Discontented Soul

Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq
by Christopher Scheer.
Written in July 2003

"The Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons."
— George Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati.
Today, more than three months after Bush's stirring declaration of war and nearly two months since he declared victory, no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons have been found, nor any documentation of their existence, nor any sign they were deployed in the field.
[Editor's note: Last week the official "hunt" was cancelled and a formal declaration that there were no WMDs in Iraq was issued.]
The mainstream press, after an astonishing two years of cowardice, is belatedly drawing attention to the unconscionable level of administrative deception. They seem surprised to find that when it comes to Iraq, the Bush administration isn't prone to the occasional lie of expediency but, in fact, almost never told the truth.
What follows are just the most outrageous and significant of the dozens of outright lies uttered by Bush and his top officials over the past year in what amounts to a systematic campaign to scare the bejeezus out of everybody:
LIE #1: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminium tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."
— President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.
FACT: This story, leaked to and breathlessly reported by Judith Miller in the New York Times, has turned out to be complete baloney. Department of Energy officials, who monitor nuclear plants, say the tubes could not be used for enriching uranium. One intelligence analyst, who was part of the tubes investigation, angrily told The New Republic: "You had senior American officials like Condoleezza Rice saying the only use of this aluminium really is uranium centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie."
LIE #2: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
-- President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.
FACT: This whopper was based on a document that the White House already knew to be a forgery thanks to the CIA. Sold to Italian intelligence by some hustler, the document carried the signature of an official who had been out of office for 10 years and referenced a constitution that was no longer in effect. The ex-ambassador whom the CIA sent to check out the story is pissed off: "They knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie," he told the New Republic, anonymously. "They [the White House] were unpersuasive about aluminium tubes and added this to make their case more strongly."
LIE #3: "We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
— Vice President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on "Meet the Press."
FACT: There was and is absolutely zero basis for this statement. CIA reports up through 2002 showed no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
LIE #4: "[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade."
— CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that evening's speech by President Bush.
FACT: Intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between Saddam and al-Qaeda in the early '90s, but found no proof of a continuing relationship. In other words, by tweaking language, Tenet and Bush spun the intelligence 180 degrees to say exactly the opposite of what it suggested.
LIE #5: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime
to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." — President Bush, Oct. 7.
FACT: No evidence of this has ever been leaked or produced. Colin Powell told the U.N. this alleged training took place in a camp in northern Iraq. To his great embarrassment, the area he indicated was later revealed to be outside Iraq's control and patrolled by Allied war planes.
LIE #6: "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States."
— President Bush, Oct. 7.
FACT: Said drones can't fly more than 300 miles, and Iraq is 6,000 miles from the US coastline. Furthermore, Iraq's drone-building program wasn't much more advanced than your average model plane enthusiast. And isn't a "manned aerial vehicle" just a scary way to say "plane"?
LIE #7: "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." — President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address.
FACT: Despite a massive nationwide search by US and British forces, there are no signs, traces or examples of chemical weapons being deployed in the field, or anywhere else during the war.
LIE #8: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." — Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.
FACT: Putting aside the glaring fact that not one drop of this massive stockpile has been found, as previously reported on AlterNet the United States' own intelligence reports show that these stocks — if they existed — were well past their use-by date and therefore useless as weapon fodder.
LIE #9: "We know where [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat."
— Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press.
FACT: Needless to say, no such weapons were found, not to the east, west, south or north, somewhat or otherwise.
LIE #10: "Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited."
— President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003.
FACT: This was reference to the discovery of two modified truck trailers that the CIA claimed were potential mobile biological weapons lab. But British and American experts — including the State Department's intelligence wing in a report released this week — have since declared this to be untrue. According to the British, and much to Prime Minister Tony Blair's embarrassment, the trailers are actually exactly what Iraq said they were; facilities to fill weather balloons, sold to them by the British themselves.
So, months after the war, we are once again where we started — with plenty of rhetoric and absolutely no proof of this "grave danger". The Bush administration is now scrambling to place the blame for its lies on faulty intelligence, when in fact the intelligence was fine; it was their abuse of it that was "faulty."
Rather than apologize for leading us to a preemptive war based on impossibly faulty or shamelessly distorted "intelligence" or offering his resignation, our sly madman in the White House is starting to sound more like OJ Simpson, the man who cheerfully played golf while promising to pursue "the real killers." Bush is now vowing to search for "the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes."
On the terrible day of the 9/11 attacks, five hours after a hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon, retired Gen. Wesley Clark received a strange call from someone (he didn't name names) representing the White House position: "I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein,'" Clark told Meet the Press anchor Tim Russert. "I said, 'But — I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence.'"
And neither did we.

