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1st Lt. Ehren K. Watada of Honolulu is expected to announce Wednesday that he will not be going to Iraq with his Fort Lewis Stryker brigade. Watada’s father, former Hawaii campaign spending commission executive director Bob Watada, made the announcement. Local anti-war groups working with the younger Watada previously would not release the man’s name to The Olympian. “My son has a great deal of courage, and clearly understands what is right, and what is wrong,” Bob Watada told the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper. “He’s choosing to do the right thing, which is a hard course.” Ehren Watada, 28, is not...

When Secretary of State Colin Powell stepped down earlier this month, the flood of political obituaries were packed with praise, but almost all contained obligatory paragraphs highlighting the top diplomat’s “low point”: his February 2003 speech on Iraq to the United Nations.But no matter how much conventional media wisdom says otherwise, Powell’s presentation on the eve of the Iraq War remains as true today as it was then, which is to say almost entirely so. To claim, as the New York Times editorialized recently, that “Mr. Powell in fact offered half-truths, poorly analyzed intelligence and outright fantasies” is pure fiction...

Annan says security must improve for elections to go ahead in Iraq. The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.

As a duty of memory, it is necessary, on the eve of the presidential election, to give a clear and definitive look at one of the most crucial events of the Bush administration and understand there was no room for hesitation. First, the U.S. intervention was legitimized by the U.N. Charter itself....Therefore, undertaking a military course of action was legitimate, and the United States respected the spirit and principles of the U.N. Charter. Second, it was not a new war.... Military intervention was necessary, and even a moral obligation, to eradicate this threat. Third, to this military threat must be...

THE case for war against Iraq remains as strong as ever - on legal grounds, moral grounds and security grounds. This might seem a big statement in the light of widespread reports that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction at the time of military action in 2003. If these reports prove correct, that would be relevant if that had been known at the time of the attack last March. But the fact is the world did not know this at the time of the attack, and it did not know because Saddam Hussein had made sure that it...

"I think that rightly does raise questions that we should be examining about whether or not the U.N. inspection process pursuant to 1441 might not also have worked without the loss of life that we have confronted both among our own young men and women, as well as Iraqis." --Sen. Ms. Hillary Rodham-Clinton-Rodham questioning Dr. Kay, who responded, "Well, Senator Clinton...we have had a number of Iraqis who have come forward and said, 'We did not tell the UN about what we were hiding, nor would we have told the UN because we would run the risk of our [losing...

Transcript of Hillary Clinton's Q&A with David Kay in today's Senate Hearing chaired by John Warner,. Let's see, Senator Clinton? SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And Dr. Kay, I join with my colleagues in thanking you for your public service. And it's with great admiration that I have followed your service over a number of years, and I thank you greatly. I just wanted to clarify a few other comments that have been reported in the press just to get the record clear in my own mind. There were some references to...

Events in Iraq seem on a positive trend line, one that every American can hope continues. While deadly attacks against American and coalition forces continue, there appears to be fewer of them since the capture of Saddam Hussein. Organizing the economic and political life of the Iraqi people remains a struggle fraught with problems, but progress is visible. It is now possible for Americans to see how much better off the Iraqi people are with Saddam Hussein gone and the process underway to create for them a prosperous, democratic state. That reality is truly gratifying, and it leads some Americans...

Secretary of State Colin Powell today defended his Feb. 5 assertions before the United Nations Security Council that Saddam Hussein's Iraq possessed and was hiding weapons of mass destruction in defiance of numerous council resolutions. "The fact of the matter is Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction and programs of weapons of mass destruction, and used weapons of mass destruction against Iran and against their own people," America's senior diplomat told reporters at a press conference here. In his U.N. speech given just weeks before the start of the U.S.-led military campaign that ousted the former Iraqi dictator, Powell...

Look, I am sick and tired of the press, the Democrat Party Operatives, and snobby "professors" making all this fuss about the lack of WMDs (so far) and why we went to war with Iraq. The President's case was strong enough for going to war with Iraq, but there was certainly one reason (legally speaking) for forcing Saddam's hand: IRAQ WAS IN VIOLATION OF U.N. RESOLUTION 1441. Now I think the U.N. is as worthless an organization as the PLO, the DNC or the NEA. Maybe even more so. But no one seriously contends that Saddam was abiding by the...

