...One of the most frequent uses of the Nation As Person metaphor comes in the almost daily attempts to justify the war metaphorically as a "just war." The basic idea of a just war uses the Nation As Person metaphor plus two narratives that have the structure of classical fairy tales: The Self Defense Story and The Rescue Story.

In each story, there is a Hero, a Crime, a Victim, and a Villain.

... In Gulf War II, Bush II is pushing different versions of the same two story types, and this explains a great deal of what is going on in the American press and in speeches by Bush and Powell. If they can show that Saddam = Al Qaeda - that he is helping or harboring Al Qaeda, then they can make a case for the Self-defense scenario, and hence for a just war on those grounds. Indeed, despite the lack of any positive evidence and the fact that the secular Saddam and the fundamentalist bin Laden despise each other, the Bush administration has managed to convince 40 per cent of the American public of the link, just by asserting it. The administration has told its soldiers the same thing, and so our military men see themselves as going to Iraq in defense of their country.

In the Rescue Scenario, the victims are (1) the Iraqi people and (2) Saddam's neighbors, whom he has not attacked, but is seen as "threatening." That is why Bush and Powell keep on listing Saddam's crimes against the Iraqi people and the weapons he could use to harm his neighbors. Again, most of the American people have accepted the idea that Gulf War II is a rescue of the Iraqi people and a safeguarding of neighboring countries. Of course, the war threatens the safety and well-being of the Iraqi people and will inflict considerable damage on neighboring countries like Turkey and Kuwait.

And why such enmity toward France and Germany? Via the Nation As Person metaphor, they are supposed to be our "friends" and friends are supposed to be supportive and jump in and help us when we need help. Friends are supposed to be loyal. That makes France and Germany fair-weather friends! Not there when you need them.

This is how the war is being framed for the American people by the Administration and media. Millions of people around the world can see that the metaphors and fairy tales don't fit the current situation, that Gulf War II does not qualify as a just war - a "legal" war. But if you accept all these metaphors, as Americans have been led to do by the administration, the press, and the lack of an effective Democratic opposition, then Gulf War II would indeed seem like a just war.

But surely most Americans have been exposed to the facts - the lack of a credible link between Saddam and al Qaeda and the idea that large numbers of innocent Iraqi civilians (estimates are around 500,000) will be killed or maimed by our bombs. Why don't they reach the rational conclusion?

One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors - conceptual structures like those we have been describing. The frames are in the synapses of our brains - physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don't fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored.

It is a common folk theory of progressives that "The facts will set you free!" If only you can get all the facts out there in the public eye, then every rational person will reach the right conclusion. It is a vain hope. Human brains just don't work that way. Framing matters. Frames once entrenched are hard to dispel.
...

This war is a symptom of a larger disease. The war will start presently. The fighting will be over before long. Where will the anti-war movement be then?

...As the war begins, we should look ahead to transforming the anti-war movement into a movement that powerfully articulates progressive values and changes the course of our nation to where those values take us. The war has begun a discussion about values. Let's continue it."

George Lakoff is the author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," University of Chicago Press, Second edition, 2002. He is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute.

The words used during war can have special significance - who can forget the classic "collateral damage" from the first Gulf War? E-cyclopedia will be keeping an eye out for the words being used in this conflict, and what they actually mean.

"The idiocy of this little man does not stop at making fabrications and feigning concern for the destiny of mankind, as though he were the absolute custodian of humanity, while his intent is to bring killing, destruction and death to humanity.

On this Full Moon evening (Pisces Sun, Virgo Moon--the "service" signs) I am feeling so much. A few of you have written recently and asked what I am feeling as we move toward war (or more precisely, what are my thoughts!) and this is such a hard question to answer. Of course I feel outrage and a deep sense of disbelief, all this on the surface potentially ready to explode into judgment and anger. But more deeply I have felt, and continue to feel, a deep sense of calm sadness over the inevitability of events, the "ripening of karma" as the Buddhists put it. After all, our government was not elected in the first place, and we didn't stop them, so it's hardly surprising that they are acting in ways that are not congruent with our interests. There is something much larger at work here.

