The Progressive Response

The Progressive Response (PR) is produced weekly by the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) as part of its Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) project. FPIF, a "Think Tank Without Walls," is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." FPIF is joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/, or email <feedback@fpif.org> to share your thoughts with us.

Tom Barry, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus. He can be contacted at <tom@irc-online.org>.

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Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)

Table of Contents

I. Updates and Out-Takes

A U.S. INVASION OF IRAQ CAN BE STOPPED
By Stephen Zunes

THE COMING WAR WITH IRAQ: DECIPHERING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S MOTIVES
By Michael T. Klare

IRAQ, NORTH KOREA, AND THE U.S. NUCLEAR "...OR ELSE"
By Col. Dan Smith (Ret.)

BUSH NO-SHOW IN MAURITIUS REFLECTS DEEPER DISDAIN
By William Minter

SUPPORTING THE PROGRESSIVE RESPONSE

II. Outside the U.S.

THE PROSPECTS FOR AL QAEDA
By Paul Rogers

III. Letters And Comments

LONG LIVE MULTILATERALISM

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN KOREA

OIL INDUSTRY

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

ANOTHER NUCLEAR WAR?

I. Updates and Out-takes

A U.S. INVASION OF IRAQ CAN BE STOPPED
By Stephen Zunes

(Editor's Note: The recent demonstrations across the U.S. and throughout the world represent an unprecedented mobilization against a war before it has actually begun. As FPIF editor Stephen Zunes notes, these anti-war mobilizations demonstrate the best chance for stopping an invasion of Iraq. The following excerpt is from a global affairs commentary available in its entirety online at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301activists.html .)

Despite increased preparation for war, there is a growing perception that a U.S. invasion of Iraq can be stopped.

There is little question that were it not for the anti-war movement, the United States would have gone to war against Iraq already. It was the strength of opposition to plans for a unilateral U.S. invasion that forced the Bush administration to go to the UN in the first place. So far, Iraqi compliance with the United Nations weapons inspectors has made it extremely difficult for the administration to proceed with its war plans.

UN Security Council resolution 1441--written by and pushed through by the United States to strengthen the power of UN inspections and weaken the ability of Iraq to evade them--was modified before passage so that military action to enforce the resolution is possible only with explicit Security Council authorization. In order for such authorization to go forward, Iraq would have to do something rather brazen and stupid which--while it certainly cannot be ruled out--has thus far forced a reluctant Saddam Hussein to cooperate with the new inspections regime.

This does not mean that the Bush administration--which has repeatedly shown its contempt for international law--would not proceed with an invasion anyway. In October, the U.S. Congress, with support of both the Republican and Democratic leadership, granted President Bush the authority to invade Iraq without UN Security Council authorization. This war resolution was illegal, however, since such an invasion would violate the United Nations Charter, which was signed and ratified by the United States; Article VI of the U.S. Constitution declares such international treaties as "supreme law."

The Bush administration has demonstrated, however, that it does not have great respect for the Constitution either. What, then, might be able to stop an invasion?

Again, it would be the strength of anti-war opposition.

Already, a number of Democrats who supported the war resolution and then saw their party lose miserably in the November elections, are now arguing against a rush to war. Some top military brass and career officials in the Department of Defense are quietly but firmly expressing their opposition to the war, recognizing that an invasion of Iraq would be the most complicated and bloody U.S. military operation since Vietnam.

The intelligence wing of the Central Intelligence Agency--unlike the operations wing--is composed largely of professionals whose concerns are less ideological. They are focused instead on how to protect American security. CIA cost/benefit analyses have shown that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would threaten rather than protect American interests.

In effect, we have the ironic situation where the peace movement finds some of its most significant allies are the Pentagon and the CIA. These very influential actors in foreign policy decisionmaking could potentially allow cooler heads to prevail.

The anti-war movement is strong and is growing. Already, the demonstrations against a U.S. invasion of Iraq--which hasn't yet happened--have been larger than those against the Vietnam War during the first three years of heavy fighting by American soldiers.

