Clinton Worker Behind Trashing Of Bush 9/11 Ad

'Dubya is trampling graves of 9/11 victims'
Independent Online, South Africa - 3 hours ago
... Ground Zero is a sacred site," said Rita Lasar , a steering committee
member of the group, September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. ...

Bush urged to pull 9/11 ads
News24, South Africa - 4 hours ago
... Rita Lasar , member of the group steering committee of September 11 Families for
Peaceful Tomorrows, said: "President Bush promised that he would not use the ...

September 11 families say Bush campaign treading on the dead
Channel News Asia, Singapore - 2 hours ago
... Ground Zero is a sacred site," said Rita Lasar , a steering committee
member of the group, September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. ...

Families urge Bush to pull September 11 adverts
Channel News Asia, Singapore - 3 hours ago
... Rita Lasar , member of group steering committee of September 11 Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows, said: "President Bush promised that he would not use the site ...

Families urge Bush to pull 9/11 ads
The Australian, Australia - 4 hours ago
... Rita Lasar , member of group steering committee of September 11 Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows, said: "President Bush promised that he would not use the site ...

Families urge Bush to pull 9/11 ads
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia - 4 hours ago
... Rita Lasar , member of group steering committee of September 11 Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows, said: "President Bush promised that he would not use the site ...

Families urge Bush to pull 9/11 ads
Daily Telegraph, Australia - 4 hours ago
... Rita Lasar , member of group steering committee of September 11 Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows, said: "President Bush promised that he would not use the site ...

Families urge Bush to pull 9/11 ads
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 4 hours ago
... Rita Lasar , member of group steering committee of September 11 Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows, said: "President Bush promised that he would not use the site ...

Families urge Bush to pull September 11 averts
Channel News Asia, Singapore - 4 hours ago
... Rita Lasar , member of group steering committee of September 11 Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows, said: "President Bush promised that he would not use the site ...

Families urge Bush to pull 9/11 ads
Advertiser, Australia - 4 hours ago
... Rita Lasar , member of group steering committee of September 11 Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows, said: "President Bush promised that he would not use the site ...

Families urge Bush to pull 9/11 ads
Brisbane Courier Mail, Australia - 4 hours ago
... Rita Lasar , member of group steering committee of September 11 Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows, said: "President Bush promised that he would not use the site ...

Bush's 9/11 ads upset firefighters, victims' families
San Francisco Chronicle, CA - 8 hours ago
... President Bush would rally support around his campaign by using our loved ones in
a way that is so shameful is hard for me to believe," said Rita Lasar , a New ...

Paul Farhi THE WASHINGTON POST |
Provo Daily Herald, UT - 11 hours ago
... President Bush would rally support around his campaign by using our loved ones in
a way that is so shameful is hard for me to believe," said Rita Lasar , a New ...

Bush ads with 9-11 images stir controversy
Seattle Times, WA - 12 hours ago
... President Bush would rally support around his campaign by using our loved ones in
a way that is so shameful is hard for me to believe," said Rita Lasar , a New ...

Bush Ads Using 9/11 Images Stir Anger
Washington Post - 17 hours ago
... President Bush would rally support around his campaign by using our loved ones in
a way that is so shameful is hard for me to believe," said Rita Lasar , a New ...

Anger at terror images in Bush ads
The Age, Australia - 8 hours ago
... President Bush would rally support around his campaign by using our loved ones in
a way that is so shameful is hard for me to believe," said Rita Lasar , a New ...

http://news.google.com/news?q=%22Rita+Lasar%22&num=100&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&filter=0

Rita Lasar is 70 years old, the mother of 2 sons, Raphael and Matthew and the grandmother of Emma aged 7 and Jake aged 15. She and her husband, Ted owned a small electronics company which they ran until Ted had a stroke. She closed the business to stay home to care for him until he died. She then was a volunteer and then paid worker in the first Clinton campaign. After that she ran the office of a candidate for a seat for the New York City Council. Recently she was a volunteer in the New York City Schools program where she taught 1st and 2nd graders to read on a one to one basis. Rita's brother Abe Zelmanowitz was killed in the World Trade Center attack.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22Barry+Amundson%22+group:misc.activism.progressive&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=misc.activism.progressive&safe=off&selm=a15l9f%2431gi%241%40pencil.math.missouri.edu&rnum=1

February 26, 2004
Kerry’s Soviet Rhetoric
The Vietnam-era antiwar movement
got its spin from the Kremlin.

