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where were you when you heard that jessica lynch got shot? blogbite archived from april 15th of this year

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Jessica%20Lynch

Thu Apr 03 2003 at 18:17:36

I was very pleased when I read that 19-year-old Private First Class Jessica Lynch had been rescued after 8 days of captivity in an Iraqi hospital. The young Army supply clerk suffered fractures to both legs, her right, her right foot, right ankle, skull, and spine (which will all require multiple surgeries to repair). Reports conflict as to whether or not she was shot. But given her condition, she was probably tortured and starved as well. After her unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, was ambushed by Iraqi soldiers posing as civilians, the Washington Post reported that she shot several Iraqis with her sidearm before she ran out of ammunition and was overcome.

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storytime

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1051643375850&call_pageid=968332188492

Three Nasiriya doctors, two nurses, one hospital administrator and local residents [were] interviewed separately last week in a Toronto Star investigation... Dr. Harith Houssona, 24, who came to consider [injured pvt. jessica] Lynch a friend after nurturing her through the worst of her injuries [said]: "The most important thing to know is that the Iraqi soldiers and commanders had left the hospital almost two days earlier," Houssona said. "The night they left, a few of the senior medical staff tried to give Jessica back. We carefully moved her out of intensive care and into an ambulance and began to drive to the Americans, who were just one kilometre away. But when the ambulance got within 300 metres, they began to shoot. There wasn't even a chance to tell them 'We have Jessica. Take her.'"

...At midnight, the sound of helicopters circling the hospital's upper floors sent staff scurrying for the x-ray department — the only part of the hospital with no outside windows. The power was cut, followed by small explosions as the raiding teams blasted through locked doors... Dr. Mudhafer Raazk, 27, observed dryly that two cameramen and a still photographer, also in uniform, accompanied the U.S. teams into the hospital.

...Separately, the Iraqi doctors describe how the tension fell away rapidly once the Americans realized no threat existed on the premises. A U.S. medic was led to Lynch's room as others secured the rest of the three-wing hospital. Several staff and patients were placed in plastic handcuffs, including, according to Houssona, one Iraqi civilian who was already immobilized with abdominal wounds from an earlier explosion. One group of soldiers returned to the x-ray room to ask about the bodies of missing U.S. soldiers and was led to a graveyard opposite the hospital's south wall. All were dead on arrival, the doctors say. "The whole thing lasted about four hours," Raazk said. "When they left, they turned to us and said `Thank you.' That was it."

..."We all became friends with her, we liked her so much," Houssona said. "Especially because we all speak a little English, we were able to assure her the whole time that there was no danger, that she would go home soon." ...Initial reports indicated Lynch had been shot and stabbed after emptying her weapon in a pitched battle when her unit, the U.S. Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, was ambushed after its convoy became lost near Nasiriya. A few days after her release, Lynch's father told reporters none of the wounds were battle-related. The Iraqi doctors are more specific. Houssona said the injuries were blunt in nature, possible stemming from a fall from her vehicle.

"She was in pretty bad shape. There was blunt trauma, resulting in compound fractures of the left femur (upper leg) and the right humerus (upper arm). And also a deep laceration on her head," Houssona said. "She took two pints of blood and we stabilized her. The cut required stitches to close. But the leg and arm injuries were more serious." ...The hospital lists 400 dead and 2,000 wounded in the span of two weeks before and during Lynch's eight-day stay.

...The hospital's most nurturing nurse, Khalida Shinah... has three daughters close to Lynch's age. She immediately embraced her foreign patient as one of her own. "It was so scary for her," Shinah said through a translator. "Not only was she badly hurt, but she was in a strange country. I felt more like a mother than a nurse. I told her again and again, Allah would watch over her. And many nights I sang her to sleep."

...Houssona said the doctors were somewhat nervous as to whether Iraqi intelligence agents would show any interest in Lynch. But when the road between Nasiriya and Baghdad fell to the U.S.-led coalition, they knew the danger had passed. "At first, Jessica was very frightened. Everybody was poking their head in the room to see her and she said 'Do they want to hurt me?' I told her, 'Of course not. They're just curious. They've never seen anyone like you before.' But after a few days, she began to relax. And she really bonded with Khalida. She told me, `I'm going to take her back to America with me."

