They told us that Osama bin Laden is "the biggest danger on earth" and they wanted him "dead or alive". They bombed the whole country but couldn't get him. So now they tell us that it doesn't matter. Our mission is greater than one man.

Then they said Saddam Hussein, "is reckless, ruthless, and not fully rational, we want him dead or alive." They ruined his whole country but couldn't get him .Now President Bush says, "It doesn't matter. Our mission is greater than one man."

Finally, they told us that they were invading Iraq to destroy their weapons of mass destruction. With Iraq under their thumb since three months, they couldn't find any weapon. Now they say those weapons probably don't exist. May be they never existed. Apparently that doesn't matter either?

Yes! To President Bush, Mr Tony Blair and all their sympathisers, it really doesn't matter. But to some it matters a lot! It matters to the Iraqi girl whose face was burned by a lamp that toppled over as a result of a US bombing run. It matters to Ali, the Iraqi boy who lost his family – and both his arms – in a US air attack. It matters to thousands of kids now begging in the streets of Baghdad, for they would have been going to schools, had their family's sole bread-earners not died because of US-led blind bombing. It matters to millions of wives & mothers who shall always sleep on beds of burning coal, with eyes full of tears, remembering their dear ones, gone for ever, 1,000,000 by US sanction and many thousands by the aerial bombing?

It is not only the loss of humans that is deplorable, those who really matter have lost the sense of regards for humanity, also. For instance, most Americans know nothing about the effect of embargo of food and medicine to Iraq. Americans directly caused the death of at least a million children. That's right; I repeat, for the death of 1,000,000 kids. Here is an excerpt of an interview between Leslie Stahl of CBS and Madeline Albright when she was US Secretary of State. The segment was called "Punishing Saddam" and Stahl was asking if the death of 500,000 (at that time) children was worth it to punish this one man.

Leslie Stahl, speaking of US sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And – and you know, is the price worth it?"

Madeline Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it."

How would you view anyone who is willing to cause the death of 500,000 children to punish one man?

How can they not understand why so many people hate the United States when for their own Secretary of State murder of 500,000 children "doesn't matter".

Similarly, way back in 1988, on July 3, the USS Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner and killed 290 civilian passengers. George Bush the First, who was at the time on his presidential campaign, was asked to comment on the incident. He said quite subtly, "I will never apologise for the United States. I don't care what the facts are."

I don't care what the facts are. What a perfect maxim for the New American Empire. Perhaps a slight variation on the theme would be more appropriate: The facts can be whatever we want them to be.

Many of President Bush's advisors had hoped that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had been behind the terrorism of 11th September. They've been obsessing over him for over a decade and wanted an excuse to re-start the Persian Gulf War. But there is no link of Iraq with Osama bin Laden. There are many in the Bush administration who want to use this fear to start a war against Iraq anyway. Remember: there is absolutely no connection between Iraq and the September 11th terrorists and absolutely nothing has changed between Iraq and the United States for years. Despite this non-connection, President George W. and his Cabinet have constantly tried to paint Saddam Hussein as Osama bin Laden's backer. And the propaganda has really worked. When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 per cent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC News poll said that 55 per cent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported Al Qaeda. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there isn't any). All of it is based on insinuation, auto-suggestion and outright lies circulated by the US corporate media, otherwise known as the 'Free Press', that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests. Public support in the US for the war against Iraq was founded on a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the US government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media. Apart from the invented links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, Americans had the manufactured frenzy about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The Bush administration portrayed Saddam Hussein reckless, ruthless, and not fully rational. Such a man, when mixed with nuclear weapons, was considered too unpredictable to be prevented from threatening the United States. Also, the main (frenzied) argument for the war was that Iraq possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was possibly developing nuclear weapons. Those weapons threatened the region and, if given to terrorists, could be used against the United States.

On Aug. 26, 2002, Vice President Cheney told the VFW National Convention: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." On Sept. 12, 2002, Bush told the UN General Assembly: "United Nations inspections also revealed that Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents, and that the regime is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons." In Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 28, he cited evidence that Hussein had enough materials to produce more than 38,000 litres of botulinum toxin and as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents. "He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them," Bush said. On Feb. 5 Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in the speech to the UN argued: "We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, he's determined to make more." A month later, on March 7, Powell told the United Nations that Hussein has "clearly not" made a decision to "disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction." Finally, in delivering his March 17 ultimatum to Hussein to go into exile, Bush told the nation: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Tony Blair insisted that military action was necessary immediately against Iraq or the consequences would be catastrophic. One intelligence dossier released in September 2002 and setting out "the assessment of the British government" over WMDs, warned that Saddam Hussein's regime "could deploy nuclear weapons within 45 minutes."