Today's anti-war movement is far more diverse in terms of women and people of color in positions of leadership. Increasing numbers of poor and working class people are becoming involved in anti-war activities, recognizing that it is their loved ones who will be doing most of fighting and dying and it is they who will be disproportionately affected by the inevitable cutbacks in social programs made necessary by this incredibly expensive military adventure. The diverse age range of the anti-war movement is also a significant indicator of its strength, blending the experience of activists from the 1960s and earlier with the energy and creativity of younger activists.

Despite all this, the Bush administration may still decide to forge ahead with its planned invasion. It is far from inevitable, however, and there are increasing signs that this war can indeed be stopped before it starts.

(Stephen Zunes <zunes@usfca.edu> is an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He is Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project (online at www.fpif.org) and is the author of the recently released book Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism <www.commoncouragepress.com>.)

THE COMING WAR WITH IRAQ: DECIPHERING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S MOTIVES
By Michael T. Klare

(Editor's Note: FPIF Advisory Committee member Michael Klare deciphers the Bush administration's motives in promoting an invasion of Iraq. The full global affairs commentary (excerpted below) is available online at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301warreasons.html .)

The United States is about to go to war with Iraq. As of this writing, there are 60,000 U.S. troops already deployed in the area around Iraq, and another 75,000 or so are on their way to the combat zone. Weapons inspectors have found a dozen warheads, designed to carry chemical weapons. Even before this discovery, senior U.S. officials were insisting that Saddam was not cooperating with the United Nations and had to be removed by force. Hence, there does not seem to be any way to stop this war, unless Saddam Hussein is overthrown by members of the Iraqi military or is persuaded to abdicate his position and flee the country.

The most fundamental question of all is: WHY are we going to war?

In their public pronouncements, President Bush and his associates have advanced three reasons for going to war with Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein: (1) to eliminate Saddam's WMD arsenals; (2) to diminish the threat of international terrorism; and (3) to promote democracy in Iraq and the surrounding areas.

These are, indeed, powerful motives for going to war. But are they genuine? Is this what is really driving the rush to war? To answer this, we need to examine each motive in turn.

(1) Eliminating weapons of mass destruction: The reason most often given by the administration for going to war with Iraq is to reduce the risk of a WMD attack on the United States. To be sure, a significant WMD attack on the United States would be a terrible disaster, and it is appropriate for the President of the United States to take effective and vigorous action to prevent this from happening. If this is, in fact, Bush's primary concern, then one would imagine that he would pay the greatest attention to the greatest threat of WMD usage against the United States, and deploy available U.S. resources--troops, dollars, and diplomacy--accordingly. But is this what Bush is actually doing? The answer is no. Anyone who takes the trouble to examine the global WMD proliferation threat closely and to gauge the relative likelihood of various WMD scenarios would have to conclude that the greatest threat of WMD usage against the United States at the present time comes from North Korea and Pakistan, not Iraq.

(2) Combating terrorism: The administration has argued at great length that an invasion of Iraq and the ouster of Saddam Hussein would constitute the culmination of and the greatest success in the war against terrorism. But there simply is no evidence that this is the case; if anything, the opposite is true. From what we know of Al Qaeda and other such organizations, the objective of Islamic extremists is to overthrow any government in the Islamic world that does not adhere to a fundamentalist version of Islam and replace it with one that does. The Baathist regime in Iraq does not qualify as such a regime; thus, under Al Qaeda doctrine, it must be swept away, along with the equally deficient governments in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. If follows from this that a U.S. effort to oust Saddam Hussein and replace his regime with another secular government--this one kept in place by American military power--will not diminish the wrath of Islamic extremists but rather fuel it.