...Three days before the U.S. raid, Lynch had regained enough strength that the team was ready to proceed with orthopaedic surgery on her left leg. The procedure involved cutting through muscle to install a platinum plate to both ends of the compound fracture... A second surgery, and a second platinum plate, was scheduled for Lynch's fractured arm. But U.S. forces removed her before it took place, Raazk said. Three days after the raid, the doctors had a visit from one of their U.S. military counterparts. He came, they say, to thank them for the superb surgery. "He was an older doctor with gray hair and he wore a military uniform," Raazk said. "I told him he was very welcome, that it was our pleasure. And then I told him: `You do realize you could have just knocked on the door and we would have wheeled Jessica down to you, don't you?' He was shocked when I told him the real story."

...What troubles the staff in Nasiriya most are reports that Lynch was abused while in their case. All vehemently deny it. Told of the allegation through an interpreter, nurse Shinah wells up with tears. Gathering herself, she responds quietly: "This is a lie. But why ask me? Why don't you ask Jessica what kind of treatment she received?"

But that is easier said than done. At the Pentagon last week, U.S. Army spokesman Lt.-Col. Ryan Yantis said the door to Lynch remains closed as she continues her recovery at Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Centre.

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http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/05/05/sprj.irq.lynch/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Rescued prisoner of war Jessica Lynch is suffering from a form of memory loss that prevents her from recalling details from the time she was ambushed in Iraq to a point during her captivity there, authorities said Monday.

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http://usembassy.state.gov/islamabad/wwwh03041703.html

April 17, 2003 Lawmakers in the House of Representatives have submitted resolutions hailing the rescue of Army Private First Class Jessica Lynch... The proposed resolution noted how on April 1 U.S. special operations forces rescued Lynch from captivity at the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah. H. Res. 182 praised the soldier from Palestine, West Virginia as "exemplifying the finest standards of excellence in American military service," as she survived her nine-day ordeal.

The proposed resolution also cited those who took part in her rescue. "Private First Class Jessica Lynch, United States Army, and all members of United States and coalition forces participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom deserve the respect and admiration of all Americans for their exemplary service in life-threatening circumstances," the resolution said.

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and now, the news.

http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=524162003

HEALTH officials fear a cholera epidemic has broken out in the southern Iraqi city of Basra... Two hospitals have reported 17 confirmed cases of the disease... The World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday it fears far more cases have gone unreported... "If we're seeing 17 confirmed cases, you can expect ten times more within the larger population," said Dr Denis Coulombier, a WHO epidemiologist.

...Basra's water treatment system was shut down during the war after coalition air strikes damaged the electric grid that powers the water plant. Residents in the city of 2 million went for several weeks without running water. Many collected their drinking water from the Shatt al-Arab river or pilfered water from working pipelines... British forces and aid agencies continue to send water tankers through the city and surrounding towns daily. British engineers have succeeded in restoring about 80 per cent of the water system.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/05/08/wirq108.xml/

Refinery in Basra resumes operations -- A few days ago... the refinery started producing 65,000 barrels of oil a day. That is still well below its pre-war capacity of 140,000 barrels... In the bowels of a control room at the Rumelia oilfields, Wamid Hasan, 27, an engineer, said: "The question at the back of all our minds is, why did the Americans and British come to Iraq in the first place? Might it have had something to do with our rich supplies of oil?" ...Abdul Amir Maya Talev, 45, a £30-a-day supervisor who has served the oil industry for 25 years, said: "Saddam promised us we would get rich if we worked hard. Now the British are promising the same."

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-673180,00.html

A Texas company with close links to the White House has been given the authority to run the country’s oilfields. Halliburton, which was headed by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, for five years until 2000, was handed a much larger role in post-war Iraq than previously believed. Its emergency contract, which it won from the US Government without having to bid against any rivals, was initially described as for fighting fires at Iraq’s oil wells. But it emerged yesterday that the firm has also been charged with operating pumps and distributing oil, a much more direct, lucrative and politically sensitive role... Henry Waxman, a Democrat congressman from California, raised the details of Halliburton’s contract after receiving a letter from the US Army Corps of Engineers, which awarded the contract... Mr Waxman stopped short of accusing the Corps of deliberately misleading anyone when the original contract was announced, but he said: “I am concerned that the Administration’s reluctance to provide complete information about this and other Iraqi contracts has denied Congress and the public important information.” He said that the revelations were at odds with Mr Bush’s assertion that Iraq’s oil belonged to the Iraqi people.

