Richard Falk
THE CHARLES GOYETTE SHOW....PUTTING BUSH ON TRAIL
Thu Oct 20, 2005 23:04
64.140.158.90
TURN ON YOUR SPEAKERS...
10/20/05 THE CHARLES GOYETTE SHOW....PUTTING BUSH ON TRAIL
Richard Falk guest....
http://www.charlesgoyette.com/archive/media/2005-10-20-Charles-02.mp3
Richard Falk
Appraising the war against Afghanistan
Richard Falk teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara rfalk@princeton.edu
http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/201falk.htm
I The Challenge of 9/11
Without dwelling on the al Qaeda attacks, it was evident from the outset that the magnitude of the harm together with their exposure of present and future American vulnerability, meant recourse to war by the United States. There were no credible alternatives to war, neither proceeding by way of the UN, nor through reliance on the past responses of retaliatory missile strikes and law enforcement efforts, nor by way of diplomacy reinforced by sanctions. On the basis of past experience and present prospects, each of these alternative options generally seemed unable to punish the perpetrators or end the threat, and so the case for war prevailed without mainstream dissent as national policy. But war against whom? And for what objectives? With what limiting conditions?
It was the good fortune of the Bush administration that Osama bin Laden had been operating from Afghanistan under Taliban rule in recent years, which also provided the setting for al Qaeda’s terrorist training program for soliciting thousands of recruits from around the Muslim world. After all, Afghanistan had practically no diplomatic friends in the world since the Taliban came to power. On September 11 the Taliban government was recognized by only three countries in the world and had been refused the right to represent Afghanistan in the United Nations. Indeed, Afghanistan itself was treated as an outlaw state, a status confirmed by a Special Rapporteur appointed by the UN Human Rights Commission, who reported annually on the severe human rights abuses and crimes against humanity that were routinely taking place in the country. As well, Afghanistan was the recipient of universal censure, including from Islamic governments, for its insistence on removing any taint of non-Islamic religious devotion by the deliberate destruction of huge world renowned statues of The Buddha at Budiman just months earlier.
Against such a background it was generally credible that Afghanistan would be treated as an enemy state held responsible for the attacks of September 11. And Pakistan, the main sponsor of the Taliban when it was struggling to gain control of Afghanistan, was quickly persuaded to switch allegiance and support the United States diplomatically and logistically in its moves toward war. President Bush in his September 20 address to a joint session of Congress articulated some non-negotiable demands directed at the Taliban regime that seemed to focus exclusively on al Qaida, seeking custody of Osama bin Laden and the al Qaida leadership, as well as terminating their presence within the country. When the Taliban requested evidence of bin Laden’s responsibility for the September 11 attacks, their request was summarily dismissed, and the war was launched. It consisted of two main undertakings: using American tactical air power and ground targeting guidance to turn quickly the tide of the long unresolved internal war decisively in favor of the Northern Alliance and destroying from the air, later with coordinated ground operations led and directed by American military forces. The result was the total collapse of the Taliban regime and the seeming elimination of the al Qaida presence in Afghanistan, although with the probable escape of some members of the terrorist network, including possibly some of its top leadership.
An appraisal of the war from a normative perspective of law and morality poses a challenge because "the enemy" was a globalized network rather than a territorial state, or even a political movement associated with a struggle for control or secession affecting a single state. The preliminary locus of response, relying on self-defense was plausibly situated in Afghanistan, and the Taliban regime’s responsibility was based not on its role in the September 11 attacks, or even any allegation or proof of any specific advance knowledge, but on complicity arising from "harboring" Osama bin Laden and his al Qaida operation. President Bush in his September 20 speech tied the demands directed at the Taliban regime to a wider doctrine: "From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded as a hostile regime." Such a conception stretched traditional notions of self-defense by attributing to a government ultimate legal accountability for operations emanating from its territory regardless of whether it favor such terrorist activities or had the capacity to suppress them. As earlier suggested, the case against the Taliban was relatively easy, and could have been even stronger had it been linked to a case for humanitarian intervention. Bush did allude to the oppressive conditions in Afghanistan, but did not explicitly connect those circumstances with rationale for war. Interestingly, in the aftermath of the war, with the interim leader Hamid Kirzai in attendance, President Bush placed strong emphasis in his State of the Union Address on the emancipatory impact of the American-led victory on the peoples of Afghanistan, particularly its women.
