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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/08/09/wirq109.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/08/09/ixnewstop.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=52784

Condoleezza Rice, the most senior black woman in the Bush administration, has levelled a charge of racism against critics of the US drive to bring Western freedoms to the Middle East.

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http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/08/08/156453-cp.html

KABUL (CP) - The No. 1 challenge facing Canadian soldiers patrolling the Afghan capital will be distinguishing themselves from their American brethren, says the commander of the German battle group they are replacing... "Not all Afghanis know what Canada is," [Lt.-Col. Helmut] Remus said in an interview. "They think you are Americans. This could cause problems. It is very important for the Canadians to show the flag - the Maple Leaf."

...Remus said they face daily threats of rocket and suicide bomb attacks. Plots are discovered and foiled continuously, he said - including threats to Canadian operations, Denne confirmed. Remus's contingent has suffered 52 casualties in a little over a year.

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http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059478841113&p=1012571727172

Japan has postponed sending a military fact-finding team to Iraq indicating it will delay the dispatch of self-defence forces (SDF) until at least December... Mr Koizumi faces ruling party and possibly general elections by November. If Japanese troops were killed before then, public opinion could turn against his administration. In a Nihon Keizai Shimbun poll recently, 52 per cent of respondents said they were against the deployment of the SDF to Iraq, with only 28 per cent in favour.

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http://www.centcom.mil/CENTCOMNews/news_release.asp?NewsRelease=20030812.txt

August 7, 2003 Release Number: 03-08-12 MOSUL, Iraq- A 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) soldier died at approximately 9:30 p.m. Aug. 6 after developing a seizure while performing duties here. The soldier was evacuated to the 21st Combat Support Hospital. The soldier's name is being withheld pending notification of next-of-kin.

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http://www.centcom.mil/CENTCOMNews/news_release.asp?NewsRelease=20030817.txt

August 8, 2003 Release Number: 03-08-17 BAGHDAD, Iraq – A 4th Infantry Division soldier died while sleeping at a base camp in the town of Kirkush on Aug. 8. The soldier's name is being withheld pending next-of-kin notification. The incident is under investigation.

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http://www.gulfwarvets.com/news13.htm

PRESS RELEASE - AUGUST 8, 2003: The American Gulf War Veterans Association (AGWVA), an independent Gulf War Veterans’ support organization, has long searched for answers to explain why nearly half of the 697,000 Gulf War I Veterans are now ill... It seems that whenever veterans become ill, the term “mystery illness” seems to be the first and often the only diagnosis that is ever made. Veterans are then left to fend for themselves.

...The DOD recently has been forced to announce the “mystery” deaths of Gulf War II soldiers... Again, however, there were no adequate answers, but, only that the “mystery illness” diagnosis had reared its ugly head again. According to a family member of one of the military victims, the DOD recently, has changed its label of the illness and is now calling it “pneumonia” in sharp contrast to what a physician on the scene reported.

...In an interview with Mark Neusche, father of Josh Neusche, one of the GW II troops to lose his life from the “mystery illness” while serving in Iraq. The father stated that his 20-year-old healthy son, a former track star and non-smoker, had written home on June 26th explaining that he would be going on a 30-hour “hauling” mission, but that he could not disclose what they would be hauling.

...Neusche stated that while his son was in a coma at Landstuhl Hospital, the father overheard the nurses say that they were expecting numerous sick troops to be brought in all at one time. In fact, the father actually witnessed approximately 55 other troops being received by the hospital after they were transported by a military ambulance (bus). According to the father, the transported troops were exhibiting varying degrees of the illness. Some walked, some were in wheelchairs and others were on respirators.

...One of the most surprising statements to come from The Power Hour interview conducted on “The Genesis Network” was that while the son, Josh Neusche, was a healthy young soldier on June 26, 2003... by July 1, 2003, he was in a coma, and that day [he] was suddenly classified by the military as medically retired from the Army, without Josh or his family’s consent. Josh did not die until July 12, 2003. Among other problems that this new classification created was that the DOD was no longer obligated to assist the family in getting to Germany to be with their son as he lay in a coma. Because the DOD would not provide even so much as plane or taxi fare for the Neusche family, all 650 members of the 203 Engineer Battalion each contributed $10.00 to make the family’s final visit possible.

...The AGWVA is demanding answers in a timely fashion... The interview with Mark Neusche and Marsha Paxson can be heard at: www.thepowerhour.com. Click on the “GWII mystery illness interview.”

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http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20030809.shtml

Former international weapons inspector David Kay, now seeking Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for the Pentagon, has privately reported successes that are planned to be revealed to the public in mid-September.

