderly conduct," or "trespass" or "failure to comply." We'll prepare for a day in court; we'll discuss how to handle any fines imposed on us. These are slight inconveniences and discomforts when I think of Iraqi friends, so wearied by war, and of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the thousands of Americans whose lives are forever altered by the cruelty and senselessness of war and of those who prolong it.

Much more grave is the risk of growing adjusted to a warlike culture that feeds the multi-billion dollar weapon industry.

I shudder still, thinking of the note that landed in my friend's kitchen, ugly paper wrapping a tiny yet terrible weapon. Who pens such a letter? Who delivers it? Who authorizes these threats? What kind of organization thrives on sundering families, on death and torture, on driving whole societies into flight and chaos and despair? The answers are murky and unclear. .

But we should all shudder with disgust at the clear fact that U.S. budget priorities are more devoted to protecting the profits of arms peddlers and military contractors than to seeking a better future for Iraqis.

It's hard to put your foot down over something called a "supplemental spending bill"--over a piece of paper, a bit of writing that you didn't write yourself but are perhaps helping to deliver. My friend's life was ruined by such a piece of paper. Iraqis are leaving their homes in Iraq by the thousands every day, and prolonging this war will cause more to flee.

That's why many of us will be occupying our representatives' offices this winter. We don't want to help deliver a death threat to people all across Iraq. This bill, this message of continued U.S. commitment to spending for war, isn't just a piece of paper to them.

It's a death threat, and it's wrapped around a bullet.

Kathy Kelly is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and author of Other Lands Have Dreams. She can be reached at: kathy@vcnv.org