One way to view it is through astrology, which shows a scenario more complex than the simple-minded events unfolding in the external daily reality. The chart of George Bush and the chart of Saddam Hussein are interlocking, along with the charts of the U.S. and Iraq. The transits to those charts are targeted in ways that seem almost supernatural, certainly fateful, and cause one to pause and reflect on destiny (both individual and collective), the ripening of karma, and the deeper reincarnational structure that holds us all in place.

The Vatican says anyone who gives up on peace will answer to God. For weeks, the Vatican has repeatedly spoken out against the possibility of war in Iraq. Pope John Paul says the use of force is a last resort and should only be considered after all peaceful means are exhausted.

The Vatican's short response to President Bush's ultimatum for Saddam Hussein says anyone who believes peace is exhausted "assumes a grave responsibility before God, his own conscience and history."

George W. Bush, with his no-frills education, may believe that God or Moses, or some other sacred advisor, gave us this as a commandment: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

It was in fact the Babylonian king Hammurabi who said it first. And he wasn't urging his own people to be more ferocious, more bloodthirsty. He was trying to make them less so. He was saying, in effect, that if you must seek revenge, you are entitled to this much of it, and not one bit more. Otherwise, you will create more people entitled to closure, until everybody in Babylonia is going to be seeking closure, and our once great country will go down the toilet of history.

Which it did.

And I thank you for your attention.

'But the Trojans dismissed the warnings as "windy nonsense" and sealed their fate. We Americans are the Greeks of our day, and as we now go to war, we should appreciate not only the beauty of the tale, but also the warnings within it.'

Many people in the world today are concerned about the current situation in Mesopotamia, specifically, the threat of war between the United States and Iraq. This is holy ground, home of one of the most ancient and venerable civilizations on Earth. A major war in this region would be a great tragedy not only for the people of region, but for all peoples everywhere. We wish to pray for peace by appealing to the oldest Goddess known from anywhere in the world, Inanna. She was worshipped thousands of years ago by the direct ancestors of the present-day Iraqi peoples. She was called Inanna when the region was known as Sumer, Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, and Virgin Mary by later civilizations.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The deliberations at the UN over possible military action in Iraq have featured thousands of pages of documents and hours and hours of debate, not to mention all the press conferences, Op-Ed articles and pure speculation that have filled the airwaves in the last few months. But even after all of that evidence and discussion, commentator Peter Freundlich still wants to express the trouble he's having trying to make sense of the argument to go to war.

PETER FREUNDLICH:
All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right?

Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it.

Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard. We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition. We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.

Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, `We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,' but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that.

As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident.

NORRIS: Peter Freundlich is a freelance journalist in New York. Tomorrow, we will hear a different view about the appropriate use of military force.

t has been plain for weeks that the US military timetable is dictating events. That is the principal reason why Britain has run out of time for its "second resolution". Yesterday the unjustly vilified French offered yet another compromise. The inspections process is still ongoing; Hans Blix is due to set out Iraq's next disarmament tasks in a report this week. Iraq itself is still voluntarily destroying missiles that it might well prefer to keep given the threat it faces. It has invited Mr Blix to pay another visit. If Mr Blair and Mr Bush arbitrarily wreck this process now, as seems certain, they will be branded warmongers by most of the world. And they will make their own peoples targets for terrorist retribution.

Whatever the attorney general may say in the Lords today, the pretence that the US and Britain are acting legally in circumventing the UN is preposterous. Resolution 1441, upon which their case mainly rests, invoked, embraced and superseded all previous Iraq-related resolutions. It specifically did not authorise the use of military force. If it had, it simply would not have been passed. Mr Blair and Mr Bush also risk breaching the UN charter, as Kofi Annan notes. They have no legal mandate to attack, let alone a mandate for regime change and an indefinite occupation. Rarely has war been launched from such shaky ground. Rarely have a war's proponents been so blind, so wrong and in such a rush.

Would-be emperors must now assume they are naked. Sophisticated analysts exist on all continents with the information and capability to discern when someone attempts to pull the wool over the world's eyes. Cross-cultural communication has dramatically increased the sharing of insights that pierce the veil of secret transnational agendas. They expose oil profiteering by covert supporters of war. They identify lucrative business connections (arms dealers and defense contractors) that will benefit from war regardless of who wins. They describe hidden conflicts, like the US-European competition over the role of the dollar versus the euro in energy markets. They point out the power of personal vendettas and egos in political decision making. The US is in a fishbowl.