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let's review: who is david kay?

http://www.yearzero.org/communique/5683b4e965721ede3c289f8562eca645.php

Like Bremer, Rice, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the cast of hardened corporate characters, David Kay is an overfed relic from a past rightwing hawk regime. Under Reagan, he was a chief scientist for the Pentagon as well as serving as a section chief for the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Administration of the UN) from 1983 until 1991. During this time, Hans Blix - Kay's boss - who was a man of integrity, was continually pressured by first Reagan, then Bush I. to come up with 'evidence' that oil-rich Iraq posed a sufficient nuclear threat for the US to invade (and thus to capture the oil).

In fact, until Kay came along, most experts in most western nations believed there was no evidence for an extensive WMD program in Iraq. But after the war, when Bush I needed greater validation for his actions in the run up to the 1992 election, Kay was made chief nuclear inspector for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq. UNSCOM was created in response to the Bush claims that Iraq was a hotbed of WMD weaponry that had to be 'dismantled.'

Kay's investigations turned up all sorts of 'evidence' -given the time lapse from the end of the war to Kay's mission, who knows how much of it was planted -possibly all of it. Certainly the contributions of some 'defectors' have been totally discredited. But UNSCOM produced the same sort of arrays of conveniently -in fact, unbelievably- detailed documents, all just left 'just laying around,' waiting to be found by Kay and company.

...Whenever Kay makes the rounds of the Bush-controlled media these days, he is always introduced only as 'former UN chief weapons inspector' and 'senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Research.' In short, Kay skips over several years of his interim history. Why? Maybe because during the 'missing years,' he was Vice President of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a company with extremely close ties to the Pentagon and to the Bush administration in particular. A company up to its armpits in post-war Iraqi business, not to mention secret contracts rumored to involve electronic spying.

...SAIC's recent history is interesting, to say the least. The company was commissioned by G. W. Bush in 2002 to construct a replica of a mobile WMD laboratory of the sort used by Saddam. This mock up, supposedly destined to be used to train teams searching for WMDs in Iraq, was designed by Stephen Hatfill, the WMD expert now being harangued into isolation and thus silence by Bush's FBI. Last spring, the Bush administration handed SAIC some of the biggest defense contract plums to be had -a billion-dollar chunk of the NexGen business and an unbelievably porky 10-year contract worth over $600 million. [and so on]

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what th'heck is SAIC?

http://middleeastreference.org.uk/irdc.html

In late February 2003, the Pentagon established the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council (IRDC), made up of Iraqis who would be part of a temporary government after the ousting of the Ba'th regime. After initially being based in suburban Virginia, its leading members were transported to Baghdad in late April 2003.

...Members of the IRDC are officially employed by a San Diego-based defence contractor, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), whose Vice President until October 2002 was David Kay, the media pundit on Iraq's weapons whose judgements have been shown to be wide of the mark. Kay was coordinator of SAIC's homeland security and counterterrorism initiatives. SAIC's Corporate Vice President for Strategic Assessment and Development until 7 February 2003 was Christopher Ryan Henry, now Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. SAIC also run the "Voice of the New Iraq", the radio station established on 15 April 2003 at Umm Qasr that is funded by the US government.

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and what's new with the 'iraqi reconstruction and development council'?

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/04/155239

[amy goodman says,] Isam al-Khafaji, a former member of the Iraqi reconstruction council. He resigned from the council on July 9th... He joins us on the phone from Amsterdam.

"To tell you the truth, it was from day one that we discovered that our role as advisors was not wanted, actually... I think that Iraqis in general and the council in particular, we were victims of this sweeping victory, of the U.S. sweeping victory... The moment Saddam fell and the regime, that is, fell and the moment that people met that with euphoria, the U.S. administration... looked at it as... that there is no need for Iraqis, that things were going smoothly, that they could do it all by themselves. They are appointed advisors, American, most of the American advisors to run the ministries... And up until now I can say that things are not moving in any other direction... This is where the dangers are coming from, that Iraqis don't see any improvement in their life."

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http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/221/nation/Bush_says_war_has_helped_Iraqis_Americans_alike%2B.shtml

CRAWFORD, Texas -- The White House yesterday mounted a spirited defense of US operations in Iraq since President Bush declared an end to major operations there, saying that the defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime has benefited Iraqis and Americans alike... Yesterday, Bush dismissed criticism of the administration's Iraq policy as ''just pure politics.''

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/09/international/worldspecial/09WEAP.html?ex=1061443684&ei=1&en=0ce27decfaa895fd

Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say. The classified findings by a majority of the engineering experts differ from the view put forward in a white paper made public on May 28 by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which said that the trailers were for making biological weapons.

