 Thanks very much Jackie. It's really nice having you introduce me. I also do want to thank all the sponsors for pulling this event together and inviting me up to Vancouver again. It's always wonderful to be back here and makes me think of how can I become a Canadian? I'm only half joking about that. And especially I want to thank Irene McInnes. I met Irene when I was actually still living in Anchorage. And she came up to show footage and photos and give a talk on what was happening in Iraq during the sanctions period. And it was at St. Mary's Church on Lake Otis and Tudor in Anchorage. And I remember that it was a sunny Sunday afternoon if I remember the right correctly. And it was a during the build up to the war with Iraq. And that presentation impacted me deeply and just seeing the footage and seeing inside the hospitals and seeing the people. That certainly played a part in my deciding to go. So it's wonderful that we've stayed in touch and that you've helped me come up to Vancouver again. So thanks a lot Irene. And I also want to thank Billy and Karnuk for letting me stay in your wonderful apartment. It's a lovely place and thanks for putting me up. And now it gets depressing. To talk about Iraq, tonight I basically want to do a few things. One, talk about very briefly why I did decide to go and then talk about what's happening on the ground right now in Iraq. Because specifically at this time we're in the midst of a pretty amazing propaganda campaign that is basically telling people that things are better in Iraq. Things are better even people are coming back to their homes and this sort of thing. And so I want to go into some great detail about what specifically is happening on the ground in Iraq today and why the situation is where it is exactly. And I want to read a little bit from the book. I promise not to read to you too much and I'll definitely be doing more talking. But especially with this audience, I won't spend a lot of time talking about why the US invaded Iraq. I imagine the common denominator in this audience is high enough that I don't need to spend too much time on that. Particularly in light of the fact that we have this interesting phenomena happening in the United States today that generals, high-ranking generals, very high-ranking generals that are now retiring. And I think there's about seven or eight now that have retired kind of almost become like a trend or this kind of fatty thing to do for these high-ranking generals to retire and then become critical of the war or how the invasion was run or how the occupation is being run or of the Bush administration itself as Ricardo Sanchez was doing just a couple of months ago. And it's interesting because these generals retire and then all of a sudden this phenomena happens and their testicles drop and then they start lashing out and they find this courage and they start lashing out at the administration. And I always ask myself, you really believe that so much, then why did you keep doing what you were doing before you retired? But anyway, that aside, the latest addition to the Newfound Testicle Club is former SINTCOM Commander General John Abizade. He's now part of the Hoover Institute, otherwise known as a very conservative think tank. It's Stanford University. It's also referred to as Bush's brain trust. And so big shocker John Abizade has a gig with Hoover Institute now. And he was speaking there at Stanford in the middle of this past October about the Iraq War and he said, quote, for anyone who still in doubt what this war was about. Of course it's about oil. We can't really deny that. We've treated the Arab world as a collection of big gas stations. Our message to them is, guys keep your pumps open, prices low, be nice to the Israelis, and you can do whatever you want out back. And then a little bit later on October 31st, when he was speaking at Carnegie Mellon University, Abizade told the audience that it may well be 50 years before the United States leaves the Middle East, in case there's any doubt. But I do want to back up and take us back to really the launching of the PR campaign to sell the Iraq War idea to the American public and to the rest of the world. And I want to take us back to September 6th, 2002 to do this, because it was on that day that the then White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, when speaking about the PR campaign for the Iraq War, told reporters in public, quote, from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August. I didn't, with few exceptions, I didn't see much mainstream media IRAs about this statement at all. I mean, a White House Chief of Staff talking about a PR campaign and war in the same sentence. But launch a PR campaign for war is exactly what he did, because literally on the very next day, on September 7th, 2002, George Bush and Tony Blair stood together at Camp David and declared that they had evidence from the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency report that showed that Iraq was six months away from building nuclear weapons. The problem was no such IRA report ever existed, but we know that. But now I want to play a little trick, just let's suspend reality for a moment and pretend that we had legitimate journalism in the establishment media. And we're back at September 7th, 2002. So just pretend that all the big newspapers, all the big TV stations have legitimate journalists really doing their job, really digging for the facts, really holding the centers of power to account for the claims that they make and the things that they do. And that Bush and Blair make this outrageous statement claiming they have that evidence from a UNIAA report that actually doesn't exist. So in this world of legitimate journalism, we would assume then the next day, for example, perhaps the most reputable newspaper in the United States, The New York Times, certainly the most prestigious, that the front page story should have been, the lead story should have been something like Bush and Blair cite a report as evidence that actually doesn't exist. Something along these lines should have been the story because I, as a mountain climber in Anchorage, Alaska, using the internet to read UN Weapons Inspectors' reports, LeMonde, LeMonde Diplomatique, The Independent, The Guardian, basically anything except US mainstream media news, I knew when they said that, that it was bogus. And I would imagine that most of you in this room probably knew that, too. But nevertheless, the very next day, instead of, okay, so let's go back to reality, no legitimate journalism with few exceptions in the establishment media. And the very next day on September 8, 2002, the lead story in The New York Times co-authored by none other than Judith Miller and Michael Gordon of WMD Notoriety, Michael Gordon, of course, still writing for The Times, and they proudly quoted their favorite source, anonymous Bush administration officials, as saying, quote, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb. And a little bit more about the way this propaganda system worked, and this has all come out now. This is not me breaking any new information. It's very well known, especially at least in journalism circles. But the way that this worked, for example, Judith Miller, very prominent journalist with The New York Times, has security clearance at the Pentagon. She's regularly going into the Pentagon, being fed this information by her anonymous Bush administration officials. She's coming back to The Times, writing this up. The story runs on September 8 on literally the same day, Cheney goes on national television, claiming Iraq is six months away from getting nuclear weapons. Look, even The New York Times is reporting this. And so it went over and over and over for months and months and months. And watching that happen before my very eyes, that for me was my red line. That's when my red line got crossed. I was completely outraged at what I was seeing and felt that the states had to be up a bit if anything was going to change. And so that was when my red line got crossed and I decided to go to Iraq. And I would argue that the coverage is...