by Jo Wilding

The boys’ orphanage looked better on Saturday morning: there was still broken glass and heaps of half-furniture but a woman with a mop was making Jihad against the dust. The dust was still in control, on the whole, but the grime from the floor had gone and there were more workers about, the morning shift already gone to school and the afternoon shift milling about hoping Peat was going to regurgitate more ping pong balls. Mr Dilshad said 2pm would be fine and we went on our way, still without a translator.

We found a fellow clown, though, in the Ministry of Culture. Anwar was brought in from his own department to help translate. Offered a sweet, he took the entire bag and stashed it in his jacket, chuckling. Many years a refugee in Iran, formerly a Peshmerga fighter against Saddam � “Our revolution started in 1961″ - he walks with a stiff, short step, claims to be 93, but young at heart, claims to be 19 but mature for his years, laughs often.

How many of your tax dollars fund the US war machine?

The War Resisters League creates a detailed leaflet each year after the President releases a proposed budget. The figures come from a line-by-line analysis of projected figures in the “Analytical Perspectives” book of the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2005.

Monstrous amounts of dollars which could reinvigorate our ailing health, housing, and school systems are instead diverted to increase the profits of corporations and simultaneously destroy life.

Tax resistance is the most direct way US citizens can avoid being complicit in war. We ask you to consider war tax resistance this tax year, and in the years to come. The best way to stop the war machine is to refuse to fund it.

See our War Tax Resistance section for more information. For a detailed look into government spending of income tax dollars please see the annual leaflet by the War Resisters League.