By Ion Mihai Pacepa

Part of Senator John Kerry's appeal to a certain segment of Americans is his Vietnam-veteran status coupled with his antiwar activism during that period. On April 12, 1971, Kerry told the U.S. Congress that American soldiers claimed to him that they had, "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned on the power, cut off limbs, blew up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."

The exact sources of that assertion should be tracked down. Kerry also ought to be asked who, exactly, told him any such thing, and what it was, exactly, that they said they did in Vietnam. Statutes of limitation now protect these individuals from prosecution for any such admissions. Or did Senator Kerry merely hear allegations of that sort as hearsay bandied about by members of antiwar groups (much of which has since been discredited)? To me, this assertion sounds exactly like the disinformation line that the Soviets were sowing worldwide throughout the Vietnam era. KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. One of its favorite tools was the fabrication of such evidence as photographs and "news reports" about invented American war atrocities. These tales were purveyed in KGB-operated magazines that would then flack them to reputable news organizations. Often enough, they would be picked up. News organizations are notoriously sloppy about verifying their sources. All in all, it was amazingly easy for Soviet-bloc spy organizations to fake many such reports and spread them around the free world.

As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, "our most significant success."

The KGB organized a vitriolic conference in Stockholm to condemn America's aggression, on March 8, 1965, as the first American troops arrived in south Vietnam. On Andropov's orders, one of the KGB's paid agents, Romesh Chandra, the chairman of the KGB-financed World Peace Council, created the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam as a permanent international organization to aid or to conduct operations to help Americans dodge the draft or defect, to demoralize its army with anti-American propaganda, to conduct protests, demonstrations, and boycotts, and to sanction anyone connected with the war. It was staffed by Soviet-bloc undercover intelligence officers and received about $15 million annually from the Communist Party's international department — on top of the WPC's $50 million a year, all delivered in laundered cash dollars. Both groups had Soviet-style secretariats to manage their general activities, Soviet-style working committees to conduct their day-to-day operations, and Soviet-style bureaucratic paperwork. The quote from Senator Kerry is unmistakable Soviet-style sloganeering from this period. I believe it is very like a direct quote from one of these organizations' propaganda sheets.

The KGB campaign to assault the U.S. and Europe by means of disinformation was more than just a few Cold War dirty tricks. The whole foreign policy of the Soviet-bloc states, indeed its whole economic and military might, revolved around the larger Soviet objective of destroying America from within through the use of lies. The Soviets saw disinformation as a vital tool in the dialectical advance of world Communism.

The Stockholm conference held annual international meetings up to 1972. In its five years of existence it created thousands of "documentary" materials printed in all the major Western languages describing the "abominable crimes" committed by American soldiers against civilians in Vietnam, along with counterfeited pictures. All these materials were manufactured by the KGB's disinformation department. I would print up these materials in hundreds of thousands of copies each.

The Romanian DIE (Ceausescu's secret police) was tasked to distribute these KGB-concocted "incriminating documents" all over Western Europe. And ordinary people often bought it hook, line, and sinker. "Even Attila the Hun looks like an angel when compared to these Americans," a West German businessman reprovingly told me after reading one such report.

The Italian, Greek, and Spanish Communist parties serviced by Bucharest were much affected by this material and their activists regularly distributed translations. They also handed them out to the participants at anti-American demonstrations around the world.

Many "Ban-the-Bomb" and anti-nuclear movements were KGB-funded operations, too. I can no longer look at a petition for world peace or other supposedly noble cause, particularly of the anti-American variety, without thinking to myself, "KGB."

In 1978, when I broke with Communism, my DIE was propagating the line that Washington's adventure in Vietnam had wasted over $200 trillion. This waste, we warned darkly, would soon generate European inflation, recession, and unemployment.

As far as I'm concerned, the KGB gave birth to the antiwar movement in America. In 1976, Andropov gave my own Romanian DIE credit for helping his KGB do so.