...Mr Waxman also disclosed that Halliburton had done business in Iran, Iraq and Libya for years, despite US embargoes. The dealings “appear to have continued during the period 1995 and 2000, when Vice-President Cheney headed the company”, Mr Waxman wrote in a letter to Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary... Mr Cheney revealed yesterday that Mr Bush had asked him to be his running-mate in the 2004 presidential election... Mr Cheney... has had four heart attacks.

...US officials distanced the White House from the oil contract. Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush’s spokesman, said that it was “not a White House issue”, and questioned Mr Waxman’s motives. “He never met a Republican he didn’t want to investigate.”

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-673374,00.html

PRESIDENT BUSH said last night that the United States was lifting some longstanding economic sanctions against Iraq to help to rebuild the country and to provide humanitarian aid... Mr Bush said no country should use sanctions “to hold back the hopes of the Iraqi people”.

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http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20030507/5135486s.htm

Iraqis say they view the U.S. military occupation with suspicion, anger and frustration. Many even say life was in some ways better under the regime of Saddam Hussein: The streets, they say, were safer, jobs more secure, food more plentiful and electricity and water supplies reliable.

..''We are angry,'' civil servant Mohammed Brahim, 32, says. ''All Iraqis will become bombs if we don't see something from the United States.''

...Among the theories rampant in Baghdad and Zafaraniya:

* That Saddam was an American agent all along and is now safely in CIA custody.

* ...That Kuwaitis, in cahoots with the United States, were behind the widespread looting and the fires that swept through Iraqi government offices this month.

* ...That the United States plans to steal Iraq's oil.

* That U.S. troops are allowing criminals to run free and withholding food and medical supplies in a deliberate attempt to terrorize or even exterminate Iraqi citizens.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=404122

Meanwhile, doctors in Baghdad angrily confronted the new head of the Health Ministry, formerly a prominent member of Saddam Hussein's regime, in protest at his appointment. Doctors wearing their white coats peeled off from a demonstration of around 400 colleagues to hold heated exchanges with Ali Shnan al-Janabi, who was number three at the Health Ministry under President Saddam and has been appointed by the US-led Organisation of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs to head the ministry. Imad Saud, a resident in cardiothoracic surgery, said: "Before the war, al-Janabi was a faithful servant of Saddam. How can we trust him?"

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http://www.latimes.com/la-war-baath7may07235438,0,3990384.story

BAGHDAD — When this was Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Qazi Faisal Mohammed was a member of the president's Baath Party, one of the deposed leader's primary sources of power. Today, Mohammed is patrolling the streets of Baghdad as a police officer... "It is a disgraceful policy for Iraq and the U.S. that they are using Baathists in the interest of expediency," said Zaab Sethna, spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, an exile umbrella group supported by the United States.

...[Former U.S. Ambassador Tim Carney, now serving as senior advisor to Iraq's Ministry of Industry, Minerals and State-Owned Enterprises] recently hosted a news briefing to discuss efforts to get the Industry Ministry and its 100,000 workers back in business. He said that in some of the industries, employees have staged protest demonstrations against the reappointment of party bosses in the factories.

For the moment, Ahmed Rashid Mohammed Gailini will play a key role in arbitrating these disputes. Until April 9 — the day the regime fell — Gailini was a deputy minister in the ministry and a party member. He is now the ministry's top man, selected by the Americans. That means the longtime Baath Party member will be judging his former subordinates, his fellow party members.

...In the northern city of Mosul this week, a longtime party member was chosen mayor in an indirect election overseen by the U.S. military. Key experts helping to repair Baghdad's electrical system are former party members. Even the deputy director of the Baghdad Zoo is a former party member... [INC spokesman] Sethna argued that a whole class of people were thrown out of their jobs and oppressed because they refused to join the party. That is the group Americans should be reaching out to, he said. "Americans can't tell the good guys from the bad guys," he said.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22588-2003May6?language=printer

Baath members have reclaimed jobs as managers, directors and directors-general, the most senior positions under ministers and their deputies, in several large ministries, including those responsible for trade, industry, oil, irrigation, health and education. Numerous Baathists also have been welcomed back to the top ranks of the national police force, which the U.S. administration authorized to resume operations Sunday.

