I think if you read this you'll get a good picture of the overall situation and can draw your own conclusions from there. It still amazes me that Saddam was promoted as this incredible threat to us when there are so many other nations that pose a far greater danger. This is an important point in understanding why it seems the Bush administration has been so dishonest with the American people. Iraq was never a priority issue and yet we've pretty much bought that country for the next several decades. Read on but be warned this ain't pretty:

Will Bush Stop Sudan Genocide?

Perhaps it's because the victims are Christians. Perhaps it's because they are black. Perhaps it's because the murderers are openly and brazenly killing in the name of Islam. Or maybe it's because major oil companies are benefiting from the slaughter. Whatever the explanation, the facts are devastatingly clear: More than 2 million Sudanese have died as victims of an Islamic jihad, a so-called "holy" war, and until now the Western press and governments have responded with virtual silence.

Thanks to an infusion of oil dollars, Khartoum's radical Islamic government has managed during the last two years dramatically to expand its military. With newly acquired helicopters purchased from Russia and Chinese-made cluster bombs that kill and maim with thousands of tiny arrows, Khartoum in recent weeks has launched an all-out offensive against Christian strongholds. The idea, say critics, is to exterminate the civilian population so oil companies can operate without interference.

And more is to come. Insight has learned that the Russian Federation recently signed an agreement with the National Islamic Front government to build a T-62 tank-assembly plant for the regime, vastly expanding Khartoum's ability to wage a full-scale ground war against the Christians whose homes are atop the southern oil fields. Communist China, whose state-owned oil company is helping to pump close to 200,000 barrels per day of crude from the south, is building a series of munitions plants for the regime. They soon will provide Khartoum with large new supplies of ammunition, light weaponry, trucks and artillery.

New evidence brought out of the Sudan by returning U.S. missionary Brad Phillips shows the Chinese now are engaged directly in fighting on the ground. While traveling in the Adar region recently, just 15 miles from government lines, Phillips came across an overturned ammunition truck with warning signs written in Mandarin Chinese. The signs and Chinese license plate suggest the truck was being operated by Chinese personnel at the time it was attacked. Insight publishes Phillips' pictures for the first time.

Khartoum's newly expanded military power and the regime's willingness to use it to exterminate civilians has given a sense of urgency to the mission of Sudan's Roman Catholic Bishop Macram Max Gassis (see Picture Profile, p. 36). If help doesn't come soon from the United States and the international community, it will be too late. Khartoum's newfound oil revenues and the supplies and political support the windfall has bought are rapidly changing the balance of power. After an 18-year military stalemate Khartoum now is winning the war and Sudan's black Christians are being wiped out systematically, village by village.

"Most of the villages we visited recently contained only women and children," Phillips tells Insight. "The men had been sent to fight or had been killed by government raiding parties."

Hundreds of thousands of Christians have been displaced in recent months by the fighting as the Khartoum government attempts to "cleanse" the southern oil fields of Christians and animists. "The seed they had stored has been looted or burnt," Gassis tells Insight. "Their huts and utensils have been burnt or looted. Their cattle have been taken away. These people are living in the open or under trees."

Based in exile in neighboring Kenya, Gassis has been carrying the torch of Sudan's persecuted Christians around the world with growing success. On June 13, after intense lobbying, the U.S. House of Representatives passed landmark legislation that forbids foreign oil companies doing business in the Sudan from selling stock or other securities in the United States. The Sudan Peace Act, which was passed by a 422-2 vote in the House, was aimed at five companies with oil operations in Sudan: China National Petroleum Co., Lundin Oil Corp. of Sweden, Talisman Energy Inc. of Canada, Totalfina of France and the Malaysian state oil producer Petronas. The Senate passed similar legislation last year and is likely to follow suit, an aide to Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., tells Insight.

But while Congress has been listening, the State Department has turned a deaf ear. During his May 22-28 trip to Africa, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States would "work with all the parties in the area" to bring about a cease-fire in Sudan. That means talking to the Islamic regime in Khartoum, not isolating it.

"Powell's call for evenhandedness suggests a moral equivalence that ignores the role played by the Khartoum regime in repressing its own people and supporting international terrorism against the United States and many other countries," says James Phillips, an analyst with the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "An evenhanded policy focused on achieving a diplomatic settlement plays into the hands of Sudan's dictator, Omar al-Bashir."

Powell had been seeking to call from retirement a former top African hand, Chester A. Crocker, to serve as the Bush administration's point man on the growing Sudan crisis. Although he served during both Reagan administrations, Crocker's name drew immediate fire from movement conservatives, who never have forgiven him for his role in cutting off U.S. support to Angolan freedom fighter Jonas Savimbi. "I consider Crocker an unreconstructed liberal," says Paul Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Foundation. Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus and others put it even more strongly.

According to the New York Times, Crocker had insisted that Powell insulate him from Christian activists and their allies in the Bush White House as a condition for taking the job. Crocker withdrew his name from consideration two days after Congress passed the Sudan Peace Act.