Leftist intellectuals in America now look to Europe — steeped for years in anti-American propaganda from the Soviet Union — for "a sane and frank European criticism of the Bush administration's war policy." Indeed, anti-Americanism in Europe today is almost as ferocious as it was during Vietnam. France and Germany insist we are torturing the al Qaeda prisoners held at Guantanamo Base. The Mirror, a British newspaper, is confident that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were "killing innocents in Afghanistan." The Paris daily Le Monde put Jean Baudrillard on its front page asserting that "the Judeo-Christian West, led by America, not only provoked the [September 11] terrorist attacks, it actually desired them."

In June 2002, a documentary film on "U.S. war crimes" in Afghanistan was shown in the German Bundestag by the crypto-Communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). The film faithfully reincarnated the style of old Soviet-bloc "documentaries" demonizing the U.S. war in Vietnam. According to this 20-minute movie, American soldiers were involved in the torture and murder of some 3,000 Taliban prisoners in the region of Mazar-e-Sharif. One witness in the film even claimed he had seen an American soldier break the neck of one Afghan prisoner and pour acid on others.

During my last meeting with Andropov, he said, wisely, "now all we have to do is to keep the Vietnam-era anti-Americanism alive." Andropov was a shrewd judge of human nature. He understood that in the end our original involvement would be forgotten, and our insinuations would take on a life of their own. He knew well that it was just the way human nature worked.

— Ion Mihai Pacepa was acting chief of Romania's espionage service and national-security adviser to the country's president. He is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. Link

September 11, 2002
on Democracy NOW!

[listen to the entire program]

[click to hear any story]

First Hour

Story: VOICES OF PEACE FROM GROUND ZERO, DEMOCRACY NOW! AND WBAI BROADCAST AROUND THE WORLD ON PACIFICA RADIO, COMMUNITY RADIO STATIONS, PUBLIC ACCESS CABLE TELEVISION, DISHNETWORK CHANNEL 9415 , FREE SPEECH TV AND THE BBC

Welcome to our listeners around the world.

I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez WBAI's Bernard White and Robert Knight. We're just blocks from where the towers of the World Trade Center stood until 1 year ago today. We're broadcasting from Chinatown, one of the hardest hit communities in the aftermath of 9/11 and from a century old firehouse, especially poignant as close to 400 firefighters died having rushed to the scene to save victims.

This anniversary is being observed against a backdrop of heightened militarism as the mainstream media beats the drums for war.

Pacifica was founded more than 50 years ago by a man who refused to fight wars. He came out of the World War Two detention camps and said, media outlets should be run by journalists and artists, not by corporations that profit from war. And that's how our network, Pacifica Radio, was born.

And in the opening segment of today's show, we are broadcasting on the BBC's Jimmy Young Program. It is the largest daytime talk show on the BBC, and reaches 5 million listeners around the world.

Guests:

Brian Hayes, with The Jimmy Young Program on BBC Radio 2.
David Potorti, lost his brother in the World Trade Center.
Andrew Rice, lost his brother in the World Trade Center.

Related link:

September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

Story: DEMOCRACY NOW! ASKS THE NEW YORK TIMES AND CNN WHY THEY DON'T COVER THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT

Dave Potorti is part of Peaceful Tomorrows, a group of family members who lost loved ones at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon They marched from Washington to New York last November to honor the dead and protest the bombing of Afghanistan. While the media covered them as family members of victims, it wasn't as willing to convey their anti-war point of view.

At a United Nations conference of media executives and reporters on 'News vs. Propaganda', Democracy Now!'s senior producer questioned Barbara Crossette of the New York Times and CNN Vice President Karen Curry about this issue.

Tape:

Kris Abrams, senior producer of Democracy Now!, asks the New York Times and CNN why there is so little coverage of the anti-war movement.
Barbara Crossette, New York Times.
Karen Curry, Vice President and New York Bureau Chief of CNN.
Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief, Al Quds Al-Arabi, an Arabic-language daily based in London.

