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http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=P242_0_1_0

11/5/03 - As of today, the official wounded count stands at 2230. As usual though, gov't numbers are untrustworthy. From the Stars and Stripes [http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=17821&archive=true]:

"“It is unmistakable that Iraq is still a war zone,” Miller [R- NC visiting Landstuhl in Gernmany] said. He said there is an average of 35 attacks a day against soldiers and 95 percent of those soldiers survive their injuries, he said. . . . The delegation made a stop at the military hospital in Landstuhl, which has treated more than 7,000 injured and ill servicemembers from the Iraq war. The congressmen met with several injured soldiers, one whose arm had been amputated by a rocket-propelled grenade, and another who was injured by a homemade bomb."

It is unclear how many of the 7,000 are soldiers with illness unrelated to combat. Nonetheless, this number is significantly higher than anything reported elsewhere. The fact that these numbers involve only soldiers flown to Germany indicates that injuries are far from minor.

Finally, the Stars and Stripes again suggests that the official wounded number is dramatically deflated. An increased flow of wounded into Germany has created the need for a new staging area to care from them all: "The decision to build a new structure comes as the steady flow of patients from Iraq continues, with Landstuhl Regional Medical Center receiving an average of 44 patients a day." A little bit of math shows that if this average goes back to, say May 1st, then the total number of wounded/ill is actually 8,000. Perhaps a phone call to CentCom will clear this up.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9708-2003Nov6.html?referrer=emailarticle

11/7/03 - The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers. The decision... was announced in an e-mail sent Wednesday to the staff of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.

House committee Democrats had just asked for information about how much the White House spent making and installing the "Mission Accomplished" banner for President Bush's May 1 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The director of the White House Office of Administration, Timothy A. Campen, sent an e-mail titled "congressional questions" to majority and minority staff on the House and Senate Appropriations panels. Expressing "the need to add a bit of structure to the Q&A process," he wrote:

"Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee."

He said this would limit "duplicate requests" and help answer questions "in a timely fashion." It would also do another thing: prevent Democrats from getting questions answered without the blessing of the GOP committee chairmen.

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http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/7210241.htm

11/7/03 - WASHINGTON - The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted Friday to repeal a 10-year-old ban on researching low-power nuclear warheads... The repeal of the research ban was contained in a record $400 billion defense authorization act for 2004 that the House passed Friday by a vote of 362-40. The bill is expected to win final approval next week in the GOP-run Senate and then go to Bush for signing [and that's just what happened -mrs.h]

The bill would provide U.S. nuclear laboratories with $6 million to explore new nuclear bomb designs and $15 million to conduct a study of the feasibility of modifying existing high-powered nuclear weapons to make a warhead that could burrow deep into the Earth... It also would authorize spending $34 million to improve the Nevada Test Site so that it could resume underground nuclear test explosions in 18 months.

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http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=P241_0_1_0

Within the past week, there has been a bunch of articles about the Pentagon's announcement that they were trying to fill local draft boards.

Within the past 24 hours, the announcement has been pulled from the "Defend America" site run by the DOD [http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/sss092203.html]. You can still view the Google cache of the page [http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:bA_njvo2Wr0J:www.defendamerica.mil/articles/sss092203.html+selective+service+site:defendamerica.mil&hl=en&ie=UTF-8].

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and nobody came

http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=44586

KABUL, November 11 (Online): The Afghan military authorities say that the Afghan youths are not ready to join the new army. Deputy Chief of Bamiyan military commissionerate, Muhammad Issa has said that more than one month has passed to the opening of army recruitment centre in Bamiyan province but only 20 people have expressed their readiness to join the Afghan army, IRNA reports. Reports say that only ten out of one thousand disarmed Mujahideen in northern province of Kunduz expressed their readiness to join the army.

Earlier too, hundreds of volunteers declined to join the army units in Heart, Kandahar, Balkh and Nangarhar provinces. They withdrew from the army and returned to their respective provinces. Seventy thousand member Afghan army was due to be formed within two years but only seven thousand people have so far been recruited and it will take ten years to form 70000-member Afghan army.

