”The black community and Muslims remember many historic wrongs done to them. Of the 2 million Americans in prisons, two-thirds are non-white. Many feel oppressed by the white power structure and sentencing disparities, which too often fall most harshly on minorities. Islam offers brotherhood, dignity, and a sense of pride and solidarity, especially for non-whites. However, many, alienated and disfranchised, are prime targets for radical Islamists who preach a religion of violence, of overcoming oppression by jihad. Many black Americans have experienced maltreatment and dehumanization. Conversion to Islam increased after September 11, even among Hispanics.

”While Muslims in the Arab world and elsewhere are enraged by the killings of innocent Palestinians and the deaths of half a million Iraqi children because of the US-led embargo, do we know how many bin Laden admirers exist among the black American community? Recent examples such as Ali Mohammed, an ex-US Army sergeant who pleaded guilty to plotting with bin Laden to kill Americans, may be just a speck on the tip of the iceberg. Islam has an old tradition of asymmetrical wars. Al-Qaida cells could soften the Christian West as Turkmen [Seljuk] horsemen did the Byzantine Empire.

Whom needs a regime change?

”A respected non-partisan US think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, in a recent report to the White House looked at international opinion polls and concluded: "Around the world, from Western Europe to the Far East, many see the United States as arrogant, hypocritical, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and contemptuous of others." This cannot be changed by creating brand equity or through marketing techniques.

”In spite of past US brutalities - slavery, racial discrimination, colonization, the dust and haze raised at Hiroshima of Nagasaki, the decimation of native Americans, terrorization of Africans, Japanese and Vietnamese, illegal bombing of Iraqis, and daily brutal killings of Palestinians by guns, helicopters and F-16s, the September 11 attacks brought universal sympathy. Nevertheless, there are also a lot of crocodile tears. Almost all major countries - Russia, China, and Europe except the lackey UK - have been browbeaten and humiliated by the United States.

”If the American public were told that an attack on Iraq would not be like the 1990-91 computer game and might cause many thousands of casualties (given the low US threshold last tested in Mogadishu), that Arabs might destroy oilfields which bring prosperity to oil companies and cheap gas to their cars, and that US nationals might even be attacked in Muslim countries, Bush's popularity would plummet immediately. [As it is now]

”What is needed is not regime change or so-called "US-ushered democracy" in Iraq (as in Afghanistan), in a region of Hama Rule "rule or die". Saudi Arabia is ruled by an incongruous alliance of luxury-loving princes and Wahhabis, who enforce medieval punishments at home and promote fanaticism abroad, yet Washington does not demand regime change there. Another repressive US-supported regime in Egypt continues to provide recruits for al-Qaida. Opening a Pandora's Box in the Middle East would release bottled-up historical forces with unpredictable results, like Ayatollah Khomeini after the ouster of the Shah of Iran, who had been supported by the CIA through its Iranian counterpart, SAVAK (Sazamane Etelaat Va Animate Kechvar, or Iranian Security and Intelligence Service).

”The United States, with 2 percent of the world's population, controls 30 percent of world resources. In addition, US corporate interests, forming perhaps 2 percent of this 2 percent population, control these massive resources. They want to control the world without accountability, not even to the American people.

”Perhaps it is in the United States itself where it’s ill informed and misinformed people need not just a regime change but a system change. Where energy and military-industry corporate interests have hijacked power from the people to pursue their narrow objectives. Where corporate chiefs enjoy coercive powers even the Communist Party chiefs in the former Soviet Union would have envied. Where blacks, Hispanics and the poor cannot freely choose a president (as in Florida, where only by not counting their votes did George Bush become the president).

”The United States needs a regime and a system under which people can question, without being labeled unpatriotic or enemies, failures of a system that could not and cannot protect them. Where, unlike the second nuclear bomb in Nagasaki, a repeat of September 11 can be avoided. There were enough concrete warnings - the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the attack on the US Navy warship Cole in the harbor at Aden, the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, a residence for American GIs, and the bombing of two US embassies in Africa. “

History and Conclusions;

One of the many ludicrous things, which Western leaders and media, especially Americans, trot out repeatedly is “we and the international community are agreed on this”. Usually along with the US, Secretary of State appears the British Foreign Minister. It used to be Robin Cook beside Madeline Albright; nowadays it is a reluctant Jack Straw with Ms Rice. In the Anglo-Saxon family, the only persistent support comes from the Australian leaders, while its population opposes the policy. New Zealand and Canadian governments are more careful.

The system of parliamentary government as it has evolved in ‘mother’ United Kingdom or rather spun around by Tony Blair is a pale shadow of what has been rightly or wrongly claimed on its behalf as a role model. After a decade and half of Conservative rule and the decimation of social and welfare responsibilities of any people sensitive government by Margaret Thatcher, people have no choice but to vote for sweet and fast talking Tony Blair, although in the last elections Labor Party's majority was slashed. In any self respecting democracy, Tony Blair ought to have resigned long ago or been thrown out by the party.

It is also some commentary on the British political system that the government did not follow the people wishes as demonstrated by over a million people marching against UK joining USA ,now likely to be followed by unpredictable but harmful consequences .There are many good people in UK ,like the UK’s deputy legal adviser who felt rightly that the war was illegal and resigned at the time .There were doubts in the mind of British Army chief about the legality of the war and the Memos leaked since then have proved the machinations and immorality of the decisions taken by the Blair regime. The choice of and quixotic findings of Justice Lord Hutton and Sir Butler , have only undermined peoples faith in British institutions. Nevertheless, why the leaks now! Why not before the invasion, why now, because the invasion is being unraveled! To earn some Brownie points!