Anyone not totally blinded by United States of Amnesia propaganda will recall the blatant lie orchestrated by the US administration about babies thrown from incubators by Iraqi's in Kuwait - a total fabrication designed to justify an aerial blitzkrieg. Likewise the bogus satellite photographs pretending to show Iraqi forces on the Saudi border. Old timers and historians will recall the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin "incident" used to justify the attack on Vietnam, which lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of US personnel and millions of Vietnamese. Similar examples of US deceit are legion.

Applying Secretary of State Powell's logic that Iraq's lying in the past means it cannot be believed today, it is clear that not a single word spoken by him can be trusted. Certainly much of his speech is demonstrably false.

Powell frequently referred to the murder of Kurds at Halabja by Saddam with chemical weapons but, as always, forgot the words - WITH OUR HELP.

If Washington is serious about Saddam's undoubted crimes will the US businessmen and government officials who supported him at the height of his atrocities be charged as accomplices? If not, then his expression of outrage at the Halabja slaughter is just one more lie, at the expense of 5,000 murder victims.

Equally, if non-compliance with UN resolutions is so wrong, why is the US giving over $3billion per year to Israel? Last week that country was found by a Christian Aid report to have caused levels of malnutrition in the illegally occupied territories as bad as those in Zimbabwe. This week Israel is reported, in the Israeli press, as using banned flachette tank shells on children. Israel has killed UN workers, including Briton Iain Hook, who was shot in the back by the IDF. Medical workers, hospitals, and food supplies are deliberately targeted.

Beyond any doubt Israel holds the world record for broken UN resolutions. Yet US tax dollars continue to pour into that country. Clearly, UN resolutions are to be applied selectively, as the US sees fit, and the sanctity of Security Council Resolutions is a big, fat lie.

If, as is likely, al Qaida has an interest in obtaining weapons like ours then the place they're likely to try to get them is Pakistan, not Iraq. This nuclear armed military dictatorship has thoroughly documented links with al Qaida, was the conduit through which billions of US dollars were funnelled to bin Laden in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation and, according to India, still supports Islamic terrorism in Kashmir.

The seriousness behind US concern about weapons like ours is starkly illustrated by the response to Pakistan's dictator General Musharraf, who stole power from an elected government, and whose country stood at the brink of nuclear war with India last year. Washington's response is to sell him more weapons, grant more IMF credits and let him keep the bomb!

For the first time in many, many months a US politician talked about anthrax. But Powell forgot to mention that the anthrax used in the US mail was produced by the US governments own massive illegal bioweapons programme. The perpetrator remains free, while bio-weapons corporations are now set to get $6 billion, announced in Bush's State of the Union speech, as part of a "bio-weapons shield". That basically means tons of money for Bush's supporters in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, one of the biggest corporate donors.

Needless to say the possibility, and the evident need, for inspecting US bioweapons facilities is simply never raised. Likewise the fact that the US single - handedly scuppered the Bio-weapons inspection treaty, which was the only show in town when it comes to reducing the global threat such materials pose. Clearly US corporate and military secrets come before making the world a safer place.

Like they say, it's all about oil and power. Washington's words and actions show it has absolutely no interest in international law, justice or security.