I doubt that many of you will have seen Dan Rowe's article "Dundurn drops controversial book" in the Online edition (Friday, April 30) of Quill and Quire.

There may have been other Canadian media stories of which I have not yet become aware.

On April 13, Anna Synenko, a Jewish employee of Dundurn Press of Toronto (the Promotion Co-ordinator) e-mailed me saying that she was both "Jewish" and "offended" by my book Swords at Sunset slated for mid-May publication. Synenko refused to help promote the upcoming book. Synenko also stated that her bosses at Dundurn were on her side. She e-mailed me twice on April 13 to emphasize her point.

But since late March I had been hearing rumours of some sort of concerted Jewish opposition to the book from my telephone, in-person and e-mail contacts with Dundurn Press. I even confided to some close friends that it seemed "iffy" that Dundurn would actually have the courage to publish the book. These rumours and the associated anxiety contributed to my hospitalization between April 1 and 5.

However, it was this first documented communication of "Jewish offense" from Anna Synenko on April 13 that officially started the situation. Dan Rowe at Quill and Quire avoided having to admit any overtly Jewish role in the affair by simply refusing to quote directly from Anna Synenko's April 13th e-mails. This sort of thing apparently passes for responsible journalism in Canada.

On April 19, Dundurn's President, Kirk Howard, assured Michael Bradley that although he "valued" Synenko's opinion, he -- and only he -- made the publishing decisions at Dundurn. His decision was to continue, as planned, with publication. Kirk Howard explained over the phone to Michael Bradley that "advance orders for Swords at Sunset had been substantial (apparently between 800-900 copies)."

But he also asked me to assist with promotion as much as possible by writing Press Releases and contacting the media on my own. Obviously, Kirk Howard did not feel in any position to demand that Anna Synenko should just do the job she was being paid to do whether she "liked" any given book Dundurn might publish or not.

On April 23 (I believe), Dundurn sent John Robert Colombo, the well-known Canadian writer, a copy of the text of Swords at Sunset by courier so that John Robert could write a Foreword for the book -- the final component necessary before going to press for mid-May release.

John Robert Colombo had previously written an "Appreciative Foreword" for Bradley's first Grail-related book, Holy Grail Across the Atlantic (Hounslow Press, Toronto, 1988). Both Barry Jowett (Editorial Director at Dundurn) and Michael Bradley thought it fitting if John Robert would also write a Foreword for the third and final book of Bradley's Grail trilogy.

John Robert Colombo's Foreword was completed and e-mailed to both Michael Bradley and Dundurn Press on Wednesday, April 28, 2004. Admitting that Swords at Sunset was certainly "politically incorrect" in some respects, Colombo nonetheless wrote: "I found Swords at Sunset to be an astonishing work of speculative non-fiction".

John Robert Colombo also said: "I truly enjoyed some of the author's insights and statements. They are worthy of [Robert L.] Ripley (Colombo's favourite unconventional author) which I quote here because they illustrate major themes of the book." Colombo then gave a selected list of his favourite quotes from Swords at Sunset.

Colombo, later in his Foreword, also gave a list of statements with which he disagreed.

Indeed, I had hoped that John Robert Colombo would consent to write a Foreword for Swords at Sunset precisely because I knew that I could rely upon his sense of objectivity (which, I admit, I've sometimes in exasperation called "fence-sitting"). But the bottom line is that my readers deserve no less than objectivity in an introduction to an admittedly very controversial book.

But Canadian readers will not have a chance to decide for themselves whether Swords at Sunset is "an astonishing work of speculative non-fiction"...or whether it isn't.

One Jewish employee at Dundurn Press, in apparent co-operation with other unnamed "Jewish organizations", have decided for them.

On April 28, the very same day that Colombo had completed and transmitted his Foreword to both Michael Bradley and Dundurn Press, Kirk Howard e-mailed to Bradley and also some Canadian media that "Swords at Sunset had NOT been accepted for publication."

And the inferrence was that it had never been accepted for publication by Dundurn Press.

In actual fact, the publication contract for Swords at Sunset had been signed on September 22, 2003 and most of the text (much of it previously written between 1998 and 2003) had been delivered by the end of October 2003. I, Michael Bradley, had accepted Dundurn's editing of "highly controversial" Chapter 7 in January 2004.