..."We stand by the white paper," the Defense Department official said. "But based on the assessment of the engineering team, it has caused us to pursue additional information about possible alternative uses for the trailers." ...Another government official from a different agency said the issue of the trailers had prompted deep divisions within the Defense Intelligence Agency. The official said members of the engineering team had been angry that the agency issued the joint white paper with the C.I.A. before their own work was completed.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/08/business/08REBU.html?ex=1061340061&ei=1&en=04d30acc5896b4d6

The Bechtel Group, one of the world's biggest engineering and construction companies, has dropped out of the running for a contract to rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, as other competitors have begun to conclude that the bidding process favors the one company already working in Iraq, Halliburton.

...Preliminary plans for a new contract, which industry executives had thought might total $1 billion, were announced late in June by the Corps of Engineers... But in the last month, the corps, which is overseeing the reconstruction efforts, has specified a timetable for the work that effectively means that the value of any contract companies other than Halliburton could win would be worth only about $176 million [less than one-fifth of the total -mrs.h], according to Corps of Engineers documents and executives in the engineering and construction business.

...Working in Iraq has helped turn around Halliburton's financial performance, its second-quarter results showed. The company made a profit of $26 million, in contrast to a loss of $498 million in the period a year earlier.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=432201

American pilots dropped the controversial incendiary agent napalm on Iraqi troops during the advance on Baghdad... They said napalm, which has a distinctive smell, was used because of its psychological effect on an enemy. A 1980 UN convention banned the use against civilian targets of napalm, a terrifying mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene that sticks to skin as it burns. The US, which did not sign the treaty, is one of the few countries that makes use of the weapon.

...A reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald [wrote on march 21]... "Safwan Hill went up in a huge fireball and the observation post was obliterated. 'I pity anyone who is in there,' a Marine sergeant said. 'We told them to surrender.'"

[the pentagon has named the napalm] Mark 77 firebombs. They weigh 510lbs, and consist of 44lbs of polystyrene-like gel and 63 gallons of jet fuel.

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http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=101-08092003

[from] transcript of the President Bush's weekly radio address to the nation:

"Friday of this week was the 100th day since the end of major combat operations in Iraq... In the city of Baghdad, 6,000 Iraqi police are patrolling the streets and protecting citizens. More than 20,000 more police are on duty in other towns and cities across Iraq... In Baghdad, the banks have opened... More than a million barrels of crude oil and over 2 million gallons of gasoline are being produced daily... Teachers, health care workers, police and others performing essential services are also receiving salaries from our coalition. In fact, teacher pay is four times higher than under the old regime... Hospitals and universities have opened, and in many places, water and other utility services are reaching pre-war levels. Across Iraq, nearly all schoolchildren have completed their exams. And for the first time in many years, a free press is at work in Iraq... Soon, representatives of the people will begin drafting a new constitution and free elections will follow... We're keeping our word to the Iraqi people by helping them to make their country an example of democracy and prosperity throughout the region."

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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6489726.htm

As police return to the war-shattered streets [of baghdad] to try to restore order, they are finding themselves in the middle of an unprecedented crime wave... Police have no crime statistics yet, but Baghdad's morgue handled 47 times as many gunshot deaths in July as in the same month a year ago... Doctors who examine the bodies say some of the deaths appear to be caused by U.S. weapons. "We get three or four bodies every day whose families say they were shot by the Americans," said Dr. Qeis Hassan. "If the bullet is still in the body we can tell. The bullet's shape is different" from the Kalashnikovs typically used by Iraqis.

Outside the morgue, men unloading coffins into the hot, fetid courtyard vowed revenge. "This is my wife and my sister," said Jamil Sultan Hachim al-Tamimi, a 45-year-old chicken farmer with two boxes. "We were driving and a car's tire blew out. The Americans thought it was a grenade and started firing randomly." He said he would bury the bodies, then turn his thoughts to vengeance. "We have to avenge these women," agreed Mohammed Hamid, a 38-year-old driver who said his brother was shot by a U.S. soldier.

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http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=2KFXMH3YPZWOQCRBAELCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=3249806

British troops in riot gear deployed in Basra Saturday to quell spreading disturbances sparked by shortages of gasoline and power in Iraq's second city, a British military spokesman said... The army spokesman said violence broke out outside at least four gasoline stations but he could not confirm that soldiers opened fire. "We are taking measures to control the crowd," he told Reuters.