George Bush junior went to the extent of saying it would be "suicidal" for the US not to attack Iraq. The world once again witnessed the paranoia that a starved, bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty America. (Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries – earlier there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Grenada, Panama...). At a media briefing before 'Operation Shock and Awe' was unleashed, General Tommy Franks announced, "This campaign will be like no other in history." Maybe he's right. May be never in the history a war like this was fought? After using the 'good offices' of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million children dead, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons had been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the 'Coalition of the Willing' (better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) sent in an invading army! Operation Iraqi Freedom?

That liberation was delivered to Iraqis at their doorsteps by the daisy cutters. The World's Greatest Democracy, led by a man who was not legally elected, America's Supreme Court gifted him his job, sent further tools of democracy on tanks, battleships, B-52s, Tomhawks, MOAB and many other ordinances for the poor oppressed and disarmed Iraqis absolutely against their will. Beaming after the easy victory, the American soldiers are mercilessly shooting down the protestors who are shouting for Americans to get out of their country. The stories of Guantanamo Bay prisoners are also frequently in circulation to make the Iraqi people aware of the great justice of the great nation.

Now if the production of weapons of mass destruction is the criteria to affix the terrorist label, then clearly George W. Bush presides over the biggest terrorist enterprise now or at any time in world history. The US has the largest nuclear arsenal – more than 6,000 nuclear missiles and bombs. It has spent $4 trillion on nuclear weapons since 1945. When it had a monopoly on these weapons it did not hesitate to use them against civilian centres – up to 200,000 civilians were instantly incinerated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Bush is spending hundreds of billions on militarizing outer space. The recently-released Pentagon military doctrine includes a declaration of its right to first use of nuclear weapons against Iraq, North Korea, Iran, China and Russia. The US has Trident submarines and US aircraft carriers carrying nuclear weapons 24 hours a day as the imperial fleet roams the seven seas. The U.S. government used chemical weapons in Vietnam, spraying Agent Orange over vast parts of that country. Thousands of US GIs and an unknown number of Vietnamese people died, or live difficult and painful lives from the after-effects. Today, the US government manufactures chemical and biological weapons, a fact that was routinely denied and only admitted after the anthrax attacks of 2001. And the US government – led by both Democrats and Republicans – has knowingly and deliberately killed more than 1 million Iraqi civilians through the quieter, less dramatic weapon known as economic sanctions. This weapon that has killed 5,000 children every month for 12 years must be regarded as a weapon of mass destruction.

It's time for anti-war activists to begin going to US military bases and demanding to see if they have weapons of mass destruction on their premises, including chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and depleted uranium.

But the baseless propaganda against Iraq this time wasn't just your ordinary brand of friendly neighbourhood frenzy. It was American Frenzy with a Purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: the Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strike, i.e; The United States Can Do Whatever The Hell It Wants, And That's Official. The war against Iraq has been fought and won and no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found. Not even a little one. Perhaps they'll have to be planted before they're discovered. And then, the more troublesome amongst us will need an explanation for why Saddam Hussein didn't use them when his country was being invaded. Of course, there'll be no answers.

A population of 30 million has undergone crisis after crisis. Cities that had been under siege, without food, water and electricity for days, cities that had been bombed relentlessly, people who had been starved and systematically impoverished by the UN sanctions regime for more than a decade. A 7,000-year-old civilisation slid into ruins. Why the Americans did this to them? What was their crime that the American administration had to even lie to their public about reasons of attacking them and annihilating them? Where are those alleged weapons of mass destruction which have put a blemish mark on every Iraqi.? For the first time in history, America is searching for the reasons it went to war, after the war is over.

There was a thorough search for these weapons of mass destruction. As the top Marine general in Iraq was recently quoted as saying, "It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Again, believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."

According to Washington Post, "a covert specialised army unit scoured Iraq, for weapons of mass destruction, even before the US- led war, but has come up empty handed. Drawn for US army's special mission units, Task Force 20, found no working unconventional weapon, long-range missiles or missile parts, bulk stores of chemical or biological warfare agents or enrichment technology for the core of a nuclear weapon".

If Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed enough of a threat to justify war, they should have been found by now, said the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, he also challenged comments by Bush administration officials that the weapons were well-hidden and may not be located soon. "You can't quite say that it's going to take a lot more time if the intelligence community seemed to be in general agreement that WMD was out there," Rockefeller said in an interview. He said that if the weapons were so well-concealed, the United States should have considered giving UN inspectors more time to find them.