Our Task Over the Next Few Years is to Transform the World of Independent States into a Genuine Global Village
by Gwynne Dyer
Published on Thursday, December 30, 2004 by the Toronto Star

The good news for humans is that it looks like peaceful conditions, once established, can be maintained. And if baboons can do it, why not us?— Frans de Waal, Yerkes Primate Center, Emory University
About 20 years ago, a disaster struck the Forest Troop of baboons in Kenya. There was a tourist lodge within their range, and the biggest and toughest males in the troop would regularly go to the garbage dump there to forage for food. Subordinate males, however, did not go — so when the brutal and despotic alpha males of Forest Troop all ate meat infected with bovine tuberculosis at the dump and promptly died, the less aggressive 50 per cent of the group's males survived. And the troop's whole culture changed.
Male baboons are so obsessed with status that they are always on a hair-trigger for aggression — and it isn't just directed at male rivals of equal status. Lower-ranking males routinely get bullied and terrorized, and even females (who weigh half as much as males) are frequently attacked and even bitten. You really would not want to live your life as a baboon.
Yet after the biggest, baddest males of Forest Troop all died off at once, the whole social atmosphere changed. When it was first studied by primatologists in 1979-82, it was a typical, utterly vicious baboon society, but after the mass die-off of the bullies the surviving members relaxed and began treating one another more decently.
The males still fight even today — they are baboons, after all — but they quarrel with other males of equal rank rather than beating up on social inferiors, and they don't attack the females at all. Everybody spends much more time in grooming, huddling close together, and other friendly social behavior, and stress levels even for the lowest-ranking individuals (as measured by hormone samples) are far lower than in other baboon troops. Most important of all, these new behaviors have become entrenched in the troop's culture...

2004: Things to Forget
by Arianna Huffington

Published on Thursday, December 30, 2004 by Arianna Huffington

Here then is a list of all the things I'd like to forget, circa 2004:
...
That the woman who dismissed a presidential briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." as a "historical" document is going to be our next secretary of state.
That a man who finds the Geneva Conventions "quaint" is going to be our next attorney general. Janet Jackson's briefly exposed right boob.
That it took 14 months and public protests from the victims' families before the president OK'd the 9/11 Commission, but only two weeks before the first hearings were held on Janet Jackson's boob.
That the media thought "Don't be economic girlie men" was a great line.
...
Madrid, Spain, March 11, 2004.
Beslan, Russia, Sept. 3, 2004.
That the Federal budget deficit hit $413 billion this year, and two-thirds of it is the result of Bush's tax cuts.
That Dick Cheney is talking about another round of tax cuts.
What Colin Powell did to his credibility. "You break it, you live with it for the rest of your life."
...

That picture of Lynndie England holding the leash.
The way the administration tried to sweep Abu Ghraib under the rug.
...

