While Tony Blair and Colin Powell plead with Muslims throughout the Middle East to "trust" the allies, the Bush administration has offered the world nothing but a litany of lies in the past several w eeks, most of them exposed within a few days. Now we are supposed to believe that a Republican Guard unit is "destroyed" and key bridge "secured" - without a shred of evidence, despite the supposed presence of embedded journalists who should be able to show us footage of said destruction and said bridge. According to the Iraqis, the current "triumphs" touted by Bush are lies. Although the truthfulness of the Iraqis must be questioned, too - the pattern of Bush lies alone suggests the Pentagon is lying now, too. And who will pay the price? The US soldiers on the ground, being forced to press on because no one knows the reality of their plight, thanks to Bush.

But Bush and his chickenhaws are pressing on with the war beneath a smokescreen of lies and disinformation, assuring the American public that all is well - the plan is "on track" and "progress is remarkable." Where did they learn this technique? Not from any military tradition - it is the EXACT SAME SCHEME used by Ken Lay and the other con artists at Enron in the months before the companies fall. Remember how the Enron execs, knowing full well that the company was going down, actuallyclaimed the future of Enron was "on track" and "progress was remarkable." They even encouraged its employees and stockholders to buy MORE soon-to-be-worthless stocks. When the company fell, the employees and stockholders were screwed, while Lay and gang made out like bandits. So, Bush is, in essence, urging America to "buy more stock" in the war with his phony projections of how well things are going. Meanwhile, when the ugly reality sets in, Bush and gang will make out like bandits - they have already made a killing on the war, no matter what happens now (troop support contracts, weapons contracts, the vast amount of petroleum products sold to fuel the tanks, ships, planes and other vehicles. And America, like the Enron stockholders, will be left holding the bag and wondering why justice is not being served.

Here are some Bush lies that have been exposed in recent days:

MARKETPLACE BOMB: The UK Independent now reports that fragments of the bomb that killed dozens of Iraqi civilians, a tragedy the Pentagon blamed on Saddam's military, have been conclusively identified as coming from a US "smart bomb." One fragment was clearly marked Ray-theon.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=393066

LEGIONS OF IRAQI DEFECTORS:The first week of the war we heard reports of how legions of Iraqi defectors were coming out of the woodwork. Now the Pentagon admits that defections have been all but nonexistent (USA Today)

BASRA UPRISING: It's bad enough that the Shiite uprising falsely claimed by the Pentagon did not exist, but now Gen. Myers is trying to say all will be well in Baghdad because the Shiites will create an uprising there! Yet the Shiite population of Baghdad is considerably smaller than that of Basra - and Baghdad is being bombed heavily - not an incentive to rise up in support of the bombers.

CAPTURED IRAQI GENERAL: This made the headlines of most US news sources a few days back...turns out there was no such capture

CAPTURED DIVISION: Late last week it was admitted that the 8,000 Iraqis claimed to have been captured in the first days of the war had never been captured and, in fact, were fighting US troops in the area around Basra.

CHECKPOINT SLAUGHTER: According to the military, the Toyota van ignored a warning shot and thus forced soldiers to shoot. First the military claimed a warning shot was not fired soon enough (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4638218,00.html). Now eyewitnesses, including at least one journalist, say that no warning shot was fired at all.

BUSH's HUMANITARIAN AID: Bush promised that aid would arrive within 36 hours of March 24. But the aid sources themselves within the US government say that aid from the US will not even arrive until mid-April. Instead, Bush has let Britain pick up the aid tab with its shipment on the Sir Galahad.

