US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s announcement that US will take out all of its troops out of Saudi Arabia has not come any sooner. It was one of the major demands of Osama bin Laden, articulating the deepest feelings and emotions of the majority of one billion strong Muslim Umma. If per chance, the administration had grasped the true depth of Muslim feelings about their holy land, 9/11 would have been avoided and US would not have to go to assume the role of an American Osama to flaunt all international laws and embark on its now planned preemptive strikes. Now that the Rubicon has been crossed, the hawks themselves will be surprised how easy that crucial step to peace was. And how power drunk were the military planners.

The preemptive move to know the world outside of the boundaries of mainland US and preempt in meeting the legitimate aspirations of the exploited people of the world, would have been far more appropriate and less destructive move by the world’s super power, now struggling to shake off the stranglehold of neo-con cabal’s ‘final solution’ formulas.

The next logical step for the Bush and Rumsfeld will be to address speediously the Israel-Palestinian imbroglio. For post-Iraq, the anger and disillusion with the US’s new incarnation of a lone World Super-power gone berserk threatening the whole world order, has been given a fresh lease of life. To preempt more 9/11s; the US must move with a healing touch policy, like the move to pull out of Saudi Arabia. The earlier the action on Israel-Palestine solution, with much more decisive political will than displayed by earlier administrations, the smoother will be the path to a more peaceful Arab and Islamic world.

The deadline for New Economic Order to do justice to the exploited Third World and address poverty, would then remain the only the final peace frontier that could then be addressed by a more enlightened and peaceful world, after having rid of its cyclical convulsive need to first spill blood of the innocents and then repent.

MSNBC Reveals Facts on Israel's Weapons of Mass Destruction

By Ira Chernus

www.msnbc.com/news/wld/graphics/strategic_israel_dw.htm

The White House may have had a reason to go to war with Iraq that had nothing

to do with

whether or not Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/US/globalshow_030425.html

Supreme Court Allows Limited Detention Before Deportation of Convicted Aliens

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGATU0T74FD.html

By Mitch Stacy

Associated Press

May 1, 2003

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAKBEEL7FD.html

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - A dentist who admitted being an accomplice in a plot

to bomb an Islamic center last year was sentenced to almost 3 1/2 years

in prison Thursday.

Michael Hardee, 50, pleaded guilty last fall to agreeing to drive friend

Robert Goldstein to the Islamic Society of Pinellas County, where the

podiatrist planned to plant homemade bombs and blow up buildings in

retaliation for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Hardee was sentenced to 41 months in prison. Federal sentencing

guidelines had called for more than five years, but prosecutors asked

leniency because Hardee helped build cases against Goldstein and his

estranged wife, Kristi Goldstein.

Hardee pleaded guilty to conspiracy to blow up the buildings, conspiracy

to violate civil rights and illegal possession of a short-barreled rifle

and silencer.

Ahmed Bedier, spokesman for the Council for American-Islamic Relations,

said the Muslim community was "outraged" at the light sentence and that

Hardee and the Goldsteins weren't charged as terrorists.

Goldstein, 38, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate civil rights,

attempting to damage religious property and possession of bombs police

found in his town house during an August search.

Prosecutors say Goldstein will face between 12 1/2 and 15 years in prison

when he is sentenced June 19. His attorney claims Goldstein is mentally

ill.

Kristi Goldstein pleaded guilty to illegally possessing bombs and is

expected to receive about three years in prison when she is sentenced

June 13.

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAKBEEL7FD.html

Putin Taunts Blair: Is Saddam Sitting in a Bunker Ready to ... [Launch WMD]?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-663950,00.html

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com

Quote:

"Recalling his service as a guard in Gaza Beach, "one of the best" Israeli

internment camps for Palestinians, Israeli journalist Ari Shavit expatiated

on [his experiences] with rare candor and insight:

Most [Palestinians] are awaiting trial; most were arrested because they were

throwing stones or were said to be members of illegal organizations. Many are

in their teens. Among them, here and there, are some boys who are small and

appear to be very young....

The prison has twelve guard towers. Some Israeli soldiers are struck - and

deeply shaken - by the similarity between these and certain other towers,

about which they have learned at school.... ... Maybe the Shin Bet [secret

police] is to blame for this - for the arrests it makes and what it does to

those arrested. For almost every night, after it has managed, in its

interrogations, to "break" a certain number of young men, the Shin Bet

delivers to the [soldiers] a list with the names of friends of the young

men....

[Then] the soldiers ... go out almost every night to the city and ... come

back with children of fifteen or sixteen years of age. The children grit

their teeth. Their eyes bulge from their sockets. In not a few cases they

have already been beaten.... And soldiers crowd together in the "reception

room" to look at them when they undress. To look at them in their underwear,

to look at them as they tremble with fear. And sometimes they kick them - one

kick more, before they put on their new prison clothes.... Or maybe the

doctor is to blame.

You wake him up in the middle of the night to treat one of those just brought

in - a young man, barefoot, wounded, who looks as if he's having an epileptic

fit, who tells you that they beat him just now on the back and stomach and

over the heart. There are ugly red marks all over his body. The doctor turns

to the young man and shouts at him. In a loud, raging voice he says: May you

die! And then he turns to me with a laugh: May they all die! Or maybe the

screams are to blame. At the end of the watch, ... you sometimes hear

terrible screams ... from the other side of the ... fence of the

interrogation section, ... hair-raising human screams.

Literally hair-raising.... In Gaza our General Security Services therefore

amount to a Secret Police, our internment facilities are cleanly run Gulags.

Our soldiers are jailers, our interrogators torturers. ... Thus in the forty

months of the intifada, more than ten thousand Israeli citizens in uniform

have walked between the fences, have heard the screams, have seen the young

being led in and out. ... And the country has been quiet. Has flourished....

Ten thousand (if not fifteen thousand, if not twenty thousand) Israelis have

done their work faithfully - have opened the heavy iron doors of the

isolation cell and then closed it. Have led the man from the interrogation

chamber to the clinic, from the clinic back to the interrogation chamber.

They have looked close up at people shitting in terror, pissing in fear. And

not one among them has begun a hunger strike in front of the house of the

prime minister. Not one among them that I know of has said, This will not

happen. Not in a Jewish state."

Editorial Director

New York, NY 10023

http://www.RePortersNoteBook.com

May 31: A United for Peace & Justice National Teach-in on Iraq, Preemptive War and Democracy

Join United for Peace and Justice for a national day of education and action on Saturday, May 31 in Washington, DC. Events in the world and the nation are unfolding quickly and people from all walks of life are asking questions, looking for reliable information. Now is the time to speak boldly and honestly about the alternatives we face as a country.

As millions of peace and justice activists around the globe tried to prevent the United States from launching an attack on Iraq, a new movement was born. While the Bush Administration and mainstream U.S. media declare the war on Iraq a "success," we know that an unprovoked attack remains just as wrong after the bombing has stopped as it was before the war started. We must speak out loudly and clearly to demand that the U.S. government account for the thousands of civilian deaths that were inflicted by our bombs.

We oppose any U.S. military occupation of Iraq, and especially one in which corporations with close ties to the Bush Administration will reap huge profits from the post-war, post-sanctions reconstruction. We say "no!" to a huge and growing $400 billion military budget while veterans' benefits are being slashed, public schools are crumbling and millions go without healthcare. We must articulate our vision for achieving a better society and world through international cooperation and peaceful means.