United States went to war on the premise of weapons of mass destruction, in the process it got about 200 of their own soldiers killed, thousands of Iraqi troops and civilians it killed and maimed while suffering a financial cost of 20 billion dollars, now the basic premise appears to be faulty. Is such a blunder an act by the most sophisticated intelligence of the world's only super power, or is it the twisting of facts and lying to their nation for more than a thousand times by their elected leader? In both the cases, it is a point of great worry, if the intelligence is faulty, then hell! America has as yet attacked 216 times on different nation, and has bombed at least 23 nations all with different reasons. With faulty intelligent God knows how many innocents have been murdered by Americans. How many governments have been toppled with faulty information? And if the leaders are lying? Then with so much power in their hands, are they not a much bigger danger to the world than they thought about Osama-bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein? (Absolute power corrupts!).

And if weapons of mass destruction were not the primary reason for war, what was? The undue protection for Israel and grabbing the oil deposits, obviously cannot be excluded. But there was one more important reason for the said attack – and that was to pronounce the hegemony and the awesome power of America. Here's the answer, officials and advisers gave ABCNEWS. "The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks changed everything, including the Bush administration's thinking about the Middle East – and not just Saddam Hussein. Senior officials decided that unless action was taken, the Middle East would continue to be a breeding ground for terrorists. Officials feared that young Arabs, angry about their lives and without hope, would always be looking for someone to hate – and that someone would always be Israel and the United States. Europeans thought the solution was to get a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. But American officials felt a Middle East peace agreement would only be part of the solution. The Bush administration felt that a new start was needed in the Middle East and that Iraq was the place to show that it is democracy – not terrorism – that offers hope. Sending a message beyond that, the Bush administration decided it must flex muscle to show it would fight terrorism, not just here at home and not just in Afghanistan against the Taliban, but in the Middle East, where it was thriving."

Officials deny that Bush was captured by the aggressive views of neo-conservatives. But Bush did agree with some of their thinking. "We made it very public our thought that one consequence the president should draw from 9/11 is that it was unacceptable to sit back and let either terrorist groups or dictators developing weapons of mass destruction strike first at us," conservative commentator Bill Kristol said on ABC NEWS' Nightline in March. The Bush administration wanted to make a statement about its determination to fight terrorism. And officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect target. Other countries have such weapons, yet the United States did not go to war with them. And though Saddam oppressed and tortured his own people, other tyrants have done the same without incurring US military action. Finally, Saddam had ties to terrorists - but so have several countries that the United States did not fight.

But Saddam was guilty of all these things and he met another requirement as well - a prime location, in the heart of the Middle East, between Syria and Iran, two countries the United States wanted to send a message.That message: If you collaborate with terrorists, you do so at your own peril. Officials said that even if Saddam had backed down and avoided war by admitting to having weapons of mass destruction, the world would have received the same message; Don't mess with the United States. Former CIA Director James Woolsey said on Nightline that although he believed Saddam was a serious threat and had dangerous weapons, going to war to prove a point was wrong "I don't think you should go to war to set examples or send messages," Woolsey said. But what if Sept. 11 had never happened? Would the United States have gone to war with Iraq? Administration officials and others say no, at least not now. The Bush administration could probably have lived with the threat of Saddam and might have gone after him eventually if, for example, the Iraqi leader had become more aggressive in pursuing a nuclear program or in sponsoring terrorism. Again, Sept. 11 changed all that. Listen closely, officials said, to what Bush was really saying to the American people before the war. "I hope they understand the lesson of September the 11th," Bush said on March 6. "The lesson is, is that we're vulnerable to attack, wherever it may occur, and we must take threats which gather overseas very seriously. We don't have to deal with them all militarily, but we have to deal with them."

Has the war done what the officials ABCNEWS talked to, wanted? "It seems to have improved the behaviour of the Syrians and maybe the Iranians", they said, "although there is still concern that Iran will meddle in Iraq. And it may have even put some fear in the North Koreans", they added. Plus, they said it probably has helped the Middle East peace process. But will Iraq be the model that can persuade young Arabs there is more to life than hatred? Too early to know, they said. Their point: We are deeply worried about the Shiites. It will be a tragedy if radical, anti-American elements gain control in post-Saddam Iraq. One official said that in the end, history and the American people will judge the United States not by whether US officials find canisters of poison gas or vials of some biological agent. History will judge the United States, the official said, by whether this war marked the beginning of the end for the terrorists who hate America.