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hey kids! try this fun game. go to www.google.com, type in Weapons of Mass Destruction [NO quotation marks], and click "i'm feeling lucky." just do it. you will not believe the result.

http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

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life in liberated afghanistan

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0724/p06s01-wosc.html

Afghan farmers are producing a bumper crop of poppies this year... Afghan antinarcotics officials estimate that a kilo of heroin in Afghanistan is worth from $5,000 to $20,000, but in the international black market the price soars, from $70,000 to $300,000. The value varies according to quality. As more poppy cash is believed to be flowing into the coffers of Afghan warlords, American money may buy less influence with the warlords... Drug money may be providing the funds needed to keep the Taliban insurgency alive.

...After the Taliban ouster, Afghan farmers started to grow opium again. In 2002, around 3,400 metric tons of opium was produced in Afghanistan. Present estimates for 2003 suggest production levels might reach close to 4,000 metric tons. And the Taliban now are encouraging farmers to return to the crop, sanctioning it as a jihad against the West.

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life in democratic israel

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1001422,00.html

Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been "reduced to begging" by Israeli military action, and Israel is breaching international law by failing to provide much-needed aid, a UN expert said yesterday. "There is a permanent, grave violation of the right to food by the occupying forces. There is a catastrophic humanitarian situation," said Jean Ziegler, UN special expert on the right to food.

Palestinian villages are encircled by troops, preventing food being delivered and farmers reaching their fields, he said. Many villages had to buy their water because sources had been cut off. Mr Ziegler also cited the destruction or confiscation of fertile Palestinian land for military zones or Jewish colonies.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&ncid=586&e=3&u=/nm/20030724/wl_nm/mideast_settlers_dc

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Jewish settler population grew by more than 5,000 in the first half of 2003, despite U.S.-backed peace moves requiring Israel to halt construction in Jewish settlements, Israel said on Thursday.

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http://www.prolog.net/webnews/wed/cz/Qmideast-settlements.Rl7T_DlL.html

July 21 (AFP) - Jewish settlement outposts on Palestinian land are an "internal" matter which Israel will deal with at its discretion, rather than under international pressure, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Monday.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=319736&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

In what may turn out to be the largest settlement effort inside the Green Line in the last 25 years, the [Israeli] Prime Minister's Office is planning to establish some 30 new towns, most in the Negev and the Galilee. The project, which will be given top priority, is expected to be completed in the shortest possible period. According to the adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on settlement, Uzi Kern, Sharon reached the conclusion that following the enormous investment in settling the territories, it is now necessary to settle the Galilee and the Negev.

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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-israel-palestinians,0,2111502.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

July 23 - The Palestinian parliament could vote Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas from power unless he wins substantial Israeli concessions in upcoming talks in Washington, a top Palestinian official said Wednesday... The Palestinians want Bush to press Israel to release thousands of Palestinian prisoners, stop construction of settlements on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and take other steps... Israel has refused so far to meet Palestinian demands.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$5CCW4WK3VUNHPQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2003/07/24/wmid24.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/07/24/ixworld.html

July 24 - Israel yesterday deferred a decision on releasing jailed Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=320524&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

The International Criminal Court in The Hague will not be prosecuting crimes committed by Israel Defense Forces' soldiers in the territories, according to chief prosecutor in the Hague Louis Moreno Ocampo. His comments effectively put an end to fears among many IDF army officers and soldiers and members of the Israeli legal establishment... The court constitution says that to prosecute a civilian or soldier, permission is required from either the accused's country or the country where thecrimes allegedly took place. Since Israel will not grant permission and the territories are not considered a state... it is not possible to try an Israeli for crimes committedmin the territories.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1520&ncid=1520&e=6&u=/afp/20030718/pl_afp/us_bush_dictators_030718232441

DALLAS, Texas (AFP) - President George W. Bush hit out six regimes on a US blacklist he said were guilty of oppression and human rights abuses in Myanmar and Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Belarus. In a proclamation issued to mark "captive nations week" first observed in 1959... "Millions of people still live under regimes that violate their citizens' rights daily," Bush said.

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http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?0cv=CA01

The U.S. military on Thursday released photos of the corpses of Odai and Qusai Hussein. THE TWO photos showed the men from the chest up — one on bloody white sheets, the other in what appeared to be a body bag — with blood caked on their faces. Both men, with heavy beards, had their eyes closed, the lids darkly bruised. One appeared to have a gash across his blood-splattered face and contusions on his forehead.

...“When Iraq broadcast photos of dead American soldiers, the U.S. considered that against human rights,” said Jordanian political analyst Sahar al-Qassem. “So, why are they violating that now by showing such inhumane pictures?”

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http://www.dawn.com/2003/07/24/int2.htm

PARIS, July 23: A journalist preparing a story on Saddam Hussein and his two sons Uday and Qusay for the French national news weekly magazine Le Point says that Uday was in the process of negotiating his surrender to the US occupation authority when he was killed on Tuesday. According to Jean Guisnel, who is considered an authority on the Saddam family and Iraq and who was speaking to a reporter for French public TV channel France 3 on Wednesday, "Uday was in the process of negotiating his surrender because he had let it be known that he would prefer being handed over alive to US forces than being discovered by Iraqi nationals whom he feared might lynch him instead of turning him over to US authorities."