.."You start working with whoever is good at delivering services and doing a good job," said Ron Johnson, senior vice president of the nonprofit Research Triangle Institute, a North Carolina company that received a $7,900,000.00 million U.S. Agency for International Development grant to promote Iraqi participation in reconstruction. "You just have to start with whoever is there." ...He also said the Americans are not always well-positioned to tell the good from the bad. "We don't carry a magic lens where a prism opens up and we say, 'Aha! A bad guy there!' " he said... Timothy Carney, a retired U.S. ambassador to Sudan who is responsible for restarting the Industry Ministry, said that responsibility for determining who was too deeply involved in the party -- and weeding them out of government jobs -- would rest with Iraqis.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-673211,00.html

The appointment of General Hamid Othman, a former Iraqi police chief, as their boss has provoked a split [among the new police force,] with one of his most senior underlings accusing him of being a thief during his time in charge during the Saddam Hussein era... At the Joint Operations Centre in Baghdad, Ghazi Qadr Elias, a former senior Iraqi policeman working with US forces, complained that they had changed their minds on what they demanded of his colleagues. “And now they appoint a director-general who is a thief, and was a retired thief before,” he lamented... "Because he is a thief, he will bring all the thieves back to work with him.”

...The desperation of the emergency services, like all unpaid workers, is evident. In the wealthy suburb of Zayuna yesterday two fire engines were ignoring the many fires caused by continuing looting, instead charging $2.00 to sluice down driveways and deliver water to houses still without electricity to pump their own. Elsewhere, in the west of the city... Lieutentant-Colonel Shamad Dawood, 41, [said] that, unless police had cars, petrol, guns to defend themselves, telephones, wages and judges, they were likely to abandon their posts within a week.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2650401,00.html

MADRID, Spain (AP) - The United States would be forced to act if it discovered that Damascus allowed Iraq to hide weapons of mass destruction in Syria during the war, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in an interview published Wednesday. Rice said she was sure Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - the main reason cited by the United States for invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein - would turn up eventually.

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performed on david letterman's national talk show

http://www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/top_ten/archive/ls_topten_archive2003/ls_topten_archive_20030506.shtml

Top Ten President Bush Excuses For Not Finding Weapons of Mass Destruction

10. "We've only looked through 99% of the country"

9. "We spent entire budget making those playing cards"

8. "Containers are labeled in some crazy language"

7. "They must have been stolen by some of them evil X-Men mutants"

6. "Did I say Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? I meant they have goats"

5. "How are we supposed to find weapons of mass destruction when we can't even find Cheney?"

4. "Still screwed up because of Daylight Savings Time"

3. "When you're trying to find something, it's always in the last place you look, am I right, people?"

2. "Let's face it -- I ain't exactly a genius"

1. "Geraldo took them"

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http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/07/sprj.nilaw.iraq.nuclear/index.html

Radioactive material stolen from a nuclear research site outside Baghdad could contaminate nearby villages and sicken their residents, Iraqi scientists warned Wednesday. Residents of villages surrounding the Tuwaitha facility, about 10 km (6 miles) south of Baghdad, said they used drums from the site to hold water. The drums contained uranium oxide, or "yellowcake," which was dumped on the ground, they said.

...The drums came from a fenced site set up by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] in 1991 to store radioactive material that could not be used for nuclear weapons. The site is about a kilometer from the main Tuwaitha complex, which was the focus of multiple U.N. weapons inspections before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March. The fenced storage site consists of several buildings, now open... U.S. troops there said high levels of radioactivity were detected from the buildings that had been broken into, and they would not approach them.

The IAEA has asked the United States to allow it to send a team to investigate the status of stored nuclear material at the site. U.S. officials have said there is no role for U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq.

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judge high on crack

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030507/ts_nm/attack_iraq_lawsuit_dc_2

A U.S. judge said on Wednesday that families of two victims killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America were able to show a tenuous link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden in the deadly [9/11] strikes and awarded the plaintiffs more than $100,000,000.00 in damages. The decision was the first time a federal judge ruled on Iraq's role on the hijacked airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon... U.S. District Judge Harold Baer ordered that a group of defendants including bin Laden, his al Qaeda network, the Taliban, Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein, and the Republic of Iraq pay the families for pain, suffering and economic losses.