Because of Kirk Howard's ambiguous and frankly dishonest wording of his April 28 e-mail to Michael Bradley and the media, Val Ross of Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper snidely assumed that Michael Bradley had perpetrated a "hoax" by writing one of his Press Releases about Dundurn's upcoming publication of Swords at Sunset. Ross wrote Michael Bradley an e-mail to this effect on April 29.

In his telephone interview with me, also on April 29, Dan Rowe told me that Quill and Quire had received "other complaints" from "Jewish organizations" that he refused to identify. Obviously, Anna Synenko had been busy "networking" since her April 13th e-mails to Michael Bradley.

The actual facts, instead of Quill and Quire's deftly-juggled "journalistic" ones, are easy to demonstrate. I have sequential e-mails from Dundurn Press and John Robert Colombo (hard copies that can be faxed) to prove the actual evolution of events...if anyone truly cares, that is.

This campaign of Jewish suppression of a Canadian book should be of interest to members of the Canadian Senate and Commons, the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

In today's politically correct jargon, this incident should be of interest to anyone who is concerned with preserving "diversity of opinion". That means, in old-fashioned terms, "freedom of speech".

This incident should also be of interest to the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- but that would certainly asking too much and would also be like carrying coal to Newcastle anyway. Most Canadians know too well who created the Human Rights Commission, why it was created and the primary group it was intended to serve.

Jewish media influence has mocked Canadian freedom of expression yet again. Global-Canwest-Asper newspaper tactics have now infiltrated Canadian book publishing.

But why was there so much Jewish "offense" over this particular book, Swords at Sunset?

What was this Jewish fuss all about?

Well, if you are interested in North American and Canadian history, and also interested in religious history, then Swords at Sunset would have been one of the most provocative books that you could have read this year.

However, I can think of other Canadian-authored books that would have been just as fascinating too, and almost as provocative, like Tom Harpur's recent The Pagan Christ.

But if you are urgently concerned with the chronic Middle East conflict, if you "hope" for Middle East peace and yearn for the prospects of a civilized world's survival, then Swords at Sunset would have been the most important book you could ever have read up until 2004.

This is simply because the panorama of Western history, culture and religion was combined in Swords at Sunset, for the first time in one place, with significant and recent anthropological and geographic discoveries.

What you've always worried about and wondered about, and maybe sometimes even suspected, was put into objective scientific terms in Swords at Sunset...at least, that is, insofar as the relevant scientific facts are presently known.

And that is exactly why Swords at Sunset was suppressed.

***********

Not that it is strictly relevant to the subject of this rather too-long "Press Release", but it is nonetheless a matter of fact, that Michael Bradley was hospitalized twice for heart failure at St. Joseph's Health Centre while all this was going on.

I was hospitalized April 1- 5, was at Emergency but chose not to be admitted on April 9, and was hospitalized again April 24-25.

Michael Bradley had been warned to avoid stress! Kirk Howard, Barry Jowett and other Dundurn employees had known about Michael Bradley's heart problems since February 2002.

At least two cardiologists who treated Michael Bradley at St. Joseph's Health Centre will testify that stress associated with the rumours and actual attempts to suppress his book was a contributing factor, at least, to a total of six days of hospitalization in the Cardiac Care Unit.

Michael Bradley herewith reserves the future right to take legal action for appropriate damages against Dundurn Press and Anna Synenko.

Michael Bradley refuses to experience any further stress over this matter and refers all queries to Dundurn Press (416) 214-5544. Kirk Howard is ext. 30. Barry Jowett is ext. 29. It was Dundurn's lack of editorial courage and integrity that precipitated this problem in the first place. Kirk Howard and Dundurn can deal with the consequences.

But Michael Bradley's wife, Joelle Lauriol, may be willing to answer questions (as she chooses). She can sometimes be reached at (416) 535-8881, ext. 203. But she works part-time. Joelle Lauriol is fluently bilingual in both spoken and written French and English. She is fully familiar with this situation.

Michael Bradley and Joelle Lauriol plan to relocate back to Europe as soon as Michael is able to travel comfortably.

Freedom of responsible expression seems to be an endangered species in North America due to inordinate Jewish media influence and control. Facts, not mere ignorant prejudice, are now being censored.

Freedom of expression has apparently become all but totally extinct in Canada due to the same cause. And I say this as one of the few Jews in North America that can actually trace a family lineage back to the so-called "Holy Land."