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jul2003/iraq-j24.shtml

Why was no effort made to capture Uday and Qusay Hussein alive? When asked about this, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was in charge of the operation, answered blandly, “Our mission is to find, kill or capture.”

...The capture of Uday and Qusay Hussein presented politically troublesome problems. Putting the two former officials on trial would have inevitably raised the issue of the entirely lawless character of the war and occupation. The Hussein brothers would not have found it a great challenge to turn the tables on their prosecutors and expose the hypocrisy and criminality of the Anglo-American operation in Iraq.

We have the example of the ongoing Slobodan Milosevic war crimes trial in The Hague, which has turned into a fiasco for the US and NATO. The former Yugoslav president has already succeeded—during the prosecution phase of the case—in using the tribunal to expose the machinations of the great powers. Milosevic is expected to develop his arguments during the two years he will now have to present his defense.

Beyond the immediate situation in Iraq, there is the equally vexing question of the long-standing relationship between the US government, including some of its current leading officials, and the former Hussein regime. In February 2003 the National Security Archive released 60 documents detailing the extent of the relations between the Reagan administration and the Iraqi government during the 1980s... The Archive notes that Washington, through direct and indirect means, provided financing, weaponry, intelligence and military support to Baghdad “in accordance with policy directives from President Ronald Reagan,” several years before the US restored formal relations with Iraq in November 1984. A highlight of the process of normalizing American-Iraqi relations was the visit by then presidential envoy (and current Secretary of Defense) Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad in December 1983... A secret memo sent to the State Department reported that “Saddam Hussein showed obvious pleasure with [the] President’s letter and Rumsfeld’s visit and in his remarks.” As the New York Times reported in March 2003, the US and France were the sources of Iraq’s biological weapons programs.

...The assassination of the Hussein brothers has further undermined the claim that the US went to war to prevent the Iraqi regime from developing or using weapons of mass destruction (WMD). According to Judith Miller in the July 23 New York Times, Qusay Hussein “was also responsible for overseeing Iraq’s unconventional weapons. ... Stephen Black, a former inspector and chemical weapons expert, said that by virtue of his control of the security services, Qusay would have known, for instance, ‘whether they had chemical weapons, how many they had, and where they were deployed.’ ... Finally, he said, Qusay would have known not the exact hiding places but the ‘broad brushes of the concealment policy and practices—whether Saddam had destroyed or hidden weapons or the capability for just-in-time production, and what the goals of this concealment were.’”

Obviously, by taking the decision to murder Qusay, the US government and military expressed their total lack of interest in the existence of WMD and, in effect, acknowledged that such deadly and dangerous weapons do not exist.

...Less than sixty years ago, Washington opposed the summary execution of the leaders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan—who had committed crimes on a far more massive scale than any carried out by the regime of Saddam Hussein—and insisted they be placed on public trial and accorded all of the legal privileges of due process... Considerable pains were taken to ensure that the defendants not take their own lives. The US was insistent that the defendants be provided with counsel and access to evidence and that they be accorded the right to cross-examine witnesses... Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, chosen to represent the US in any post-war proceeding, explain[ed] the options he presented to President Harry Truman: “We could execute or otherwise punish them [the Nazi officials] without a hearing. But undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would ... not set easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride.”

...Jackson noted that the Allied triumph by itself did not provide the victors with the legal sanction to punish German officials, nor did Allied claims and proclamations. The guilt of the Nazi leaders had to be proven in a court of law.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/assassination_ban

Pursuing with intent to kill violates a long-standing policy banning political assassination. It was the misfortune of Saddam Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai, that the Bush administration has not bothered to enforce the prohibition... The ban has been overlooked so often in recent years that some wonder why the administration doesn't simply declare the measure null and void.

...The ban on assassinations, spelled out in an executive order signed by President Ford in 1976 and reinforced by Presidents Carter and Reagan, made no distinction between wartime and peacetime. There are no loop holes; no matter how awful the leader, he could not be a U.S. target either directly or by a hired hand.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/25/1058853211303.html

July 25 2003 Gunmen calling themselves Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen militia vowed to step up attacks on US forces and Iraqi collaborators to avenge the killing of his sons Uday and Qusay, in a video aired on Al-Arabiya television yesterday.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/23/1058853138200.html

July 24 - The US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, told reporters he expected retaliatory attacks for several days, but he believed that the daily assaults on US troops would subside soon.... Mr Bremer did not have to wait long for the retaliation: two US soldiers were killed and at least eight wounded yesterday.

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bob fisk tells it straight

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=3514198

There is a fundamental misunderstanding between the American occupation authorities in Iraq and the people whose country they are occupying. The United States believes that the entire resistance to America's proconsulship of Iraq is composed of "remnants" of Saddam's followers... Their theory is that once the Hussein family is decapitated, the resistance will end. But the guerrillas who are killing US troops every day are also being attacked by a growing Islamist Sunni movement which never had any love for Saddam.

Much more importantly, many Iraqis were reluctant to support the resistance for fear that an end to American occupation would mean the return of the ghastly old dictator. If he and his sons are dead, the chances are that the opposition to the American-led occupation will grow rather than diminish - on the grounds that with Saddam gone, Iraqis will have nothing to lose by fighting the Americans.