The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.

This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.

The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'.

Julie:

What do we do? You know what I'm talking about? Is there anything we can do?

Love,
A.S.

...and the Win Without War coalition, together with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and many faith-based organizations, are calling this vigil, and we need your help.

... You can make your local vigil as small or as big as you wish. The important thing is to act now and to add your efforts to the efforts of thousands of others around the world. Whether you plan a gathering with just your closest friends, or organize an event for thousands, you will be making a difference. ..

Immediately afterward, please report your vigil to our web site or to photos@moveon.org, with digital photographs if possible. If you know how, please crop and resize your photos to approximately 200h x 150v pixels and send them in .jpg format. Please include the city, location and country of your vigil. We will compile the reports and photos for the media.

.. P.P.S. Yesterday, we delivered to the 15 United Nations Security Council members anti-war comments from one million people around the world, gathered last week in just five days. 180 boxes of your petitions were delivered, which drew extensive media attention. It now appears that the Bush administration's resolution on Iraq will fail to garner Security Council support, and world public opinion has been a key part of this. Thank you!

The town's council, or Board of Aldermen, have passed a resolution declaring April "French trade month", and will be encouraging residents to buy as many French products as they can all month in protest at the action.

"It's kind of tongue in cheek but we also have a serious message," Joal Hall Broun, one of the aldermen, told BBC News Online. "France is right to try to avoid war - we're sick of all this anti-French stuff, it's dumb.

He insisted war was right, despite the overwhelming public opinion against it.

Here, 11 high-profile women, including some who appeared on Monday's show, tell why we should not be joining George Bush's battle trail.

Some speak as mothers worried that innocent children will suffer. Others voice their disgust at the macho ravings of a US president hell-bent on war whatever the human cost.

... MO MOWLAM, Ex-Northern Ireland Secretary is clear: Bombs will not beat terror

IF we go to war, it will fail. You don't beat terrorism with bombs and guns.

They simply act as a recruiting agent for terrorism, encourage the civilian population to hate us and make them willing to hide terrorists and weapons....

ROSIE BOYCOTT, Writer & broadcaster: US bribery makes a new art of cynicism

THE slow handclap that greeted the end of Tony Blair's interview with a group of women spoke volumes. They were unconvinced by the need for the war.

Aren't wars a thing of the past? Isn't the modern way forward the power of politics and persuasion, of sanctions and economics? Hans Blix says the weapons inspectors must be given more time.

Bush and his poodle ignore him. Neither will rethink until bombs have rained on Baghdad, even if the war is illegal under the UN charter.

This war will cause huge unrest in the Middle East. Meantime, Mr Bush does nothing to curb Israel's continual flaunting of UN rules - 68 to Saddam's 17. One law for the rich and one for the poor? You bet.

Watching the US and UK - and, it must be said, the French - bribe and cajole the junior members of the Security Council to vote their way by threatening their pockets makes a new art of cynicism. If we go to war without UN sanction, the organisation the world created to ensure peace will be in tatters. It's a frightening prospect

SHATHA BESAVANI, Member of the Iraqi Community Association slow-clapped Blair

TONY Blair was disappointing. We did not have enough time to talk to him.

When I told other women from the Iraqi Community Association that I was going to meet Tony Blair, they were crying and asking me to tell him their stories - one woman lost her sister and six children when they were bombed by a American warplane.

I hate Saddam Hussein's regime, I lost members of my family. My cousin was taken by the regime 23 years ago and the last we heard he was still in jail. The last time I saw him I hardly recognised him he had been so badly tortured.

There have been rumours that Saddam intends to poison political prisoners before the US and UK armies arrive. He will use chemical weapons on the Iraqi people. That means hundreds of thousands of innocent people dying. They will suffer the most from an invasion.

At home, Labour party chiefs fear the PM's opponents will try to force an emergency conference to hold him to account for flouting the will of the world community.

Mr Blair looked haggard yesterday at No.10 talks with key ministers.

His critics believe the 122-strong rebellion against the Government two weeks ago will be dwarfed if Britain backs US go-it-alone action.