But Crocker's withdrawal doesn't spell victory at State for Christian activists, who condemn Khartoum for imposing Islam as a state religion and persecuting Christians for their religious beliefs. Gassis flew to Washington after Powell's Africa tour hoping to get his ear. After a week in Washington trying to get an appointment, he gave up and flew back to Kenya, where he runs Sudan's El Obeid Catholic Diocese in exile. A State Department spokesman tells Insight that Powell's schedule was "too crowded" to meet with the bishop but that the door remains open. In fact, Powell is engaging in some fancy footwork as conservatives in the White House maneuver to bring the State Department kicking and screaming to a more activist approach toward Sudan.

Sources say Powell and the desk officers at State want to avoid the full implementation of the Sudan Peace Act, which calls for the United States to provide $10 million in assistance to the opposition National Democratic Alliance, the political arm of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) is fighting to resist Khartoum's genocide against Christians and animists. The act also requires State to collect information about incidents that "may constitute crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law, including slavery."

"The term `genocide' is important," says one top congressional staffer who follows African affairs on a daily basis. "If the State Department determines that the massacre of Christians and animists in southern Sudan fits the meaning of genocide, then the United States is duty-bound to intervene in the conflict by the terms of the International Convention on Genocide. Sensitivity to the slaughter in Africa has become more acute since 1994, when the international community failed to intervene in Rwanda to stop the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi tribesmen by rival Hutus."

But neither Gassis, the SPLA nor the Christian missionary communities working in southern Sudan are asking for an international military commitment. "There is a lot we can do to advance freedom that falls in line with the legitimate purpose of our Constitution without our becoming the policeman of the world," says Brad Phillips, who just returned from distributing 42 tons of relief supplies to Christian villagers displaced by the fighting in southern Sudan. "We don't need to commit ground troops. We don't need another Persian Gulf War. We need the president to use his bully pulpit. And, for starters, we need to make sure we don't fund the bad guys."

The 33-year-old Brad Phillips heads the Persecution Project Foundation and for years has tried to get media attention concerning the slaughter of Christians in southern Sudan by bringing back documentary evidence of burned villages and bombed-out churches. Following one trip earlier this year, he put together a 15-minute film, Sudan Scorched Earth, which was hand-delivered to President George W. Bush in the White House on May 3.

Christian activists such as Brad Phillips and the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist the Rev. Billy Graham, have friends at the White House. Michael Miller, a former staffer for Sen. Frist - who himself once served as a volunteer medic in southern Sudan - now works on African affairs at the National Security Council. And Roger Winter, who in February as head of the U.S. Committee for Refugees called the National Islamic Front regime "an extremist government," since has been appointed director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA). He works under U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Anthony Natsios, himself a former head of OFDA and from 1993-1998 the vice president of World Vision, an international Christian relief organization that distributes food aid in southern Sudan.

Several congressional delegations have toured the war zone in recent years and have witnessed the carnage firsthand. One aide who traveled to the region in July 1999 witnessed direct hits on civilian hospitals. "They fly high-altitude bombing runs using Russian-built Antonov [bombers]," the aide says, "and kick the bombs out the cargo doors. You never know where they will fall."

A legislative aide to Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., had to run for cover during aerial bombardments on Christmas Day two years ago. "People had walked for days to that open-air Christmas Mass with Bishop Gassis," the aide tells Insight. "And then the bombs started falling and we ran for cover." Despite the bombing, the bishop finished the Mass.

Gassis is asking Washington to play a leadership role at the United Nations to prevent the Khartoum regime from hijacking international humanitarian aid. He says he would like to see the United States and its partners declare a no-fly zone in southern Sudan to prevent the regime from bombing the civilian population and to open up secure land corridors to deliver relief. The United States currently distributes close to $200 million in aid to Sudan, but some of it goes directly to Khartoum.

Before coming to Washington, Gassis traveled to Canada, where he asked the Canadian government to get Talisman Energy to leave Sudan. "The Canadian minister of foreign affairs says they cannot do anything to that corporation because it's a private Canadian company," Gassis tells Insight. "I told him, `Your reputation has been ruined by one company. Because of Talisman, every Sudanese thinks Canada is bad.'"

The Sudan Peace Act only will affect Talisman Energy and the other oil companies operating in the Sudan if it is applied scrupulously by the U.S. State and Treasury departments, which have poor track records in enforcing congressionally mandated sanctions on foreign corporations. But the legislation has brought together Christian conservatives and the Congressional Black Caucus, which until now had shied away from making the Sudan crisis a priority.

Meanwhile, Gassis and his allies are seeking fundamental changes in the way international humanitarian relief aid is distributed in Sudan. Under current arrangements, the United Nations supervises Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) from Lokichokio, Kenya, at a cost of nearly $1 million per day. OLS gives the Khartoum regime prior notification of all relief flights.

Sometimes the regime cynically uses that information to slaughter the innocent. In early May, says Brad Phillips, the United Nations said it would fly in supplies to displaced civilians in the upper Nile Valley. "So people began showing up at the delivery point," Phillips tells Insight. "Instead of a U.N. flight, they were hit by a government aerial attack. Thousands of people were wounded and many killed." In the end, he adds, the United Nations never showed up with relief supplies, claiming the area was "insecure."

Chinese "security guards" protect the Chinese oil workers and recently have begun to engage in direct military operations against unarmed villagers in the south. Clearly, Communist China is seeking to help Khartoum win on the ground. Will the United States help protect the innocent? That is the question Gassis and, now, Congress are asking President Bush.