...Witnesses said the crowd was enraged by the lack of petrol at the station and power in the city where summer temperature was over 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

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http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=0-213079-2109692.php

When the U.S. military goes to war these days, it takes along water... In Iraq alone, 45 million 1.5-liter bottles a month, drained and tossed aside... Soldiers have two potential sources of water. One is bottled in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or Greece... The military buys so much bottled water, from so many vendors, through so many agencies, that no one knows how much, at what cost, it takes to slake its thirst.

The other, traditional source is the 400-gallon steel tank sitting on a trailer in the desert sun. In Army lingo, that’s a Water Buffalo, which holds water that’s been purified by the ROWPU boys — the soldiers who man the Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units... [But] what comes out when a thirsty grunt turns the spigot may be less than palatable. Worse, in some units this summer, the treated water was rumored to make soldiers sick.

...At one point this spring, about 60 percent of the supply line supporting troops in Iraq was devoted to carrying bottled water, food and ice.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31596-2003Aug7.html

The Bush administration made a broad pledge yesterday to spread democracy and free markets to the Middle East... National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the United States and its allies must make a "generational commitment" to Middle Easterners who live under oppressive and often corrupt governments... She offered few details of a project whose prospects have been greeted with widespread skepticism, particularly in the Middle East itself.

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rsf/ifex = reporters sans frontiers/ international freedom of expression

http://electroniciraq.net/news/1021.shtml

On 31 July 2003, RSF deplored the worsening attitude of American troops towards journalists in Iraq and urged United States (U.S.) Administrator Paul Bremer to explain why two Iranian journalists, Said Aboutaleb and Soheil Karimi, of the public television station IRIB, have been held since 1 July for alleged "security violations". The organisation noted that confiscations of equipment, arrests of journalists and incidents between the media and American soldiers had increased in recent days. "The U.S.-British forces must provide convincing evidence that the Iranians have violated security [provisions] or release them at once," RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said. He expressed concern over the worsening conditions for journalists and recent statements by U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz accusing pan-Arab satellite television stations Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya of airing reports encouraging violence against U.S. troops.

...In addition, on 27 July, Kazutaka Sato, of Japan's Nippon Television Network, was beaten up by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad and detained for an hour until other foreign journalists came to find him... The newspaper "Al-Adala", organ of Iraq's main Shiite party, said its Baghdad offices were recently ransacked by U.S. troops. On 26 July, four Turkish journalists... were detained for an hour and a half by U.S. troops. Their equipment was returned but the photographs they had taken of soldiers with a digital camera were erased. Also on 26 July, Al-Jazeera's correspondent in Mosul, Nawaf Al-Shahwani, was arrested with his driver and held by U.S. troops until the night of 27 to 28 July. Their film was confiscated.

...On 29 July, on the U.S. television network Fox, Wolfowitz charged that Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya were airing "false and slanted reports that are an incitement to violence" against U.S. troops... A report entitled "The Iraqi media three months after the war: a new but fragile freedom", published by RSF on 23 July, expressed concern about the possible misuse of the June order by Bremer concerning "inimical media activity".

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http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059478807151&p=1012571727172

President George W. Bush has chosen a businessman who is a personal friend and a leading Republican fundraiser to rescue the failing Iraqi corporate sector. Thomas C. Foley, a corporate turnround expert based in Connecticut, is due to fly to Baghdad next week to take charge of the privatisation and revival of Iraq's nearly 200 state-owned companies.

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http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-order7aug07,0,4076489.story

An executive order signed by President Bush more than two months ago is raising concerns that U.S. oil companies may have been handed blanket immunity from lawsuits and criminal prosecution in connection with the sale of Iraqi oil... But lawyers for various advocacy organizations said the two-page executive order seemed to completely shield oil companies from liability — even if it could be proved that they had committed human rights violations, bribed officials or caused great environmental damage in the course of their Iraqi-related business.

"As written, the executive order appears to cancel the rule of law for the oil industry or anyone else who gets possession or control of Iraqi oil or anything of value related to Iraqi oil," said Tom Devine, legal director for the Washington-based Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that defends whistle-blowers. Taylor Griffin, a Treasury Department spokesman, dismissed that interpretation, saying the president issued Executive Order 13303 to protect proceeds from the sale of Iraqi crude oil, which are supposed to go into a special fund that the United Nations set up in May to help rebuild the war-torn country.

...But Devine and others said the administration's stated intentions were not borne out by the sweeping language in the executive order. "Unless they offer a different, credible translation for plain English, it's no solace that the administration meant something different," Devine said.