(3) The promotion of democracy: The ouster of Saddam Hussein, it is claimed, will clear the space for the Iraqi people (under American guidance, of course) to establish a truly democratic government and serve as a beacon and inspiration for the spread of democracy throughout the Islamic world, which is said to be sadly deficient in this respect. But is there any reason to believe that the administration is motivated by a desire to spread democracy in its rush to war with Iraq? There are several reasons to doubt this. First of all, many of the top leaders of the current administration, particularly Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, were completely happy to embrace the Saddam Hussein dictatorship in the 1980s when Iraq was the enemy of our enemy (that is, Iran) and thus considered our de facto friend. There is another reason to be skeptical about the Bush administration's commitment to democracy in this part of the world, and that is the fact that the administration has developed close relationships with a number of other dictatorial or authoritarian regimes in the area.

So, if concern over WMD proliferation, or the reduction of terrorism, or a love of democracy do not explain the administration's determination to oust Saddam Hussein, what does?

I believe that the answer is a combination of three factors, all related to the pursuit of oil and the preservation of America's status as the paramount world power. These concerns undergird the three motives for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The first derives from America's own dependence on Persian Gulf oil and from the principle, formally enshrined in the Carter Doctrine, that the United States will not permit a hostile state from ever coming into a position where it can threaten America's access to the Gulf. The second is the pivotal role played by the Persian Gulf in supplying oil to the rest of the world: whoever controls the Gulf automatically maintains a stranglehold on the global economy, and the Bush administration wants that to be the United States and no one else. And the third is anxiety about the future availability of oil: the United States is becoming increasingly dependent on Saudi Arabia to supply its imported petroleum, and Washington is desperate to find an alternative to Saudi Arabia should it ever be the case that access to that country is curtailed--and the only country in the world with large enough reserves to compensate for the loss of Saudi Arabia is Iraq.

It is this set of factors, I believe, that explain the Bush administration's determination to go to war with Iraq--not concern over WMD, terrorism, or the spread of democracy. But having said this, we need to ask: do these objectives, assuming they're the correct ones, still justify a war on Iraq? Some Americans may think so. There are, indeed, advantages to being positioned on the inside of a powerful empire with control over the world's second-largest supply of untapped petroleum. If nothing else, American motorists will be able to afford the gas for their SUVs, vans, and pick-up trucks for another decade, and maybe longer. There will also be lots of jobs in the military and in the military-industrial complex, or as representatives of American multinational corporations (although, with respect to the latter, I would not advise traveling in most of the rest of the world unless accompanied by a small army of bodyguards). But there will also be a price to pay. Empires tend to require the militarization of society, and that will entail putting more people into uniform, one way or another. It will also mean increased spending on war, and reduced spending on education and other domestic needs. It will entail more secrecy and intrusion into our private lives. All of this has to be entered into the equation. And if you ask me, empire is not worth the price.

(Michael T. Klare <mklare@hampshire.edu>, author of Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict and a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., is a military affairs analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)

IRAQ, NORTH KOREA, AND THE U.S. NUCLEAR "...OR ELSE"
By Col. Dan Smith (Ret.)

(Editor's Note: Dan Smith highlights the contradictions in Bush administration policy by examining the different approaches it has taken to North Korea and Iraq in this excerpt from a global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301nkiraq.html .)

Mohamed El-Baradei, Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is a busy diplomat. In Iraq, as part of the UN effort to determine the extent of Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction program, his inspectors are looking at facilities that have been or may be associated with nuclear weapons development. Simultaneously, almost halfway around the globe, he is trying to persuade North Korea to reverse course by readmitting IAEA monitors and re-freezing its nuclear weapons complex. As he addresses the immediate questions of each country's nuclear efforts and status, he also must finesse the U.S. threat--the inverted U.S. "or else" should either country continue to defy the international community.

The puzzle facing El-Baradei and the world is why the United States seems bent on war with a country (Iraq) in which inspectors have virtually free rein to act. Simultaneously the U.S. is pushing for extended diplomacy with a country (North Korea) that has expelled IAEA inspectors, announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), disabled observation cameras, and is in the process of restarting is plutonium producing nuclear reactor.