Story: HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER LYNNE STEWART DISCUSSES HER ARREST

Lynne Stewart is a longtime radical human rights attorney from New York. She faces up to 20 years in prison on charges that she helped her client Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman deliver messages from his Minnesota prison cell to his followers in Egypt. In 1995, Sheik Rahman was accused of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

In April, she was arrested and agents searched her Manhattan office for documents. She was indicted and released on $500,000 personal recognizance bond.

Guest:

Lynne Stewart, radical human rights attorney, arrested in April on charges that she helped her client Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman deliver messages from his Minnesota prison cell to his followers in Egypt.

Related link:

Lynne Stewart

Second Hour

Story: SOUNDS OF SEPTEMBER 11

Story: OVER 300 FIREFIGHTERS AND PARAMEDICS HAVE THE 'WORLD TRADE CENTER COUGH': A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ON ENVIRONMENTAL DEVASTATION NEAR GROUND ZERO

A year after their unprecedented rescue attempt at the World Trade Center, about 600 New York City firefighters and paramedics remain sidelined with disabilities sustained on Sept. 11, and more than half have developed a condition doctors have dubbed, "World Trade Center cough," Newsday reports. We'll look at the environmental affect of the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Guest:

Joel Kupferman, executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project. He filed a Freedom of Information Act request that made public over 800 documents related to the environmental consequences of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.
Shirley Kwan, who co-founded the Lower Manhattan Residents Relief Coalition following Sept. 11 to help residents of lower Manhattan organize and mobilize to create a strong, united and permanent voice that will fight for the community's needs.

Related link:

Lower Manhattan Residents Coalition

Story: THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE U.S. HAVE BEEN DETAINED IN THE LAST YEAR

Thousands of people across the United States have been detained in the past year. The government acknowledges that the overwhelming majority had little to do with the attacks. Detainees are being shipped across the country and held in secret. They often do not have proper access to lawyers. Many times their families have no idea where they are. Many are losing their jobs.

Guests:

Michael Ratner, lawyer, Center for Constitutional Rights.
Bobby Khan, Pakistani immigrant rights activist, Coney Island Avenue Project.

Related link:

Center for Constitutional Rights

Story: AT 8:45 AM EST ONE YEAR AGO, THE FIRST HIJACKED PLANE CRASHED INTO THE NORTH TOWER OF THE WTC: A MEMORIAL WITH FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN, DAR WILLIAMS, AND OTHERS

At 8:45 am EST one year ago, American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Tape:

"No News," a film by Bushra Azzouz.

Guest:

Father Daniel Berrigan, priest, poet, prisoner and political activist. Along with his brother Philip, Daniel Berrigan burned draft files in a Catonsville, Maryland parking lot back in 1968 to protest the Vietnam War. The action led to harsh prison terms for the two brothers and seven others. But it also propelled the Berrigans into the national spotlight and sparked a nationwide series of draft-file burning.

Tape:

"Sliding Off the Edge of the World: Two Little Girls at Ground Zero," a film by Mark Street.

Guest:

Dar Williams, singer and songwriter. The Green World is her latest album.

Related link:

Dar Williams

Third Hour

Story: RITA LASAR LOST HER BROTHER IN THE WORLD TRADE CENTER: SHE REMEMBERS SEPTEMBER 11 AND CALLS FOR PEACE

Today is September 11, 2002. One year ago, at the time of this broadcast, 9:03 a.m. EST, the second hijacked plane hit the second tower of the World Trade Center.

Among the thousands of people trapped inside was Abe Zelmanowitz. His sister, Rita Lasar, remembers the day.

Tape:

Rita Lasar, sister of Abe Zelmanowitz, who perished in the World Trade Center.

Story: ODETTA SINGS TO MARK THE TIME UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 175 FROM BOSTON CRASHED INTO THE SOUTH TOWER OF THE WTC ONE YEAR AGO

Considered the "Queen of American Folk Music," Odetta has introduced audiences worldwide to American roots music and especially African-American folk, blues and gospel. As a major voice in the American Civil Rights Movement, she marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, sang for the masses in Washington in 1963, and performed for President John F. Kennedy at a civil rights presentation on national television.

She has shared the stage with Paul Robeson, Nina Simone, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and many others. Harry Belafonte once said, "Odetta is a vast influence on our cultural life."