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more from fisk

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=3513815

July 22 - The Iraqi guerrilla war against the United States is becoming increasingly deadly. On Saturday, for example, a US military map of Baghdad violence showed 10 security 'incidents' over the previous 48 hours... In one 24-hour period, the UN recorded six attacks across Iraq.

...One of the more disturbing elements of the American reports is the separation of incidents involving US troops and the violence inflicted on civilians or Iraqi police... Assaults on Americans are described as "Significant Incidents" while assaults on Iraqi civilians - during the theft of their cars, for example - are referred to under the simple heading of "Crime". American lives, the underlying tenor of these reports seems to be, are more important than innocent Iraqi lives.

...The message of all this information - most of it unreported by the media - is that the Americans are no longer safe anywhere in Iraq: not at Baghdad airport, which they captured with so much fanfare in early April, not at their military bases nor in the streets of central Baghdad, nor in their helicopters nor on the country roads. A regular guerrilla war has broken out in Iraq. And it's getting ever more out of control.

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http://www.prolog.net/webnews/wed/bw/Qiraq-us-media.RzUZ_DlM.html

BAGHDAD, July 22 (AFP) - The US-led coalition in Iraq has closed down a local newspaper for the first time, accusing it of incitement to murder in an article published earlier this month, officials said Tuesday. "It was our duty to close down this newspaper," Al-Mustaqila, or The Independent, a senior coalition official said on condition of anonymity.

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when one door closes, another opens

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_23-7-2003_pg5_16

BAGHDAD: The US-led Coalition Provisional Authority said on Tuesday it had created the Trade Bank of Iraq... The CPA said in a statement the bank would provide financial and related services to help the import and export of goods and services to and from Iraq.

...The lure of new business has banks worldwide rushing to build alliances that will compete to run the bank, the Journal reported, citing US officials and international financial executives. Those banks include J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which has joined forces with Britain’s Standard Chartered Plc, the National Bank of Kuwait, the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd, and Poland’s Millennium Bank, The Journal said. Financial services giant Citigroup Inc. may be another contender, along with Deutsche Bank AG, which would likely be tied up with a large US bank, the WSJ said. In London, Standard Chartered declined to comment on the WSJ report but said it was looking for opportunities in Iraq.

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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1001673,00.html

The continued detention of leading Iraqi scientists and other officials by US forces is swiftly turning into a major human rights row... The inability to produce a single scientist from the former regime to confirm the assertions about an alleged threat is becoming an embarrassment... The International Committee of the Red Cross, with an internationally recognised mandate to inspect detention centres around the world, has been urging the US to clarify the status of the three dozen Iraqi scientists and officials it holds. The authorities have given no details of their whereabouts and, unlike Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, the place where they are held has not been shown to journalists. Some detainees are believed to be imprisoned in solitary cells or in swelteringly hot tents near the vast US base at Baghdad airport.

...Around 30 other Iraqis in the 'pack of cards' are being held in similarly secret conditions... Many were professionals with no connection to the torture machine of the Interior Ministry or the state security organisation.

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http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030720-115919-6766r.htm

Captured Saddam Hussein loyalists in Iraq are proving adept at beating lie-detector tests, frustrating attempts to find banned weapons... Officials attribute the lying to many factors. They say it may have become part of the culture of Saddam's regime to lie routinely. In other cases, the Iraqi intelligence service and Special Security Organization trained operators how to "beat" the machine.

...Military sources say no torture is being used. The Bush administration has pledged not to use that technique in questioning suspects in the war on terrorism. But a military officer said intelligence agents are using sleep deprivation... Sleep is allowed as a reward for providing information.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=564&e=10&u=/nm/20030721/ts_nm/iraq_wolfowitz_dc_4

July 21 - U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz warned foreigners Monday not to interfere in Iraq... "I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq," said Wolfowitz.

...Washington has several times warned neighboring countries -- - in particular Iran and Syria -- to keep out of Iraq's internal affairs. Tehran hit back, saying Washington was being hypocritical, having invaded the country.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/international/20MILI.html?ex=1059650248&ei=1&en=9c604e7e13df3a0b

July 19 — American air war commanders carried out a comprehensive plan to disrupt Iraq's military command and control system before the Iraq war, according to an internal briefing on the conflict by the senior allied air war commander. Known as Southern Focus, the plan called for attacks on... important military assets. The strikes, which were conducted from mid-2002 into the first few months of 2003, were justified publicly at the time as a reaction to Iraqi violations of a no-flight zone... One reason it was possible for the allies to begin the ground campaign to topple Mr. Hussein without preceding it with an extensive array of airstrikes was that 606 bombs had been dropped on 391 carefully selected targets under the plan, General Moseley said.

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http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/201/nation/After_9_11_US_planes_began_softening_Iraqi_defenses%2B.shtml

As early as the autumn of 2001, US military authorities took steps to increase surveillance of southern Iraq and then to systematically bomb Iraq... according to the American general who commanded the air campaign... Although Bush administration officials have maintained that war was not inevitable and the decision to invade Iraq was not made until March this year, Moseley's comments make clear that military commanders started planning for stepped-up action soon after the Sept. 11, 2001.

