Some resent the term "class warfare," but what a great description for our headlong rush to war with Iraq: Class Warfare. Ask yourself, "Who will benefit and who will pay?"

While there is no evidence of a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaida, there ARE many indications that war with Iraq will energize Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Why would anyone want that?

Plans were prepared for a war with Iraq BEFORE the attack of September 11. How could those plans result from an act of terrorism which had not yet occurred and which, by its own statement, the administration could not have anticipated?

If America's goal is to protect Iraq's neighbors, why are all its neighbors except Israel against the war? If our goal is to protect the larger world from a mad man, why has the rest of the world been so loath to support us?

Should young American men and women - most of whom are NOT from the privileged class - suffer or die in a war which will not reduce domestic terrorism, which will alienate the Arab world, which is at best only nominally supported by our allies, which will kill and

Thursday, Dec. 5, my friend Dr. Pete Livingston filed suit in Federal Court in Oakland, Calif., seeking declaratory relief to uphold his right to distribute the documentary "Over 9 Billion Dead Served." The feature-length film, a passionate anti-war commentary, is almost entirely comprised of clips from the 25 biggest box-office movies. Pete contends that his film is protected by the fair use doctrine. The fair use doctrine is designed to protect the use of copyrighted material without permission for the purposes of criticism and education.

Livingston's company, Not the Enemy Media, is currently being blocked by legal threats from Fox Entertainment Group, Columbia and Universal Studios. Film companies have denied Livingston permission to use even a single frame of their material. Universal went so far as to demand that Pete tear apart his documentary and remove the portions of their material.

Two hours past midnight on April 7, 2001, a nineteen-year-old black man, Timothy Dewayne Thomas, was shot and killed by a police officer in Cincinnati's inner-city neighborhood called Over-the-Rhine. The police officer, Thomas Roach, claimed that Thomas had fled from police on foot when they had approached him. In hot pursuit, Roach headed off Thomas at the end of an alley. Roach fired his weapon because, according to one version of events he later gave investigators, it appeared that Thomas was reaching into the waistband of his oversized pants. Thomas, shot once, was unarmed.

Thomas had been the fifteenth African-American male who had been killed by the Cincinnati police, and the fourth in the previous six months. As word spread the next day about Thomas's killing, many residents in Over-the-Rhine as well as black neighborhoods throughout the city were overwhelmed with grief and outrage. Spontaneously, people went into the streets, venting their hostility against the symbols of white power and property.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Good grief. I turn my back for 10 minutes, and they bring back the old War Criminal.

Two generations of Americans have come to adulthood since Henry Kissinger last held political power, so I need to explain that War Criminal is not an affectionate sobriquet: The man is, in fact, a war criminal -- wanted for questioning in Chile, Argentina and France (concerning French citizens who disappeared in Chile). He cannot travel to Britain, Brazil and many other countries because they cannot guarantee his immunity from legal proceedings.

In addition to his role in the Chilean coup that brought the regime of Gen. Pinochet to power, Kissinger is wanted for questioning about the international terrorist network called Operation Condor, which conducted killings, kidnappings and bombings in several countries, including this one -- the 1976 bombing in Washington, D.C., that killed a noted Chilean dissident and his companion.

A dozen years after the Gulf War, public perceptions of it are now very helpful to the White House. That's part of a timeworn pattern. Illusions about previous wars make the next one seem acceptable. As George Orwell observed: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."

It's not unusual to hear journalists and politicians say that the Gulf War had few casualties. Considering the magnitude of media spin, that myth is hardly surprising. "When the air war began in January 1991," recalls Patrick J. Sloyan, who covered the Gulf War as a Newsday correspondent, "the media was fed carefully selected footage by (Gen. Norman) Schwarzkopf in Saudi Arabia and (Gen. Colin) Powell in Washington, DC. Most of it was downright misleading."

In an essay written as a fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation this year, Sloyan describes "limitations imposed on reporters on the battlefield" in 1991: "Under rules developed by (Defense Secretary Dick) Cheney and Powell, journalists were not allowed to move without military escorts. All interviews had to be monitored by military public affairs