2. Appraising War Against Afghanistan
In early retrospect, it is possible to appraise recourse, conduct, and effects of the war by relying on a flexible interpretation of the just war doctrine combined with a rule of reason that takes account of the new context established by a defensive war waged against a global terrorist network of demonstrated will and capacity to inflict catastrophic harm on civilian society. While the normal restraining influence of international law and the United Nations are not directly very relevant, the importance of identifying and adhering to limits is of great significance here, both to acknowledge the barbarity of war as a means to resolve conflict and of the importance of not setting a precedent that unleashes the dogs of war in the future. In the trauma of response, the United States Government has been tactically innovative in devising a quick response, but it has been disappointingly insensitive to establishing limits for itself (and indirectly for others).
The less consequential criticisms are associated with the initial recourse to war against Afghanistan. Here, the refusal to negotiate with the Taliban over the demands issued by Washington and its rebuff of the request for evidence of bin Laden’s involvement, created the impression that the United States was not genuinely interested in a peaceful resolution of the crisis. In fact, there were good reasons not to rely on a diplomatic approach, given the unlikelihood that al Qaeda could be seriously weakened through the efforts of the Taliban to cooperate with the US counter-terrorist campaign, but that case was never really made in public. As a result, an impression was created outside the United States of a rush to war, a perception undoubtedly reinforced by the impressions of unilateralism fostered before September 11 by the Bush administration and by the patriotic fervor in America on nightly TV display. Again, in the specific setting of urgency, with credible dangers of further attacks, the necessity for war in the context of Afghanistan seemed at the time compelling, and in retrospect, has been validated both by the political changes in Afghanistan, and even more so, by present indications of the weakening of al Qaida.
The debate on the conduct of the war raised some further difficulties, but again of a secondary character. From the outset American leaders made it rhetorically clear that they would do their best to avoid civilian casualties by using precision munitions and avoiding targets that were surrounded by civilians. Given the character of the al Qaida targets, and the American aversion to taking casualties, tactics were relied upon that did produce skepticism about how seriously the pledge to minimize civilian casualties should be taken. Especially controversial was reliance on discredited weaponry used in the Vietnam War- B-52 carpet bombing, cluster bombs, and huge Daisy Cutter bombs containing 2000 tons of explosives. Criticism also arose because the Pentagon explicitly admitted that was keeping no record of civilian casualties, and there were indications that American media was encouraged to downplay the issue. At the same time, the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was widely quoted as saying "I can’t imagine there’s been a conflict where there has been less collateral damage, less unintended consequences." [Los Angeles Times, Jan. 16, 2002, A6]
The issue of civilian casualties is sharply contested. Carl Conetta, respected co-directed of the Project on Defense Alternatives in Cambridge asserted, "[d]espite the adulation of Operation Enduring Freedom as a finely tuned or bull’s-eye war, the campaign failed to set a new standard for accuracy." His institute prepared the most careful study publicly available of civilian casualties, estimating that up through December 10, 2001 in the course of dropping 12,000 bombs in 4,700 sorties, between 1,000 and 1,300 civilians were killed. Such a ratio compares unfavorably according to Conetta’s report with the Kosovo War in which 23,000 bombs were dropped during 13,000 sorties, killing an estimated 500 civilians.[Mjurray Campbell, "Afghan civilian toll notably high," Globe and Mail, Jan. 19, 2002, A11] Of course, the targets and the goals were different, and the level of resistance was much higher in Afghanistan, as was the civilian population density in relation to the combat zones.
I think it can be tentatively concluded that the US Government did do its best to minimize Afghan civilian casualties, but in a manner that was hampered by the greater attentiveness to tactics that would reduce American military casualties to near zero. There was also some confusion due to targeting that depended on Afghan intelligence, which appeared on occasion to call for air strikes designed to weaken non-Taliban rivals for post-Taliban power rather than to attack the Taliban as such. Michael Walzer speaking at a Forum on Just War held at Princeton University advanced the useful idea that the behavior of a state with respect to the conduct of war in conformity to the just war framework could be partly assessed by its willingness to take risks to itself so as to avoid causing civilian casualties. [October 10, 2001; Peter Singer moderated the Forum, and James Turner Johnson, Gideon Rose, and Richard Falk were the other participants] The United States record is mixed. It could have done more, but given the political urgency associated with effective action and compared to the indiscrinate attacks resulting in massive civilian death and suffering in such major past wars as the Korean War and the Vietnam War, as well as World War II, there were notably successful efforts made to avoid civilian casualties in the Afghanistan War.