By any measure, North Korean actions since October are more direct challenges to international norms than anything Iraq has done over the same period. The chief U.S. complaint about Iraq is that Saddam Hussein cannot be trusted to adhere to UN Security Council demands that he give up his ambitions to develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Yet by expelling IAEA inspectors, restarting its dormant graphite nuclear plants, covertly attempting to develop a uranium enrichment program, and threatening to resume long-range missile development, Kim Jong Il has also demonstrated a readiness to ignore international agreements.

But unlike Baghdad, with whom Washington has no agreements, Pyongyang claims that the United States broke its promises under the 1994 Agreed Framework--i.e., the United States has failed to act on instituting normal diplomatic relations, has fallen behind schedule in constructing two light water nuclear reactors, has cut off promised fuel oil deliveries, and has not removed North Korea from the list of terrorist states. Moreover, the North Koreans believe they are on Washington's nuclear "hit list." For North Korea, all this suggests that the way forward is to revive and strengthen the Agreed Framework.

In the end, both the Iraqi and North Korean situations are about energy. With Iraq, it is about reliable access to cheap oil for the United States and its allies. With North Korea, it is about a reliable source of cheap power for that country's needs. By any calculation, war in either place would be much more costly in human lives and material destruction than allowing the diplomatic process to fully play out. Washington can raise or lower the temperature depending on what it does next, not only directly with North Korea but in how well it listens to the serious reservations of allies about attacking Iraq without a smoking gun.

If the latter stand-off ends peacefully with Baghdad in acceptable compliance with UN resolutions, it will augur well for Korea. If Baghdad and President Saddam's regime are in ruins, North Korea may well decide it has nothing to lose by pressing ahead with unregulated nuclear weapons development, missile tests, and a more aggressive posture on the peninsula. If the latter happens, the odds for a new Korean war will increase dramatically.

(Dan Smith <dan@fcnl.org> is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) is a retired U.S. army colonel and Senior Fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.)

BUSH NO-SHOW IN MAURITIUS REFLECTS DEEPER DISDAIN
By William Minter

(Editor's Note: Analyst William Minter discusses the Bush administration's disdain for Africa in this excerpt from a global affairs commentary available in its entirety online at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301africa.html.)

In mid-December, in the midst of the controversy over racist remarks by Senator Trent Lott, Bush administration officials intimated that a presidential trip to Africa in January would demonstrate the U.S. president's sensitivity to African American concerns. If President George W. Bush had followed through on his plan to visit five African countries,Africans would have posed hard questions: Is your policy "just another trip"? Or are you willing to commit real resources to responding to the deadly threat of AIDS, and to other urgent African priorities?

An answer of a sort came just before Christmas, when a White House press release curtly announced that the trip was being postponed. Later Secretary of State Colin Powell also called off plans to fill in for President Bush at the U.S.-Africa consultation being held in Mauritius this week. Heading the U.S. delegation instead will be U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who will tout the benefits to Africa of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (which mandated this second consultation), and pitch other U.S. policies for promoting free trade.

Both the reduced U.S. presence in Mauritius and the exclusive focus on trade accurately reflect the realities of current U.S. Africa policy. Washington policymakers are offering band-aids for the continent's gaping wounds, while pushing policies that add to the damage and deprive Africans of resources to fight back. This is evident in the U.S. willingness to use Africa as a military staging ground for war in the Middle East, while ignoring Africans' concerns for their own security.

As African countries face the combined impact of famine and AIDS, they also see their agriculture devastated by another killer: agricultural trade subsidies in the U.S. and Europe. Last year's U.S. farm bill, for example, added some $83 billion in new subsidies for rich U.S. farmers, whose exports already undercut developing country farmers who produce rice, maize, and other food crops. Such subsidies also undercut African exports. In a report last fall, for example, Oxfam calculated that U.S. cotton farmers received subsidies of $3.9 billion. Oxfam estimated the damage to African cotton producers from these subsidies at about $300 million a year.

Most official speches in Mauritius will undoubtedly extol the potential mutual benefits of expanded U.S.-African trade. But that potential stands little chance of being realized with the current business-as-usual policy. When and if President Bush does visit Africa, he may seek to avoid answering the question of whether he values African lives. Two years into his administration, the policy record leaves little doubt that the answer is "no."