<p>The new and overriding predicate of American policy -- foreign, defense, security, domestic -- is to ensure that 9/11 never happens again. If the terrorists managed to mount a second such attack anywhere in the U.S., the consequences would be destructive for the nation and calamitous for the administration. The dominant unspoken thought of the president of the U.S. must therefore be: "I will take whatever action is required to protect America from attack so that it will not be said of me 50 years from today that I was asleep at the switch at a seminal moment in our history."</p>

<p>DINUBA, Calif. &#8212; President Bush yesterday said the regime of Saddam Hussein possessed and used weapons of mass destruction, declaring the world should have a unanimous reaction to the ouster of the Iraqi dictator: "Good riddance."</p> <p>Making a case for his decision to depose Saddam, the president said investigators combing Iraq for evidence of mass-destruction weapons have already turned up enough proof that the Iraqi regime was a threat its neighbors and the world.</p>

    United Nations   S/2002/1198    Security Council   Provisional 7 November 2002 Original: English   <![if !supportMisalignedColumns]>             <![endif]>   United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and United States of America: draft resolution  [Adopted as Resolution 1441 at Security Council meeting 4644, 8 November 2002]          The Security Council,          Recalling all its previous relevant resolutions, in particular its resolutions 661 (1990) of 6 August 1990, 678 (1990) of 29 November 1990, 686 (1991) of 2 March 1991, 687 (1991) of 3 April 1991, 688 (1991) of 5 April 1991, 707 (1991) of 15 August 1991,...

<! ---- MAIN CONTENT TABLE ----> Attack mandate valid: KoizumiPrime minister says new UNSC resolution unwarranted Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi indicated Monday that he believes the U.S. already has enough of a U.N. Security Council mandate to go to war in Iraq. He suggested that an attack could be waged on the basis of previous UNSC resolutions, including resolution 1441, which states that Iraq "will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations." Koizumi indicated that no fresh resolution is necessary after the United States, Britain and Spain set a Monday deadline for a...

Dr. Uday Saddam Hussein to the extraordinary session of the National Assembly, for discussing the UN Security Council Resolution (1441) In the name of Allah the most Omnipotent, the most compassionate My comrades and brothers members of the National Assembly.. Iraq, or more correctly the Arab Nation, is passing through a critical historical circumstances for any results or reflections that will be resulted from these circumstances, whether negative or positive, will have direct effects, not mere reflections, on Arab countries in general, especially Saudi Arabia, then Syria, and Jordan in the third place, if not the first, which will equal...

PM turns hawkish on Iraq war Chrétien issues stern warning; U.S., Britain push to authorize war Prime Minister Jean Chrétien took his most hawkish stance on Iraq to date yesterday, warning that Saddam Hussein has only weeks to disarm, while at the United Nations, the U.S. and Britain pushed closer to war with a draft Security Council resolution that would authorize conflict by mid-March. Mr. Chrétien blasted the NDP for "sing-song" anti-war rhetoric, while continuing to hold open his options on whether Canada would back a U.S.-led war on Iraq. But the prime minister's remarks appear to echo the two-to-three-week...

<p>Following is a transcribed excerpt from Fox News Sunday, Feb. 23, 2003.</p> <p>TONY SNOW, FOX NEWS: A group of activists, including many Hollywood stars, has formed an outfit named Win Without War. They argue that it's possible to neutralize Saddam Hussein peaceably.</p>

<p>ROME, Italy (CNN) --Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said in an interview with CNN on Saturday that it would be "unacceptable" for U.N. weapons inspectors to destroy Iraqi missiles found to violate U.N. limits and dismissed the idea of sending U.N. peacekeepers to Iraq.</p>

At the end of a week of high drama, the world seems more divided than at any time since the Cold War. Now the first casualty of the crisis may be the UN itself It was earlier than usual for President George W Bush. At 9pm on Friday, after a final briefing from his officials in the Oval Office, Bush retired to bed. It had been a difficult, awkward, infuriating 24 hours. A few hundred miles to the north, Dominique de Villepin was enjoying a glass of red wine at the French ambassador to the UN's residence in New York....

I have received several antiwar email petitions in the past few days so I figured I would turn the text around and create my own version of a petition asking people to endorse UN Resolution 1441 by force. Here is the petition that I wrote and would like to get comments or just send it to everyone you know. A coalition of countries led by the United States and England is about to enforce UN Resolution 1441 by force if necessary for non compliance of the Security Council demands. UN Resolution 1441 requires that Iraq destroy it's stocks of biological...

"What we need is not more inspections, what we need is not more immediate access," Powell told the Security Council. "What we need is immediate, active, unconditional, full cooperation on the part of Iraq. What we need is for Iraq to disarm." There was no immediate evidence to suggest that the latest U.N. report had swayed any minds. Those nations that support more inspections repeated their calls for them after the presentation, and those nations that say Saddam is not cooperating said more inspection would be futile.......

efreedomnews         WAR ON TERRORISM - AN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE Iraq "Accepts" UN Resolution: Really?efreedomnewsJonathan RhodesNovember 18, 2002Despite the liberal press' accolades for Saddam the innocent peacemaker, the Iraqi letter to UN General Secretary Kofi Anan  delivered November 13, merely met the November 15 deadline and mostly set the groundwork for later arguments against the validity of the inspectors.Here are some choice excerpts from the letter delivered by Iraqi UN Ambassador Muhammad al-Douri: (underscores by efn) We hereby inform you that we will deal with resolution 1441, despite its bad contents, if it is to be implemented according to the...