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http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/19/1058545627433.html

President George Bush and his National Security Adviser did not entirely read [note: the commander in chief "did not entirely read" --mrs.h] the most authoritative pre-war assessment of US intelligence on Iraq, including a State Department claim that an allegation that Mr Bush later used in his State of the Union speech was "highly dubious". White House officials made the acknowledgment in a briefing for reporters [july 20th].

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http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review/

A White House official noted that the president "is not a fact checker."

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&ncid=703&e=1&u=/ap/20030722/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iraq_criticism

July 22 - Stephen Hadley, President Bush's deputy national security adviser, on Tuesday became the second administration official to apologize for allowing a tainted intelligence report on Iraq's nuclear ambitions into Bush's State of the Union address.

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http://www.msnbc.com/news/942095.asp?0cv=CA01&cp1=1

July 21 — They were just 16 words in the State of the Union address — words that we now know were misleading. And this man, retired career diplomat Joe Wilson tried to warn the administration of just that nearly a year before the speech. NOW IN AN NBC News exclusive, Wilson says his family is the subject of a smear campaign. Wilson tells NBC News the White House deliberately leaked his wife’s identity as a covert CIA operative... after he criticized the administration on “Meet the Press” and in the New York Times. He told me, “It’s a shot across the bow to those who might step forward, those unnamed analysts who said they were pressured by the White House for example would think twice about having their own families names being dragged through this particular mud.” The White House strongly denies the charge.

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http://www.thehill.com/news/072303/leak.aspx

July 22 - Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) defended himself against charges he leaked sensitive information. Durbin took to the Senate floor to deny accusations that he disclosed classified information on Iraq after CIA Director George Tenet briefed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week. Durbin, a member of the panel, accused the administration of intimidating individuals who have spoken out against the its use of intelligence to justify military action against Iraq... He said that the “White House press operation started floating the story that there were senators … who were asking for my removal from the Senate Intelligence Committee because [of] the statements that I made.”

...Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said, “I don’t know who is trying to intimidate … [Durbin], but I know that efforts are being made from various sources to undermine his credibility and to deny him the responsibility and, I would say, the support that he needs to continue his work.”

...Speaking to reporters after his Senate remarks, Durbin said... "What we have here is a continuing pattern by this White House,” he declared. “If any member of this Senate, Democrat or Republican, takes to the floor, questions this White House policy, raises any questions about the gathering of intelligence information or the use of it, be prepared for the worst.” ...The White House did not return calls requesting comment.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3080699.stm

If one thing is certain in the wake of the tragic death of David Kelly it is that politics in Britain has changed for ever... Governments have fallen and prime ministerial careers have collapsed over less... There have already been demands from his own side for the prime minister to resign.

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http://www.sundayherald.com/35434

What we know for sure is that Kelly met the BBC defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan at the Charing Cross Hotel in London on May 22. There they discussed Iraq... [and] the preparation of intelligence for public consumption. A week later, Gilligan broadcast his Radio 4 report that a British official involved in the preparation of last September’s dossier on Iraq claimed the document had been “sexed up” to woo the country into war.

Kelly later informed his superiors in the MoD [Ministry of Defense] that he’d had an unauthorised meeting with Gilligan. On Tuesday, he appeared before the foreign affairs select committee (FAC), was ruthlessly grilled, and denied that he was Gilligan’s primary source. On Thursday, he killed himself.

...When Kelly stepped forward on July 3 to say he had spoken to Gilligan, the MoD and [the prime minister's office] leapt at the chance to use Kelly to discredit the BBC... On Friday, July 10, at the morning Downing Street press briefing, journalists were told unequivocally that Kelly was Gilligan’s source... With hindsight, Andrew MacKinlay, one of the Labour members on the FAC, must recall his questioning of Kelly with horror. Even by the standards of most committee hearings, it was brutal and humiliating. Shouting at Kelly, MacKinlay demanded to know what other journalists the scientist had spoken to. He then proceeded to insult and bully Kelly, saying: “I reckon you are chaff; you have been thrown up to divert our probing. Have you ever felt like a fall guy?”

...Kelly was effectively cleared by the FAC when the committee members ruled that it was “most unlikely” he was the source – but... the government wouldn’t let go, insisting that they would continue to believe Kelly was the mole unless the BBC said otherwise... The BBC, of course, refused to play a game of identifying their source by a process of elimination.

