At a time when the United States is promising a reconstructed democratic postwar Iraq, many Afghans are remembering hearing similar promises not long ago.

Instead, what they see is thieving warlords, murder on the roads, and a resurgence of Taliban vigilantism.

``It's like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem,'' said Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan's president and his representative in southern Kandahar. ``What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business.''

Karzai said reconstruction has been painfully slow -- a canal repaired, a piece of city road paved, a small school rebuilt.

``There have been no significant changes for people,'' he said. ``People are tired of seeing small, small projects. I don't know what to say to people anymore.''

Thanks to the most crudely partisan decision in the history of the Supreme Court, the nation has been given a President of painfully limited wisdom and compassion and lacking any sense of the nation's true greatness. Appearing to enjoy his role as Commander in Chief of the armed forces above all other functions of his office, and unchecked by a seemingly timid Congress, a compliant Supreme Court, a largely subservient press and a corrupt corporate plutocracy, George W. Bush has set the nation on a course for one-man rule.

He treads carelessly on the Bill of Rights, the United Nations and international law while creating a costly but largely useless new federal bureaucracy loosely called "Homeland Security." Meanwhile, such fundamental building blocks of national security as full employment and a strong labor movement are of no concern. The nearly $1.5 trillion tax giveaway, largely for the further enrichment of those already rich, will have to be made up by cutting government services and shifting a larger share of the tax burden to workers and the elderly. This President and his advisers know well how to get us involved in imperial crusades abroad while pillaging the ordinary American at home. The same families who are exploited by a rich man's government find their sons and daughters being called to war, as they were in Vietnam--but not the sons of the rich and well connected. (Let me note that the son of South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson is now on duty in the Persian Gulf. He did not use his obvious political connections to avoid military service, nor did his father seek exemptions for his son. That goes well with me, with my fellow South Dakotans and with every fair-minded American.)...

The President frequently confides to individuals and friendly audiences that he is guided by God's hand. But if God guided him into an invasion of Iraq, He sent a different message to the Pope, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the mainline Protestant National Council of Churches and many distinguished rabbis--all of whom believe the invasion and bombardment of Iraq is against God's will. In all due respect, I suspect that Karl Rove, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice--and other sideline warriors--are the gods (or goddesses) reaching the ear of our President....

We will, of course, win the war with Iraq. But what of the question raised in the Bible that both George Bush and I read: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul," or the soul of his nation?

The Department of Veterans Affairs is being targeted for billions in cuts. Evidently, President Bush's support for the troops doesn't include their health care.

"All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community, where a child is taught to have a strong faith," [US Secretary of Education Rod] Paige said in the interview with Union University, a Baptist-affiliated school in Tennessee. "Where a child is taught that, there is a source of strength greater than themselves."

To critics, Paige said, he would offer "my prayers."

Congressional Republicans, working with the Bush administration, are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping anti-terrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said Tuesday.

For the long-term freedom, health, prosperity, and security of Americans – and the world's other six billion people, and all its other species, too – there is no more critical task in the coming months than to oust George W. Bush, and the lunatics surrounding him, in November 2004.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... Sen. Ted Stevens suggested last week that New York City's cops and firefighters should work overtime without pay as a wartime sacrifice. "I really feel strongly that we ought to find some way to convince the people that there ought to be some volunteerism at home. Those people overseas in the desert -- they're not getting overtime. ... I don't know why the people working for the cities and counties ought to be paid overtime when they're responding to matters of national security."

Stevens, R-Alaska, had just voted for tax cuts that will give those who make a million dollars a year $92,000 more to spend on polo ponies. Some must sacrifice more than others.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who seems prepared to run the world, favors one Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile-emigre group, as postwar leader (read figurehead-puppet). Chalabi is bitterly opposed by both the State Department and the CIA. ...

[Knight-Ridder's] Landay also reports, "It was information provided by Chalabi that led Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to a prewar belief that Iraqis would rise up and welcome the invading coalition with open arms, that the Republican Guard would surrender in droves and the government of Saddam Hussein would crumble in a matter of days." ...

This gets better. Chalabi has been in exile for four decades and, in 1992, he was convicted on multiple counts of embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars in Jordan after the failure of his bank there. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison. He escaped from Jordan, reportedly in the trunk of a car, and wound up in London. Dick Cheney is also a Chalabi fan. ...

The Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz choice for "viceroy designate" of Iraq is Gen. Jay Garner, head of the Pentagon's Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Garner is a retired military man with links to both the international arms industry and a Jewish lobby group. After retiring from the Army, Garner became president of SY Coleman, a defense contractor specializing in military defense technology. He is currently on leave of absence from the company.

The problem of Garner's alleged Zionist sympathies is also causing talk: He visited Israel as the guest of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and signed a statement in October 2000 blaming the Palestinian Authority for the violence after the collapse of peace talks and praising the "remarkable restraint" of the Israeli army.

The third member of the triumvirate that Rumsfeld & Co. want to run Iraq is former CIA chief James Woolsey, who said last week that Iraq is the opening of the "Fourth World War" (counting the Cold War as III) and that America's enemies include the religious rulers in Iran, states like Syria and Islamic terrorist groups.

So, we've got a crook, a Zionist and an old spy who thinks this is the beginning of WWIV set to run Iraq. How lucky can the Iraqis get? Is this what we thought we were fighting for?