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don't let your babies grow up to be soldiers

http://www.msnbc.com/news/988070.asp?0dm=s128k&cp1=1

SOON THE TROOPS will swoop down on a house in Fallujah’s northern outskirts, where a Baathist named Taha and 30 comrades are holding a meeting, allegedly to plan roadside bombings. “Go out and grab Taha,” says the company commander, Capt. Matthew Mobley. “He’s gonna have a helluva treat for Halloween.” Then the battalion’s chaplain asks the men to join him in a short prayer. “Lord, there are bad guys out there,” he says, bowing his head. “Just help us kill ‘em.” [and so on.]

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dont dont dont dont

http://www.msnbc.com/news/991235.asp?0cb=-415191491

...Although the bomb went off barely 100 yards from the hospital’s entrance, the Iraqi police officers guarding the door seem not to have noticed anyone planting the explosives. Sanchez shoves past an Iraqi cop who strays into his path. “They were covering for their own,” says another frustrated soldier. “F—k ‘em. Kill ‘em all.” The Guardsmen investigate the scene and search a nearby house but find no one. Sometimes Sanchez misses the early days, when the war seemed easier to understand. “When we first got here, it was black and white,” he says. “Now everything is gray.” The sense of twilight keeps getting deeper.

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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3784078

11/9/03 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A last minute peace deal offered by a top Iraqi official in the run up to the war that toppled Saddam Hussein was a trap designed to discredit U.S. policy, an advisor to the Pentagon said on Sunday.

Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defense Policy Advisory Board who had met with a Lebanese businessman who conveyed the Iraqi offer meant to prevent an invasion, said... "This was a trap... I think it was clearly a trap. It was intended to discredit the administration's policy, it was intended to discredit our effort to liberate Iraq."

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/08/1068243307816.html

A soldier mother faces punishment for refusing to return to duty in Iraq to avoid losing custody of two children. Simone Holcomb and her husband of three years, Vaughn Holcomb, also a soldier, were sent to Iraq early this year. The children's paternal grandmother came from Ohio to their Denver, Colorado, home to look after them.

Then an ex-wife came along and sued for custody. The Holcombs came home on emergency leave. A judge in a custodial hearing ruled that one of the parents must stay home to look after the children in order for Vaughn to retain full custody of the two. Vaughn, 40, went back to Iraq. Simone, 30, stayed - without the US Army's permission. Now she faces dismissal and even jail.

"I was told by the army to get on a plane," Simone said. "I even told them it was unlawful and [the officer] said, 'I don't care, get on a plane.' It's against the law for me to abandon my children. I can no sooner walk out on my children than I can rob a bank just because the Army told me to."

Simone, a medic, is being treated as absent without leave. Army officials have already stopped her active-duty pay and are expected to begin the process of dismissing her from the military.

Simone has been in the army for six years [and has seven children, apparently --mrs.h]

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you won't believe your eyes and ears

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/10/international/middleeast/10POWS.html?ex=1069432852&ei=1&en=a1f5c2360d4cf7b0

Nov. 9 — The Bush administration is seeking to block a group of American troops who were tortured in Iraqi prisons during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 from collecting any of the hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Iraqi assets they won last summer in a federal court ruling against the government of Saddam Hussein.

In a court challenge that the administration is winning so far but is not eager to publicize, administration lawyers have argued that Iraqi assets frozen in bank accounts in the United States are needed for Iraqi reconstruction and that the judgment won by the 17 former American prisoners should be overturned.

...President Bush had signed an executive order in March, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, that confiscated Iraqi assets and converted them into assets of the United States government. In May, after Mr. Hussein was ousted, Mr. Bush issued a declaration that effectively removed Iraq from a list of countries liable for court judgments involving past rights abuses and links to terrorism.

In a sworn court filing in the case for the former prisoners, L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Iraq, said the money won by the former prisoners had already been "completely obligated or expended" in reconstruction efforts.