The harsher lines of criticism deriving from anti-war and hard left sources seems ill-considered. The occurrence of civilian casualties in the midst of war is virtually unavoidable to some extent, and such a cost, tragic as it is for those individuals so victimized, does not by itself cast doubt on a war undertaken as this one was for a just cause. Also, allegations that civilian deaths in Afghanistan equaled or exceeded the number killed at the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11 seem unconvincing, based on biased and unreliable evidence, and are besides the point from a just war perspective. The issue is whether the violence used in self-defense was proportional to the harm inflicted and to the reasonable apprehension of future harm. It is hard to contend that the level of violence relied upon by the United States was disproportionately large in relation to the ends of restored security and punitive justice being reasonably sought.
A further test of war within the just war matrix relates to its effects, and to the restoration of peace. It was St. Augustine who devised the matrix in the first place, and conditioned approval of particular wars as just by reference to a general view of war as an evil, but a necessary one in certain circumstances, but always as a means to a reestablishment of peace, which was viewed as a good. It is too soon to be confident about such effects even with respect to Afghanistan. What does seem clear is that the appalling economic incompetence and record of human rights abuse during the period of Taliban rule is likely to be superseded by a much improved quality of Afghan governance resulting in material and political benefits for a large majority of the citizenry. [On the gruesome realities of Taliban Afghanistan see the excellent summary article of Pankaj Mishra, "The Afghan Tragedy," NY Review of Books, Jan. 17, 2002, 43-49, esp. 43-44] Of course, part of the improvement is a result of a renewed international engagement by richer countries in the destiny of Afghanistan, contrasting with the scandalous abandonment of Afghanistan in the afterglow of the cold war. At present, the donor states have pledged $4.5 billion in assistance as a first step in the reconstruction of the country, and there is a widespread realization that the war will not be viewed as a true success if Afghanistan is mired in a humanitarian disaster of famine, poverty, and chaos. Despite energetic efforts and good intentions the outcome may still be a severe disappointment if warlordism controls the Afghan future, and civil strife among competing factions obstructs and demoralizes efforts at economic and political reconstruction.[For an assessment along these lines see "Helping Afghanistan: More than money," The Economist, Jan 26-Feb 1, 2002, 10] So far, the signals are mixed, at best.
3. Beyond Afghanistan
For most commentators on the response to September 11, the zone of deepest disagreement almost from the outset concerned the post-Afghanistan approach to addressing the global terrorist challenge. Many of us who acknowledged the legitimacy of the Afghanistan War were careful to indicate that the rationale for war did not create a broader mandate. In effect, we argued that the scope of response should be strictly limited to the al Qaida network (including closely allied groups with similar goals and methods), and that the presence of terrorist cells and financial flows could be effectively dealt with through reliance on enhanced international law enforcement efforts, increased cooperation between national intelligence agencies, financial interdiction, and occasional reliance on covert operations. There was neither need nor justification for a wider war.
Part of the disagreement as to scope related to differing views as to the threat posed. Those that favored extending the war in its full military sense to Iraq, and possibly even Iran, North Korea, and Somalia, were expressing the view that any government that was hostile to the United States and possessed the potential to develop a capability to produce weaponry of mass destruction should be challenged militarily and destroyed. Another part of the disagreement centered on the nature of the agenda. Should it be confined to terrorism with a global reach or extended to all varieties of non-state terrorism that somehow challenged US interests and friends. President Bush has been rather ambivalent, giving aid and comfort to both sides in the debate, but sliding closer and closer to the hawkish view that terrorism should be conceived broadly, and extend to such groups as Hamas and Hezbollah. These latter groups have neither ideologically nor tactically associated themselves with al Qaida and the visionary outlook of Osama bin Laden, and their struggles are much harder to categorize. Hamas has certainly embraced gruesome terrorist tactics involving suicide bombers seeking to disrupt Israel as much as possible by attacking crowded civilian targets and spreading fear, b
10/20/05 THE CHARLES GOYETTE SHOW....PUTTING BUSH ON TRAIL
Richard Falk guest....