That George Tenet, who knew that the intel on Iraqi WMD was thinner than Lara Flynn Boyle on Dexatrim, turned into the Dick Vitale of WMD: "It's a slam dunk, baby!"
That George Tenet was subsequently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
That a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich allegedly bearing the likeness of the Virgin Mary sold for $28,000 on eBay.
...
That of the roughly 550 enemy combatants held captive in Guantanamo Bay, only four have been formally charged.
...
The looks on George and Laura Bush's faces when Dr. Phil asked them about the "epidemic levels of oral sex" in America's middle schools.
That Osama is still on the loose — and releasing tapes.
That the Kyoto Protocol was ratified — and we aren't part of it.

...
That 35.9 million Americans live below the poverty line — 12.9 million of them children.
That 42 percent of Americans still think Saddam Hussein was "directly involved in planning, financing or carrying out" the 9/11 attacks.
That, thanks to presidential cutbacks, we actually have fewer police and first responders on the streets today than we had on 9/11.
...

That Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld couldn't find time to personally sign letters of condolence to the families of troops killed in Iraq.
That Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz couldn't remember the number of soldiers who'd lost their lives in Iraq.

Tsunami Disaster Highlights Corporate Media Hypocrisy
by Peter Phillips

Published on Thursday, December 30, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

...The US corporate media coverage of the tsunami disaster exposes a huge hypocrisy in the US press. Left uncovered this past year was the massive disaster that has befell Iraqi civilians. Over 100,000 civilians have died since the beginning of the US invasion and hundreds of thousands more are homeless and weakened. In late October 2004 the British Lancet medical journal published a scientific survey of households in Iraq that calculated over 100,000 civilians, mostly women and children, have died from war related causes. The study, formulated and conducted by researchers at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University and the College of Medicine at Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, involved a complex process of sampling households across Iraq to compare the numbers and causes of deaths before and after the invasion in March 2003. The mortality rate in these families worked out to 5 per 1,000 before the invasion and 12.3 per 1,000 after the invasion. Extrapolate the latter figure to the 22 million population of Iraq, and you end up with 100,000 total civilian deaths. The most common cause of death was aerial bombing followed by strokes and heart attacks. Recent civilian deaths in Fallujah would undoubtedly add significantly to the total.
The Iraqi word for disaster is museeba. Surly the lose of life from war in Iraq is as significant a meseeba as the Indian Ocean tsunami, yet where is the US corporate media coverage of thousands of dead and homeless? Where are the live aerial TV shots of the disaster zones and the up-close photos of the victims? Where are the survivor stories - the miracle child who lived thought a building collapsed by US bombs and rescued by neighbors? Where are the government official's press releases of regret and sorrow? Where is the international coalition for relief of civilians in Iraq and the upsurge in donations for Red Cross intervention? Would not Americans, if they knew, be just as caring about Iraqi deaths as they are for the victims of the tsunami?
The US corporate media has published Pentagon statements on civilian deaths in Iraq as unknown and dismissed the Lancet Medical Journal study. It seems US media concerns are for victims of natural disasters, while the man-made disasters, such as the deliberate invasion of another country by the US, are better left unreported.

The Baghdad Tapestry and A Thousand Years of Spinning Invasions into Liberations
by Steven Laffoley

Published on Thursday, December 30, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

It's a nifty trick.
On the evening news, two talking heads - one liberal, one conservative - trade verbal shots over the war in Iraq.
"And let's not forget," says the conservative, "We are fighting the war on terrorism in Iraq."
"Come on," says the incredulous liberal, "you know there was no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda."
"Really?" says the conservative, "My son is fighting in Iraq. He's fighting al-Zarqawi. And you know as well as I do that al-Zarqawi is connected to bin Laden and al-Qaeda."
"No," says the liberal, not buying the backward logic, "we created the terrorist situation in Iraq by invading the country, not the other way round."
Sadly, the liberal missed the point: on most days, a good story beats the straight truth. That al-Zarqawi appeared as the terrorist enemy only after the invasion was not relevant to the good story. What was relevant was that the war in Iraq was suddenly becoming what George W. Bush said it was: the war on terrorism.
The Bush administration knows its history. Spinning illegal invasions into righteous liberations has been an effective practice for a thousand years...