Swords at Sunset was to have been the completion of a promise made after I was attacked by the Ku Klux Klan (http://www.geocities.com/michaelbradley2003 -- "Michael Bradley and the Crucible of the Holy Grail", written originally for Vision-TV) almost fifty years ago in August 1954.

Swords at Sunset therefore WILL be published. It is the culmination of my life's work.

Some illustrations may be available for pre-publication articles.

Such a statment may seem strange in view of Dundurn's apparently irrevocable repudiation of Swords at Sunset.

However, Hounslow Press, which merged with a couple of other publishers to form the Dundurn Group, once repudiated even Holy Grail Across the Atlantic before its agreed-upon publication date back in 1988.

Hounslow's president and owner, Tony Hawke, had last-minute jitters that the book was much too controversial. Tony's wife, Dutch-born Liedewei, finally calmed him down and told him just to go ahead and publish the book! Holy Grail Across the Atlantic proved to be one of Hounslow's most profitable titles. After sixteen years it is still selling.

Therefore, at least for the moment (given this prior experience with Hounslow), I do not consider Dundurn's decision as being absolutely final.

However, in the case of Swords at Sunset, I retained electronic book rights "just in case" and am prepared to release a CD-ROM version of Swords at Sunset at very short notice. Given the situation, if it actually continues, I will also put out a paperback edition of Swords at Sunset regardless of the legal ramifications or repercussions.

For further information contact Kirk Howard at Dundurn Press, 8 Market Street, Toronto, (416) 214-5544 ext. 30, e-mail jkh@dundurn.com.

Or contact Joelle Lauriol at (416) 535-8881, ext. 203. e-mail jolauriol@yahoo.com. She has the illustrations ready for the CD-ROM version and also for any print edition that JBL E-Publishing decides to release. Some of these illustrations could be used for newspaper and magazine articles.

**************

Now, for all you supposedly "inquisitive" and "courageous" Canadian journalists, lawmakers and cultural leaders out there, here's the publishing background and some idea of the content of Swords at Sunset.

Anti-Semitic?

Anti-Islamic?

Anti-Neanderthal?

Or just the historical and anthropological facts as they are presently known?

Swords at Sunset: The Last Stand of North America’s Grail Knights is ostensibly just the third and final book in Michael Bradley’s trilogy about a group of religious refugees – believers in the medieval "Holy Grail" heresy of Christianity – that sought a haven from the Inquisition in Canada.

The first book of the trilogy, Holy Grail Across the Atlantic (Hounslow Press, Toronto,1988) was about the arrival in Nova Scotia of these refugees from the Orkney Isles under the leadership of nobleman Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and Baron of Rosslyn (AD 1345-1400). According to a document known as "The Zeno Narrative", Sinclair’s refugees established a "city" in Nova Scotia in AD 1398 – almost a century before Christopher Columbus (1492) and John Cabot (1497) supposedly first crossed the Atlantic.

Holy Grail Across the Atlantic enjoyed considerable popular success in Canada, selling almost 20,000 copies in several printings although it was generally ridiculed by Canada’s established historians. The book inspired several "clones", including Andrew Sinclair’s The Sword and the Grail (1992), Mark Finnan’s The Sinclair Saga (1999) and American author Steven Sora’s The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar (1999).

In 1995, however, the Royal Nova Scotia Museum recovered sixty-three metal fragments of European origin in three Mi'kmaq ("Micmac") Indian sites (Pictou, Avonport and Northport, all in Nova Scotia). The fragments were pieces of "from six to thirteen metal pots" (two of which were virtually complete), according to analysis of the fragments' metallic impurities by the University of Toronto’s SLOWPOKE nuclear reactor. Since these metal fragments all dated from about AD 1400 to AD 1450 according to accepted Mi'kmaq stratigraphy, Bradley’s assertions in Holy Grail Across the Atlantic have gained considerable scientific support.

The second book of the trilogy published ten years later, Grail Knights of North America (The Dundurn Group, Toronto, 1998) presented the evidence of twenty artefacts indicating that the original Nova Scotia "Grail Refugees" and their descendants had probed inland toward the Great Lakes Basin along at least five major river routes. Bradley speculated in this book that they were seeking convenient sources of metal with which to sustain their medieval European lifestyle.