...Kelly couldn’t even return to his own home until Thursday... The FAC got a hint of what terrible pressure Kelly was under when he told them that because of the media pack, he’d been holed up in an MoD safehouse away from his family. When he did manage to return home, he phoned the Hind’s Head, his local pub, to say he would miss the cribbage game he regularly played, and at around 3pm – the same time that Andrew Gilligan was recalled by the FAC and found to be an unreliable witness – Kelly said goodbye to his wife... Just a few hours before he left, Kelly sent [an] e-mail... referring to “many dark actors playing games”... To his friends and family, all the war stands for has now been boiled down into the life and death of David Kelly.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/20/1058639664997.html

July 21 - The BBC has confirmed that weapons expert David Kelly, whose body was found on Friday, was the source of its report that the British government embellished intelligence to justify war on Iraq.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/international/worldspecial/24BRIT.html?ex=1060069105&ei=1&en=e931c41d253d6c9f

Prime Minister Tony Blair has denied that he approved making public the name of a weapons inspector, David Kelly... The name of Dr. Kelly was disclosed to British newspapers earlier this month by the Defense Ministry... On July 15, Dr. Kelly underwent a humiliating round of questioning in televised hearings... His body was found on Friday, his left wrist slashed and a package of painkillers nearby... A formal judicial inquiry led by Lord Hutton, a senior British judge, is to begin next week... Mr. Blair's denial that he had betrayed Dr. Kelly's confidentiality shifted the focus to two of the prime minister's most trusted aides, Geoff Hoon, the defense secretary, and Alastair Campbell, the communications and security chief.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/international/middleeast/20CND-TURKEY.html?ex=1059749349&ei=1&en=30fc4672dc76c7b3

Mr Blair, speaking after the death of Dr David Kelly, the weapons expert who spoke to the BBC before the corporation claimed that last September's WMD dossier had been "sexed up"to help justify the war, again insisted that the evidence in the dossier was genuine as well as being undoctored when it was published.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/07/21/nguan21.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/07/21/ixnewstop.html

Tony Blair signalled yesterday that the two Britons held by America in Guantanamo Bay would be tried by an American military tribunal... The Prime Minister said the proceedings would be conducted according to judicial rules "regarded as reasonably strict by anybody"

...Unless they plead guilty, the suspects run the risk of facing the death penalty. If convicted, the Pentagon has said the detainees can only appeal to Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary. Mr Blair said: "I don't believe myself that the Americans would want to try these people in a way that was inconsistent with the rules that we have. Let us give the Americans credit."

...Another seven Britons are held in Guantanamo Bay and eventually they could be tried in the same way as Mr Begg and Mr Abbasi.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/north_yorkshire/3087135.stm

A British man who travelled to Iraq as war broke out to look for his young daughter has been held by American troops there for over a fortnight. Michael Todd, from York, revealed earlier this year he was determind to travel to Baghdad to find 19-month-old Sajida, who he has never seen. The 33-year-old street performer said Sajida was born out of his relationship with her mother, Abla, 32, when she was a student in Leeds in 2000. The Foreign Office says Mr Todd was arrested by US forces in the northern Iraqi town of Sulaymaniyah on 4 July. A spokeswoman said there were no details about why Mr Todd was detained.

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http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,6797507%255E25777,00.html

23jul03 AN international Red Cross aid worker was shot dead and his Iraqi driver was wounded when their car came under fire south of Baghdad today, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. The ICRC said in a statement that it did not know who was responsible for the attack on the car... "The ICRC is assessing the implications of this attack with a view to deciding its future course of action in Iraq," an ICRC statement said... The ICRC was one of the few international aid agencies to stay in Iraq and provide mainly medical aid during the US-led invasion.

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bob fisk on the job again

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3947

July 24, 2003 - Now here's a story to shame us all. It's about America's shameful prison camps in Iraq.

...Most of all, it's about Qais Mohamed al-Salman... He hated Saddam, fled Iraq in 1976, then returned after the "liberation" with a briefcase literally full of plans to help in the restoration of his country's infrastructure and water purification system. He's an engineer who has worked in Africa, Asia and Europe. He is a Danish citizen. He speaks good English. He even likes America. Or did until 6 June this year.

That day he was travelling in Abu Nawas Street when his car came under American fire. He says he never saw a checkpoint. Bullets hit the tyres and his driver and another passenger ran for their lives. Qais al-Salman stood meekly beside the vehicle. He was carrying his Danish passport, Danish driving licence and medical records... "A civilian car came up with American soldiers in it. Then more soldiers in military vehicles. I told them I didn't understand what had happened, that I was a scientific researcher. But they made me lie down in the street, tied my arms behind me with plastic-and-steel cuffs and tied up my feet and put me in one of their vehicles."

The next bit of his story carries implications for our own journalistic profession. "After 10 minutes in the vehicle, I was taken out again. There were journalists with cameras. The Americans untied me, then made me lie on the road again. Then, in front of the cameras, they tied my hands and feet all over again and put me back in the vehicle."

...Amnesty International turned up in Baghdad yesterday to investigate... the mass detention centre run by the Americans at Baghdad international airport in which up to 2,000 prisoners live in hot, airless tents. The makeshift jail is called Camp Cropper and there have already been two attempted breakouts. Both would-be escapees, needless to say, were swiftly shot dead by their American captors. Yesterday, Amnesty was forbidden permission to visit Camp Cropper.

This is where the Americans took Qais Al-Salman on 6 June... "In the morning, I was taken for interrogation before an American military intelligence officer. I showed him letters involving me in US aid projects . He pinned a label on my shirt. It read, Suspected Assassin'." ...Qais Al-Salman was given no water to wash in, and after trying to explain his innocence to a second interrogator, he went on hunger strike. No formal charges were made against him. There were no rules for the American jailers. "Some soldiers drove me back to Baghdad after 33 days in that camp," Qais al-Salman says. "They dropped me in Rashid Street and gave me back my documents and Danish passport and they said, Sorry'."