On September 29, 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Odetta with the National Endowment for the Arts' Medal of the Arts. Story: RITA LASAR MEETS MASUDA SULTAN, AN AFGHAN-AMERICAN WHO LOST 19 MEMBERS OF HER FAMILY IN THE US BOMBING OF AFGHANISTAN

Within a month, the bombs started to fall on Afghanistan. A few months later, Rita Lasar, who lost her brother Abe in the World Trade Center, decided to go to Afghanistan. In the midst of her deepest grief, Rita said the killing of innocent civilians should not be avenged by the killing of innocent civilians. We followed her on her trip.

A few days before she took that trip in January, she came to our studio, and met for the first time Masuda Sultan, an Afghan American who lost 19 members of her family

Tape:

Rita Lasar, who lost her brother in the World Trade Center, traveled to Afghanistan.
Masuda Sultan, an Afghan-American describing how she discovered the US had killed 19 members of her family in the bombing of Afghanistan

Guest:

Masuda Sultan, Afghan-American citizen who lost 19 members of her family.

Story: FORMER US ATTORNEY GENERAL RAMSEY CLARK AND INDEPENDENT FILMMAKER JON ALPERT DISCUSS IRAQ

At the height of the Gulf War, newsman Jon Alpert, a long-time contributor to NBC News, shot the only footage of the war's impact not censored by either Iraq or the U.S. Traveling with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Alpert captured on camera what it was like to be on the ground during the allied bombing. In dramatic and often graphic scenes, the film "Nowhere To Hide" shows a far different reality than what most Americans saw on the nightly news. Although several networks initially expressed strong interest in the footage, all declined to air it, and NBC ended its long affiliation with Alpert, a seven-time Emmy-winner.

Guest:

Jon Alpert, filmmaker, journalist & founder of DCTV.

Related link:

DCTV

We go now to a clip of 'Inside Iraq' excerpted from Alpert's footage. The scene is Basra where people are standing next to a gigantic crater filled with water and surrounded by rubble. The US had just bombed.

Guest:

Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General.

Story: DEMOCRACY NOW! ARCHIVAL AUDIO

We go now back to September 11, 2001. This is Democracy Now's broadcast from the firehouse in the moments and hours after the towers were hit.

Tape:

Archival audio of Democracy Now! on September 11, 2001 with WBAI reporter Robert Knight and co-founder of WBIX Ryme Kathouda.

Fourth Hour

Story: MARTIN LUTHER KING III, ODETTA, AND GREG PALAST ON TERROR HERE AT HOME, CIVIL RIGHTS, PATRIOTISM, AND THE STOLEN ELECTION

Many people say this is the day terror came to the United States. But a number of communities in this country have known terror for a long time.

Guests:

Martin Luther King III, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization his father founded in 1957. His father was assassinated April 4, 1968.
Odetta, blues, folk, gospel singer. Considered the "Queen of American Folk Music," Odetta has introduced audiences worldwide to American roots music and especially African-American folk, blues and gospel. As a major voice in the American Civil Rights Movement, she marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, sang for the masses in Washington in 1963, and performed for President John F. Kennedy at a civil rights presentation on national television.
Greg Palast, investigative reporter with the BBC. Palast just won a Project Censored award for his piece in the London Guardian, 'FBI and US Spy Agents Say Bush Spiked Bin Laden Probes Before 11 September.'

Related link:

Greg Palast

Story: PATTI SMITH RECITES "PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER"

Guest:

Patti Smith, singer, songwriter, and activist. For nearly 30 years Patti Smith has been one of New York's most beloved punk rock poet. Today she shares her thoughts on moving forward after the Sept. 11 attacks and offers up a stirring spoken-word version of her anthem, "People Have the Power."

Story: "DAY OF ATTUNEMENT OBSERVING 9-11 THE JEWISH WAY"

In last week's Village Voice, Richard Goldstein wrote, "This year, the 11th falls right in the middle of the week that runs from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, which Jews call the Days of Awe. And the holidays begin, even more auspiciously, on the Sabbath. I doubt that the networks will notice this confluence, and that's a shame. The spirit of these days could do much to enrich what promises to be nonstop glop." Today we discuss his article.