Because of several artefacts discovered in Potton Township on the shores of Lake Memphremagog, about one hundred kilometres south of Montreal, Bradley concluded that the original Nova Scotia Grail Refugees had established an inland concentration of their population along the shores of this lake. Long and narrow Lake Memphremagog is near the source of four of the five river routes where Grail-era artefacts have been discovered.

One of the artifacts is a twenty-metre-long stone dam that was radiocarbon dated by professional Quebec archaeologists to about AD 1450. The dating, done at U.of T.'s Isotech Labs, was performed on hemlock wood surveyor's stakes that had been recovered during provincially-sponsored excavations. These stakes had defined the slight upstream curve of the dam's configuration. But only an established and relatively populous community needs a dam for a mill.

This settlement, mainly on the western shore of Lake Memphremagog, was actually founded, Bradley believes, by about AD 1425-1450 in the foothills of the Green Mountains on the border of Quebec and Vermont.

Although the Quebec government became interested in the Memphremagog sites as early as 1997-1998 when an Arts and Entertainment Network documentary was produced at the dam by Greystone Productions of Los Angeles, the only English-language Canadian coverage of the artefacts has been a few short newspaper articles that Bradley was able to sell to English Canadian media.

Since the publication of Grail Knights of North America in 1998, at least three other apparently European pre-colonial artefacts have been independently discovered on the western shores of Lake Memphremagog.

In the third and final book of the trilogy, Swords at Sunset, Michael Bradley claims to have located yet another Grail Refugee settlement on the Niagara Escarpment. "Obviously," says Bradley, "the reason for this settlement was to allow navigation ‘above the (Niagara) Falls’ by using the Upper Great Lakes to reach toward the interior of the North American continent."

But the settlement in the Green Mountains near Lake Memphremagog and the one on the Niagara Escarpment were both wiped out about AD 1571 due to conflict with the rising power of the Iroquois Confederacy. Bradley’s source for this date is an admittedly speculative interpretation of the Book of Mormon. But Bradley is quick to point out that the dates of artefacts actually discovered on the Niagara Escarpment do roughly match his interpretation of dates given in the Book of Mormon. "Either the founding Prophet of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, actually discovered some sort of record and was able to read the gist of it – or else we’re faced with some astounding coincidences," Bradley maintains.

The well-known Canadian author, John Robert Colombo, has agreed to write a Foreword for Swords at Sunset, just as he wrote an "Appreciative Foreword" for Holy Grail Across the Atlantic to introduce Bradley's trilogy sixteen years ago.

If that was all that Michael Bradley had to say in Swords at Sunset, it would still be a "controversial" book for Canadian history buffs, perhaps, but it would not be so potentially offensive to major religious groups – or so potentially relevant to understanding history's pattern of Western expansion and today’s Middle East conflicts.

But Bradley, in the final chapter of this last book of the trilogy, undertakes to explain what the "Holy Grail" really was.

And this explanation purports to make the religious history of the Western world from the Atlantic to western India explicable. This highly controversial and outspoken final Chapter 7 can be viewed on Michael Bradley's web site at http://www.geocities.com/michaelbradley2003. It is necessary to scroll about two-thirds of the way down the Home Page to find the Swords at Sunset link.

Chapter 7 of Swords at Sunset would turn our traditional religious ideas and loyalties upside down.

Bradley argues that the so-called "Holy Grail" was the original symbol of the Cro-Magnon people of Western Europe who travelled, mainly via the Mediterranean, its major rivers and lowlands, all the way to western India.

The Holy Grail was symbolic of the all-regenerating womb of the Great Fertility Goddess who was continually fertilized by her husband-son, the Good Shepherd. Bradley cites the work of French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, as well as the research of UCLA Professor Emeritus of Archaeology Dr. Marija Gimbutas, in support of this idea.

According to Bradley, the Great Goddess gradually evolved into "Mary" (both the Virgin and the Magdalene) of the New Testament and Her Good Shepherd husband-son consort gradually became the figure we know as Jesus. That is, according to Michael Bradley, the earliest Christianity was polytheistic, having revered representatives of both genders, and the legend of the Holy Grail was a medieval remembrance of this former religious orientation.

Therefore, Bradley argues, the religion of the "Holy Grail" was, and is, nothing more than a reflection of the earliest form of Christianity or "Messiah reverence".

Another extremely controversial 2004 book, Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ, argues much the same idea and presents some of the same archaeological evidence.

And what about monotheism?