Qais al-Salman went home to his grief-stricken mother who had long believed her son was dead. No American had contacted her despite her desperate requests to the US authorities for help. Not one of the Americans had bothered to tell the Danish government they had imprisoned one of its citizens. Just as in Saddam's day, a man had simply been "disappeared" off the streets of Baghdad.

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"coalition" body count to date

http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx

March 20th through April 9th, 2003, when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad. Deaths during this 21 day period averaged 7 per day.

April 10th (the day after Baghdad fell) through May 1st when President Bush announced the end of major combat aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. Deaths during this 22 day period averaged 1 per day.

May 2nd (the day after the aircraft carrier announcement) through today's date (Jul/25). Deaths during this 84 day period averaged 1.31 per day

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iraq civilian body count. see this site for itemization & methodology

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm

6,073 MINIMUM Total of civilians reported killed

7,782 MAXIMUM Total of civilians reported killed

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17130-2003Jul19.html

CAMP AS SALIYAH, Qatar, July 19 -- U.S. military commanders plan to train and arm thousands of Iraqis to conduct military missions alongside U.S. and British troops... Army Gen. John P. Abizaid said in his first interview since taking over U.S. Central Command this month, "We intend to get them in the fight."

...Plans to create a militia-like civil defense force signal a new approach to the task of establishing order in postwar Iraq.

...There are now 3,800 Iraqis in detention, of whom about 1,200 are believed to be hard-core Baathists or die-hard elements of the old Iraqi military, a Central Command official said.

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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ERMEWEDURICFECRBAEOCFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=3122122

Sun July 20 - U.S. Marines fixed bayonets on Sunday to disperse an angry crowd of 10,000 Iraqi Shi'ites in the holy city of Najaf after tempers flared over rumors of U.S. harassment of a radical cleric... The U.S. commander in Najaf, Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Conlin, denied reports his men had surrounded Sadr's house on Saturday and warned his men would respond if threatened... Sadr, a young cleric with limited religious authority, [had] denounced the U.S. occupation of Iraq in a sermon on Friday.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=425912

20 July 2003 - "Up yours, asshole," mutters Sergeant Ronald Black to an Iraqi youth who waves from the back of a passing motor scooter... "God, I hate these people," he says.

...There still exists a school of thought ­ especially well represented among hawks in the Bush administration and the Pentagon ­ that it was the mass media, not the failure of US policy, that sapped American resolve and ultimately lost the war in Vietnam. It may be only a matter of time before a similar schism opens over press coverage here, as departure dates for homesick troops and deadlines for stamping out the resistance are pushed back indefinitely.

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http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review/

Several U.S. soldiers complained on television that morale was low and that they wanted to go home. "If Donald Rumsfeld were here, I'd ask him for his resignation," said one. "I would ask him why we are still here," said another. "I don't have any clue as to why we are still in Iraq." "This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," a special assistant to Donald Rumsfeld said about the unrest in Iraq. "We'll get better as we do it more often."

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http://www.dawn.com/2003/07/21/top13.htm

BAGHDAD, July 20: Amnesty International accused US troops on Sunday of "very severe" human rights abuses in Iraq and complained that it had been denied access to thousands of prisoners held without charge in "appalling" conditions. Amnesty spokeswoman Judit Arenas Licea said some Iraqis had been forced to stand under the blistering sun for up to 48 hours in US-run detention centres that lack proper sanitation and that relatives had no information on their plight. One detainee was shot dead by US troops during a prison riot last month... US military officials declined immediate comment.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17109-2003Jul19.html

The U.S. military is investigating at least seven cases of suspected suicide by soldiers deployed for the war in Iraq... Overall, the military has not released an official count of possible suicides under investigation, and the total could be higher than seven, given a number of unexplained deaths included in the Pentagon's casualty statistics.

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http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=183984

Tehran, July 19 - The chief of the UN's Nuclear Watchdog has denied reports that inspectors found enriched uranium in samples taken recently in Iran, calling it "pure speculation at this stage," the Associated Press has reported.

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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2003-07/21/content_986218.htm

TEHRAN, July 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran vowed to be committed to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) on Monday, denying reports saying it would quit from the NPT.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/22/international/worldspecial/22SPIE.html?ex=1059890291&ei=1&en=bcba32b872d38ed4

Relying on the help of an Iraqi political party, the United States has moved to resurrect parts of the Iraqi intelligence service, with the branch that monitors Iran among the top priorities, former Iraqi agents and politicians say... The party has received documents from the intelligence officers and recruited them into a reconstituted version of the unit, said Abdulaziz Kubaisi, the Iraqi National Congress official responsible for the recruiting effort... "As far as what we do, we are sending back information to the Pentagon, to people who are responsible," Mr. Kubaisi said. "...There is coordination. We have representatives of Rumsfeld at the I.N.C."

...A senior American official said concern about Iran was driving some of the discussion about moving quickly to re-establish an intelligence service.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2933607,00.html

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - The former head of the world's chemical weapons regulatory body was wrongly dismissed last year at the insistence of the U.S. government, according to a ruling at the International Labor Organization in Geneva. Jose Mauricio Bustani was voted out of office as director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in April 2002, after Washington accused him of mismanagement.