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http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-plastic7aug07,0,4730824.story

Visa International [is bringing] charge cards to Iraq and introduce a quintessential American symbol to a nation whose ancestors invented the concept of credit. Although occupation authorities are still struggling to provide electricity and clean water throughout Iraq, the San Francisco-based credit card giant is so confident that the country will embrace plastic, it began mapping its commercial invasion early this year -- even before the U.S. launched the first Tomahawk missiles in the Iraq war.

...[However,] regular telephone service -- necessary for the machines that authorize purchases -- is still unavailable. Merchants are reluctant to pay Visa's fees. And Islamic leaders are counseling that usury and profits from loans are serious crimes under the Koran... "In Islam, this is not allowed," said the imam, Thaer Ibrahim Shammari, who also teaches at the Islamic College. "Every loan in which a profit is made will hurt the man who gets the loan. I don't approve of this company."

His father, Ibrahim, offered another reason why Visa may face obstacles in postwar Iraq. "I would boycott even the air if it came from the Americans," he said.

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http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059478831810&p=1012571727172

US and Iraqi authorities were still searching for clues on Friday to Thursday's bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, in which the death toll has risen to 19. At least 65 people were wounded... Observers are still mystified about why Jordan's embassy would have been targeted. The kingdom a week ago offered Saddam Hussein's two daughters asylum, angering some Iraqis, but the motive could just as easily have been tied to Jordan's support for the coalition during the campaign to unseat Mr Hussein.

...Meanwhile, attacks continued on US forces, with one soldier killed on Thursday night in Baghdad's upmarket Mansour neighbourhood.

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http://electroniciraq.net/news/1006.shtml

Maarten H.J. van den Berg, RISQ, 4 August 2003 - As Dutch peacekeepers are arriving in the Southern province of Al Muthanna to join the UN-backed 'stabilisation force' in Iraq (SFIR), the government has unduly assured MPs that no DU ammunition was used in the area during the recent conflict. If this information comes from US officials, as the Dutch government claims, it has been deceived--and misinformed parliament. This is the conclusion of a report by RISQ Associate Maarten H.J. van den Berg. Already, the report has led Dutch MPs to pose questions to the Minister of Defence, and a television program in which one of the US soldiers mentioned in the report reaffirms that the use of DU ammunition in the area was "standard procedure".

...The Dutch government assured concerned MPs, “the security situation in the South of Iraq may be described as reasonably stable”. Some MPs raised questions about the use of DU (depleted uranium) during the war, and its repercussions for the safety of civilians and army personnel in the area. On this issue, too, the government assured, there was no cause for concern as “no significant fighting has taken place in the province of Al Muthanna”. Besides that, according to Minister of Defence, no DU ammunition was used in the area during the recent conflict.

The assertion that no significant fighting took place in the area is so blatantly belied by open sources, that one wonders if any of the Ministers ever reads a newspaper. The capital of the province, As Samawah, is strategically located on the road from Basra to Baghdad, providing access to a bridge over the Euphrates river... Reportedly, it took just one day to take the bridge but more than a week before the town and the road were cleared of all ‘pockets of resistance’ . 112 civilians, most of them inhabitants of As Samawah, were killed in the battle. Despite such incidents, the Dutch government persists in depicting Al Muthanna as a remote, barely inhabited desert.

...For that matter, the assertion that “no DU ammunition was deployed in Al-Muthanna" is also unfounded... On the 12th of March, about a week before his troops set foot on Iraqi soil, Major General “Buff” Buford Blount III... conveyed in an interview with Le Monde that “if we receive the order to attack, final preparations will only take a few days. We have already began to unwrap our depleted uranium anti-tank shells.” ...In a widely distributed field message, Sergeant First Class (SFC) Cooper reports that the weapon systems used... en route to As Samawah and on to Najaf, “are performing well, especially the 25mm DU and 7.62” . In a letter sent home, E. Pennell, crew member on a BFV... describes how his crew fires a 25 mm DU-round as they encounter seven enemy troops in the town of As Samawah: “We fire five rounds. The first one is a depleted uranium due to standard operating procedures”.

