Please forward and send out to everyone you can!!

Enough from us, why don't you check out the statement released
by Ward
Churchill yesterday (1-31-05):

"In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly
inaccurate
media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11,
2001 attacks
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has
resulted
in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What
I
actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of
itself,
and I hope the following facts will be reported at least to the
same
extent that the fabrications have been.

* The piece circulating on the internet was developed into a
book, On
the Justice of Roosting Chickens. Most of the book is a detailed
chronology of U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S.
violations of
international law since World War II. My point is that we cannot
allow
the U.S. government, acting in our name, to engage in massive
violations
of international law and fundamental human rights and not
expect to
reap the consequences.

* I am not a "defender"of the September 11 attacks, but simply
pointing
out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and
destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of
that destruction is
returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in
armed attacks
on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and
unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin
Luther King, quoting
Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change
impossible
make violent change inevitable."

* This is not to say that I advocate violence; as a U.S. soldier in
Vietnam I witnessed and participated in more violence than I
ever wish to
see. What I am saying is that if we want an end to violence,
especially
that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility
for
halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the
world. My feelings are reflected in Dr. King's April 1967 Riverside
speech,
where, when asked about the wave of urban rebellions in U.S.
cities, he
said, "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of
the
oppressed . . . without having first spoken clearly to the greatest
purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."

* In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN and
soon to be
U.S. Secretary of State, did not dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children
had died as a result of economic sanctions, but stated on
national
television that "we" had decided it was "worth the cost." I mourn
the victims
of the September 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those
Iraqi
children, the more than 3 million people killed in the war in
Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada,
Panama and elsewhere
in Central America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade,
and
the indigenous peoples still subjected to genocidal policies. If
we
respond with callous disregard to the deaths of others, we can
only expect
equal callousness to American deaths.

* Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims
as
"Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working
in the
World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns."
Adolf
Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring
the smooth
running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide.
Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the
Allies.

* It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that
a
CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the
logic
by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have
consistently sought
to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement
of
an element of the American "command and control
infrastructure" in an
ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a
"legitimate" target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as
announced
in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but
were
nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than
"collateral
damage." If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these
"standards" when
the are routinely applied to other people, they should be not be
surprised when the same standards are applied to them.

* It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns"
characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it
was
obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service
workers,
firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack.
According to
Pentagon logic, were simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly?
Yes.
Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or
dehumanizing
a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone
else. If
we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must
refuse
to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our
name.

* The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps
only way
to prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens
to
compel their government to comply with the rule of law. The
lesson of
Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation. To
the
extent we shirk this responsibility, we, like the "Good Germans"
of the
1930s and '40s, are complicit in its actions and have no
legitimate
basis for complaint when we suffer the consequences. This, of
course,
includes me, personally, as well as my family, no less than
anyone else.

* These points are clearly stated and documented in my book,
On the
Justice of Roosting Chickens, which recently won Honorary
Mention for the
Gustavus Myer Human Rights Award, for best writing on human
rights.
Some people will, of course, disagree with my analysis, but it
presents
questions that must be addressed in academic and public
debate if we are
to find a real solution to the violence that pervades today's world.
The gross distortions of what I actually said can only be viewed
as an
attempt to distract the public from the real issues at hand and to
further stifle freedom of speech and academic debate in this
country.

Ward Churchill
Boulder, Colorado
January 31, 2005"