Bush Fails a Global Test
by John Nichols

Published on Thursday, December 30, 2004 by The Nation

...When other world leaders rushed to respond to the crisis caused by last Sunday's tsunamis in southern Asia, George Bush decamped to his ranch in Texas for another vacation. For three days after the disaster, the only formal response from the White House was issued by a deputy press secretary. Finally, after a United Nations official made comments that seemed to highlight the disengaged nature of the official U.S. reaction to one of the worst catastrophes in human history, the president appeared at a hastily-scheduled press conference to grumble about how critics of his embarrassing performance were "misguided and ill-informed."
Bush bragged about the U.S. commitment of $35 million to help respond to a tragedy that has cost more than 100,000 lives and displaced millions of people in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Somalia and other countries.
What the president did not say is that this initial commitment is less than the planned expenditure for his Jan. 20 inauguration: $40 million...

You Can't Blame 'Uncle Sam' for What Bush Does
by Robert Kuttner

Published on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 by the Boston Globe

...The administration makes a concerted effort to disparage "the government." That's not surprising; the administration believes in cutting taxes (mostly on the wealthy) and reducing services on everyone else. The less confidence people have in government, the easier it is to sell tax cuts. But what is distressing is that people who should know better, even advocates of public services, are falling into the trap of confusing "the government" with a particular administration and its policies...

...Most callers object [to a National ID Card], largely because of amorphous fear of something called "the government." I observed that the problem is not the government, but the administration...

...Some of us, as a matter of principle, don't think government should play much of a role in society. That's fine. But polls show that most Americans [and Australians] actually value Social Security, public education, reliable health coverage, and other services that the Bush [Howard]administration proposes to reduce or kill.
This country is (still) a democracy. If we don't like the way a particular administration runs our government, we should get a different administration. We shouldn't displace our concerns into a generalized loathing of "the government."
Despite the right's propaganda, if we can't think clearly enough to distinguish the government from the administration, we will lose what we actually like about government, as well as our function of being free, deliberative citizens in a self-governing democracy.

I see that a group of “trendier” Coalition [Liberal/National Party] politicians have attempted to sponsor a Bill which would gladden the heart of their mentors in the US Republican Party — they want to lower taxes for the wealthy. Their arguments in favour of this stunning proposal are not new however — merely a rehash of the same tired bullshitt we have heard from right-wing economists for the past twenty years.
It used to be referred to as the “trickle-down” effect — “feed the horse enough oats and some will eventually get to the sparrows waiting underneath.” Nice for the horse, but not for the sparrows who have to pick through its crap!
The only ones who benefit from lower taxes will be the rich who will invest their newly-gotten gains offshore. Those of us for whom taxation revenues provide services will get nothing — but then the ideologues who cling to the dogma of lower taxes for the wealthy also believe that the rest of us don’t deserve services, because we haven’t worked hard enough or saved enough!

Careful Not to Get Too Much Education...Or You Could Turn Liberal
by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Published on Tuesday, December 28, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to a conversation I overheard at a Starbucks in Nashville last winter. It was a cold and rainy night as I worked away at my laptop, but the comforting aroma of cappuccino kept me going. My comfort was interrupted, however, by two young men who sat down in upholstered chairs near my table. One was talking, the other listening, in what appeared to be an informal college orientation.
"The only trouble with David Lipscomb (a conservative Christian college nearby) is that old man Lipscomb apparently didn't like football. So we don't have a football team, but we have a great faculty."
"But you do have to be careful about one thing," he said more quietly, coming closer and speaking in hushed tones, "My professor-I have this great professor-told me that you have to be careful not to get too much education, because you could lose your foundation, your core values."
The neophyte nodded solemnly, his eyebrows raised with worry...

