What is the cost of war on Iraq? We hear occasional estimates tossed around in Congress… from 90 billion to 900 billion dollars…depending on how much fixing we do after we destroy Iraq. But no one truly knows, and these are only government numbers; they don’t have much to do with us… OR DO THEY?

Today on the brink of Congress’ acquiescence to the Warmakers’ demands for power, the ancient and honorable Dow Jones average has sunk to below 7500 without any sign of support. It has lost about one third since Day911–most of it since President Bush’s “War on Terrorism.” Dozens of companies have gone into bankruptcy and more have threatened to do so including most of the major airlines, which are now taxpayer bail-outs. Many well-known stocks are down 80%. Does this have anything to do with war? We think so.

What about your IRA? If it is not down substantially since day 911 you are lucky. If your IRA has not dropped significantly it is probably because it is propped up by artificially by inflated government bonds. Some friends tell me they have already lost half of their net worth since the War On Terrorism began. War has been made to sounds patriotic, but how much more of this good deal can Americans stand?

And how about the Dollar, the hidden market that defines everything but of which no one speaks? The mighty dollar has dropped about 10% of its value versus almost any currency in the world. That means the whole world is dumping American securities, and especially American government bonds. Who is buying these bonds that pay practically nothing and are losing ground on inflation every day? Maybe you have them, and they are what is propping up your IRA. In our next edition We will talk about who buys them and why they are selling for twice what they are worth in real terms, and why bonds return only about a fourth of that annual inflation rate.

Serial war is very expensive. Let us talk about who wants the war and why they want you to pay for it. Lest you think We Hold These Truths is picking on the Republicans, we suggest you look at our research paper on the Clinton Administration’s war on Yugoslavia, and you will see how fair and even-handed we are. President Bush’s demand for war finds is support in two powerful lobbies that are as close together as your point finger and index finger. These two fingers are the Israeli lobby and the Judeo-Christian church. Without either there would be no more support for war in America than there is in Sweden or Germany.

As we have shown in several previous papers, there could be no war in the Mideast without the support of leading celebrity Judeo-Christians. One of these is Jay Sekulow, director of the American Center for Law and Justice, a Pat Robertson offshoot. Sekulow stated his organization’s reason for supporting the President’s demands for war on his Thursday, October 3rd radio broadcast. He, like most Judeo-Christians in the Christian fundraising business, enthusiastically support the Bush family’s second war upon Iraq, as well as the President’s huge and oppressive Homeland Securities Act.

Jay glibly answered call-in-questions about his reasons, making several statements alleged to be facts about Saddam Hussein and Iraq. He demanded support of the resolution that would allow Bush to commence immediate war, just passed by the House and not going to the Senate. Most of his arguments are standard establishment propaganda heard every day on talk radio.

We note that Sekulow specious reasoning is identical to that of Israel, which is also demanding the war:

* Iraq was somehow involved in the Day911 bombing
* Iraq has “weapons of mass destruction” and is “clearly planning to use them against the USA“
* Iraq is involved with Al-Qaeda network

Not one of these popularly-mouthed claims has been proved. Not one of our readers would spank their five-year old child based on evidence as flimsy as what Mr. Sekulow has put forth against Iraq. You would demand more proof of the child’s wrongdoing before even sending him to his room for ten minutes. But based on these claims and with no proof at all, Jay Sekulow and those like him in the Judeo-Christian ranks are ready to begin killing Iraqi five-year-olds by the scores.

What would you do if a neighbor you hardly knew came to you and told you the following about your 12 year old son: “He smokes pot in the back yard and sells crack to his friends out of his bedroom, has a gun under his mattress, held up a 7-11 store on the corner, is the father on illegitimate child, is planning to elope with his 8th grade teacher who is a male prostitute, and is planning to kill you for your insurance money.”

What would your reaction be? Would you demand to know how the neighbor knows all this, look under the mattress, go see the teacher, and only then talk to your son? Or would you call the police and have your son arrested, beat him bloody while waiting for the police, and let someone else investigate later?

You might say, “my son is not Saddam Hussein” and you are right. But Mr. Bush is not talking about punishing Hussein, he is talking about killing thousands, perhaps as many as another half-million Iraqi children. Saddam Hussein was the villain in the first war, yet he never missed a meal, while half a million or more of his people died. Mr. Sekulow claims to be a follower of Christ, who said “whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.”

But in his demand for war, Jay Sekulow made no mention of any moral responsibility to the women, old men and children of Iraq, not to mention the conscripted soldiers who have no choice but to serve until they are buried under the sand.

Mr. Bush, like his father before him, is a politician from birth, beholden to special friends. We can expect him to use war as a political weapon if he needs to. Jay Sekulow and his boss, Pat Robertson, claim to be Christian missionaries. Killing people should require a higher level of proof for them. At least, it would if they were following Christ.

None of the Celebrity Christian claims about the Iraq threat are even close to being proved. But Mr. Sekulow made one statement that was new to me and stood out above all the rest of his hypocrisy. It involved the concept of an economically acceptable war. Mr. Sekulow made this war a money issue, so let us talk about that.

A sensible young caller who seems to have read a government rulebook asked Jay if the US Congress should not instead make a declaration of war, rather than give the power of life and death to the President.

In reply, Sekulow, who claims to be a Constitutional lawyer, stated that declaring War is outdated now. He said
war should not be declared against Iraq because of “liability insurance.” Sekulow claims that the Congress declaring war would adversely affect people if they sustained damage, because their insurance might not protect them. This amazing statement cannot be naivete, and it shows that Robertson’s band, like Bush’s, considers war in economic terms. If people get hurt, they’ll want an insurance company to pay for it on grounds that it is not war unless the Congress declares it. Of course, your insurance company is hardly going to buy this dumb line; if someone bombs your house they will call it war, no matter what Jay calls it. Sekulow considers war in economic terms and wants it to be a convenient war. He does not want the inconvenience of disturbing some contract between an insured and an insurer. Like most supporters of the war, he ignores the fact that it has high costs because his boss’s belief is that Israel‘s aims must be supported regardless of the cost to you. And what he does not tell you is that no one will insure your IRA against the loss that is sure to come in a war.

We are often asked, “BUT WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT IT?“
Why not picket a killer church.

QUESTIONS THAT WON’T BE ASKED ABOUT IRAQ
by US Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX)

Look for: WAR AND YOUR IRA, PART II, WHAT IS GOLD FOR?