SUPECTED LIES:

DESTRUCTION OF REPUBLICAN GUARD DIVISION AND CAPTURE OF TIGRIS BRIDGE: this claim was made, with nothing to prove it, on 4/02. Here's a report from the Aussie network ABC:

"Iraq's information minister has denied US troops have crossed the Tigris river in their advance on Baghdad. "I have detailed information about the situation ... which completely proves that what they allege are illusions," Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told a news conference. "They lie every day. Therefore what they say or allege about success and advances in Najaf and Karbala are illusions. "They also said they crossed the Tigris, which is another lie. As is what they said about Kut." " Australian Broadcasting Corp.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s822981.htm

EVIDENCE OF TORTURE AND CRUELTY: Increasingly lurid "reports" of "evidence" of Iraqi atrocities will start flying thicker and faster to counter the documented cases of US atrocities. Thus the day after the slaughter of 10 women and children, Rumsfeld could be heard floating the claim of an Iraqi found with his tongue This is one of the most irresponsible thing that the Bush administration has done - and that the news sources reporting it have done. By disseminating these stories, they are complicit in the war crimes being committed by our troops. Why? Because these stories whip exhausted, frightened men up into a state of paranoia that gives rise to incidents like the checkpoint shooting. These rumors dehumanize the enemy to a point that makes soldiers and the public cheering them on feel justified in brutality. What's next? We start calling them by some subhumanizing nickname, like Gooks?

HOSPITAL AS MILITARY BASE "EVIDENCE": I think the reported "discovery" of "evidence" that the hospital from which Jessica Lynch was rescued was being used as a military facility was a little bit too conveniently timed. This story aired this morning everywhere.....along with the news that the US had bombed a maternity hospital, killing several people (some of them pregnant women and their babies, we can assume). So the Jessica Lynch hospital story was designed to "justify" the maternity hospital bombing...afterall, the message is, it wasn't REALLY a hospital - it was a "military facility."

US MIMICS WORST OF SHARON WEST BANK TERRORISM TACTICS

PENTAGON PLANS TO USE BULLDOZER TERRORISM IN BAGHDAD.In the UK Guardian April 2 edition it is revealed that one of the strategies the US troops will use in Baghdad is to flatten everything in their path with bulldozers - including civilians. If the U.S. thinks it's got a detiorating world image now, just wait till the world sees those images. Maybe Rachel Corrie did not die in vain afterall - her death may help underline the true ugly brutatlity of the Bush Reich. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,927780,00.html

SPEAKING OF BRUTAL REGIMES....I think it is an extremely telling fact that of all "civilized" nations, Israel and the US have the highest rate of infant mortality...shows that when your focus is on killing, the survival of the most vulnerable citizens are pushed way down the priority list. See http://newsinsider.org/seal/myths_US_healthcare.html

ANTI-VETERAN PROPAGANDA ON C-SPAN:

C-Span is now being used as the government mouthpiece. This morning, they had as a guest Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the armed services committee. Man, what a belligerent old fart! If this guy represents the tone of today's military - no wonder the troops are committing atrocities! This guy is a "Deliverance"-style rightwinger who condemns all people questioning the war as anti-American, etc.. He also sat there and lied through his teeth to a woman who demanded to know why Veterans benefits were cut. He actually told her they weren't being cut - a baldfaced lie.

The "increases" he referred to over the past several years were cost of living increases (always below realworld inflation) and administrative costs. Right now, the waiting time for a veteran who files for ANY KIND of benefits is up to TWO YEARS. And, Bush has created corporate style roadblocks to vets getting access to the money. For example, he made a show of increasing how many APPLICATIONS for benefits the VA would process - then not providing for any additional claims counselors, or worse, downsizing the claims processing departments. In other words, he makes sure the money sits there, unclaimed so he can dip into it later for his own purposes. But, in any case, Duncan Hunter is a classic Bush henchman.

QUESTION: Where's America's sense of balance? We now believe that one American soldier rumored to have been tortured is a much worse development than the proven revelation that 10 innocent women and children were blown to bits at a checkpoint. That is the way the Roman Empire used to work - if resistors - early Christians, for ex., were to kill one Roman soldier and scores of Christian civilians must die horrible deaths. Is that who we want to be?