http://www.charlesgoyette.com/archive/media/2005-10-20-Charles-02.mp3
Richard Falk
Appraising the war against Afghanistan
Richard Falk teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara rfalk@princeton.edu
http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/201falk.htm
I The Challenge of 9/11
Without dwelling on the al Qaeda attacks, it was evident from the outset that the magnitude of the harm together with their exposure of present and future American vulnerability, meant recourse to war by the United States. There were no credible alternatives to war, neither proceeding by way of the UN, nor through reliance on the past responses of retaliatory missile strikes and law enforcement efforts, nor by way of diplomacy reinforced by sanctions. On the basis of past experience and present prospects, each of these alternative options generally seemed unable to punish the perpetrators or end the threat, and so the case for war prevailed without mainstream dissent as national policy. But war against whom? And for what objectives? With what limiting conditions?
It was the good fortune of the Bush administration that Osama bin Laden had been operating from Afghanistan under Taliban rule in recent years, which also provided the setting for al Qaeda’s terrorist training program for soliciting thousands of recruits from around the Muslim world. After all, Afghanistan had practically no diplomatic friends in the world since the Taliban came to power. On September 11 the Taliban government was recognized by only three countries in the world and had been refused the right to represent Afghanistan in the United Nations. Indeed, Afghanistan itself was treated as an outlaw state, a status confirmed by a Special Rapporteur appointed by the UN Human Rights Commission, who reported annually on the severe human rights abuses and crimes against humanity that were routinely taking place in the country. As well, Afghanistan was the recipient of universal censure, including from Islamic governments, for its insistence on removing any taint of non-Islamic religious devotion by the deliberate destruction of huge world renowned statues of The Buddha at Budiman just months earlier.
Against such a background it was generally credible that Afghanistan would be treated as an enemy state held responsible for the attacks of September 11. And Pakistan, the main sponsor of the Taliban when it was struggling to gain control of Afghanistan, was quickly persuaded to switch allegiance and support the United States diplomatically and logistically in its moves toward war. President Bush in his September 20 address to a joint session of Congress articulated some non-negotiable demands directed at the Taliban regime that seemed to focus exclusively on al Qaida, seeking custody of Osama bin Laden and the al Qaida leadership, as well as terminating their presence within the country. When the Taliban requested evidence of bin Laden’s responsibility for the September 11 attacks, their request was summarily dismissed, and the war was launched. It consisted of two main undertakings: using American tactical air power and ground targeting guidance to turn quickly the tide of the long unresolved internal war decisively in favor of the Northern Alliance and destroying from the air, later with coordinated ground operations led and directed by American military forces. The result was the total collapse of the Taliban regime and the seeming elimination of the al Qaida presence in Afghanistan, although with the probable escape of some members of the terrorist network, including possibly some of its top leadership.
An appraisal of the war from a normative perspective of law and morality poses a challenge because "the enemy" was a globalized network rather than a territorial state, or even a political movement associated with a struggle for control or secession affecting a single state. The preliminary locus of response, relying on self-defense was plausibly situated in Afghanistan, and the Taliban regime’s responsibility was based not on its role in the September 11 attacks, or even any allegation or proof of any specific advance knowledge, but on complicity arising from "harboring" Osama bin Laden and his al Qaida operation. President Bush in his September 20 speech tied the demands directed at the Taliban regime to a wider doctrine: "From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded as a hostile regime." Such a conception stretched traditional notions of self-defense by attributing to a government ultimate legal accountability for operations emanating from its territory regardless of whether it favor such terrorist activities or had the capacity to suppress them. As earlier suggested, the case against the Taliban was relatively easy, and could have been even stronger had it been linked to a case for humanitarian intervention. Bush did allude to the oppressive conditions in Afghanistan, but did not explicitly connect those circumstances with rationale for war. Interestingly, in the aftermath of the war, with the interim leader Hamid Kirzai in attendance, President Bush placed strong emphasis in his State of the Union Address on the emancipatory impact of the American-led victory on the peoples of Afghanistan, particularly its women.