...The OPCW is charged with ridding the world of chemical weapon stockpiles and production facilities... If OPCW chemical weapons inspectors had gone to Iraq and, like U.N. weapons inspectors, failed to find banned chemical weapons, it could have hurt the Bush Administration's case for war... Bustani's firing came one year after he was unanimously re-elected by the organization's member countries, including the United States, for a second four-year term. At the time, Secretary of State Colin Powell praised his leadership qualities in a personal letter.

...Bustani called the ruling a "great relief," telling The Associated Press that he would donate the damages he won [$56,700] to an international cooperation program at the OPCW, based in The Hague, Netherlands.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EG19Df01.html

NEW DELHI - Ever since the United States sought Indian military help to continue its three-month-old occupation of Iraq, speculation about the carrots and sticks attached to the request have been rife... Now that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's coalition government has shown the courage to refuse to send troops to Iraq, both the carrots and sticks are beginning to come out into the open... Senior Pentagon official Peter Rodman told the head of India's Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt-Gen Kamal Davar, that India's refusal to send troops may have a negative impact on Indo-US ties... As it became clear that the overwhelming majority of Indians opposed sending troops to Iraq ...[India] was told in effect: "...We know you may ask for UN cover or cite domestic concerns... But if you send troops right now, that will strengthen our friendship."

...A desperate US is not going to take India's considered rejection of its request for troops as a closed chapter. While there were several reasons for India's refusal, it has mainly cited the lack of a UN cover. So the US is moving to provide it with one. It has started looking to the United Nations Security Council for a much broader mandate that would facilitate India and some other nations sending troops to Iraq.

...While the government has once again gone into a wait and watch mode, knowing that it will again be called upon to make a decision it doesn't want to make, an angry editorial in Friday's Hindustan Times sums up the Indian position succinctly: "...It may not have been so much for stabilization and reconstruction that the Americans were eager to have the Indian troops as for fighting the war on their behalf. This is clearly out of the question... It is India which has a greater reason to voice displeasure because of the manner in which it was sought to be dragged into a quagmire of the Americans' own creation."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/international/middleeast/20CND-TURKEY.html?ex=1059749349&ei=1&en=30fc4672dc76c7b3

July 20 — The Bush administration has asked Turkey's leaders to send troops to Iraq.

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http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v3/news.php?id=5866

TOKYO, July 23-- [Japanese] Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi admitted Wednesday he could not name any place in Iraq that can be defined as a noncombat zone, where Self-Defense Forces (SDF) can be sent to help rebuild the country.

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http://www.freep.com/news/nw/troops23_20030723.htm

July 23, 2003 - U.S. Army leaders are to announce as early as today a plan to start relieving exhausted troops in Iraq with thousands of soldiers from U.S.-based units and an additional 10,000 National Guards members who will be called to active duty.

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http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20030721/D7SE10N82.html

Some 4,500 more American sailors and Marines have been ordered to position themselves closer to Liberia to be ready for possible duty in the embattled West African nation, officials said Monday.

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http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030720-115938-3269r.htm

About 165 communities nationwide have passed resolutions condemning the USA Patriot Act. But one little city in northern California has taken its opposition a step further... In March, Arcata officials set down a $57 fine for those who don't "promptly notify the city manager" if federal law-enforcement authorities contact them seeking help in an investigation, interrogation or arrest under the provisions of the act.

..."Obviously, the folks [in Arcata] who voted for this ordinance haven't read the law," said Justice Department spokesman Mark C. Corallo.

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http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030721/D7SE01P80.html

A Justice Department investigation into more than 1,000 recent claims of civil rights and civil liberties violations under the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act concluded that 34 were credible, according to a report released Monday... Many of the complaints were from Muslims or people of Arab descent who claimed they were beaten or verbally abused while being detained. These include a claim by a Muslim inmate that he was ordered to "remove his shirt so that the officer could use it to shine his shoes." ...The report also substantiated a claim by a federal prison inmate who said he was told by a prison doctor, "If I was in charge, I would execute every one of you because of the crimes you all did."

...Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said Monday that the agency is "committed to pursuing every allegation of civil liberties violations by federal law enforcement officers." But he added that the relatively small number of credible complaints makes it "pretty clear that this is not a huge problem." There were 1,073 complaints [filed]... during the six-month period.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25587-2003Jul21.html

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday defended the USA Patriot Act, saying criticism of the sweeping federal anti-terrorist law was based on exaggerations and falsehoods... "We use these tools to secure the liberties of our citizens. We use these tools to save innocent lives," Ashcroft said.

...The Republican-controlled state legislature in Alaska has approved a resolution condemning the act as an infringement of civil liberties.

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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3136483

More than 400,000 letters have been sent to members of the U.S. Congress backing a call for an independent investigation into intelligence used by the Bush administration to justify the Iraq war, organizers of an online campaign said on Tuesday. The campaign, being run by the advocacy group Moveon.org (http://www.moveon.org), is trying to pressure lawmakers to back a bill introduced by Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, that would create a nonpartisan commission to probe the intelligence... The initiative to get an inquiry approved by Congress faces an uphill task, with the majority Republicans opposing it. Since the petition began about a month ago, the number of lawmakers sponsoring the House bill has almost tripled to 63.