...Since the US government has so far not disclosed any exact numbers, it is yet unknown just how much DU has been used in the war... all over Iraq, the remains of spent DU shells and DU-contaminated debris have been found littering the streets in urban areas. Some wrecked vehicles have been towed away, and the most obvious contaminated sites are marked. However, most locations have not even been identified let alone cleaned... If we are to believe the Dutch government, the only specific information that the US authorities have disclosed so far is that no DU-ammunition has been used in the province of Al Muthanna.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/business/media/07CND-LYNCH.html?ei=1&en=8f673c3f4e892350&ex=1061309282&pagewanted=print&position=

Representatives for Pfc. Jessica Lynch have pulled out of a proposed deal with NBC that would have added Private Lynch's cooperation to a television movie that the network is producing about her ordeal in the war in Iraq... "The Lynch family has received many offers from people interested in bringing Jessica's story to life," Randy Coleman, the spokesman for the family, said in a statement. "Jessica and her family have concluded that the most appropriate and complete telling of this story will be in a book." ...NBC executives declined to comment

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31317-2003Aug7.html

Several U.S. Army soldiers in Iraq who expressed anger last month toward Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after their tours of duty were extended have not been punished but have received warnings about respecting the chain of command, according to a senior Army officer... The soldiers received "a good talk" from senior noncommissioned officers who "reinforced their obligations as soldiers to respect their military and civilian chain of command," the officer added.

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word of moja vera

http://turningtables.blogspot.com/

...8.4.2003...they called in the 'net rangers'...and they had a bust...some fool was using up a third of our bandwidth on mp3 downloads...very bad...there are guys whose sole purpose in life is to catch people doing stuff like that...

. . . . we had another guy get busted today too...one of the 'net rangers' was just checking his computer for some normal 'net ranger' stuff...and he was locked out of his administrator log in...very interesting...the 'net ranger' had the soldier log into the admin desktop and low and behold if there wasn't all kinds of crazy soft wear...hacker soft wear...soft wear for breaking into routers and servers...again very interesting...especially since he's on a military LAN network...yeah he's in trouble...computer geeks like to feel powerful...they're talking now about yanking the NIPR drops (my internet access)...they want to throw up fire walls because of stupid shit like this...so i might disappear off the internet super high way...we'll see what happens...i'm sure i can work something out if they do some drastic stuff...

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baghdad weather

http://www.intellicast.com/Local/IntlLocalStd.asp?loc=orbb&seg=LocalWeather&prodgrp=Forecast&product=Forecast&prodnav=none

Sunday: A mainly sunny sky. High 117F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.

Sunday night: A mostly clear sky. Low 89F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.

UV Index: 11, Extreme.

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http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=29#5

Fully 72% of Americans agree that the government should provide universal health care, even if it means repealing most tax cuts passed since Bush took office... Even a narrow majority of Republicans (51%) favor providing health insurance for all even if it means canceling the tax cuts, while 44% disagree.

In addition, most Americans ­ especially those who support repealing tax cuts to provide universal health coverage ­ see this as a moral issue as well as a political issue. Just a third believes this is strictly a political issue... A big majority of those who support this proposal ­ 61% ­ think of it as a moral as well as a political issue, while most opponents tend to see this in strictly political terms (58%).

...Results for the survey are based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates among a nationwide sample of 2,002 adults, 18 years of age or older, during the period June 24 - July 8, 2003. Based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points... A total of 68 interviews were conducted in Spanish.

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big brother update

http://www.weeklyplanet.com/current/cover3.html

In late-May, Defense Tech's Noah Schactman reported that the same folks at DARPA who had designed the Internet and given the world the global positioning satellite system (GPS) had come up with "a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index all the information and make it searchable." It is called LifeLog, and it aims to catalogue every step you take and every move you make.

..."This gigantic amalgamation of personal information could then be used to 'trace the "threads" of an individual's life,' to see exactly how a relationship or events developed," according to a DARPA briefing.

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coming soon: your new, improved patriot act

http://www.nydailynews.com/08-06-2003/news/wn_report/story/106872p-96686c.html

WASHINGTON - Attorney General John Ashcroft is hitting the road to rally support for the Victory Act, which would further expand his powers to go after Al Qaeda and narcoterrorists, the Daily News has learned. Ashcroft will starting pushing the Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act later this month in a 10-day, 20-state Victory tour that includes a stop in New York.

...Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is expected to introduce the Victory Act next month. If passed, the feds would be allowed to: Clamp down on Arab hawala transactions, where cash exchanged in an honor system has been funneled to terrorists. Get business records without a court order in terrorism probes and delay notification. Track wireless communications with a roving warrant. [and so on]

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alas, poor colin powell

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAO4TLT5JD.html

"There are many smoking guns," Colin Powell would say afterward. For 80 minutes in a hushed U.N. Security Council chamber in New York [in february 2003], the U.S. secretary of state unleashed an avalanche of allegations... Here is an Associated Press review of the major counts, based on both what was known in February and what has been learned since:

Powell presented satellite photos of industrial buildings, bunkers and trucks, and suggested they showed Iraqis surreptitiously moving prohibited missiles and chemical and biological weapons to hide them. At two sites, he said trucks were "decontamination vehicles" associated with chemical weapons... But these and other sites had undergone 500 inspections in recent months... Nothing has been reported found since.