(William Minter <wminter@igc.org> is a senior research fellow at Africa Action, the oldest U.S.-based advocacy group on African affairs. This commentary was originally published in Le Mauricien (http://lemauricien.com/), January 15, 2003.)

SUPPORTING THE PROGRESSIVE RESPONSE

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II. Outside the U.S.

(Editor's Note: FPIF's "Outside the U.S." component aims to bring non-U.S. voices into the U.S. policy debate and to foster dialog between Northern and Southern actors in global affairs issues. Please visit our Outside the U.S. page for other non-U.S. perspectives on global affairs and for information about submissions at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/index.html. If you're interested in submitting commentaries for our use, please send your solicitation to John Gershman at <john@irc-online.org>.)

THE PROSPECTS FOR AL QAEDA
By Paul Rogers

(Editor's Note: This is excerpted from a longer Outside the U.S. global affairs commentary located at http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2003/0301alqaeda.html.)

Sixteen months after the attacks of 11 September, what is the status of al Qaeda and what are its prospects?

Al Qaeda and its associates have been maintaining a level of activity over the past sixteen months that is actually higher than in the months leading up to the New York and Washington atrocities. Major incidents include the killing of French technicians in Karachi and the attempt to bomb the U.S. consulate in the same city, the attack on the Limberg oil tanker, the Bali bomb, the Paradise Hotel bomb at Kikambala, and the attempt to shoot down an Israeli charter airliner taking off from Mombasa airport.

There have been many lesser incidents in numerous countries, and a number of major attempted incidents have been intercepted, including planned attacks in Paris, Rome, and Singapore. Away from al Qaeda itself, Chechen rebels laid siege to a Moscow theater and, more recently, bombed the Russian administrative building in Grozny that was presumed to provide the greatest place of safety in the city for Russian civilians. There have, in addition, been frequent bombings in the Philippines.

Though some of these may not be directly connected to al Qaeda, they should be analyzed in the context of a number of other incidents in a range of countries where there are also no clear links with al Qaeda as such. The ricin incident in Britain may be an example of this, and some other interceptions in Europe seem to show little connection.

More generally, the trend now appears to be for al Qaeda and its associates to be proselytizing among Islamic communities in many parts of the world via videos, tapes, and direct contacts, replacing the single "safe haven" of Afghanistan with many small safe havens around the world.

In general, such a dispersal of a paramilitary organization would be regarded by western security authorities as a success. On this measure, al Qaeda would be considered to be in retreat. This is clearly not the case, given the extent of current activity.

There are two explanations for this. The first is that al Qaeda might have appeared to be thoroughly centered on Afghanistan, but this was never the whole picture. Long before 9/11, it was an organization with affiliates and supporters across much of the Middle East and North Africa as well as in some communities in Asia, Europe, and North America.

The second explanation is that there is probably more support for al Qaeda in many countries than there was two years ago. Although al Qaeda previously gave little support to the Palestinians, and even less to the secular regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, it has embraced both causes and is achieving considerable success in promoting the view of a deeply anti-Islamic U.S./Israeli "axis of evil."

In Afghanistan, thousands of U.S. troops are tied down trying to kill or capture Taliban and al Qaeda militias, and there have been substantial recent tensions with Pakistan over border crossings. Osama bin Laden, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar all elude capture, and the CIA is authorized to kill more than twenty al Qaeda leaders if it cannot capture them.

This very decision has its own consequences, as was seen in Yemen with tragic results. First, a CIA drone was used to destroy a vehicle in which an al Qaeda leader was travelling but, within a few weeks, a secular politician, Jarallah Omar, was assassinated and two days later three missionaries from the U.S. were murdered.

Some western security analysts argue that these independent attacks are proof that al Qaeda is in retreat, and is unable to coordinate its operations. This may miss the point. Al Qaeda has always been a partially dispersed network, and what is now significant is its greater concentration on this aspect of its organization, a process aided by increasing support for at least some of its overall aims.