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from 15 july

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0703/071503h2.htm

The Homeland Security Department has chosen Microsoft Corp. as its preferred supplier of desktop computer and server software, according to a statement issued late Tuesday... The department has purchased a license for about 140,000 desktop computers and is consolidating other Microsoft agreements held by Homeland Security agencies into the five-year contract. The deal is worth $90,000,000.00.

...Microsoft will provide the standard e-mail software for the entire department.

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how 'bout that microsoft securityu? here's one example of published instructions for breaching it. crack a password in just 5 seconds!

http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/330004

Windows password hashes can be calculated in advance because no salt or other random information is involved. This makes so called time-memory trade-off attacks possible. This vulnerability is not new but we think that we have the first tool to exploit this... It works by calculating all possible hashes in advance and storing some of them in an organized table. The more information you keep in the table, the faster the cracking will be.

We have implemented an online demo of this method which cracks alphanumerical passwords in 5 seconds average (see http://lasecpc13.epfl.ch/ntcrack). With the help of 0.95GB of data we can find the password after an average of 4 million hash operation. A brute force cracker would need to calculate an average of 50% of all hashes,

which amounts to about 40 billion hases for alphanumerical passwords (lanman hash).

More info about the method can be found at in a paper at http://lasecwww.epfl.ch/php_code/publications/search.php?ref=Oech03.

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http://www.latimes.com/la-na-homeland23jul23,0,4078978.story

WASHINGTON — House members Tuesday lambasted the Terrorist Threat Intelligence Center, a new piece of the government designed to coordinate the analysis of intelligence gathered by the CIA, FBI and Department of Homeland Security... The center has no bureaucratic identity but is rather a free-floating body whose chief reports to CIA Director George J. Tenet... [and so on.]

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http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3138081

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to roll back a key provision, which allows the government to conduct secret "sneak and peek" searches of private property, of a sweeping anti-terrorism law passed soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. The House voted 309-118 to attach the provision to a $37.9 billion bill funding the departments of Commerce, State and Justice. It would be the first change in the controversial USA Patriot Act since the law was enacted in October, 2001. The move would block the Justice Department from using any funds to take advantage of the section of the act that allows it to secretly search the homes of suspects and only inform them later that a warrant had been issued to do so.

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amy goodman interviews bernie sanders

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16486

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 309-118 to overturn key provisions of the [Patriot] Act...

Amy Goodman: Let's start off with what happened last night? The significance of that roll back.

Bernie Sanders: It was a big deal. And it was a very big surprise... There is massive discontent with the anti-civil liberties provisions in that bill... By the way, I should tell you that the person who introduced that amendment was a conservative Republican.

...Amy Goodman: What does this mean for Bush since all of this has taken place in the context of the presidential campaign?-

Bernie Sanders: This is – remember, this particular amendment was brought by a fellow named Butch Otter of Idaho. What it should tell the Bush administration and Mr. Ashcroft, is that people all over this country, including a conservative United States congress say, you have gone much too far.

...Amy Goodman: Congressmember Sanders, I also want to talk about the F.C.C. and the new media ownership regulations. The New York Times reports today there's growing bipartisan support in congress to roll back Michael Powell's new rules that are expected to result in the greatest media consolidation in U.S. history. Yesterday the Bush administration threatened to veto any bill that would seek to overturn the recent changes by the F.C.C. to the nation's media ownership laws. Then a magazine reported that Michael Powell was thinking about stepping down, though he has denied this. What is happening in congress around this?

Bernie Sanders:... The main concern is that we're seeing every year is fewer and fewer large multinational media conglomerates owning what we see, hear and read. It is a hugely significant problem... What I did is introduce legislation which would rescind what they did on June 2 – bring us back to where we were. Maurice Hinchey of New York State is working on legislation which would take us a lot further in determining how we can create a more diverse and democratic media... We are quite close – quite close in the House, at least, to having the votes to completely override what Powell did.

Amy Goodman: Finally, Congress member Sanders, you have signed a letter asking Vice President Cheney 10 questions. You sit on the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations... Can you tell us what these questions are?

Bernie Sanders: Well very briefly, I think a lot of Americans are deeply concerned about the Bush administration statements that got us into the war.. While most of the attention has been focused on the President or the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Defense, the truth of the matter is that Vice President Cheney as many people believe is also active in this process. There is strong evidence to suggest that he has been putting a lot of undue pressure on the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies... to move them in a direction that they, themselves, did not feel comfortable about. So the bottom line is – of the questioning is – what role did Cheney play in trying to influence the intelligence agencies to provide inaccurate information to the President and to the American people.

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http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33705

WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence services unanimously agreed last fall that "no specific intelligence information" tied Iraq to U.S. terrorist attacks, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Their findings were presented to the president Oct. 2 in a still-secret report on Iraq. The summary, or "key judgments" section, of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate was declassified Friday. WorldNetDaily obtained a copy from the National Security Council. (The report is different from the unclassified 25-page white paper the CIA made public on its website last October.)

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a view from germany

http://www.alertnet.org/printable.htm?URL=/thenews/newsdesk/L23109558.htm