In his startlingly outspoken Chapter 7 of Swords at Sunset, Bradley re-introduces the geographical and anthropological arguments of his first major book to gain international recognition, The Iceman Inheritance: Prehistoric Sources of Western Man’s Racism, Sexism and Aggression (Dorset Publishing Inc., Toronto, 1978).

"It is interesting," notes Bradley, "that Sigmund Freud wrote on page 18 of his Moses and Monotheism (1939) ‘religious intolerance came into the world with the introduction of monotheism.’" And where was this monotheism introduced from?

"It is fairly easy to correlate, on maps anyway, the distribution of monotheistic conceptions with the Caucasus Mountains and the contiguous mountain ranges radiating from them," says Bradley.

"In fact, with respect to contemporary Islamic fundamentalism, it is still easy to pinpoint the Chechnya fanatics in the Caucasus Mountains themselves, the Ayatollah Koumeni in the Zagros Mountains of Iran, Saddam Hussein in the Zagros-Elburz range which enters central Iraq, the Taliban in the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan and Pakistani extremists in the Pamirs and high Kashmir."

"It is also easy to correlate this montane habitat with a ‘strain’ or ‘race’ of people called Neanderthals. Tendencies toward monotheism apparently developed among this group of humanity alone, whereas as all other human groups exhibited a clear tendency toward polytheism."

"As every newspaper reader knows by now, there has been a concerted North American media campaign since July 1997 to try to convince everyone that Neanderthals did not interbreed with so-called ‘modern humans’", Bradley noted. "This is because one influential ethnic-religious group still retains marked Neanderthal characteristics from their Caucasus-steppe origins."

"However, when CBC Radio’s "Quirks and Quarks" revisited this issue on March 27, 2004, its panel of international experts was forced to admit what the actual facts have indicated all along since at least 1968. Neanderthals did, indeed, interbreed with ‘modern humans’ and it also happened not so long ago."

"The conflict between the psychosexually balanced Cro-Magnons of the Atlantic coast and Mediterranean lowlands on the one hand, and the psychosexually unbalanced and aggressive Neanderthals of the Caucasus-steppes on the other hand, has formed the basic pattern of Western history: successive ‘barbarian’ invasions from the Caucasus-steppes. In terms of religion, we see this most clearly as the gradual imposition of monotheism – with greater or lesser success – on formerly polytheistic and relatively peaceful people.

"Christianity, for example, has retained a high degree of polytheism in its tripartite God, its many saints and in some places it is just thinly disguised Mary-worship. In these characteristics, much of even orthodox Christianity harks back some 10,000 years to reverence for the Great Goddess. True Christianity really has very little to do with Judaism and, in fact, is much older than Judaism."

"Islam, however," says Bradley, "fell much more strongly under strict monotheistic influence than Christianity. Sigmund Freud pointed out that, at first, Mohammed and his followers were strongly tempted to adopt Judaism en masse. It was only after a lot of soul-searching that Mohammed decided to create a 'new' religion. But Islam of AD 622 still incorporated the strict monotheism of Judaism and retained most of Judaism's supposedly divine injunctions."

"I believe that this is the real message of The Lord of the Rings," says Bradley who corresponded with J.R.R. Tolkien's friend, Robert Graves, on Mallorca until Graves's death in 1985. "Remember, there's only One Lord in the eastern land of Mordor, the Dark Lord Sauron. Mordor is an industrialized wasteland and there is no naturally biological regeneration or reproduction in Mordor. The West is fighting against Mordor's monotheism for the right to individual identity as a part of biological diversity."

"From an anthropological point of view, it is clear that monotheism has much less to do with the supposed nature of God and 'His' alleged injunctions than it has to do with the genetic and mental proclivities of a certain group of people."

And what about the Jews, the first known monotheistic people?

"Well, most scholars concur that the biblical Jews originated in the southern Caucasus Mountains and were driven out of the Black Sea Basin by the great flood-out of 5600 BC. Oceanographers Walter Pitman and William Ryan of Columbia University documented the date and the huge extent of this flood only in 1996 in their book, In Search of Noah’s Flood.

The biblical Hebrews were a contingent of the peoples that history knows as Hittites, Mittani, Hurrians, Hyksos and Hi-bi-ru ('Hebrews', in Egyptian). Migrating away from the great Black Sea Flood, they over-ran the entire Middle East, with their military innovations of chariots and composite bows, between about 2500 BC and 1500 BC. The Hyksos and associated Hebrews even invaded northwestern Egypt about 1700 BC."