...Powell played three audiotapes of men speaking in Arabic of a mysterious "modified vehicle," "forbidden ammo" and "the expression 'nerve agents'" - tapes said to be intercepts of Iraqi army officers discussing concealment. Two of the brief, anonymous tapes, otherwise not authenticated, provided little context for judging their meaning... Powell's rendition of the third conversation made it more incriminating, by saying an officer ordered that the area be "cleared out." The voice on the tape didn't say that, but only that the area be "inspected," according to the official U.S. translation.

...Powell said "classified" documents found at a nuclear scientist's Baghdad home were "dramatic confirmation" of intelligence saying prohibited items were concealed this way. U.N. nuclear inspectors later said the documents were old and "irrelevant" ...from a failed and well-known uranium-enrichment program of the 1980s.

...Powell said Iraq was violating a U.N. resolution by rejecting U-2 reconnaissance flights and barring private interviews with scientists... On Feb. 17, U-2 flights began. By early March, 12 scientists had submitted to private interviews. In postwar interviews, with Saddam no longer in power, no Iraqi scientist is known to have confirmed any revived weapons program.

Powell noted Iraq had declared it produced 8,500 liters of the biological agent anthrax before 1991, but U.N. inspectors estimated it could have made up to 25,000 liters... No anthrax has been reported found... Three weeks before the invasion, an Iraqi report of scientific soil sampling supported the regime's contention that it had destroyed its anthrax stocks at a known site, the U.N. inspection agency said May 30. Iraq also presented a list of witnesses to verify amounts, the agency said. It was too late for inspectors to interview them; the war soon began.

...Powell said defectors had told of "biological weapons factories" on trucks and in train cars. He displayed artists' conceptions of such vehicles [produced by david kay's pals? --mrs.h]. After the invasion, U.S. authorities said they found two such truck trailers in Iraq... But no trace of biological agents was found on them... The trailers have not been submitted to U.N. inspection for verification. No "bioweapons railcars" have been reported found.

...Powell showed video of an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet spraying "simulated anthrax." He said four such spray tanks were unaccounted for, and Iraq was building small unmanned aircraft "well suited for dispensing chemical and biological weapons." ...According to U.N. inspectors' reports, the video predated the 1991 Gulf War... and three of the four spray tanks were destroyed in the 1990s. No small drones or other planes with chemical-biological capability have been reported found

...Powell said Iraq produced four tons of the nerve agent VX. "A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons," he said. Powell didn't note that most of that four tons was destroyed in the 1990s under U.N. supervision... Experts at Britain's International Institute of Strategic Studies said any pre-1991 VX most likely would have degraded anyway. No VX has been reported found since the invasion.

"We know that Iraq has embedded key portions of its illicit chemical weapons infrastructure within its legitimate civilian industry," Powell said. No "chemical weapons infrastructure" has been reported found.

..."Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent," Powell said... Powell gave no basis for the assertion, and no such agents have been reported found... The DIA reported confidentially last September there "is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons."

Powell said 122-mm chemical warheads found by U.N. inspectors in January might be the "tip of an iceberg." The warheads were empty, a fact Powell didn't note. Blix said on June 16 the dozen stray rocket warheads, never uncrated, were apparently "debris from the past," the 1980s. No others have been reported found since the invasion.

"Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. ... And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them," Powell said. No such weapons were used and none was reported found after the U.S. and allied military units overran Iraqi field commands and ammunition dumps...

..."We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program," Powell said. Chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei told the council two weeks before the U.S. invasion, "We have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq." On July 24, Foreign Minister Ana Palacio of Spain, a U.S. ally on Iraq, said there were "no evidences, no proof" of a nuclear bomb program before the war. No such evidence has been reported found since the invasion.

Powell said "most United States experts" believe aluminum tubes sought by Iraq were intended for use as centrifuge cylinders for enriching uranium for nuclear bombs. Energy Department experts and Powell's own State Department intelligence bureau had already dissented from this CIA view... No centrifuge program has been reported found.

Powell said "intelligence from multiple sources" reported Iraq was trying to buy magnets and a production line for magnets of "the same weight" as those used in uranium centrifuges. The U.N. nuclear agency traced a dozen types of imported magnets to their Iraqi end users, and none was usable for centrifuges, ElBaradei told the council March 7.