'Staying the Course' Won't Do
by Patrick J. Buchanan

In the aftermath of the suicide bombing of the Mosul mess hall, we are being admonished anew we must stay the course in Iraq. But "Stay the course!" is no longer enough.
President Bush needs to go on national television and tell us the unvarnished truth. Why are we still there? For some of Bush's countrymen, there is a sense of having been had, of having been made victim to one of the great bait and switches in the history of warfare.
The President, his War Cabinet, and the neocon punditocracy sold us on this war by implying Saddam was implicated in 9/11, that he had a vast arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, that he was working on an atom bomb, that he would transfer his terror weapons to al-Qaeda. We had to invade, destroy, and disarm his axis-of-evil regime. Only thus could we be secure.
None of this was true. But the President won that debate and was given a free hand to invade Iraq. He did so, and overthrew Saddam's regime in three weeks. "Mission Accomplished!"
That was 20 months ago. What is our mission now? When did it change? With 1,300 dead and nearly 10,000 wounded, why are we still at war with these people?
The President says the enemy is "terrorism" and "evil," and that we fight for "democracy" and that "freedom" that is "God's gift to humanity." All very noble.
But why should Americans have to die for democracy in a nation that has never known it? Democracy in the Middle East is not vital to our national security. For though the Middle East has never been democratic, no Middle Eastern nation has ever attacked us. And should we catch a nation that is supporting terror against us, we have the weapons to make them pay a hellish price, without invading and occupying their country.
The only nation in the 20th century to attack us was Japan. And Japan lashed out, insanely, in desperation, because we had cut off her oil and convinced the British and Dutch to cut off the vital commodities she needed to avoid imperial defeat in China. We were choking the Japanese empire to death.
We might all prefer that Arab nations be democratic. But that is not vital to us. If they remain despotic, that is their problem, so long as they do not threaten or attack us. But to invade an Islamic country to force it to adopt democratic reforms is democratic imperialism. If we practise it, we must expect that some of those we are reforming will resort to the time-honoured weapon of anti-imperialists — terrorism, the one effective weapon the weak have against the strong.
Yet, if our goals appear gauzy and vague, our enemy's war aims appear specific, concrete, and understandable. They seek our expulsion from Iraq and the eradication of all "collaborators." And the tactics they are using are the same as those the FLN used to drive the French out of Algeria.
To us, democracy may mean New England town meetings. To the Sunnis, democracy means a one-man, one-vote path to power for the Shias, 60 percent of Iraq's population, who will dispossess them of the power and place they have held since Ottoman times. Why should people to whom politics is about power — "Who, whom?" in Lenin's phrase — not fight that? And why should we fight and die for a Shia-dominated Iraq?
Before addressing his countrymen, the President needs to ask and answer for himself some hard questions. Who told him this would be a "cakewalk"? Who misled him to believe we would be welcomed as liberators with bouquets of flowers? Who led him into a situation where his choice appears to be between a seemingly endless guerrilla war that could destroy his presidency, and walking away from Iraq and watching it collapse in mayhem and the massacre of those who cast their lot with us?
Why have these fools not been fired, like the CIA geniuses who sold JFK on the Bay of Pigs?
It is not just President Bush who is in this hellish mess. We're all in it together. But the President needs to know that if he intends to use US military power to democratize the Middle East, Americans — 56 percent of whom now believe Iraq was a mistake — will not follow him.
Finally, the President must answer in his heart this question — exactly how much more blood and money is he willing to plunge into a war for democracy in Iraq, and at what point must he decide — as LBJ and Nixon did in Vietnam — that the cost to America is so great that we must get out and risk the awful consequences of a mistaken war that we should never have launched?