2. Appraising War Against Afghanistan
In early retrospect, it is possible to appraise recourse, conduct, and effects of the war by relying on a flexible interpretation of the just war doctrine combined with a rule of reason that takes account of the new context established by a defensive war waged against a global terrorist network of demonstrated will and capacity to inflict catastrophic harm on civilian society. While the normal restraining influence of international law and the United Nations are not directly very relevant, the importance of identifying and adhering to limits is of great significance here, both to acknowledge the barbarity of war as a means to resolve conflict and of the importance of not setting a precedent that unleashes the dogs of war in the future. In the trauma of response, the United States Government has been tactically innovative in devising a quick response, but it has been disappointingly insensitive to establishing limits for itself (and indirectly for others).
The less consequential criticisms are associated with the initial recourse to war against Afghanistan. Here, the refusal to negotiate with the Taliban over the demands issued by Washington and its rebuff of the request for evidence of bin Laden’s involvement, created the impression that the United States was not genuinely interested in a peaceful resolution of the crisis. In fact, there were good reasons not to rely on a diplomatic approach, given the unlikelihood that al Qaeda could be seriously weakened through the efforts of the Taliban to cooperate with the US counter-terrorist campaign, but that case was never really made in public. As a result, an impression was created outside the United States of a rush to war, a perception undoubtedly reinforced by the impressions of unilateralism fostered before September 11 by the Bush administration and by the patriotic fervor in America on nightly TV display. Again, in the specific setting of urgency, with credible dangers of further attacks, the necessity for war in the context of Afghanistan seemed at the time compelling, and in retrospect, has been validated both by the political changes in Afghanistan, and even more so, by present indications of the weakening of al Qaida.
The debate on the conduct of the war raised some further difficulties, but again of a secondary character. From the outset American leaders made it rhetorically clear that they would do their best to avoid civilian casualties by using precision munitions and avoiding targets that were surrounded by civilians. Given the character of the al Qaida targets, and the American aversion to taking casualties, tactics were relied upon that did produce skepticism about how seriously the pledge to minimize civilian casualties should be taken. Especially controversial was reliance on discredited weaponry used in the Vietnam War- B-52 carpet bombing, cluster bombs, and huge Daisy Cutter bombs containing 2000 tons of explosives. Criticism also arose because the Pentagon explicitly admitted that was keeping no record of civilian casualties, and there were indications that American media was encouraged to downplay the issue. At the same time, the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was widely quoted as saying "I can’t imagine there’s been a conflict where there has been less collateral damage, less unintended consequences." [Los Angeles Times, Jan. 16, 2002, A6]
The issue of civilian casualties is sharply contested. Carl Conetta, respected co-directed of the Project on Defense Alternatives in Cambridge asserted, "[d]espite the adulation of Operation Enduring Freedom as a finely tuned or bull’s-eye war, the campaign failed to set a new standard for accuracy." His institute prepared the most careful study publicly available of civilian casualties, estimating that up through December 10, 2001 in the course of dropping 12,000 bombs in 4,700 sorties, between 1,000 and 1,300 civilians were killed. Such a ratio compares unfavorably according to Conetta’s report with the Kosovo War in which 23,000 bombs were dropped during 13,000 sorties, killing an estimated 500 civilians.[Mjurray Campbell, "Afghan civilian toll notably high," Globe and Mail, Jan. 19, 2002, A11] Of course, the targets and the goals were different, and the level of resistance was much higher in Afghanistan, as was the civilian population density in relation to the combat zones.
I think it can be tentatively concluded that the US Government did do its best to minimize Afghan civilian casualties, but in a manner that was hampered by the greater attentiveness to tactics that would reduce American military casualties to near zero. There was also some confusion due to targeting that depended on Afghan intelligence, which appeared on occasion to call for air strikes designed to weaken non-Taliban rivals for post-Taliban power rather than to attack the Taliban as such. Michael Walzer speaking at a Forum on Just War held at Princeton University advanced the useful idea that the behavior of a state with respect to the conduct of war in conformity to the just war framework could be partly assessed by its willingness to take risks to itself so as to avoid causing civilian casualties. [October 10, 2001; Peter Singer moderated the Forum, and James Turner Johnson, Gideon Rose, and Richard Falk were the other participants] The United States record is mixed. It could have done more, but given the political urgency associated with effective action and compared to the indiscrinate attacks resulting in massive civilian death and suffering in such major past wars as the Korean War and the Vietnam War, as well as World War II, there were notably successful efforts made to avoid civilian casualties in the Afghanistan War.
