A SHORT LETTER TO THE WASHINGTON POST

I was taken aback by the concluding paragraphs in Bruce Ackerman's and Oona Hathaway's piece called “The War's Expiration Date” (Saturday, April 5, 2008).

They did a very good job of describing how Bush's presidential authority to continue the Iraq war will stop January 1, 2009.

Then they (incredibly) advise that the U.N. should extend the legal basis for this mendacious war.

It IS an illegal war, in my opinion, because Bush lied to the world for his rationale (that was quite irrational!) to bomb Iraq.

Don't continue this occupation.

Neither the U.N. nor the U.S. Congress should give George W. Bush or the next president any "legal" authority to stay in Iraq.

I know that this would be terrible news for all of the contractors and other snakes writhing in the sands of Iraq.

This illegal occupation by Bush has become the Raison d'être for Global Terrorism, and for

Osama bin Laden (if he is alive), who cheers in the amen corner with George W. Bush.

IT'S THE OIL STUPID!

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Just as the US government launched its illegal invasion of Iraq on the back of lies about weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds, the US government claims it must attack Iran or Iran will build a nuclear weapon. The Bush Regime has learned never to discard a lie as long as it works. The lie works for the US Congress, the US media and much of the US public, but it is breaking down abroad. On April 27 the British newspaper, the Independent, responded to the recent US government claim that the Syrian facility attacked last September by Israel in an act of naked aggression was a nuclear reactor built by N. Korea: "There is no independent way to verify any of this, especially since the installation has now been destroyed. We must rely on the integrity of the Israeli and US intelligence. That is where we hit a problem. The former US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented similar evidence to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 showing what we were told was strong evidence of Iraqi storage of weapons of mass destruction. As we all know, that intelligence turned out to be bogus." A needless war, a country destroyed, all for bogus intelligence. Why must we repeat our crime in Iran? Why do we persist in our crime in Iraq? On April 27 McClatchy Newspapers reported that 50 Iraqi political leaders representing numerous political groups including Sunnis went to Sadr City to protest the siege by the US military. Why is al Sadr under seige? He called for a halt to bloodshed between Iraqis, for a "liberation of ourselves and our lands from the occupier," for "a real government and real sovereignty." However, for the Bush Regime, rhetoric about "freedom and democracy" is but a mask behind which to impose a US puppet government. Real Iraqi leaders like al Sadr are "terrorists" who must be eliminated. Why do the American people and "their" representatives in Congress continue to tolerate a criminal Bush Regime that uses lies and propaganda to mask its acts of naked aggression, war crimes under the Nuremberg standard? Why does the rest of the world continue to receive political representatives from a war criminal government? What if the rest of the world told the US to close its bases, its embassies, its CIA operations and to go home? Self-righteous Americans would regard such demands as effrontery! We own the world. From The Iraq War Morphs Into The Iran War By Paul Craig Roberts 5-2-8 Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com