Noam Chomsky Offers Views on Motivation for Iraq War and the Choices Before Voters on Election Day

Interview with Noam Chomsky, MIT professor of linguistics, author and political activist, conducted by Scott Harris

The Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq remains one of the central issues in the U.S. presidential election campaign. Violence there continues to escalate, resulting in growing numbers of deaths and injuries among American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Although recent presidential debates focused on differences between President Bush and his opponent Sen. John Kerry on the rationale for the war, the two candidates agree on the need to prosecute the conflict until victory.

Meanwhile in Iraq, U.S. forces continue an offensive against insurgents in the city of Falluja, where hostility to the American occupation has grown after weeks of constant air strikes. In mid-October, 18 U.S. soldiers of the U.S. Army's 343rd Quartermaster Company made headlines when they refused to deliver a shipment of fuel from the Tallil air base near Nasiriya to a base in Taji, in the north. The soldiers, who claimed their trucks were unsafe and did not have an adequate armed escort, are now under investigation for insubordination. The incident underscores long-standing charges that many American troops in Iraq are ill-equipped and have been placed in unnecessary danger by the Pentagon's poor war planning.

In his latest book, "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance," MIT professor of linguistics and philosophy Noam Chomsky examines U.S. foreign policy and concludes that our government's aggressive military posture and disdain for international treaties and conventions on arms control, the environment and human rights, threaten the very survival of human kind. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with professor Chomsky, America's most honored intellectual dissident, about his views on the primary motivation for the Iraq war and the choices before voters in the Nov. 2nd U.S. presidential election.

Noam Chomsky's latest book "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance," is published by Metropolitan. Read more about professor Chomsky's work online at www.chomsky.info or www.zmag.org

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