A Year of Living Dangerously
by James Carroll

Published on Tuesday, December 28, 2004 by the Boston Globe

...2004 will be remembered not least as the year when the tragedy of Iraq showed itself fully for what it was, and when, nevertheless, those responsible for this catastrophe were recommissioned by voters to carry on.
I confess that, looking back on this recent American past, I find myself deeply saddened. If that note seems unduly grave, or partisan, for this festive week, apologies. In truth, few Americans seem happy with what we are becoming. The expansive sense of historic open-endedness, so palpable across all political divides a mere five years ago, as the year 2000 was dawning, has been replaced by a national claustrophobia, with the growing suspicion that we are hedged in by walls of our own creation.
Yes, fear and a sense of victimhood understandably stalked us in 2001, but instead of shaking those alien feelings off, we used them to construct an emergency garrison, from which we take aim at others, but which, also, is turning out to be our self-made brig.
Iraq, above all, is our prison, the place where America has taken its own self hostage. Thousands and thousands of men, women, and children who meant us no harm are now dead because of our striking out so blindly. And many more are living on the edge of disaster. But we Americans, too, are victims of our mistake. It is not only that options in Iraq seem so limited (How, exactly, do we get out? Well, by getting out), but also that the deathtrap of that war has come to define a vast shrinking of possibility, as the shape of our new century begins to actually show itself.
Only five years ago, the uncharted future was spread before us. We were an optimistic and confident people. Our firm membership in the global community was as clear as the televised sequence of midnight celebrations -- Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Delhi, Johannesburg, Paris -- that circled the earth at the glorious millennium. Watching that rotation on an axis of joy, the only "homeland" we wanted was the very planet, and our "security" was everyone's. The human family was never more aware of itself than that night, and we Americans were never more a part of it.
But this year, what a lonely nation we have become. And to how many fewer peoples are we the tribune of hope. How like exile is our "homeland," and what is "security" if it depends on suspicion of those who are unlike us?
The point of the New Year, traditionally, is to leave such brooding behind, but this broadly felt emotional weight is a warning that great things are at stake in America's argument with itself. Equally, it is a summons to resolution -- New Year's resolution -- to do nothing less, at last, than say no to the war in a way that will be heard.

The US isn't protecting or feeding Iraqis, it's stoking violence and hardship
by Naomi Klein
Published on Monday, December 27, 2004 by the Guardian/UK

Colin Powell invoked it before the invasion, telling aides that if the US went into Iraq "you're going to be owning this place". John Kerry pledged his allegiance to it during the first presidential debate, saying: "Now, if you break it, you made a mistake. It's the wrong thing to do. But you own it."
It's the so-called Pottery Barn rule: "You break it, you own it." Pottery Barn, a chain of stores that sells upmarket home furnishings in shopping malls across America, apparently has an in-store policy that if you shatter anything while shopping, you have to pay for it, because "you own it".
In US foreign policy, this little dictate has come to wield more influence than the Geneva conventions and the US army's law of land warfare combined - except it turns out that the rule doesn't even exist. "In the rare instance that something is broken in the store, it's written off as a loss," an exasperated company spokesperson recently told a journalist.
Never mind that. The imaginary policy of a store selling $80 corkscrews continues to be the favoured blunt instrument with which to whack anyone who dares to suggest that the time has come to withdraw troops from Iraq: sure the war was wrong, the argument goes, but we can't stop now - you break it, you own it...

© 2004 Guardian Newspapers, Ltd.

From Constantine to Bush, power has needed to stifle a revolutionary message
by Giles Fraser

Published on Friday, December 24, 2004 by the Guardian/UK

Every Sunday in church, Christians recite the Nicene Creed. "Who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven. And was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary and was made man; was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried; and the third day rose again according to the Scriptures." It's the official summary of the Christian faith but, astonishingly, it jumps straight from birth to death, apparently indifferent to what happened in between.
Nicene Christianity is the religion of Christmas and Easter, the celebration of a Jesus who is either too young or too much in agony to shock us with his revolutionary rhetoric. The adult Christ who calls his followers to renounce wealth, power and violence is passed over in favor of the gurgling baby and the screaming victim. As such, Nicene Christianity is easily conscripted into a religion of convenience, with believers worshipping a gagged and glorified savior who has nothing to say about how we use our money or whether or not we go to war...