Guest:

Richard Goldstein, executive editor of Village Voice and author of the new book "The Attack Queers: Liberal Society and the Gay Right."

Related link:

Day Of Attunement Observing 9-11 The Jewish Way

Story: SCHOLAR /ACTIVISTS NOAM CHOMSKY AND CORNEL WEST ON TERRORISM AFTER 9/11

As we wrap up our special broadcast, we play a few of the voices that have been missing from the mainstream media.

Tape:

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, speaking at the 50th anniversary of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting in New York in January.
Cornel West, professor of African-American studies and philosophy of religion at Princeton University and author of the best-selling book, Race Matters. He was speaking last year in the Bay area at the Mario Savio awards.

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For more information about Pacifica and its programming, visit the Pacifica Web site.

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Link

Maybe we shouldn't be looking for the links between Kerry and Fonda.

Maybe we need to be looking at just how closely tied Kerry and Ramsey Clark are.

September 5, 2002

To avoid another Sept. 11, U.S. must join the world
By Rita Lasar

When the planes hit the World Trade Center last Sept. 11, my brother Avrame, who was in the North Tower, refused to join the evacuation because he was concerned for the safety of his close friend and fellow worker, a quadriplegic who could not easily leave. So Avrame stayed, hoping that help would arrive. When it didn't, he and his lifelong associate died together, along with thousands of other innocent New Yorkers.

That day changed my life. It changed the lives of all those who lost loved ones in the towers. It changed the lives of the relatives of those on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. It changed the lives of hundreds of families who lost loved ones in the Pentagon. And, perhaps to a lesser extent, it changed the lives of most people living in the United States.

In the months following the disaster, I often heard how Sept. 11 changed the world. But I don't think the attacks changed the world. And to the extent that Americans believe that 9/11 changed the world, it is because they don't know much about the world in which they live.

I have never heard anyone say that the horrific massacres of 1994 in Rwanda -- which took more than 500,000 lives -- changed the world. Nor have I ever been told that Indonesia's massacre of 200,000 East Timorese during a 20-year span changed the world. I have not even heard that the daily loss of 8,000 souls in sub-Saharan Africa due to AIDS changed the world. Were these people less important than my dear brother?

Despite my own personal grief, I must conclude that, in light of these far greater calamities, Sept. 11 did not change the world. What it did, in its own terrible way, was invite Americans to join the world, which is already a very troubled place. The question is whether we will accept that invitation.

Sadly, President Bush has no interest in doing so.

He does not want the United States to join, or even cooperate with, the new International Criminal Court.

He has also withdrawn the United States from the longstanding Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty with Russia, even as India and Pakistan shudder on the verge of nuclear war.

He refuses to support international agreements that would alleviate global warming, and he will not seek to ratify the treaty banning landmines, leaving the United States in the company of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, Bush's "axis of evil."

And now the president is planning for a war against Iraq. Never mind that Iraq has committed no act of aggression against us that justifies war, that there has been no evidence linking Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks. Neither does the president seem to care that the world is opposed to an invasion of Iraq.

The international coalition that fought the first Gulf War was cemented by the principle that one country cannot invade another without provocation. Now the White House is poised to dismiss the coalition to launch an unprovoked invasion of Iraq.

An isolated United States is an unsafe country. As Sept. 11 showed, there are no barricades high enough, no bombs big enough, no intelligence sophisticated enough to make America invulnerable.

We Americans have a choice.

We can conclude that we are alone, that we owe the world nothing and that the world owes us everything. This is the assumption implicit in Bush's "you're either with us or against us" stance, which is a shortsighted and self-centered philosophy.

Or we can open our eyes and see the abundance of opportunities for making the planet a safer and more just place, by actively participating in international organizations, multilateral treaties and protocols that advocate peace and social equality.

We can no longer afford a go-it-alone approach. If we want the world's help in getting at the roots of terrorism, we are going to have to start helping the rest of the world. We are going to have to comprehend that there are millions of people around the globe who understand all too well the horror of tragedies like Sept. 11.

When that realization occurs, only then will we glimpse how Sept. 11 changed the world.

Rita Lasar is a founding member of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows (www.peacefultomorrows.org). She can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.

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