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http://www.pressaction.com/pablog/archives/001137.html#001137

11-8-03 - Fox News reported on Friday, Nov. 7, 2003 from Tikrit, Iraq: "The U.S. military swept through Iraqi neighborhoods early Saturday, firing at houses suspected to be harboring hostile forces in the wake of an apparent attack on a Black Hawk helicopter that killed six U.S. soldiers."

The report quotes the commander of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regimen, Lt. Col. Steven Russell, as saying, "This is to remind the town that we have teeth and claws and we will use them.”

No doubt Iraqi civilians are finding out who has “teeth and claws.” Lest one forgets that the Fourth Geneva Convention, relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Aug. 12, 1949), adopted after the world learned about the horrors of war crimes of World War II, states very clearly: In Article 33, "No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

"In Article 53, Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations."

Is the U.S. military committing war crimes? Who will hold Lt. Col. Steven Russell et al. responsible? Under international laws, it is a war crime to punish Iraqi civilians for the Iraqi resistance downing U.S. military helicopter(s).

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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-woiraqupdate1110,0,6821921.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

Fallujah, Iraq -- America's top general in the Middle East has warned community leaders the U.S. military will use stern measures unless they curb attacks against coalition forces... Hours after Abizaid's warning, U.S. jets dropped three 500-pound bombs in the Fallujah area.

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http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/09/1068329418990.html

US warplanes bombed targets in Iraq at the weekend - the first time since US President George Bush declared major combat over on May 1. The US offensive came as the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was temporarily shutting its offices in the Iraqi capital and the southern city of Basra.

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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-ushood1110,0,4368169.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines

Fort Hood, Texas -- Every Friday, Capt. Timothy Tyson lines his soldiers on the pavement in the Army motor pool and tells them straight up what to expect when they eventually deploy to Iraq. His most effective method: reading aloud the details surrounding new deaths of U.S. troops.

...These soldiers have become keenly aware of the mounting casualties halfway across the globe. Many of the troops who have died were their neighbors. Of the total number of Army dead, Fort Hood's 4th Infantry Division... had the second-highest casualty rate even though it arrived in Iraq after the major battles were finished.

...In March, this Army post was a much different place. Eager soldiers psyched themselves up for war, desperate to test their combat skills... The bravado found last spring has given way to a more sobering tone... Pfc. Angel Diaz, 19, of Yonkers... fought the major battles in Iraq, served at checkpoints and patrolled Baghdad and came home in August. He just received new orders to return to Iraq in January for a year-long deployment. "I came back alive before," Diaz said. "I don't know about this time."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17283-2003Nov8.html

11-9-03 - Plans for Veterans Day parades across the country are being scaled back or scrapped. The problem: Not enough troops, tanks and Humvees to wow the patriotic crowds.

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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1081186,00.html

[In re] American Private Jessica Lynch... Last week she accused the administration of manipulating her story for propaganda, saying she was not a heroine at all; accusations that she'd been raped were disputed by appalled Iraqi doctors who first treated her, and the army was accused of insensitivity and racism for awarding Lynch a full disability pension while others from her ambushed maintenance company, including Shoshana Johnson, the black cook wounded and captured by Iraqis, will receive barely a third of Lynch's discharge package... It was her dead colleague Lori Piestewa, a Native American mother of two, who went down fighting.

Lynch says the circumstances of her rescue was dramatised and manipulated by the Pentagon. She was not rescued in a 'blaze of gunfire' as reported by Defence Department officials last April, but picked up from compliant Iraq doctors who had saved her life. She was not raped, as the department said, and the Iraqi, Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief, who was given US citizenship for his efforts, has written a book about how he risked his own life to win her freedom. Now he is described by his wife as overly influenced by John Wayne movies.

...Lynch, who joined the army hoping to see the world after failing to land a job at a supermarket... now questions why her rescue was filmed: 'They used me to symbolise all this stuff. It's wrong. I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say these things.'