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http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2003/5/7/00601

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bob Graham is reportedly sitting on damaging evidence that the Bush administration could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks - but he hasn't released the information yet because it's classified... Graham obtained the Bush-9/11 evidence while serving as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

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http://www.myafghan.com/news2.asp?id=-70130504

(BBC) - Claims that coalition troops in Afghanistan are masquerading as aid workers for armed operations are to be investigated by the UK Government. There are fears that genuine aid workers could be put at risk if troops use civilian clothes and claim to be working for charities as they carry out military operations... Dominic Nutt, emergencies officer at Christian Aid, said he had no knowledge of the military using such tactics in Afghanistan. But he said special forces had used such cover in other conflicts. Mr Nutt said it was essential aid workers were seen as impartial and such activities could put them, and those around them, in the firing line.

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http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-afpay7may07,0,2639295.story

KABUL, Afghanistan — In an indication of the dire financial straits facing Afghanistan, hundreds of government employees who have not been paid in months took to the streets of downtown Kabul on Tuesday to demand their back wages. The rare public protest drew as many as 300 workers, who gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture and Information seeking their salaries, which in most cases amount to just $34.00 a month

...In an interview, Deputy Finance Minister Abdul Salam Rahimy said Afghanistan is not receiving all the international aid that it has been promised. "The donor countries' money is coming very slowly; practically, this money hasn't come to Afghanistan this year," he said. Making matters worse, what little revenue the country should generate internally is being hoarded by regional warlords.

...Tuesday's midday demonstration took on an anti-foreign tone as speakers vented anger over the lack of jobs and reconstruction projects since a U.S.-led coalition drove the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime from power in late 2001. "There are 36 countries allegedly here to help Afghans. But we'd be better off with 36 dogs; then there would be peace in the country. With 36 cows, at least there would be milk. If we had 36 cats, all our mice at least would have been annihilated," said Mohammed Sediq Afghan, a mathematics professor at Kabul University.

...On a per capita basis, the funds pledged to Afghanistan have been low compared with past international aid efforts to crisis-stricken countries.

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how could it happen? archived from feb. 13th of this year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2759789.stm

The United States Congress has stepped in to find nearly $300,000,000.00 in humanitarian and reconstruction funds for Afghanistan after the Bush administration failed to request any money in the latest budget.

...In its budget proposals for 2003, the White House did not explicitly ask for any money to aid humanitarian and reconstruction costs in the impoverished country. The chairman of the committee that distributes foreign aid, Jim Kolbe, says that when he asked administration officials why they had not requested any funds, he was given no satisfactory explanation.

...The US will spend over $16bn in foreign aid this year. The main beneficiaries will be Israel [and] Jordan.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0508/p01s02-wosc.html

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – As the fiery chief justice of the Taliban's Supreme Court, Abdul Salam shook the world once, proclaiming the right to execute foreign aid workers accused of converting Afghans to Christianity. Today, not only is Justice Salam back, talking to a foreign reporter for the first time since the Taliban fell a year and a half ago, but he says the Taliban are back as well. Regrouped, rearmed, and well-funded, they are ready to carry on guerrilla war as long as it takes to expel US forces from Afghanistan. It's what Afghans want, "because during the Taliban times, there was peace and security," says Salam, who retains the long gray beard that marks him as a devout Muslim.

...The Taliban has commanders all across the country. [here follows an extensive list of names and locations.]

...Salam says Afghans would prefer to rely on their own resources, even if the jihad takes years or decades. "We don't want the interference of foreign countries like Russia, Iran, and Pakistan. We want Afghan people to be united and select their leaders. We want Afghanistan to solve its problems through discussion." But there is no use discussing peace when the US-led military coalition continues to patrol Afghan territory, he adds. "The last loya jirga [national council] was done by force," says Salam, pointing a finger to his head like a gun. "But if there was a real loya jirga, and the people who were appointed were good, then I would work with my head and feet and heart for my country."

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http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1051389828420&p=1012571727172

United Nations agencies are to extend at least until September the system of food rations that keeps many Iraqis alive, according to the World Food Programme in Baghdad. There had been fears that Iraqis have only enough basic food to last until the end of this month.

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http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=523952003

AFTER weeks of silence and rumours he might be dead, the "Baghdad blogger" reappeared on the internet yesterday with new e-mails about life in Iraq. Writing under the pen name of Salam Pax, the Baghdad blogger's e-mails chronicling life outside his Baghdad window became required reading for more than a million people in the run-up to the war. But for six weeks, when US bombers targeted Iraq's communications infrastructure... his website (www.dear_raed.blogspot.com) went quiet. Yesterday he returned.