...Powell said "intelligence sources" indicate Iraq had a secret force of up to a few dozen prohibited Scud-type missiles. He said it also had a program to build newer, 600-mile-range missiles, and had put a roof over a test facility to block the view of spy satellites. No Scud-type missiles have been reported found... Powell didn't note that U.N. teams were repeatedly inspecting missile facilities, including looking under that roof, and reporting no Iraqi violations of U.N. resolutions.

...The secretary of state said in a CBS interview later that Wednesday in February [that] "Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option." The U.S. bombing began 43 days later, and on April 12 al-Saadi, the [Iraqi] science adviser, handed himself over to the U.S. troops who seized Baghdad. His wife has not seen him since.

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http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/iraqintell/adminquoteshtml.htm

see this site - the carnegie endowment for international peace - for a comprehensive list of all claims made by the bush administration re: weapons of mass destruction.]

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shut up shut up shut up!

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1060380618360

After 39 years in the Marines, including commands in Somalia and Iraq, Gen. Anthony Zinni never imagined he would be tagged "turncoat." The epithets are not from the uniforms but the suits — "senior officers at the Pentagon," the now-retired general says from his home in Williamsburg, Va... After Zinni challenged the administration's rationale for the Iraq war last fall, he lost his job as President George W. Bush's Middle East peace envoy after 18 months."I've been told I will never be used by the White House again."

Across the United States, hundreds of Americans have been arrested for protesting the war. The American Civil Liberties Union has documented more than 300 allegations of wrongful arrest and police brutality from demonstrators at anti-war rallies in Washington and New York. Even the silent, peaceful vigils of Women in Black — held regularly in almost every state — have prompted threats of arrest by American police.

...Actor/comedian Janeane Garofalo was stalked and received death threats for opposing the war in high-profile media appearances. MSNBC hosts asked viewers to urge MCI to fire actor and anti-war activist Danny Glover as a spokesperson... and one host, former politician Joe Scarborough, urged that anti-war protesters be arrested and charged with sedition. [and so on]

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http://www.fair.org/extra/0307/wmdhunt.html

see this site - fairness and accuracy in reporting - for a comprehensive list of all claims made by the american 'news' media re: weapons of mass destruction.]

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http://www.npr.org/yourturn/ombudsman/2003/030730.html

Can NPR journalists express their personal opinions when they speak or write for other media? ...NPR encourages its journalistic staff to speak in public... Some listeners find this... troublesome when it comes to FOX News and the regular presence of NPR's Juan Williams and Mara Liasson. That issue came to a head with reference to statements made by Liasson on FOX.

Last October 3, Mara Liasson on FOX News Sunday commented on the arrival of Congressmen Bonior and McDermott in Baghdad prior to the start of the war: "These guys are a disgrace. Look, everybody knows it's 101, politics 101, that you don't go to an adversary country, an enemy country, and badmouth the United States, its policies and the president of the United States. I mean, these guys ought to, I don't know resign."

...Some listeners just don't understand why NPR would allow its reporters to lend their own credibility and that of NPR to FOX programs... NPR is in the process of writing its own ethics guide. It can't come too soon...

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Special Report is a FOX 'news' program. Brit Hume and Fred Barnes are hosts. Juan Williams is an NPR sellout. apparently they were all discussing al gore's recent antiwar speech...

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh080803.shtml

On last night’s Special Report, Brit Hume started the panel in orderly fashion; he read off six “false impressions” about Iraq which Al Gore had blamed on the Bush Admin. “Well, some of it was true,” Juan Williams said, agreeing with the things Gore said. And that’s when Barnes began his faking. No, we really aren’t making this up. Yes, the corrupted man said it:

WILLIAMS: "Well, some of it was true."

BARNES: "I didn’t notice any."

WILLIAMS: "Well, I think it’s true when [Gore] says that President Bush led us to believe that somehow Saddam Hussein might have had connections to Al Qaeda—"

At this point, Fred cut Williams off... BARNES (continuing directly): "I think Bush said exactly the opposite, consistently! Exactly the opposite!"

Amazing, isn’t it? Exactly the opposite!

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31042-2003Aug7?language=printer

Labor, environmental and women's organizations, with strong backing from international financier George Soros, have joined forces behind a new political group that plans to spend an unprecedented $75 million to mobilize voters to defeat President Bush in 2004. The organization, Americans Coming Together (ACT), will conduct "a massive get-out-the-vote operation that we think will defeat George W. Bush in 2004," said Ellen Malcolm, the president of EMILY's List, who will become ACT's president. ACT already has commitments for more than $30 million.

...Republicans sent a warning shot across ACT's bow. "We are going to be watching very closely to make sure they adhere to their claim that they will not be coordinating with the Democratic Party," said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson. Such coordination would violate campaign finance laws.