In particular regions, local paramilitary groups may concentrate on local issues, but they are doing so as part of a loose international movement that may on balance not be losing any of its force. Once again, we are faced with a situation in which all the emphasis in the war on terror is focused on pre-emption and capture--beating the terrorists into submission. Meanwhile, there is scarcely any focus on the reasons for the groundswell of support for al Qaeda and its associates in the first place, a support that is likely to be enhanced still further by a war with Iraq.

(This article was first published in its entirety on the global issues website www.opendemocracy.net as part of an ongoing debate about Global Security. Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University and is openDemocracy's international security correspondent. He is a consultant to the Oxford Research Group. The second edition of his book Losing Control has just been published by Pluto Press.)

III. Letters And Comments

LONG LIVE MULTILATERALISM

Re: Our Fateful Choice

I read through your statement on proposing an alternative U.S. foreign and military policy. I very much appreciate your suggestions and fully agree, if the U.S. is not to end up fully isolated in the world, it must now abandon hostile policies that threaten rather than promote world peace and security. Sure the 9/ 11 attacks were horrible, but that in no way justifies the infringement of civil or human rights (at home / or abroad), nor does this permit the Bush government do be arrogant toward other nations, anyone, or any organization that rightly criticizes U.S. foreign policy. Dissent in America is not unpatriotic, rather it is the complete reverse, it is the best sign of patriotism to America. Long live multilateralism.

- Walter Onubogu, International Labour Organisation <g1ifpses@ilo.org>

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN KOREA

Re: Roh's Election and Widening Gap

Thank you Mr. Shorrock for your article on the recent developments on the Korean peninsula. Your observations and perspective reflect what most concerned and informed Koreans feel and think. Also, I really liked your challenge to progressives in the U.S. to liberate themselves from certain values through which they may not be able to understand other nations and cultures, and people's aspirations.

- Kil Sang Yoon <ksyoon@gbhem.org>

OIL INDUSTRY

Re: New Oil Order

An excellent article, underscoring the close links the Bush administration has with the oil industry, which is really running the U.S.'s foreign policy both in Afghanistan and the Gulf.

- Philip Fowler <fowlarch@vsnl.com>

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

Re: U.S. Declares Open Season on UN Workers

It's astonishing how the U.S. has adopted some of the tactics employed during the cold war by the former Soviet Union in the UN Security Council debates whenever an issue unfriendly to itself or to one of its satellites was put to a vote. Time and again the Soviet delegate's hand was raised and his voice loudly uttered the usual "nyet." In this way the Security Council capability of handling objectively with peace-threatening pressing issues or other issues connected with human rights violations by the Communist countries was automatically rendered impotent. It seems that the U.S. that led the free world struggle against Soviet imperialist ambitions and its influence has found it convenient to adopt the same tactics. One should bear in mind that the present Republican administration's loudly proclaimed determination to set up "democratic" governments in the Middle East, whatever might that mean in view of the present political and socio-cultural conditions prevailing in this region has a certain similarity to the Soviets setting up also "democratic" (albeit people's democracies)in Eastern Europe, regardless of the peoples' desires. The more things change the more they look alike.

- Eliezer Haffner <e_haffner@hotmail.com>

ANOTHER NUCLEAR WAR?

I am one of the hundred thousand Americans living here in Japan including my wife and three children. Now our lives are facing a danger, a nuclear threat, and we really feel our government's priority should change from Iraq to North Korea. Kim Jong Il, North Korea's dictator, is without a doubt the most dangerous terrorist in the world. This warlord's country is starving and having succeeded to develop nuclear warheads, they are ready to attack Japan anytime. We really want our government to take action. Of course, our wish is not use of force, but to have a peaceful resolution as a civilized nation. We sincerely hope you can help us because Kim Jong Il is a bigger threat than Saddam Hussein and ignoring his threat consequentially can cost more American lives.

- Reverend William F. Parkinson <revbill@livedoor.com>

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