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enduring liberation

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/09/1068329422664.html

November 10, 2003 - Increasingly alarmed by the failure of the Iraqi Governing Council to take decisive action, the Bush Administration is developing possible alternatives to the council.

...The US is even considering a French proposal, earlier rejected, to create an interim Iraqi leadership that would emulate the Afghan model.

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102603,00.html

MANILA, Philippines — Miss Afghanistan Vida Samadzai, condemned in her homeland for parading in a bikini at the Miss Earth contest, failed to make the semifinals but won the pageant's first "beauty for a cause" award on Sunday. The 23-year-old Samadzai, the first Afghan in three decades to take part in a beauty contest, she was cited for "symbolizing the newfound confidence, courage and spirit of today's women." ...Fazel Ahmad Manawi, deputy head of Afghanistan's Supreme Court, told The Associated Press that Samadzai, a college student in California, had betrayed Afghan culture by appearing at the Miss Earth contest in a bikini — and may have also broken the law.

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http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/images/20031105-1_p35410-21-515h.html

For Immediate Release

Office of the Press Secretary, November 5, 2003. The Ronald Reagan Building, Washington, D.C. 1:40 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I'm pleased that all of you have joined us as the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 becomes the law of the land. (Applause.) For years, a terrible form of violence has been directed against children who are inches from birth, while the law looked the other way. Today, at last, the American people and our government have confronted the violence and come to the defense of the innocent child. (Applause.) ...The real issue is not when life begins, but when love begins. (Applause.) This is the generous and merciful spirit of our country at its best. This spirit is reflected in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which I am now honored to sign into law. God bless. (Applause.)

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http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=P248_0_1_0

Occupation Officials, angered and disappointed by their own hand-picked Iraqi Governing Council, let it be known that they are looking to dump the council. Within hours of the release of this story, it was announced that US guards shot and killed the leader of the local Baghdad US-appointed Council, Muhammed Kaabi.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20807-2003Nov10?language=printer

BAGHDAD, Nov. 10 -- Iraqis marched in anger through the streets here Monday after the killing of an American-appointed local Iraqi council leader by U.S. military guards under disputed circumstances... The council leader, Muhammed Kaabi, was approaching the council offices in a car Sunday. American authorities and local witnesses agreed that he got into some sort of argument with soldiers who wanted to search the car he was driving. They agreed as well that at some point he got out of his car. They disagree about what happened next, however.

A U.S. spokesman here said the victim went for the weapon of one of the American guards and was shot by a second soldier in response... Local witnesses said there was indeed a warning shot but reported no attempt by the leader to seize a weapon from the soldier.

Whatever the truth, the hundreds of mourners who carried the coffin through the streets draped with an Iraqi flag were blaming the Americans. They chanted and wailed and carried signs condemning the soldiers.

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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=564&u=/nm/20031111/ts_nm/iraq_bremer_dc_1&printer=1

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's U.S. governor, Paul Bremer, has left for Washington at short notice and canceled a meeting on Tuesday with visiting Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller, the Polish delegation said. Officials in the U.S.-led administration had no immediate comment.

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http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=797881&tw=wn_wire_story

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of more than two dozen House of Representatives Democrats on Monday said they had introduced a resolution urging President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1082739,00.html

November 11, 2003 - The war in Iraq has resulted in an "alarming deterioration" in the health of the Iraqi people that will be felt for generations, according to a report published by medical charity Medact today.

...Dr Sabya Farooq, the report's author, said today: "Limited access to clean water and sanitation, as well as poverty, malnutrition, and disruption of public services - including health services - continue to have a negative impact on the health of the Iraqi people.

"The environment is littered with mines, and they are killing humans. A lot of unexploded bomblets are continuing to injure civilians, particularly children because they are brightly coloured."

...The report, which is entitled Continuing Collateral Damage: the health and environmental costs of war on Iraq 2003, follows Medact's initial report on the country, Collateral Damage, published in November last year.