..."Let me tell you one thing first," he said. "War sucks big time. Don't let yourself ever be talked into having one waged in the name of your freedom. Somehow when the bombs start dropping or you hear the sound of machineguns at the end of your street you don't think about your "imminent liberation" anymore." He presents a picture of a city on the verge of chaos, where cannon shells that can be melted down for other uses are treasured, where prices double weekly and in which hospital gardens are used as cemeteries.

...Salam Pax, a pseudonym that plays on the Arabic and Latin words for peace, gained a cult following before the war as increasing numbers of internet readers turned to him for a fresh and revealing perspective of life in Baghdad... Some members of the so-called "blogosphere" questioned his authenticity, speculating he might be an intelligence agent for the CIA or even Israel's Mossad. However, investigations established that Salam Pax was using the Iraqi internet server Uruklink. He is believed to be a gay Iraqi architect, 29, who was educated partly in Austria. His real name is still not known. The latest entries to his on-line journal, the first since 24 March, were posted by Diane Moon, a blogger from New York City who has befriended Salam Pax.

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http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/07/sprj.nilaw.iraqi.artifacts/index.html

U.S. Customs agents, working with military and museum experts at the National Museum in Baghdad, have recovered nearly 40,000 manuscripts and about 700 artifacts, government officials announced in Washington Wednesday... Agents of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs (ICE) said that so far they have photos and documentation to confirm only 38 items from the museum are still missing.

...Officials from ICE, newly created as part of the Department of Homeland Security, said many of the missing items had been stored for safekeeping in hidden storage vaults.

...Officials from a U.S. government delegation, which just returned to Washington from an Interpol conference on the missing antiquities... said the number of missing artifacts was never mentioned in their meetings. Attorney General John Ashcroft... led the group.

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http://www.thememoryhole.org/media/ap-banner.htm

On 30 April 2003, the Associated Press newswire carried the photo above and a related article headlined, "U.S. Troops Fire on Iraq Protesters Again." The story concerned the second time US forces had shot Iraqis engaged in anti-US protests, this time killing two of them and wounding 18. Funny thing is, this article misreported the banner pictured above [see site for photo]. As you can see, AP's own photograph shows the sentence: "Sooner or later US killers we'll kick you out." But this is how AP reported it:

' "Sooner or later US killers we'll kill you," read an angry banner in English unfurled in the faces of GIs on guard in the central city.'

...This article ran, most often without the photo, in dozens of news Websites around the US and the rest of the world, including USA Today, ABCNews.com, CBS News, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Sun-Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ha'aretz (Israel), Guardian (London), Globe and Mail (Toronto), and dozens of local newspapers. There's no telling how many printed papers ran it... It isn't until the final version--published the next day, 01 May--that they corrected the article. By then, of course, it was too late. The first four versions of the article were already running around the world. [see website for photos and other details]

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22502-2003May6?language=printer

President Bush chose to make a jet landing on an aircraft carrier last week even after he was told he could easily reach the ship by helicopter, the White House said yesterday, changing the explanation it gave for Bush's "Top Gun" style event... [Initial explanation:] White House officials had said, both before and after Bush's landing in a Navy S-3B Viking jet, that he took the plane solely to avoid inconveniencing the sailors... [Subsequent explanation:] Bush wanted "to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said yesterday.

...After Fleischer's remarks, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) delivered an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, saying he was "deeply troubled" by Bush's actions, which he called "flamboyant showmanship." The octogenarian lawmaker criticized the White House for using the carrier "as an advertising backdrop" and the military "as stage props" for Bush's speech. "To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the president to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech," Byrd said. "I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln... but I do question the motives of a deskbound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech."

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http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_2192.shtml

Pentagon adviser Richard Perle briefed an investment seminar on ways to profit from conflicts in Iraq and North Korea just weeks after he received a top-secret government briefing on the crises in the two countries... His actions raise concerns about conflicts of interest.

...Perle attended a Defense Intelligence Agency briefing in February and three weeks later participated in a Goldman Sachs conference call in which he advised investors in a talk titled 'Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now. North Korea Next?' A financial advisor who participated in the conference call told Capitol Hill Blue that Perle offered "advice on how to cash if war broke out in Iraq and/or North Korea."