According to David Sanger's analysis in The New York Times, "Some hawks in the administration are convinced that Iraq will serve as a cautionary example of what can happen to other sates that refuse to abandon their programs to build weapons of mass destruction, an argument that John Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control, has made several times in recent speeches."

The administration's more pragmatic wing fears that the war's lesson will be just the opposite: that the best way to avoid American military action is to build a fearsome arsenal quickly and make the cost of conflict too high for Washington.

In our name. US Brigadier General John Kelly, assistant commander of the 1st marine division, claims that hundreds of Muslim fighters putting up a stronger fight than the regular army are, or were, non-Iraqis. "They appear willing to die. We do our best to help them out in that endeavour."

"They stand, they fight, sometimes they run when we engage them.. But often they run into our machine guns and we shoot them down like the morons they are." Don't you feel proud?

A man with a job to do speaks bluntly of the savages war makes of men as the man who ordered him to do this, at a summit with Tony Blair, mourns the loss of fallen Allied soldiers sacrificed to this war of 'liberation' and pointedly fails to mention the innocent Iraqis also sacrificed. He knows that his mighty force has just dumped four giant bombs on a restaurant in a suburban area on the chance Saddam might be there. Up to 14 innocents are dead.

I write this after American forces admitted to bombing the premises of al-Jazeera in Baghdad, killing one journalist, and firing at the Palestine Hotel housing the media, killing another two. No American company will host the al-Jazeera website. Speech in the land of freedom is no longer free. Independently reporting the carnage in Baghdad may no longer be possible. ...

The Pentagon now wants a US - not UN - run war crimes tribunal to try Iraqis for war crimes after it has conquered this third world nation in an illegal war with overwhelming force and the use of cluster bombs, an inherently indiscriminate weapon. The superpower invades, destroys, slaughters, then judges the survivors. This is the new world order Australia has signed on to. Might is right. To the victor go the spoils. You in, John? Yes, George.

American hearts are focused on their troops these days—the dangers they face, the tragedies they’ve suffered. Yet the war Americans see on their television screens is wholly different from what’s shown elsewhere. U.S. programming concentrates on victory. Arab and Muslim TV focuses on victims. Children feature prominently: grisly images of the dead and dying and maimed. Such is the bitterness evoked by this war that even benign acts of charity are tainted. “It’s humiliating to see a soldier giving a piece of candy to a poor child,” says Khalaf Haddadin, general manager of a contracting company in Jordan. “Maybe in the States these images are convincing, but the Iraqis don’t need [cookies]. They need for soldiers to stop killing their children.”

The Center for Public Integrity, a private watchdog group in Washington, recently disclosed that of the 30 members of the [Defense Policy] board, at least 9 are linked to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002.

Richard Perle was the chairman of the board until just a few weeks ago, when he resigned the chairmanship amid allegations of a conflict of interest. He is still on the board.

Another member is the former C.I.A. director, James Woolsey. He's also a principal in the Paladin Capital Group, a venture capital firm that, as the Center for Public Integrity noted, is soliciting investments for companies that specialize in domestic security. Mr. Woolsey is also a member of the Committee to Liberate Iraq and is reported to be in line to play a role in the postwar occupation.

A convoy carrying Kurdish soldiers and coalition special forces had come under attack from two U.S. fighter jets early yesterday morning. ...

BBC World was broadcasting this footage yesterday morning. It also reported at least 18 people were killed and another 45 injured by the so-called "friendly fire" attack.

"I actually saw the bomb dropping from the aircraft, and then I saw it, as it came down beside me," said John Simpson, BBC's world affairs editor. ...

But had you been watching CNN in the morning, you wouldn't have heard much about this deadly "mistake" in Northern Iraq.

Even by 4:17 p.m., when CNN aired its daily "War Recap," details of the incident were curiously sketchy. The graphic read: "6:33 a.m. — Friendly fire incident reported."

This means the network had about 10 hours to investigate. But all anchor Leon Harris could offer viewers was a pre-programmed, "No word yet on U.S. casualties."

For the past two months, US officials have been seeking to wriggle free from this constraint. In February, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told Congress's armed services committee that "there are times when the use of non-lethal riot agents is perfectly appropriate". He revealed that he and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Richard Myers, had been "trying to fashion rules of engagement" for the use of chemical weapons in Iraq.

Rumsfeld, formerly the chief executive of GD Searle, one of the biggest drugs firms in the US, has never been an enthusiast for the chemical weapons convention. In 1997, as the Senate was preparing to ratify the treaty, he told its committee on foreign relations that the convention "will impose a costly and complex regulatory burden on US industry". Enlisting the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy with which we have since become familiar, he maintained that it was not "realistic", as global disarmament "is not a likely prospect". Dick Cheney, now vice-president, asked the committee to record his "strong opposition" to ratification.

Last month Victoria Clarke, an assistant secretary in Chemical Donald's department, wrote to the Independent on Sunday, confirming the decision to use riot control agents in Iraq, and claiming, without supporting evidence, that their deployment would be legal. Last week the US Marine Corps told the Asia Times that CS gas and pepper spray had already been shipped to the Gulf. The government of the US appears to be on the verge of committing a war crime in Iraq. ...

You cannot use chemical weapons to wage war against chemical weapons. They are, as the convention makes clear, the instruments of terrorists. By deploying them, the US government would liquidate one of the remaining moral distinctions between its own behaviour and that of the man it asks us to abominate.