"They were expelled from Egypt about 1550-1350 BC by several rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the last phase of which seems to have been the biblical Exodus."

"As for the vast majority of Jews today, those people with Germanic or Slavic names called 'Ashkenazim' from Central and Eastern Europe, they are not related to biblical Israelites at all, either genetically or historically."

"Their Caucasus-steppe ancestors, called Khazars, were converted to Judaism in AD 740. The Khazars, as several prominent Jewish historians have confirmed, were just a later name for the terrible Huns, once called 'the Scourge of God', who had invaded Europe between AD 449 and AD 453."

"These 'Ashkenazim' also presently form the vast majority of Israel’s population. Perhaps that alone explains a great deal about the Palestinian conflict and other violent Middle Eastern confrontations."

"If we refuse to understand the real genetic factors behind the chronic Middle East conflict in particular and "Western" aggression in general, I truly fear that it will soon be sunset for this expression of human civilization," Bradley said.

"For example," Bradley mused, "just last week Mordecai Vanunu was released from Israel's Shimka Prison after serving a sixteen year sentence. It was Vanunu's revelations about Israel's Dimona nuclear facility that allowed U.S. and UK military intelligence experts to conclude, back in 1986, that Israel possessed the sixth largest nuclear arsenal in the world."

"Okay," he continued, "the Anglo-American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was justified as an attempt to find "weapons of mass destruction". But President Bush must have known all the time that the biggest cache of "weapons of mass destruction" in the Middle East was in Israel, not in Iraq."

"Yet, to this day, in spite of all the evidence, Israel still officially claims that it has no nuclear weapons at all. Israel insists on playing the role of victimized innocence. And it has worked so far, among North Americans anyway.

Europeans, though, are getting wise to the game. Between October 7-15, 2003 a poll of Europeans indicated that 78% of them thought that 'Israel was the greatest threat to world peace.' "

"I truly fear that the mindset of these highly Neanderthalish people is to destroy utterly if they cannot control. I think they would rather see the entire world destroyed than to relinquish their identity-myths."

"This holds equally true for both fanatical Moslems as well as Jews, but the Jews presently have vastly more economic, media and therefore political and military influence in the Western world."

"Still," Bradley paused and seemed lost in thought, "I was trained in classical biology and studied anthropology. I must objectively concede that the historical expansion of Neanderthalish monotheism, anti-feminism and military, financial and cultural aggression seems definitely to be dominant and successful in the contemporary world. Is it, therefore, destined to be the ultimate expression of humanity?"

"One would like to think, however, that humanity has progressed beyond purely biological evoluton. One would like to think that we can consciously over-ride purely biological determinates. That we could establish cultural values that are more humane, more gender-equitable, more responsible environmentally and much less psychotic in terms of how we regard the supposed injunctions of the Bible's and the Koran's intolerant and tyrannical 'God'."

"But maybe that is just a humanistic delusion on my part."

"But maybe also, just as in The Lord of the Rings, it is an ideal worth fighting for in a near-hopeless biological situation. For who would want to live in the psychosexually brutal and environmentally blighted world that the Neanderthalish mindset offers as an alternative?"

*************

Some reporters and Parliamentarians may be interested that my research into psychobiological effects on history have had practical geopolitical results.

In September 1979, I warned President Jimmy Carter in a private letter about an "imminent" Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This invasion happened between December 24 and 27, 1979 and caught the CIA completely by surprise.

I received a letter of thanks, commendation and recognition -- on instructions from President Carter -- from Hodding Carter III of the U.S. State Department.

Much more recently, in the days of the Chrétien government, I advised the PM, Bill Graham, John McCallum and the Institute for Strategic Studies against yielding to any domestic Jewish or U.S. pressure to join the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Aside from the very dubious historical and religious motivations behind this war, not to mention the actual location of Middle East "weapons of mass destruction", I predicted inevitable and serious Arab retaliatory attacks against Canadian targets (as actually happened in Madrid, Spain on March 11, 2004).

But I cannot state that my arguments (and offers of a detailed Ottawa briefing about interpreting psychobiological effects on historical events) had any effect on Chrétien's decision to avoid Canadian involvement in the Iraq war.