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http://www.prolog.net/webnews/wed/ae/Qus-iraq-weapons-probe.Rhap_DN8.html

WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (AFP) - The leader of US Senate Republicans has suspended a politically damaging inquiry into possible inadequacies or misuse of pre-war intelligence on Iraq, saying it was being manipulated "to politically wound the president of the United States."

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/11/07/national0423EST0457.DTL

A man charged with entering a restricted area during an October 2002 presidential visit has subpoenaed U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Bush political adviser Karl Rove to testify at his trial next week. Activist Brett Bursey, 55, said Thursday the men's testimony would show that the Bush administration tries to "sanitize" areas of dissent around the president during visits across the country.

...Bursey originally was charged by local authorities with trespassing when he refused to move to a "free-speech zone" at the Columbia airport. That charge was dropped, but the Justice Department decided to prosecute Bursey five months later under a statute that allows the U.S. Secret Service to restrict access to areas during the president's travels. He faces up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine if convicted.

"We intend to find out from Mr. Ashcroft why and how the decision to prosecute Mr. Bursey was reached," said Lewis Pitts, Bursey's lawyer.

Bursey, who began protesting war and inequities in the 1960s, attached $400 checks to the subpoenas for fees and mileage.

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http://www.topplebush.com/oped79.shtml

President Bush has never been an advocate of the First Amendment. Even when he was governor of Texas, he prohibited demonstrations on the walkways in front of the governor's mansion... As president, Bush has widened his restrictions on demonstrations against his policies. Anti-Bush protesters are now relegated to what are euphemistically called Free Speech Zones. These areas are cordoned off as far as a mile away from the president and the main thoroughfares. The free speech enclosures are only for those who disagree with the administration's current policies. Those citizens who carry pro-Bush signs are allowed to line the street where the president's motorcade passes.

...The American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of four national advocacy groups has filed a lawsuit in federal court charging the Secret Service with a "pattern and practice" of discrimination against protesters that violates their free speech rights. The suit seeks to ban the Secret Service and local police from confining protesters to areas away from the view of public officials and the press.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031108/pl_nm/security_subpoena_dc

The national commission investigating the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks decided on Friday to subpoena the military's North American Aerospace Defense Command records for information it promised but did not deliver. It would be the second subpoena issued by the commission.

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freedom is slavery

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/sns-ap-britain-id-cards,0,7054202.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines

November 11, 2003 - LONDON -- The British government said Tuesday it wants to introduce compulsory identity cards to protect against illegal immigration, welfare fraud and terrorism... Home Secretary David Blunkett said the government would introduce the scheme after building a national database of biometric information using fingerprints, iris scans and facial recognition technology.

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addendumb

http://www.msnbc.com/news/990904.asp?0cv=CB10

HOUSTON, Nov. 8 — When the state of Texas bestowed “exemplary” status on Austin High School in August 2002, ecstatic administrators compared the honor to winning the Super Bowl. There was more cheering and pompom-waving a few weeks later when a private foundation honored Houston for having the nation’s best urban school district.

JUST a year later, the high school has been downgraded to “low-performing,” the lowest possible rating. And the Houston Independent School District — showcase for the “Texas educational miracle” that President Bush has touted as a model for the rest of the nation — is fending off accusations that it inflated its achievements through fuzzy math.

Austin is one of more than a dozen Houston high schools caught up in a burgeoning scandal about the reliability of their dropout statistics. During a decade in which, routinely, as many as half of Austin students failed to graduate, the school’s reported dropout rate fell from 14.4 percent to 0.3 percent. Even a Houston school board member calls the statistic “baloney.”

If this were any other school district in the nation, few people would pay much attention. But Houston is the political springboard for U.S. Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige. He was school superintendent here before moving to Washington... During his tenure, Paige formed a political alliance with Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who became an ardent advocate of accountability and high-stakes testing. After Bush was elected president, Paige’s ideas became the inspiration for the administration’s “No Child Left Behind” plan... Schools now face penalties for failing to show improvement in such things as dropout rates and reading scores.

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