The harsher lines of criticism deriving from anti-war and hard left sources seems ill-considered. The occurrence of civilian casualties in the midst of war is virtually unavoidable to some extent, and such a cost, tragic as it is for those individuals so victimized, does not by itself cast doubt on a war undertaken as this one was for a just cause. Also, allegations that civilian deaths in Afghanistan equaled or exceeded the number killed at the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11 seem unconvincing, based on biased and unreliable evidence, and are besides the point from a just war perspective. The issue is whether the violence used in self-defense was proportional to the harm inflicted and to the reasonable apprehension of future harm. It is hard to contend that the level of violence relied upon by the United States was disproportionately large in relation to the ends of restored security and punitive justice being reasonably sought.
A further test of war within the just war matrix relates to its effects, and to the restoration of peace. It was St. Augustine who devised the matrix in the first place, and conditioned approval of particular wars as just by reference to a general view of war as an evil, but a necessary one in certain circumstances, but always as a means to a reestablishment of peace, which was viewed as a good. It is too soon to be confident about such effects even with respect to Afghanistan. What does seem clear is that the appalling economic incompetence and record of human rights abuse during the period of Taliban rule is likely to be superseded by a much improved quality of Afghan governance resulting in material and political benefits for a large majority of the citizenry. [On the gruesome realities of Taliban Afghanistan see the excellent summary article of Pankaj Mishra, "The Afghan Tragedy," NY Review of Books, Jan. 17, 2002, 43-49, esp. 43-44] Of course, part of the improvement is a result of a renewed international engagement by richer countries in the destiny of Afghanistan, contrasting with the scandalous abandonment of Afghanistan in the afterglow of the cold war. At present, the donor states have pledged $4.5 billion in assistance as a first step in the reconstruction of the country, and there is a widespread realization that the war will not be viewed as a true success if Afghanistan is mired in a humanitarian disaster of famine, poverty, and chaos. Despite energetic efforts and good intentions the outcome may still be a severe disappointment if warlordism controls the Afghan future, and civil strife among competing factions obstructs and demoralizes efforts at economic and political reconstruction.[For an assessment along these lines see "Helping Afghanistan: More than money," The Economist, Jan 26-Feb 1, 2002, 10] So far, the signals are mixed, at best.
3. Beyond Afghanistan
For most commentators on the response to September 11, the zone of deepest disagreement almost from the outset concerned the post-Afghanistan approach to addressing the global terrorist challenge. Many of us who acknowledged the legitimacy of the Afghanistan War were careful to indicate that the rationale for war did not create a broader mandate. In effect, we argued that the scope of response should be strictly limited to the al Qaida network (including closely allied groups with similar goals and methods), and that the presence of terrorist cells and financial flows could be effectively dealt with through reliance on enhanced international law enforcement efforts, increased cooperation between national intelligence agencies, financial interdiction, and occasional reliance on covert operations. There was neither need nor justification for a wider war.
Part of the disagreement as to scope related to differing views as to the threat posed. Those that favored extending the war in its full military sense to Iraq, and possibly even Iran, North Korea, and Somalia, were expressing the view that any government that was hostile to the United States and possessed the potential to develop a capability to produce weaponry of mass destruction should be challenged militarily and destroyed. Another part of the disagreement centered on the nature of the agenda. Should it be confined to terrorism with a global reach or extended to all varieties of non-state terrorism that somehow challenged US interests and friends. President Bush has been rather ambivalent, giving aid and comfort to both sides in the debate, but sliding closer and closer to the hawkish view that terrorism should be conceived broadly, and extend to such groups as Hamas and Hezbollah. These latter groups have neither ideologically nor tactically associated themselves with al Qaida and the visionary outlook of Osama bin Laden, and their struggles are much harder to categorize. Hamas has certainly embraced gruesome terrorist tactics involving suicide bombers seeking to disrupt Israel as much as possible by attacking crowded civilian targets and spreading fear, b
- Bush's War Against Iraq Would Violate Constitution —Richard Falk and David Krieger, Thu Oct 20 23:18
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